Marking the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow: Exhibition "Wartime Letters", timed to the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, to open in Saint-Petersburg

On June 22, 2021, the Memorial Hall of the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad on Victory Square in Saint-Petersburg will hold the opening of the exhibition "Wartime Letters". The event is timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.

During the war, the post office fulfilled the most significant strategic task of ensuring the country's unity by connecting the front and rear.

The famous soldier's triangle letter became the symbol of the war. It was an unsealed sheet of paper folded in a specific way with the text and address. This convenient way of folding letters, which appeared in the days of the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, became especially popular during the Great Patriotic War. It was used everywhere - both at the front and in the rear.

Letters from home played an important role for the soldiers during the war. They gave a powerful emotional charge, raised the spirit and courage, and helped to fight the enemy. Lines from the notebook of one of the soldiers confirm it: "After all, you are not aware, but all your letters led us like flags through fire and smog".

Letters of the Great Patriotic War are exclusive documentary evidence of the time, a significant part of our heritage, which allows comprehending the origins of the victory of our people in this bloody war.

The exhibition in the Memorial Hall presents letters of the Great Patriotic War from the private collection of V. I. Elkin, including soldiers' triangle frontline letters, messages from relatives and friends with news from home, greeting cards for the holidays.

The exposition features a collection of wartime documents from the Museum of the Staroutkinskaya Secondary School No. 13 (Staroutkinsk, Sverdlovsk Region). The school keeps 42 letters from the front, written by Vasily Moiseev to his wife Anisya Permenova, a native of Staroutkinsk. The exhibition showcases some of the letters together with photographs of the Moiseevs-Permenovs. The last letter is dated March 1, 1943. Vasily Eliseevich was killed at the front. Anisya Nefedievna (born in 1901) lived 100 years. All life through, she thoughtfully kept her husband's frontline letters. In 2015, her granddaughter, Lyudmila Razumova, donated these documents to the School Museum.

The exhibition will run until July 22, 2021,