The museum’s exhibition features the painting “Guests of the Pioneers of Kuznetsov’s Unit”, created by the partisan artist Grigory Grigoryevich Ponomarenko. The work captures a moving encounter between veterans of the legendary partisan detachment “The Winners” and young pioneers. The meeting took place at a Moscow school named after Dmitry Nikolaevich Medvedev — the detachment’s commander. This symbolic event embodies the continuity between generations of heroes, linking past and present through the enduring memory of their feat.
When the war began, Grigory Ponomarenko volunteered for the front. He fought against German forces near Orsha, was seriously wounded, and captured twice. Fate eventually brought him together with the scouts of a special partisan detachment under Medvedev’s command — where the legendary intelligence officer Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov also served.
Even in the midst of combat, Ponomarenko never abandoned his vocation as an artist. In every spare moment, he drew: recording military events, sketching comrades, and creating portraits of commanders and fighters. These field sketches have since become invaluable historical documents of the era. More than mere likenesses, they convey the profound inner world of partisans and Red Army soldiers — their resilience, humanity, and quiet dignity.
In a letter to a friend, Ponomarenko recalled the day he drew Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov posing as a German officer:
