Materials on the cultural life during the Great Patriotic War entered the collection “World War II in Archival Documents”

The Collection of Digitized Archival Documents, Film and Photo Materials “World War II in Archival Documents” available on the Presidential Library’s website has been entered with unique photographs, manuscripts and autographs of iconic military literary and musical works. Documents have been provided by the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI) and cover the initial period of the Great Patriotic War (June 22, 1941 – November 19, 1942).

The earliest document is dated June 23, 1941. It is a telegram addressed to the administration of the Moscow Art Theatre about the evacuation of the theatre troupe from Minsk, signed by the famous actor, People’s Artist of the USSR I. M. Moskvin and the legendary administrator of the MHAT F. N. Mikhalsky: “We left Minsk in two groups. Seventy seven people are in Borisov. Everyone is well. We are taking measures for departure. Moskvin, Mikhalsky”.

Behind those short lines there is one of the most dramatic episodes in the history of the national theatre. While Minsk was bombed nonstop, Moskvin took it upon himself to save the troupe that consisted of 117 people. He absolutely refused the offer to be evacuated alone (as a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Moskvin was supposed to be provided with a car) and completed the entire two-hundred-kilometer journey to Orsha together with other artists and workers of the theatre.

Several days later, on June 26, 1941 at the Belorussky Railway Terminal in Moscow, one of the groups of the Red-Bannered Song and Dance Ensemble of the Red Army of the USSR performed the song “The Sacred War” written by V. I. Lebedev-Kumach for the first time. Easily recognizable from the first menacing chords and words “Arise, vast country!”, the song became a symbol of the fight for liberation of the Fatherland and faith in the victory of the Red Army. Autograph of the poem “The Sacred War”, included in the State Register of Unique Documents of the Archival Fonds of the Russian Federation, is also included in the Collection.

The theme of poetic understanding of the war is illustrated in the manuscripts of numerous famous poems of 1941–1942, such as “Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of Smolensk…” and “Wait for Me” by K. M. Simonov, “In the Frontier Forest” by M. V. Isakovsky and others. The feat of the besieged Leningrad is immortalized in poems by O. F. Bergholz, including “Leningrad Poem” and “Addressing”.

On August 9, 1942 in Leningrad, the Big Symphonic Orchestra of the Leningrad Radio Committee under the direction of Karl Eliasberg performed the famous Seventh (“Leningrad”) Symphony of D. Shostakovich. To perform it, the surviving musicians were searched for all over city, brought from the front line and hospitals. The exhausted performers didn’t have enough strength for the wind-instruments parts.

Nevertheless, on August 9, the Seventh Symphony was heard in the crowded hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic, from where it was broadcasted via radio and loudspeakers of the city network, reaching the front positions of the Germans. The autograph of the Seventh Symphony of Shostakovich, included in the unique documents of the Archival Fonds, is featured in the Collection as well.

Undoubtedly, the beginning of the Great Patriotic War required cultural institutions to completely restructure their work and find its new forms both in the conditions of evacuation and in the field of cultural service to the army. The foundation for this was already laid in the early July of 1941 by the directive letter of the Committee on Arts of the Council of People’s Commissioners of the USSR on the necessity to restructure the activities of all institutions of art and its submission to the cause of defence and tasks of the Great Patriotic War.

From the first weeks of the war, one of the key directions of activity of theaters and concert organizations was the formation of front-line brigades, which began to depart to the front lines in August 1941. Many famous artists both of the older and the younger generations were members of the front-line brigades. The collections of the RGALI contain photographs of performances at the front by A. A. Ostuzhev, L. O. Utyosov, L. A. Ruslanova, A. I. Raykin, K. I. Shulzhenko and other artists, as well as reports of the brigades’ leaders and reviews of the performances written by soldiers and commanders.

Documents of the RGALI, associated with the Stalingrad Battle, are also undeniably interesting. They include images by the famous Soviet photographers Georgy Zelma that capture the scenes of street battles.

In accordance with the List of instructions for the implementation of the Address of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation dated January 15, 2020, the organizers of the Collection of Digitized Archival Documents, Film and Photo Materials "World War II in Archival Documents" are the Federal Archival Agency (Rosarkhiv), the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation and the Presidential Library.

The Collection content is carried out by the Federal Archives and federal state archives with the participation of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the state archives of Belarus.

In 2020-2021 the Collection included more than 5.5 thousand archival documents, including maps, diagrams, periodicals, photographs, newsreels for the period from January 1933 to June 22, 1941. Today, the Collection exceeds 8 thousand materials.

Viewing archival documents of the Collection "World War II in Archival Documents" is available from anywhere in the world. Especially for the foreign audience, the titles and annotations to the documents and the texts of the accompanying articles are also published in English.

In addition to digitized archival documents, the Collection features a list of the main Internet projects, databases, other thematic Internet publications of documents, virtual tours of the history of World War II, developed by government agencies of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and various organizations.