Exhibition 'Honor of the Uniform'

About exhibition

The exhibition presents authentic elements of the gymnasium uniform, photographs and photo albums, and memoirs of students of the gymnasium and the Simbirsk Cadet Corps. The central figure of the exhibition, who embodies the concept of 'honor of the uniform,' is Sergey Alekseevich Vitalyev, a graduate of the Simbirsk Cadet Corps, whose family archive was recently transferred to the collection of the Museum-Reserve 'Homeland of V. I. Lenin.' Sergey Alekseevich led an extraordinary life. He received his secondary education in Simbirsk and his higher education at the Mikhailovsky Artillery School in Saint Petersburg. He fought in the First World War; during the Civil War he sided with the Reds and took part in the liberation of the Crimean Peninsula from the tsarist army. After the war he worked in the rear, taught at a Soviet Party school in Ulyanovsk, and later moved with his family to Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), where his grandchildren and great-grandchildren now live. Among Sergey Alekseevich's personal belongings, the exhibition will for the first time present personal photographs and documents, including frontline photographs from the First World War. In several of these photographs Sergey Alekseevich is pictured together with his faithful batman Petrovich, who saved his life three times.