Among the new additions are archive records and reminiscences. Through them, one may learn about the work of a special subversive service, evacuation of strategic to the field enterprises to the Urals, and the educational process at the Mining Institute, which despite the attacks and hunger, did not stop even for a day.
The exhibition dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory, which St. Petersburg Mining University opened this May, was expanded in June. Ten new webpages added to the exposition's website present scientific achievements brought by the Mining Institute's staff during the siege of Leningrad. There is also information on the evacuation of valuables, equipment, museum collections, as well on the participation of students, teachers, and university's alumni in defence of Leningrad.
In particular, many exhibits tell the story of people's contribution to the demining of the city. Some of the bombs that fell upon Leningrad did not explode and could detonate at any time. Time bombs with explosion delayed between 2 to 70 hours were even more dangerous. Buried in the ground, deep in the houses' basements, they could destroy a six-story building.
Special subversive service of Leningrad (in Russian)
Aleksandr Khanukaev, who graduated from the Mining Institute in 1937, served as the Deputy Chief of special services. Before the war started, he had been performing drilling and blasting operations in quarries and mines of Leningrad Oblast, at the Kirov and Izhora plants. And in the fall of 1941, he invented a device allowing to detect mines at a depth of more than ten meters.
He was also the first in the USSR to discover the secret of the German 250-kilogram high-explosive bomb. Its construction was of unknown type to Soviet specialists. That is why in the first months of the siege about 60 Lenvzryvprom's blasters and deminers at the anti-chemical regiment of the USSR's Ministry of Internal Affairs died while trying to neutralize such missiles.
To get acquainted with the exhibition "Mining Institute on the Frontline of the Motherland's Defense" and its virtual items, follow the link below:
"Mining Institute on the Frontline of the Motherland's Defense" (in Russian)
