38

Museums and Monuments in Khabarovsk

Khabarovsk attracts many tourists from various parts of the world, especially from China, Japan, Korea. Some of them go here on business, some visit the city for pleasure. Others want to see relatives. Though infrastructure for travel business is not much developed there are intentions to improve it.

None of the Khabarovsk guests escapes the charm of this beautiful city with its new modern housing developments, light-filled streets and spacious squares, its theatres, museums and recreation centres and parks.

Khabarovsk has many striking monuments and memorials. Thus, an armoured launch, which took part in many military operations during the Great Patriotic War of 1941 – 1945, stands on a granite postament in Krasnoflotsky district. A T-34 tank was set up in honour of the factory Energomash workers who repaired tanks and weapons for the Army in the field. In Garazhnaya Street a fighter plane immortalizes the feat of the Soviet pilots in the War. Before September 2005, by the 60th anniversary of WWII ending, the monument had been renovated.

An impressive War Memorial Complex has been laid out on the Amur high bank commanding the surrounding country. In the centre of Glory Square stands an obelisk symbolizing the combat and labour exploits of the Khabarovsk Krai citizens. On the Granite wall there are more than 14 thousand names of the Far Easterners who fell in WWII. There is an Eternal flame, which is glowing to remember the heroes forever. We live at the time of local wars and terrorist acts. The last monument was erected in 2003 after those who fell in Afganistan, Chechnya, Lake Khasan, Damansk and other places.

Khabarovsk has a set of different sights to provide a lot of materials about history, nature, peoples of the Far East.

It was Governor N.I. Grodekov who suggested establishing the Khabarovsk Regional Lore Museum. It was opened in 1894 on the initiative of the Priamursky Department of the Imperial Russian Geographic Society. Now it has more than 320 thousand items. Among its exhibits there is a unique collection of the Far Eastern flora and fauna representatives, ethnography of indigenous peoples and Slavic settlers.

Vladimir K. Arseniev, the famous explorer of the Far East and the author of books about its nature and native people, had been heading the Museum for more than ten years (1910-1919, 1924-1925).

The Khabarovsk Fine Art Museum was opened in 1931. The Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin Art Museum, the State Hermitage, the Russian Museum had participated in collecting its exhibits. Now it holds over ten thousand works. They are Russian and Western paintings, a unique collection of indigenous peoples’ applied arts, icons and sculptures.

The Archeological Museum contains numerous documents pertaining to the Far Eastern history. Among its artifacts there are petrogliphs of Sikachi-Alyan and cultural heritage of the Golden Empire of the Jurchen People.