Make history: Izvestia opens the Great Victory Virtual Museum
The Great Victory Virtual interactive Museum will help bring history closer to the present day and literally bring it to life for Internet users. This is a special project that Izvestia launched on the eve of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The museum opened on March 31 and is available at pobeda80.iz.ru . Seven virtual halls feature rare archival materials, 3D models of weapons and equipment, interactive maps of major battles, and photographs of military personnel brought to life by artificial intelligence technology. About what else can be seen in the new military museum and how it was created, see the Izvestia article.
A revived story
Rare archival materials, 3D models of weapons and equipment from the Great Patriotic War, interactive maps and animated photographs of famous military officers — to see all these exhibits, it is no longer necessary to go to the museum of military history. The museum is a real one, although virtual — it came to the users on its own.
We are talking about the new virtual museum "The Great Victory", which opened on March 31 on the Izvestia website. Artifacts are collected in a single modern digital space that immerse the viewer in the history of the most important events of 1941-1945. It's not boring in the virtual space: here, as in ordinary museums, you can walk through the halls, each of which will tell you about something different.
For example, interviews with veterans, witnesses and participants of those great and terrible events, are presented in the Living History hall. Many of them are over 100 years old, and the more valuable their memories are, which they share with museum visitors.
While working on the project, Izvestia journalists talked with dozens of veteran soldiers, doctors, home front heroes, and prisoners of Nazi concentration camps who now live in different countries — in the republics of the former Soviet Union and Western Europe. This material has turned out to be the largest and most lively hall, according to the authors of the project.
There are seven themed halls in the museum. In addition to "Living History", these are "Heroes of Victory", "Weapons of Victory", "Victorious Battles", "Everything for Victory", "Military Leaders" and "Victory in the lens of Izvestia".
The platform was created using modern visualization technologies, so the main feature of the museum is its interactivity. Thanks to artificial intelligence, many of the archival photographs presented in the museum come to life. Just click on the picture with the mouse — and the people on it start moving, guns and mortars are firing.
The hall of the virtual museum "Victory in the lens of Izvestia" provides a unique opportunity to see the war through the eyes of photojournalists. Here is a nurse on the battlefield bandaging the head of a wounded soldier: it's like watching a movie — we see how she bandages it, how she looks at the fighter with concern, how smoke from a newly exploded shell envelops the frame. Here we can also read the history of photography and even what happened to its characters in the future.
But about a dozen fighters on the steps of the stairs at the Grafskaya pier in the newly liberated Sevastopol froze in such a familiar black-and-white entourage from numerous photographs. But one tap — and suddenly they come to life in color and start running up the stairs to Victory.
Or another photo where several military men, led by Georgy Zhukov, are chatting on a hillock. They have cards in their hands, and we can assume that they are discussing the details of the offensive. With a click of the mouse, the military is talking to each other, gesturing, smiling. And from the text we will find out the details of which operation they are discussing.
All this gives rise to an immediate emotional response to military events, forcing us to look at them in a new way. And not just to look at, but to experience. Modern technology takes the viewer back 80 years, making them a witness to bygone but not forgotten events.
How the museum was created
In the Weapons of Victory hall, all military equipment is presented in the form of 3D models, which were hand-drawn by designers in as much detail as possible, according to drawings and photographs of those times. Airplanes, tanks, self—propelled artillery installations, small arms - the visitor can examine each exhibit in detail in 360° format. Military experts recalled the history of those weapons that made the greatest contribution to the Victory, ranging from the T-34 tank to the PPSh submachine gun.
To interact with the models on the website in real time, the designers had to develop several new technical solutions. On average, it took about a week to prepare one model. Then it was shown to WWII weapons experts for additional verification.
On the Victorious Battles Museum page, users will see interactive maps of the most important campaigns of 1941-1945. Here, in a game format, you can study in detail important details of historical battles: how the troops attacked, where the battles took place. Thanks to the hints left by the developers, the user will be able to "start" a particular offensive operation of the Soviet troops himself, moving specific units on an interactive map, and then observe how subsequent events unfolded.
In the text support of the project, the creators had the task of giving the reader a concise idea of a particular military fact, person or battle, one of the authors of the Great Victory project, military historian Dmitry Boltenkov, told Izvestia.
— It was necessary to make it interesting for everyone, and first of all for yourself, — said the expert. — To make it simple, understandable and not trivial.
The history of the Great Patriotic War is multifaceted, Dmitry Boltenkov added, and new unexplored pages continue to open up in it. The elimination of these blank spots is associated with the study of military archives, many of which are located in Germany and the United States. Now, due to the situation in the world, many of them have become inaccessible, and this complicates the work, the expert noted.
The history of the Great Patriotic War is primarily the history of the country, Veniamin Zanfira, one of its authors, shared his thoughts on the Great Victory Virtual Museum project.
— This is an example of the heroic deed of the entire Russian people, and finally it is the story of my family, — said the journalist. — These are the stories of my grandfather, a veteran, thanks to which, in fact, I decided to participate in this project.
Over a hundred employees of the Izvestia News Center, a TV channel and website, worked on the creation of the museum. IZ.RU , Izvestia newspapers, as well as consulting historians.
"The idea itself arose in September 2024, and in October we started implementing the project,— Veniamin Zanfira said. — Since we are talking about a virtual museum, access is open to absolutely everyone who has the Internet. We work seven days a week, for free and without breaks.
Neural networks in the service of history
All the material shot and written during the preparation of the project had to be uploaded to the website and brought to a single standard. The authors also discovered new possibilities of artificial intelligence, and the art director of the project, Alexander Romashko, shared his impressions.
"Just a year ago, artificial intelligence did not have such capabilities, but now it has allowed us to animate photos and "restart" people's emotions in them according to the moment," he said. — And it was quite an interesting experience to bring life back to these photos. We tried especially for the younger generation, who find it much easier to perceive moving images than frozen images.
All the photographs presented in the museum are taken from the Izvestia archive, they were taken by legendary employees of the newspaper, many of whom risked their lives for these pictures. Two types of photographs were selected from the extensive database of the publication for the museum: on the one hand, the most famous, recognizable by almost every person, on the other — rare, little-known, but conveying the nature of this war and the people who fought in it.
— For example, there are many photos of Marshal Zhukov, but only we have his pictures on the front line, where he is surrounded by soldiers, in an operational environment, — said Alexander Romashko.
He added that even when using AI to animate photos, the quality of work depends on the person — on how competently he makes a request to the neural network, correctly takes into account the emotions of the characters and the context of the photo. To get one good result with a lively photo, the specialists had to carry out 20-30 iterations.
Along with all the famous heroes, the authors of the project tried to find and tell about the non-obvious heroes. These are people who were not written about every day in the Soviet newspapers, but who contributed to important battles. For example, this is the Moscow seamstress Maria Platova, who in the winter of 1941 sewed protective covers for fighter engines so that they would not freeze on airfields and could instantly rise into the sky.
All the materials prepared by the journalists were subject to mandatory verification by historians.
"Thanks to such a high level of expertise, we can guarantee the accuracy of all information presented in the museum," Alexander Romashko assured.
According to the authors of the project, the exposition will be replenished after its launch. Previously, the virtual museum expanded its geography, and some of its exhibitions can already be seen in different parts of our country at the largest media facades.
Veniamin Zanfira
The Virtual Victory Museum is not the first project of the Izvestia News Center dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War. Earlier, on February 19, 2025, Yandex opened access to the digital archive of the Izvestia newspaper with all issues since 1917, including those for 1941-1945. With this project, every user can find and read the historical issue of the publication of that era.
The launch of the digital archive started together with the Izvestia News Center special project "80 Days to Victory", dedicated to the anniversary of the Great Victory. Daily on the IZ website.RU and the pages of the newspaper publish materials based on archival articles from Izvestia in 1945, which covered key events of the war years.
The Great Victory Museum is available at pobeda80.iz.ru .
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