The land we live in is much older than we. The Ural mountains and rivers are much older than we. They silently guard their past. People are the only ones to decipher the signs of the past and animate the images coming from the depthof time or from recent years. Their memory creates the blinding mosaic of love and sorrow, cosy corners and the ravages, the dear faces of friends and relatives, bright glassy pebbles from the childhood, cross-currents of welcomes and farewells. Then roaring cannon, funeral marches, victory salutes blendingly sound from the past...

Vsevolod N. Ivanov (1888 - 1971). In the Civil War he joined the White Army troops of Kolchak, then emigrated but returned in 1947, became a writer. His memories brightly describe the 1918 - 1919 Perm

Memory comprises everything. But now we shall tell the tale of war. Not only farmers and craftsmen lived at the Urals. Our land preserved coats of mail, arrows, spears. The Vychegdo-Vymsky chronicle saved the names of chieftains - Fyodor Pyostry, Burmort, Noch... The land's severe nature moulded true and hardy warriors.

In the big campaigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the peasants were made soldiers while doctors and nurses voluntarily joined the army. So was during the Russian-Turkish war, so was during the Russian-Japanese war.

The workers of state plants and works were not mobilized then.

During the First World War, the fifth of all the heavy guns made in Russia were sent to the army by Motovilikha's works. New shops were built at the works in order to produce shells, shrapnels and gun-carriages. The 1905-1907 rebellion was suppressed. The town worked to defend the state.

But the second revolutionary wave was approaching to divide the people in the town and region of Perm into the "red" and the "white", to move brothers against each other, to shed the land with the Russian blood, to make human beings inhuman. There is no monument to the unknown victims of the Civil War In Perm, no monument to those who perished in the early twentieth century for the ideas they valued more than life. We know the names of the Red Army soldiers and commanders - Perm streets are named after them. Little is written about the White Army soldiers. We know the Great Prince Michael A. Romanov was shot dead in Perm. Well, thousands of common people lost their life and they often did not actually realize - why...

The winners celebrated their victory. But the ravages of the war and starvation faced them. It took great toil to restore the railway, restart hearth and open-hearthfurnaces,wipe out illiteracy .return to the peaceful walks of life. Between victorious meetings in the 1920s and bitter meetings in 1941 there are only two but eventful decades - our history can hardly be retold. But the war trumpets were going to herald the turn of the century - its Second World War.

This war did mobilize everybody: a craftsman, a qualified worker, a student, the only son in the family, an old man, a child. Plants and factories worked 24 hours a day. Machines were operated by women and teenagers. Indeed, the war years were those of the people's sorrow and fame. Perm is a warrior city, a worker city, and the names of the Motherland's heroes are written into its history with golden letters.

The grandchildren of these heroes were also doomed to devastating feats of arms. Local wars - in Afghanistan, Chechnya - devoured thousands of young lives. This is our sorrowful memory.

	Anatoly N. Pepelyaev (1891 - 1938). Lieutenant-General of Russian Army, he took part in the First World War from August 1914 to January 1918, was awarded 8 war orders and golden weapon. In the Civil War he headed the White Army troops seizing Perm	Filip E. Akulov (1878-1933). A Red Army commander, he headed a regiment of "red eagles" who seized Perm on 1 July 1919

	Perm nurses going to Russian-Turkish war, May 1877
	Military doctors and nurses, 1905. They took part in Russian-Turkish war
	The Red Army parade, 1920s
	People's volunteer corps, 1941
	These boys operated machines and produced aircraft motors
	Motovilikha young gun-makers during the Great Patriotic War
	Bread for the front
	Victory Day

Veterans

	Monument to Twentieth-Century Local Wars

Historical Perm | Heroic Perm | Lirical Perm

Perm. The poem of the town: Photo album. Publishing house «Pushka», 2003