Children and Youth Center on Krasnoznamenskaya Street in Volgograd in mid-October 2021

Volgograd Children and Youth Center is a municipal educational institution of additional education for children. It is the successor of the first in Russia and the second in the territory of the former USSR (after Kharkov) Palace of Pioneers - the Stalingrad Palace of Pioneers. On January 3, 1936 in Stalingrad, at a meeting of the Bureau of the Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the issue of opening the Palace of Pioneers was decided. Of the six proposed buildings that could house the palace, for various reasons, not one was chosen. As a result, the Palace of Pioneers was given the building, which at that time housed the city committee of the party. This building was built by order of the Tsaritsyno merchant K.V. Voronin. The interiors of the mansion were made of marble. The walls were decorated with artistic stucco. The building was faced with Finnish granite. Restoration and re-equipment of the building were carried out within three months. The building had 38 rooms. Music rooms, a ballet studio, rooms for theater and choir groups, a laboratory for young naturalists, an entertaining physics class, a cinema and a photo studio, a zoology room, and a radio center were equipped for the opening. The palace was designed for 1500 pupils. The decoration of the palace was performed by the Moscow artist N.V. Filippov. All work on the creation of the Palace of Pioneers was carried out by the Council of the Palace, whose chairman was the first secretary of the regional party committee, Joseph Mikhailovich Vareikis. The grand opening of the Stalingrad Palace of Pioneers took place on May 17, 1936. Samuil Lvovich Zaitsev was appointed the first director of the palace, but already in the middle of 1937, Veniamin Iosifovich Nikolaevsky became the director, who worked until 1962. In addition to the main building, the building of the former Mariinsky Women’s Gymnasium was transferred to the palace, in which an auditorium for 800 seats was opened. In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, the Palace continued its work. The circle of needlework began mass tailoring of linen for hospitals. Young chemists packaged medicines and dressings for field medical battalions. The printing house printed agendas. The symphony orchestra of the palace played on the city radio, replacing the musicians who had gone to the front. Art circles gave concerts at recruiting stations and in hospitals. Young technicians made wooden cases for anti-tank mines. Pupils of the art studio drew postcards for the Red Army. On December 9, 1941, the city defense committee decided to close the Palace of Pioneers. On December 10, the building of the palace was occupied by the headquarters of the Kharkov military district. But the circles continued to work in schools, in the premises of the musical technical school and the radio studio. During the Battle of Stalingrad, the building of the palace was destroyed and could not be restored. April 22, 1950 in the building at st. Pushkinskaya, 25, the House of Pioneers began its work, which Stalingraders called the Palace for old times’ sake. The building was small and in 1956, by decision of the Executive Committee of the City Council, the palace was transferred to the building along Lenin Avenue, 5. In the summer of 1980, before the opening, a canvas for the Stalingrad Battle panorama museum was sewn together in the palace’s gymnasium. On December 29, 1981, a new building of the Palace of Pioneers was opened on the banks of the Tsaritsa River, designed by architects Yefim Levitan and Alexander Leushkanov. In 1984, the Volgograd Palace of Pioneers hosted the 1984 World Chess Champion title match. The contender for the title Irina Levitina fought against each other and the current two-time champion Maya Chiburdanidze, who defended the title. For almost four months, the attention of the sports community around the world was riveted to Volgograd. The match was attended by up to 100 thousand spectators. The President of the International Chess Federation Florencio Campomanes, Minister of Culture of the USSR Pyotr Demichev, Chairman of the USSR Chess Federation Vitaly Sevastyanov, leaders of the region attended the open championship. In December 2005, due to lack of funding for the reconstruction of the building, which is in disrepair, the palace was closed. Children continued to study on the territory of various educational institutions in Volgograd and in the building of the former Pobeda cinema. On May 11, 2014, a fire broke out in the building of the Youth Center. On June 1, 2014, the leadership of the Volgograd region decided to reconstruct the building. At the same time, the reconstruction was begun, which was carried out by PrivolzhTransStroy, the chief architect of the reconstruction Alexei Lisin, the head of construction Alexei Kolpakov, the foreman Boris Miklin. On March 6, 2018, the building of the Children’s and Youth Center of V