he St Petersburg Artillery Museum is a dream of any little boy and not very little one as it is the biggest artillery museum in the world; it has displays of artillery from medieval times until 1812, along with the pike that Peter the Great (founder of St Petersburg) carried as a foot soldier, an ornate coach from which Kutuzov (commander- in-chief of Russian troops during war with Napoleon) harangued his troops at Borodino, and regiment banners (one depicting the Last Judgment, with foreigners writhing in hell).
Amongst the WWII exhibits inside the St Petersburg Artillery Museum is the “Katyusha” multiple rocket launcher, a huge mural of trench warfare at Stalingrad and diorama of Kursk, where the biggest tank battle in history took place. The Artillery Museum also has a model of ruined Reichstag and a gleeful painting of Hitler committing suicide, a model of a dog with a mine strapped to its back – the Soviets trained them to run underneath the Nazi tanks.
Also worthy of your attention is the snazzy Red Army uniforms of the Civil War era, designed by a futurist artist later killed by the Stalin purges. Don’t miss the exhibition at the St Petersburg Artillery Museum devoted to Mr. Kalashnikov, inventor of AK -47: “A Man, a Weapon, a Legend”