Tula Defense Museum

The Tula Defense Museum is the only museum in the region where the heroic defense of Tula, which went down in the history of the Great Patriotic War as one of the brightest and most significant pages, is shown on such a large scale. Near Tula, virtually the entire right flank of the Nazi group aimed at Moscow was shackled.

Tula is one of the few cities that fought off all the attacks of the fascists and remained unconquered during the Great Patriotic War. The main thing is that the enemy was stopped and prevented from entering Tula by its heroic defenders — soldiers of the 50th Army, which was successively commanded by Generals A. N. Ermakov and I. V. Boldin, soldiers of the Tula Workers' Regiment under the command of A. P. Gorshkov, NKVD troops guarding defense plants, the population of the city and the region.

For the feat accomplished by the Tulyaks and their contribution to the defense of Moscow, Tula was awarded the Order of Lenin in 1966, and in 1976 the honorary title of Hero City was awarded with the Gold Star medal as a symbol of heroism, perseverance and courage of the defenders of Tula.

The idea of creating the museum was supported by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, and the implementation of this significant and unique military-patriotic, cultural and educational project for the region was carried out with the organizational and financial support of the Government and personally the Governor of the Tula region Alexei Dyumin. The museum is located in Patriot Park on an exhibition area of about 3,000 square meters. meters.

In a short time, a team of museum staff, artists, decorators, and programmers prepared an immersive exhibition unique to Tula for the opening. The history of the fighting city has been reliably recreated on the basis of historical and archival data from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the State Archive of the Tula region, the archives of the FSB and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the regional military enlistment office. It reveals the history of the fighting city. The museum captures the feat of the soldiers of the Red Army and the Tula Workers' Regiment, the labor feat of railway workers, doctors, and ordinary residents, who in October of the 41st as one stood up to defend their native walls.

The exhibition features over 60 hardware and software complexes that allow each visitor to find interesting and important things for themselves. Electronic encyclopedias reveal to experts and lovers of military history not only the period of the city's defense, but also the history of the region during the war, and various interactive programs enable children to learn in a playful way what was in the ambulance bag and sent to the front, what a Molotov cocktail is and what warmed Tulyaki in the harsh winter of 1941.

Museum visitors will see more than 1,000 authentic wartime objects. These are exhibits from the funds of the Tula Museum Association, rarities acquired specifically for the creation of a new exhibition and

authentic objects received as a gift from Tula residents as part of the "National Museum" campaign. It is noteworthy that defense enterprises, various organizations and institutions joined the creation of the museum. Thus, Tulamashzavod handed over to the museum three machines manufactured in 1934-1937, the Imperial Tula Arms Factory — samples of small arms and models of Maxim machine guns, search teams — over 150 valuable finds. Among them are a banner from the period of the Battle of Moscow, handed over by the Slavny search party, and unique documents from 1941, a gift from Tolstoy Tula State Pedagogical University.