January 27, 2023: shortly after the Unknown Soldier Week, which had been held on November 26 - December 3, 2022, Taganrog joined another event, "Memorial Hour", dedicated to the Lifting of the Siege of Leningrad anniversary in 1944. Both the Unknown Soldier Week and "Memorial Hour" were organized by the Russian Center of the Kazakh-Russian International University (Aktobe, Kazakhstan).

Chief Specialist of Taganrog Local Government's Foreign Relations Dept. Dmitry Koulitchev participated in the event in the remote mode. He made a report on Leningrad architect and artist Yakov Rubanchik (1899-1948), who was born in Taganrog and studied at Taganrog Boys' Gymnasium (now "Chekhov Gymnasium" museum). During the Great Patriotic War, he chose to stay with his family in the besieged city of Leningrad, where he spent all 872 days of the Blockade. Rubanchik was an eyewitness, who chronicled the events in the besieged city by his drawings.
The colourful drawings of this talented artist present the everyday life of the besieged city in 1941-1944. There are many details, which are not reported in common newsreels and photo reviews on the blockade. Drawn from life, Rubanchik's artworks from the series "Leningrad in the Days of the Great Patriotic War: an Architect's Diary" are of great artistic and documentary value. After the war these pictures were assembled into Yakov Rubanchik's archive.

In November 2020, a joint project between the State Museum of the History of St. Petersburg and Taganrog Group of Museums entitled "Blockade Diary of Yakov Rubanchik" was exhibited in Taganrog Museum of Architecture and Urbanism.

It is noteworthy that the main exhibit "A Time-Lapse Portrait of the City", which was unveiled in 2019 contains rare photos of Taganrog's classic architecture made by Yakov Rubanchik on his visit to home city in 1929.

Two years later, successors of Yakov Rubanchik donated his memorabilia to Taganrog Group of Museums (TGLIAMZ).