Thirty years after the victory over Nazi Germany grateful ancestors "resurrected" the 411th Soviet artillery battery by constructing the Memorial Complex of the Heroic Defence of Odessa (the Memorial, for short) at the location of the battery. In February 1975, war and labour veterans of Odessa published a call to construct a memorial in the Evening Odessa newspaper; the call was answered by the majority of industrial enterprises and non-governmental organisations as well as by soldiers of Odessa Red Banner Military District.
Thanks to the patriotic impulse and good organisation of the construction works, the Memorial was constructed in a record short period of time.
A solemn opening of the Memorial took place on the day of the 30th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, 9th May 1975. At a mass public rally organised by industrial enterprises, non-governmental and Communist party organisations, Odessa educational institutions and soldiers of Odessa Military District, the famous writer Konstantin Simonov spoke; he was in Odessa and visited the 411th artillery battery during the defence, as a front-line reporter of the Red Star newspaper.
The Memorial is a kind of an open-air museum, which occupies an area of 16 hectares (40 acres). The Memorial offers detailed exhibitions that show samples of military machinery and weapons of the main armed forces branches, for the Great Patriotic War period (1941–1945).
The entrance to the Memorial is decorated with sculptures of the Katyusha concrete stele, and along a 500-meter (1,600-foot) long alley there stand metallic structures depicting the emblems of the cities (including one fortress, Brest Fortress) that hold the honorary title of the Hero City.
On the day of the 45th anniversary of the liberation of Odessa from Nazi German troops, 10th April 1989, the Alley of Memory was planted on the north-western outskirts of the Memorial by parents of soldiers who died during the 1979–1989 Soviet War in Afghanistan. Together with the sculptural composition, the complex, which symbolises the link between and continuity of generations, is known as The Sad Memory of the Age.
The four rooms of the museum offer thematic exhibitions of a high artistic level; the exhibitions present the "epic" of the defence of Odessa under the following epigraph: "The years of the Second World War are increasingly becoming remote history. However, time cannot condemn them to oblivion and erase them from people's memory."
The Memorial has become a solid bridge between the past and the future, one of the most visited cultural establishments in the region, dear and loved to veterans of the Second World War and to veterans of the Soviet War in Afghanistan and a symbol of memory and pride to inhabitants of Odessa for the heroic history of their hometown.
At the Memorial, one may always see many young people. Here, war and labour veterans regularly meet young people, soldiers and university students, and during solemn ceremonies graduates of military training programs receive their first officer ranks.
The State Museum of the Defence of Moscow was founded in 1979. The Museum began as an exhibition dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Moscow during the World War II.
The Museum is open to the public from 1981.
In 1994, the Museum's exhibition area was under renovation and a new exhibition was under creation.
In 1995, a perman...
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