Published on: 2026-09-08
Source: Moscow Government – Правительства Москвы –
An important disclaimer is at the bottom of this article.
On the 85th anniversary of the beginning of the Siege of Leningrad, we tell about the exhibits of the museums subordinate to the capital To the Department of Culture. These items allow one to see the history of the besieged but unyielding city through the fates of its inhabitants. Children’s toys that became part of history, a book printed in the toughest times, a portrait of a woman who endured the blockade and saved many lives — objects that preserve the memory of what was endured and bear witness to the endless courage of the people of Leningrad.
Letters, toys, and memories of children
In Marina Tsvetaeva House Museum Since 2012, letters and toys related to the siege have been kept. They were passed on by Natalia Berezina, who was born in Leningrad in 1940 and spent all 872 days of the siege in the city: her family did not manage to leave.
Natalya Nikolaevna recalled how she and her mother Elena Andreevna were getting ready to go to the train station, but shelling began — they had to turn back. Her mother was a seamstress, took work home: sewed clothes, but sometimes also received orders for children’s toys.
Since those terrible days, Natalya Nikolaevna has kept her plush dogs — Shulik and Sharik. These toys have become not just a memory of childhood, but a quiet testament to how people tried to preserve hope in the most difficult circumstances.
Natalia Nikolaevna’s husband, Alexey Darinsky, has a different story: at the beginning of the war he was six years old, and in the summer of 1941 he was evacuated with his grandmother to the Kirov region. Already in August, Alexey wrote his first letter to his mother, Varvara Mikhailovna. Until 1944, when evacuees were allowed to return, she only learned about her son’s affairs in this way, and the boy promised in every letter that he would come soon.
The rattle-parrot that little Alyosha played with turned out to be filled with dried peas. Varvara Mikhailovna searched for and bought all such toys she could find in stores, and then began to grow peas at home.
Fighter book: to print against all odds
In Nikolai Ostrovsky Museum a very special book is kept here: the novel “How the Steel Was Tempered,” published right in besieged Leningrad. In 1942, after the first and most difficult winter, when the city suffered from hunger and cold, the printing house released an edition with a print run of 10,000 copies. The book came out in the simplest cover, on gray paper, but its appearance was a feat and a true manifestation of the greatness of spirit.
“From January 6 to May 1942, the printing house was mothballed… In May, after five months of downtime, it resumed operations. One of the first books the team worked on was Nikolai Ostrovsky’s ‘How the Steel Was Tempered,’” recalled Vasily Gulya-Yanovsky, director of Printing House No. 2 named after Evgenia Sokolova.
The book was printed by Alexander Efremov together with a group of young workers. Due to constant power outages, the printing press often had to be operated manually. Order No. 104 of the State Publishing House of Fiction Literature was completed only in October 1942.
Almost the entire print run was sent to the front. Later, in the 1960s, one of the copies ended up in the Nikolai Ostrovsky Museum from the Central Museum of V.I. Lenin in Leningrad. Now this book is part of the exhibition.
A gaze in which the blockade lives
In the permanent exhibition Alexander Shilov’s Galleries The portrait “Siege Survivor of Leningrad E.N. Ivanova” is presented. The artist painted it in 2004. The fate of the heroine of the canvas is truly remarkable.
Ekaterina Ivanova was born on April 20, 1920, in the Vologda region, studied and worked in Leningrad. At the beginning of the war, she continued working at a factory where she sewed military uniforms. Like thousands of other Leningraders, she dug trenches and anti-tank ditches on the outskirts of the city for 12 hours a day. She was a member of the air defense militia—standing watch on roofs with sandbags and extinguishing incendiary bombs. In the winter of 1941–1942, Ekaterina Ivanova, as part of a special brigade, went door to door searching for children left without parents and sent young Leningraders to hospitals and orphanages where they could be saved. Ekaterina Nikolaevna was awarded the “For the Defense of Leningrad” medal.
Alexander Shilov managed to convey the blockade in a single glance of the heroine: hunger, hardships, and irreparable losses that cannot be forgotten.
No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten: how the Moscow Defense Museum tells about memory
The memory of the blockade in the capital’s museums is not just pages of history, but living human destinies preserved in simple things: letters, toys, books, and portraits.
Tickets to all city museums can be purchased using the service “Mosbilet”.
Get the main news promptly on the official channels of the city of Moscow in messengers “Max” and “Telegram”.
Please note; This information is raw content obtained directly from the information source. It is an accurate report of what the source claims and does not necessarily reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.