FUNDS OF THE «DNIPROSPETSSTAL’» PLANT PEOPLE’S MUSEUM OF HISTORY AS A SOURCE TO THE HISTORY OF WORKERS IN ZAPORIZHZHIA CITY DURING THE XX CENTURY

Abstract

The article is devoted to the research of the materials that form the basis of the exposition and fund collections of the Museum of the Dniprospetsstal Plant (Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine). The People’s Museum was established on April 29, 1960. It was a place for storing materials illustrating his activities and an effective tool for communist propaganda. Today the museum occupies 5 exhibition halls, which present 2303 exhibits on the history of the plant. It also has a stock room for the archive, which houses more than 4,000 exhibits. So all museum objects are grouped into actually museum funds, an exposition and two collections of photo negatives: from the history of the plant and portraits. The museum has a large number of sources about the construction of Dniproges, which has become an energy base for enterprises of the Zaporizhzhya industrial complex. Sources related to the construction of the Tool Steel Plant and its operation in the pre-war period are also widely presented. First of all, it is project documentation. The museum also keeps documents on mobilization for the construction of Komsomol members and other means of non-economic coercion. Another set of sources in the Dniprospetsstal Museum was formed during the Second World War - in evacuation, in Siberia: memoirs, diaries and letters of veterans, orders to celebrate labor valor and photographs. Reconstruction of the plant after the war, in the second half of the 1940s - early 1950s, is recorded in numerous photographic documents. The collection of commemorative badges and medals, samples of philately and philocards, as well as honorary diplomas, records evidence of the policy of the communist leadership of the plant “Dniprospetsstal” aimed at perpetuating the main events of the so-called “socialist construction”.