Monuments
«Motorist Warriors»
During the war, employees of the Moscow tram company participated in the construction of defensive structures around Moscow. They worked 1.5-3 shifts in a row, often without going home for days. In the summer of 1941, there was an acute fuel crisis in Moscow. Supplies of coal from the Donetsk and Moscow regions stopped, and supplies of petroleum products decreased sharply. Many businesses and buildings switched to wood-burning heating. To provide fuel for the city, a large-scale harvesting of firewood was organized in the Sheksna and Mologa areas. The harvested wood (total volume 7 million cubic metres) was transported by water: barges towed along the Rybinsk reservoir and the Volga, and then transferred through the locks of the Moscow-Volga Canal to Moscow riverboats. The main transportation during this time was carried out by the steamship «Pravda», which transported 6-8 thousand cubic metres of firewood per voyage. Moscow’s public transportation, including trams and trolleybuses, operated under conditions of blackout. Photographs of trolleybus route № 2 in Petrovka street with darkened headlights from 1941 have been preserved. In memory of the heroic work of transport workers, a monument «Glory to Motorist Warriors» was erected in front of the Moscow State Academy of Management named after V.P. Goryachkin. The monument includes a restored GAZ-AA truck, fragments of which were discovered by a university research team at battlefields near Vyazma in 1941-1942. The monument was officially opened in May 2001.
Address: Moscow, Listvennichnaya Alley, 7
