The Presidential Library and “Arguments and Facts – St. Petersburg” launched a joint project dedicated to the siege of Leningrad

Marking the year of the 80th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege, the Presidential Library and the newspaper “Arguments and Facts - St. Petersburg” launched a new joint educational project dedicated to the fate of Leningrad during the Great Patriotic War.

The main goal of the project is to attract the attention of a wide audience to the study of the life of the besieged city during severe trials, the daily feat of Leningraders. Today it is very important that every resident of our country has the opportunity to receive information from reliable sources, access documents and materials that contain truthful, accurate data.

Questions on the history of the siege of Leningrad (1941–1944), based on the materials from the Presidential Library's collections, will be published weekly on the pages of the newspaper “Arguments and Facts - St. Petersburg”. Answers to questions are available in the library’s collections or on its portal, which contains extensive information on a variety of topics related to the history of our country. The electronic collections contain official documents, photographs and newsreels, wartime newspapers, books, propaganda publications, collections of articles, biographies, testimonies of participants in military battles and home front workers, their personal documents, images of military and labor awards, monuments and memorials complexes.

One can compare his knowledge about the life of the besieged city with the answers posted in the following issues of the newspaper “Arguments and Facts - St. Petersburg”. The results of the project will be summed up in the Presidential Library on the eve of May 9, on the eve of the Great Victory Day.

The first question, published in the newspaper “Arguments and Facts - St. Petersburg” on January 31, 2024, reads like this: “Nowhere did radio mean as much as in our city during the war”, noted the poetess, an employee of the Leningrad Radio Committee, who became the voice of the siege Leningrad, Olga Bergholz. The lively voices of the announcers warmed the Leningraders, helped them endure inhuman difficulties and hardships, and realized that they were not alone in their struggle. Radio journalists and announcers David Bekker, Antonina Vasilyeva, Lazar Magrachev, Mikhail Melaned, Maria Petrova, Matvey Frolov became family members of the Leningraders. By the beginning of the war, the city radio network consisted of over 100 thousand radio points. Because of their characteristic appearance, the radios hanging in apartments reminded Leningraders of this household item and it is under this name that they are often mentioned in siege memoirs and diaries. What were the siege radio points? What did they mean to the Leningraders living in the besieged city?”

We wish everyone success and new knowledge!