The archives of St. Petersburg showed frightening finds from the funds

Central State Archive of Historical and Political Documents of St. Petersburg (former Leningrad Party Archive) presented in honor of its 95th anniversary, a unique virtual exhibition “Miracles on the Shelves”. The archivists included interesting, unusual and even frightening finds from the collections among the exhibits.

“Miracles on the Shelves” is divided into four sections. “Printed Products” presents propaganda posters from the first years of Soviet power, periodicals, postcards, food labels and even fragments of wallpaper. There are many lottery tickets from different years, including military ones; a letter from a resident of Borisoglebsk, Toma, to partisan Ivan Iosifovich Martynov, written on the back of a stewed meat wrapper (it is dated 1942-1943), a postcard addressed to the foreign relations department of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU from the Republic of Mali (1984-1990) and much more.

One of the rarities is a signal copy of the 21st issue of the magazine “Crocodile” for 1938 with notes from the second secretary of the LOC and LGC of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) A.A. Kuznetsova. “The issue about the editorial team’s trip to Leningrad was checked before printing for compliance with the current ideological line. Despite the fact that the authors of the feuilletons were such masters of the literary genre as Mikhail Zoshchenko and Yuri Olesha, on one of the pages the censor wrote: “Empty and vulgar.” It is difficult to say whether these comments were ultimately taken into account, since the further fate of the “Crocodile” according to archival materials is not can be traced,” the archive noted.

Another unique artifact is a certificate to the secretary of the LOC and LGC of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) A.A. Zhdanov about a photograph with a defect published in the press (1935). Serious proceedings then arose due to the placement in Leningrad publications of a photograph depicting the General Secretary of the CPSU (b) I.V. Stalin and the leader of the Bulgarian and international communist movement G.M. Dimitrova. “The cause was a stray strand of hair on the forehead of a Bulgarian revolutionary.

In the magazine “Red Village” the photograph was posted without retouching; moreover, the artist gave a resemblance to G.M. hanging from his forehead. Dimitrov’s lock of hair with a swastika, and the censors, without noticing this, signed the magazine for publication. The Leningrad regional party committee, having learned about this, gave instructions to seize the circulation of the magazine “Red Village” with an unretouched photograph, and to impose a party penalty on those responsible for their “negligence,” said the authors of the exhibition.

In the “Drawings” section there are interesting sketches on party cards. For example, in one document there is an elaborate profile of Lenin, and in another there is a gentleman with a smoking pipe. You can find out what the draft banner for the sea scout detachment of the Russian Organization of Young Scouts looked like, drawn in 1922, or what was written in the combat leaflet of the “Budenovets” detachment in 1942. In the diary of Leningrad schoolgirl Lena Mukhina, which she kept from May 22, 1941 to May 25, 1942, there are graphite sketches of the city during the siege – a deserted embankment, a Soviet plane flying over the city.

In the “Photo Documents” of the St. Petersburg Archives there is a photograph, presumably dated 1892, which depicts the imperial family of Alexander III surrounded by members of the Danish royal family. This photo was found in the personal documents of RCP (b) member V.I. Khrustaleva. In 1916, he took a photograph from one of the representatives of the Sheremetev family and kept it in a visible place at home – for this, he was later almost deprived of party membership. Khrustalev justified himself in an original way: he stated that he kept the photograph only so that the image of the allegedly drunk Nicholas II and his family would remind of the failure of the tsarist regime.

Among the exhibits there are photographs taken by foreigners who visited Leningrad in 1939 – queues of many kilometers outside the shops. The camera and film were confiscated by the police from the authors of the photo, the photographs were printed and sent to the Leningrad City Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks).

The photo from the report of the head of plant No. 5 of the NKVD Lokshin, declassified in June 2024, shows armored snowmobiles manufactured in 1940. They were designed for fast movement through deep snow in winter during the Soviet-Finnish War.

Brain cast of the first secretary of the Leningrad regional and city committees of the CPSU (b) S.M. Kirov. 1934 Photo: TsGAIPD St. Petersburg.

The “Items” section contains exhibits with a unique history. For example, ears of wheat from the 1930s, which were sent to the Vsevolozhsk District Committee as an example of poor quality work of agricultural machinery. An investigation revealed that the thresher was unable to cope with the task and the straw was left partially unthreshed.

The most unusual exhibit is a cast of the brain of the first secretary of the Leningrad regional and city committees of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, S. M. Kirov, with a trace of a fatal bullet wound. During the evacuation of the archive to Chelyabinsk in August 1941, this item was listed in a specially packed box prepared for transportation to the Urals. And the most curious item is the whiskers of the cat Timofey, who lived in the family of ship designer Andrei Tokmakov. In his personal collection, an album was discovered in which three whiskers of a furry pet were glued.