BEIJING/CHUNGKING, June 18 (RIA Novosti) - A major exhibition dedicated to the 60th anniversary of VE Day opened in Chungking (China) on Saturday.
RIA Novosti helped organize the exhibition, which opened in Chungking's largest museum Three Gorges. This is the only national museum in China located outside the capital Beijing.
Speaker of the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament) Boris Gryzlov, currently in China, attended the opening ceremony.
The Chungking museum exhibits 195 photographs of the period of the Great Patriotic War and the defeat of militarist Japan in the Far East. Some of the photographs feature Russian veterans and celebrations of VE Day in Moscow in May.
Gryzlov said at the opening ceremony that the Soviet Union "had made the decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi armies which intended to enslave Europe."
"We are proud of Soviet-Chinese cooperation during World War II," the speaker said. After Japan attacked China, the USSR supplied the latter with 1,200 aircraft, 1,850 vehicles, 1,600 guns, 14,000 machine-guns and 110,000 rifles, he added.
According to Gryzlov, over 12,000 Soviet soldiers and officers were killed during the liberation of northeast China.
Gryzlov congratulated those present on the 60th anniversary of Victory in World War II saying that in September Russia and China would mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Japan which had brought terrible suffering to Chinese people.
The State Duma speaker handed a medal dedicated to the 60th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) to a Chinese woman who fought in the Far East in a Soviet brigade.
Chungking was China's capital in 1939-1946. Government offices and embassies were situated there.
Gryzlov also laid wreaths to the monument to the Soviet volunteers, handed a $10,000 bill to local authorities to restore the monument and attended the premises of the former USSR embassy in Chungking. It is occupied by a hospital for Chinese veterans today.
