World history: Exhibition “The War, like thunder in heaven…” to the First World War Centenary in Moscow

In the Museum of Heroes of the Soviet Union and Russia (Moscow) from July 31 to November 20, 2014 takes place the exhibition "The War, like thunder in heaven…" the First World War Centenary 1914-1918.

The poem, the line of which was the title of the exhibition, the poet-symbolist Valery Bryusov composed on 14 August 1914, when the world's only military conflict just flared. For the majority of the population of the Russian Empire the war really broke out suddenly, like a thunderstorm, like "the thunder in heaven". No one suspected that it will drag on for a long four years, will bring with them tens of millions of deaths, the collapse of the most powerful European empires and seemingly immutable ideas of humanism.

The exhibition presents more than 200 objects from the collection of the Central State Archive in Moscow, private collection of Y. P. Tushin, family collection of Vorontsov-Velyaminov and the Museum-Panorama "The Battle of Borodino".

The chronological outline of events of the war, "the image of war," as it seemed to the Government of the Russian Empire of 1914-1915, are shown on the basis of more than 80 works from the collection of military splint, preserved in a private collection of Y. P. Tushin. Of particular note is a series created by well-known Russian futurist V. V. Mayakovski, K. S. Malevich and A. G. Lentulov.

Documents of the Central State Archive in Moscow provide a nuanced picture of the life of the city during the Great War as a single economic and social organism.

The dramatic impact of the war on the lives of individual family is shown on the basis of documents, photographs and objects from the collection of the Vorontsov-Velyaminov. Several members of this genus were directly related to the history of the Museum-Panorama "The Battle of Borodino" that makes it particularly valuable relics displayed at the exhibition.