Permanent display of the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad is located beneath the monument. Mosaic triptych “The Siege of 1941” by Sergey Repin, Ivan Uralov and Nikita Fomin depicts volunteers leaving for the war, women working at the factory in besieged city, and the portrait of Dmitry Shostakovich, who wrote his famous Symphony No. 7 to glorify the city’s resistance and defiance to fascism. The “Victory” panel in the opposite part of the hall represents the reception of returning soldiers and the Victory Parade, which was held in Leningrad in the June of 1945. The display includes documents, awards, soldiers’ personal belongings, weapons, a 125-gramm slice of bread – the only food available to the citizens from November 20 to December 25,1941, and other items, connected with the history of the Siege.
The Memorial Hall houses “Chronicle of the Siege of Leningrad” and “Memory Book”. Bronze pages of the Chronicle describe the series of events that took place in the city of Leningrad and on the Leningrad front in 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944. Pages telling about each of the 900 blockade days are changed daily and exhibited on a special base. The “Memory Book”, also made of bronze, contains the whole list of military units that undertook defence of Leningrad.
The display is accompanied by reproduction of call signals from Moscow, changed by the metronome ticking – audio documents of the epoch. During the Siege the radio broadcast a ticking of a metronome warning citizens about coming air raids. Fast tempo meant an air raid warning and a slow tempo informed the citizens that the threat was over.
The museum display features documentary films “Recollections about the Siege” and “Leningrad in Struggle”. Fragments from the Symphony No. 7 byDmitry Shostakovich are used as background music to the movies.
