One year after the German surrender in World War II, an exhibition about the “Great Patriotic War” opened its doors in the regional museum of Chelyabinsk. The curators presented the visitors with a geological take on the war events: the exhibition employed a geological time frame, which started with the genesis of planet Earth, and displayed a large introductory section on natural resources of the southern Urals, the museum’s home region. The exhibition makers reasoned that the Soviet war effort was inextricably linked to the region’s inanimate environment with its rich deposits of minerals and metals. Based on archival documents and published sources, this article explores how a narrative focusing on minerals and metals could find a place in an exhibition about the Soviet war effort. It argues that the museum director’s personal background as an earth scientist, the short-lived regional diversity of war memory in the postwar Soviet Union, and a particular vein of environmental thought that was widespread in Soviet and international geology influenced this remarkable exhibition.

中文翻译：

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战争中的石头：1946 年车里雅宾斯克战争展览与苏联环境思想

德国在二战投降一年后，关于“伟大卫国战争”的展览在车里雅宾斯克地区博物馆开幕。策展人向参观者展示了战争事件的地质情况：展览采用了地质时间框架，从地球的起源开始，并展示了博物馆所在地乌拉尔南部自然资源的大型介绍部分。展览制作者推断，苏联的战争努力与该地区拥有丰富矿物和金属矿藏的无生命环境密不可分。本文基于档案文件和已发表的资料，探讨了以矿物和金属为重点的叙事如何在有关苏联战争努力的展览中找到一席之地。