Presidential Library about legendary cruiser Aurora

125 years ago, on May 24, 1900, to the thunder of artillery salutes from ships standing on the Neva, the 1st-rank cruiser Aurora was launched. The event was held in a solemn atmosphere, in the presence of Nicholas II, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the wife of Emperor Alexandra Feodorovna, admirals and generals, engineers, workers, sailors, numerous guests, foreign ambassadors and military attaches. The ceremony was attended by a detachment of warships of the Baltic Fleet.

On the portal of the Presidential Library, a virtual tour of the legendary ship prepared jointly with the Central Naval Museum named after Emperor Peter the Great and learn many interesting facts about the history of the cruiser.

The marine biography of the ship is very rich. The Aurora sailed the waters of the North and Mediterranean Seas, the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. The cruiser was a participant in the naval battles of the Russian-Japanese and the First World Wars.

One of their most striking pages in the annals of the ship was written in 1917. The Aurora, which stood on the Neva River, found itself in the epicenter of revolutionary events. On October 25 (November 7), one blank shot was fired from a six-inch cannon, which became a signal for the sailors of the military vessels stationed on the Neva with a call to combat readiness. According to another version, it was a signal for the surrender of the Provisional Government.

On that memorable October evening, the first commissar of the ship, sailor Alexander Belyshev, gave the command: "Bow gun, fire!" There is a unique recording in the Presidential Library's collection, Conversation with the Commissioner of Aurora, where Alexander Viktorovich Belyshev talks in detail about those historical events.

After the revolution, the cruiser became one of the training ships of the Soviet navy. In 1924, the Aurora, the first of the Soviet state's naval ships, was honored to sail abroad. The cruiser traveled about six thousand miles around Scandinavia.

The cruiser met the Great Patriotic War in Oranienbaum. The team heroically repelled enemy air raids with the help of anti-aircraft artillery. As the Nazi troops approached the city, weapons were removed from the ship. In July 1941, Battery A (Aurora) was formed, which included nine removed 130-mm guns with a range of 20-25 km. She was sent to the land front near Duderhof. During the years of the blockade, Aurora defended the city from the enemy with its "steel chest". The hull of the ship received many holes and sat on the ground. In July 1944, the cruiser was raised and sent for repairs, and in 1948 she anchored at her eternal parking place. It has become a symbol of the Russian Navy and the maritime capital of Russia, St. Petersburg. In 1956, a branch of the Central Naval Museum was established on the Aurora cruiser.

More information about the history of the legendary cruiser can be found in the section On this Day on the portal of the Presidential Library. In addition, the fund contains a large number of photographs of the ship taken in different years, audio materials, as well as unique archival documents. Among them are the cases On the delegation from the cruiser Aurora to the Session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (1926), On the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution and the anniversary of the cruiser Aurora (1927), On the award of a gold personalized watch to senior mechanical engineer S. S. Matveyuk ... (1931), etc.