Concert commemorating Great Victory held at Presidential Library

On 7 May 2025, the Presidential Library hosted a gala event dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The concert was organised by the Administration of the Admiralty District of St. Petersburg, the Mirniye Lyudy (Peaceful People) Social Initiatives Foundation and the Presidential Library.

The event was attended by veterans of the Great Patriotic War, residents of besieged Leningrad, home front workers and former minor prisoners of concentration camps.

On behalf of the Director General of the Presidential Library, Chairman of the St. Petersburg Regional Branch of the Russian Military Historical Society Yuri Nosov, the greeting was read out by the Deputy Director General Yaroslava Borozdina. She noted: "The Presidential Library annually organises educational events, implements projects to preserve the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War".

The guests of the event were also welcomed by Dmitry Vakushin, Acting Head of the Admiralty District Administration, Vitaly Milonov, a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Family, Women and Children, and Alexander Malkevich, a journalist and member of the Russian Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights.

The concert was attended by the Wind Orchestra of the St Petersburg Musorgsky Music College, conducted by Janis Bartashevich. The orchestra, founded in 1926, has won numerous awards, including the Grand Prix of the All-Russian open festival-competition of brass bands, ensembles and soloists "Vivat, Student!" in Moscow, as well as the Grand Prix of the XI open festival-competition of musical creativity "Spring Kaleidoscope" in St. Petersburg. The team performs at the significant venues of our city.

The brass band performed marches from different periods of our Motherland's history and famous songs dedicated to the Great Patriotic War at the Presidential Library.

The concert was hosted by Anna Zagrebneva, actress and artistic director of the Olga Berggolts Drama Theatre.

The Presidential Library pays great attention to preserving the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War. A large-scale electronic collection Memory of the Great Victory has been created on the institution's portal since 2010. It includes official documents, photo and newsreels, wartime newspapers, testimonies of combatants and home front workers: video recordings of interviews, diaries and personal documents, images of military and labour awards.

The Presidential Library portal also presents the Collection of digitised archival documents, film and photo materials World War II in Archival Documents, which is being formed jointly with the Federal Archives Agency from 2020. The volume of the Collection today is more than 15 thousand storage units: maps, charts, periodicals, photographs, newsreels for the period from January 1933 to April 1945.

The galleries of the multimedia hall of the Presidential Library present two exhibitions dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory and the Year of the Defender of the Fatherland.

One exhibition is prepared by Rossiyskaya Gazeta and introduces visitors to rare photographs taken by Grigory Kulizhnikov, a military doctor and holder of two Orders of the Red Star, during the defence of Leningrad.

The second exhibition presents archive images by the legendary Great Patriotic War photographer Evgeny Khaldey, as well as works by Sergei Venyavsky, editor-in-chief of the New Regions of Russia magazine. This project allows us to see parallels between the events of the Great Patriotic War and the special military operation.