Exhibition «Return to Seliksa»

About exhibition

The exhibition reveals the complex historical topic of military camps that carried out pre-frontline military training — a subject that has never been presented in the Russian museum space. To date, the museum's collection materials are the only coherent assemblage of diverse sources describing the phenomenon of reserve military formations, on the basis of which the museum exhibition was created. It follows contemporary museum trends and features photographs, documents and audio recordings. During the Great Patriotic War, on the territory of the modern town of Zarechny in the Penza region, the “Seliksen” military camps were located, which have remained in popular memory as places of harsh daily life and the tragic deaths of thousands of recruits. The project “Return to Seliksa,” which became the winner of the grant competition “Changing Museum in a Changing World” of the V. Potanin Charitable Foundation, is dedicated to investigating this page of national history. The exhibition’s concept involves conducting an independent investigation using the documents presented about life in the “Seliksen” camp, which gradually leads the visitor to their own conclusions.