13.04.2006 — 01.08.2006

The exhibition devoted to 61-year anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War narrated about Izhevsk plants in the years of the War. The city worked hard and intense, on the most verge of human capabilities.

In this harsh time Izhevsk became an “arms workshop”: it produced 80% of all USSR small arms for this period.

For the first time an exhibition managed to gather products that demonstrated the capabilities of leading Izhevsk arms enterprises during the Great Patriotic War:  Plant No. 74 (at present named as Izhevsky Mashinostroitelny Zavod); Plant No. 622 (Izhevsky Mechanichesky Zavod); Plant No.524 (Izhevsky Motozavod). In 1941-1945 the plants in common produced more than 13 million items of small arms.
The Exhibition offered main types of small arms: Tokarev self-loading rifles, Berezin air cannons and machine-guns, Nudelman air cannons, Mosin rifles and carbines, “Maxim” machine-guns, Tokarev machine guns (“TT”), Nagant revolvers, Degtyarev antitank rifles (“PTRD”) and Simonov antitank rifles (“PTRS”), lighting pistols.

War-time materials from staff archives, commercial documents describing different sides of the production were presented. Some of them had been just recently declassified and demonstrated for the first time.