The exhibition “Nine years - nine countries ... and hundreds of good stories”, devoted to the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege, opened in the Tavricheskiy Palace

The exhibition was opened by the IPA CIS Secretary General – Head of the IPA CIS Council Secretariat Alexey Sergeev. He congratulated attendees on the upcoming holiday, the Day of the Liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege, and emphasized that “The siege of Leningrad is the most tragic and certainly the most heroic period in more than 300 years of our city's history”.

“Despite the fact that people directly involved in those events pass away every year, it is very important to preserve the memory of those days and those pages of our common history so that it lives for generations. To preserve these memories we need the many memorial complexes, which already exist in all the Commonwealth capitals, but, at the same time, monuments and memorials created for private funds of patriots of their homeland”, noted Alexey Sergeev.

The exhibition opening featured a presentation of the book sharing the same name with the exposition by the honored cultural worker of the Russian Federation, former Colonel Yuri Klenov as well as a demonstration of the documentary The Train to Eternity” telling the story about the tragedy at the “Tikhvin” station of 14 October 1941 claiming dozens of lives of children of the besieged Leningrad, and about preserving the historical memory.

The event was attended by the IPA CIS Council deputy secretaries general: Plenipotentiary Representative of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia Ayk Chilingaryan, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Jogorku Kenesh of the Kyrgyz Republic Nurbek Satvaldiev, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation Irina Sokolova, Plenipotentiary Representative of the Majlisi Oli of the Republic of Tajikistan Ibod Rakhimov, as well as veterans - inhabitants of the besieged Leningrad, numerous representatives of NGOs, the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church of St. Petersburg.