Artillery Regiment of 8th Division of the People’s Militia of the Krasnopresnenskiy District of Moscow was Formed in This Building in 1941
The 8th Moscow Rifle Division of the People’s Militia of the Krasnopresnenskiy district was formed from July 3 to July 6, 1941. The division included workers of the Trekhgornaya Manufactory and Proletarian Labour factories, metalworkers of the Krasnaya Presnya plant, workers of the varnish and paint factory, tramway workers, students and teachers of Lomonosov Moscow State University, MGRI, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory, artists of the Theatre of the Revolution, writers (“Writers’ Company”), workers and employees of the Proletarian district. In addition to Muscovites, volunteers from Kolomna, Zagorsk, Solnechnogorsk, Voskresensk, Noginsk and Podolsk districts of the Moscow Region joined the division. By July 6, 1941, 6 thousand people were called up. The formation of the division took place in the buildings of the regional court and the Faculty of Law of Moscow State University (address: 11, Herzen Street). The 1st Rifle Regiment was located in schools № 83 (address: 14, Strelbishchensky Lane), № 89 and № 95 (address: 37, Zamorenova str.) and clubs of the district. From July 9 to July 10, the regiments of the division left Moscow and settled in the area of Nikolo-Uryupin and Buzlanov. On July 30, the division was sent to the Rzhev-Vyazma line of defence. On August 4, units of the division arrived in Semlevo. A detachment of the division, together with a unit of the 6th division of the People’s Militia of the Dzerzhinskiy district of Moscow, surrounded and destroyed several groups of enemy paratroopers, including the area near the village of Dudenka. After the battles near Yelnya on October 6-7, 1941, the division practically ceased to exist: more than half of the personnel were lost, the division was cut off from the main forces. Some of the surviving fighters joined the partisan detachments, some went to their own. Officially, the 8th Moscow Rifle Division of the People’s Militia of the Krasnopresnenskiy District was disbanded at the end of November. In 2006, a memorial plaque was unveiled on the building of the Educational Centre of the Moscow Zoo (4A, Krasnaya Presnya str.) in memory of the formation of the 8th division of the People’s militia of the Krasnopresnenskiy district. A shell casing is visible from the pierced armor, a small candle is in the bend, above them is a black stone board with an inscription and edges chipped as from shelling (architect I.A. Gusev).
Address: Moscow, Krasnaya Presnya str., 4A, p. 1
