Memory of the Great Victory

Memory of the Great Victory

Since 2010, the Presidential Library has been creating an electronic collection dedicated to the victory in the Great Patriotic War. The collection includes official documents, photo and newsreels, wartime newspapers, books of agitation and propaganda nature, collections of articles, biographies, testimonies of combatants and workers of the home front, their personal documents, images of combat and labor awards, monuments and memorial complexes.

The material is placed in thematic sections, provided with brief annotations. Some of the materials are available in the Electronic reading room.

The selection and preparation of the collection of materials involves archive of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation; Library for Natural Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Library of Congress; the Tyutchev Bryansk Regional Scientific Universal Library, the Military History Museum of Artillery, Engineers and Signal Corps of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation; the M. Gorky Volgograd Regional Universal Scientific Library; the main archival department of the city of Moscow; State Archives of the Russian Federation; Children's multimedia studio M-ART of the St. Petersburg City Palace of Young Creativity; the Pushkin Zabaikalsky Regional Universal Scientific Library; Publishing house "St. Petersburg Vedomosti"; Interagency supercomputer center of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Museum-library "Books of the Siege of the City"; M. Gorky Scientific Library of St. Petersburg State University; the National Library of Belarus; the National Library of the Republic of Buryatia; the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan; the National Library of the Republic of Karelia; the Novosibirsk State Regional Scientific Library; the Pushkin Omsk State Regional Scientific Library; the Krupskaya Orenburg Regional Universal Scientific Library; the Lermontov Penza Regional Library; the Russian Academy of Arts; the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents; the Russian State Historical Archive; the Paustovsky Ryazan Regional Youth Library; the St. Petersburg studio of documentary films; the Lermontov Stavropol Regional Universal Scientific Library; the Tula Regional Universal Scientific Library; the Mendeleev Tyumen Regional Scientific Library; The fundamental library of the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University; The Empress Maria Feodorovna fundamental library of the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia; the Central Naval Library.

  • Authorities and society during the Great Patriotic War

    The documents in this section reflect different aspects of public institutions activities in wartime, agitation and propaganda work, the life of people in the rear. The section features books, brochures, leaflets, posters, drawings. Among the official documents there are materials of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR from the State Archives of the Russian Federation. These documents cover the issues of supply of the Red Army with engineer equipment and provisions, adjustment of the economy to the war conditions, recovery of the national economy in the territories liberated from the enemy, and others. Under the heading "Agitation" there are posters of wartime.

  • Allies of World War II

    The materials of this section reflect the main stages of formation and development of cooperation between the USSR, the USA and the Great Britain during the World War II on both the diplomatic front and on the battlefields. Special emphasis is placed on the International conferences (Teheran, 1943; Yalta, 1944; Potsdam, 1945) and the relationship between the USSR and the USA in the context of economical collaboration, in particular, on the activity of polar convoys, the aerial communication between Alaska and Siberia, the supplies under the Lend-Lease program via the territory of Iran. The gem of the collection is the photographs provided to the Presidential Library by the Library of Congress.

  • The might of the Russian arms: military operations during the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945

    The section presents the materials covering the military operations in different sectors of the battlefront, the activities of particular combat arms and certain battles of the Great Patriotic War. Special emphasis is placed on such significant operations as Leningrad defense, the Battle of Moscow, defense and liberation of Sevastopol, the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk; liberation of western territories of the USSR, Vistula-Oder offensive and the Battle in Berlin. The section contains scientific publications, maps, military operations, photographs, newsreels. Particular attention should be paid to the photos of correspondents of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union made directly on the front line.

  • People’s volunteer corps in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945

    The section covers the formation and activities of volunteer corps, destructive battalions and partisan detachments. The special attention is conferred to the documents from the Russian State Historical Archives related to the war of 1812, which demonstrate the traditions of people’s contribution to the defense of the Fatherland. There is also a subsection, which includes underground and partisan press as well as handwritten journals issued in wartime on the territory of Belarus.

  • Fatherland Defenders

    The section contains legislative acts related to social support of veterans of the Great Patriotic War, materials on the casualties of the USSR on the frontline and occupied territories, war heroes and prisoners of war. The "Living Memory" subsection contains documents from personal archives, including letters from the front as well as digital records of some interviews with war veterans and rear workers.

  • Mass crimes of the Nazis against Soviet citizens

    Planning a blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union, the German government strived for the colonization of the best East Slavic lands by the Germans, so it was not interested in preserving the local population, the systematic destruction of which occurred throughout all of the Great Patriotic War. The German command purposefully pursued the same policy in all occupied Soviet territories: death camps for prisoners of war and civilians were built en masse, local intellectuals were identified and shot, health, education and cultural institutions were closed, monuments of national and world art were removed. From the very beginning of the war, the Soviet government organized the Extraordinary Commission for Investigation of the Atrocities and Crimes of the Hitler Regime, which carefully collected eyewitness accounts, letters, memoirs, photographs of executions and torture of civilians. The featured section includes notes of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR to the German command, documents on the formation of the Extraordinary State Commission. Presented results of the Commission’s activities, such as collections of documents, reports, acts, letters, photographs, testify to numerous facts of executions and mockery of Soviet citizens, arson and looting of cultural national values.

  • War in the pages of the press

    The section contains front-line, partisan, central and regional wartime periodicals. They published information on fights and battles, essays and stories, feature materials and front-line sketches, diaries, and notes that give evidence of heroism at the front and labor feats in the rear.

  • The perpetuation of the memory of the Great Patriotic War

    A section contains the photographs of separate, dedicated to the Great Patriotic War memorials and monuments, located in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast, in the Belgorod, Irkutsk, Kemerovo, Kirov, Murmansk, Tomsk and Tyumen regions, the Krasnoyarsk and Stavropol territories, and the Republic of Dagestan. The "War in Collectibles" subsection includes digital copies of the badges and the calendars.