Thursday, September 24, 2009

The 100th anniversary of foundation of Poltava Battle Museum


An official ceremony dedicated to the centenary of Poltava Battle Museum has taken place on September 21st, 2009. Museum was founded in 1909 due to the efforts its first director, Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Pavlovsky, who served at the time as a teacher of history at the Poltava Cadet School. The initial display of the one-room museum was not very large. It included old Russian and Swedish firearms and coldsteel, regimental colours and uniforms as well as portraits of the Swedish and Russian commanders. After the Revolution of 1917, the Poltava Battle Museum, as so many other historical sights, was left unattended. In 1950 the museum was reopened in a late 19th century building that had been used as a hospital for disabled veterans of Russian-Turkish war.
As a gift from Poltava Oblast Branch of Raiffeisen Bank Aval for the 100th anniversary Poltava Battle Museum got about 40 copies of unique documents that were discovered by LTC Oleg Bezverkhnii in Krigsarkivet (Stockholm, Sweden) in the University of Helsinki's Slavonic Library (Finland), and in some private Ukrainian archives. All these findings were shown to the Poltava public on June 24th, 2009, on the eve of marking of 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava. The gift was handed over to the museum by Volodymyr Shyyan, Head of Poltava Oblast Branch of Raiffeisen Bank Aval. The first museum of the Battle of Poltava has been fully reconstructed in its original shape recently. Poltava City Council decided to create a museum of Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Pavlovsky and the first museum of the Poltava Battle Museum in this building soon.
To read more about Poltava Battle Museum in Swedish language click on following link
http://www.battle.poltava.ua/svensk/museum.htm