OREANDA-NEWS. On 29 April 2008 was announced, that All-Russian Contest "The 65th Anniversary of the Victory in the Kursk Salient" is timed to the anniversary of that historical battle. The contest will be sponsored by joint efforts of United Metallurgical Company, the Central Museum of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War at Poklonnaya Gora (Poklonnaya Hill), and the Government of the Belgorod Region. This information was provided by Aleksandr Kastravets, OMK Director for Public Relations, and Mikhail Mikhalchev, Deputy Director of the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War.

Contestants, aged 10-30, are supposed to submit their essays, stories, movies, songs, poems, paintings, interviews with war veterans, and other creative works devoted to the heroes and events of the Battle of Kursk. The information sponsors of the contest are the radio station Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei, the magazine Metallosnabzheniye i Sbyt, and the newspapers Krasnaya Zvezda and Pionerskaya Pravda.

The contest prize fund accounts for 1 million rubles. The award ceremony for winners of the contest will take place in late August at the Meeting of Three Generations to be held in honor of the heroes of the Battle of Kursk at the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War.

"It was Chairman of the OMK Board of Directors Anatoly Sedykh who generated the idea to organize this contest," said Mr. Kastravets. "For our part, this event serves to acknowledge the heroism and dedication of those who fought in the Great Patriotic War on the whole and in the Battle of Kursk in particular. Our idea is to attract attention to this anniversary of young people in the first place. So we expect them to come up with some interesting and creative projects, which will be their way of paying tribute to our war veterans."

"The significance of the Battle of Kursk in the Great Patriotic War can scarcely be overestimated," said Mr. Mikhalchev, Deputy Director of the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War. "The crushing defeat of the Hitlerite troops in the Kursk Salient and the Red Army's retrieving the Dnieper after that were the events that finally turned the tables in the Great Patriotic War."