The Presidential Library presented a “victorious” collection

In 2015, the major electronic collection of the Presidential Library is the "Memory of the Great Victory."

The project is presented within the III International scientific and practical conference "Development of electronic resources in the field of culture and education." According to Director for Information Resources Elena Zhabko, when the library specialists were compiling the collection, they tasked to treat the subject of war from different perspectives. To show it as a complex crisis that affects not only the belligerent parties, but also the whole world.

The collection "Memory of the Great Victory" can literally be called a guide to the state ideologies, economic and social policy, existence of nations in war. Thus, six main sections were created: "Authorities and society on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War", "The might of the Russian arms", "Allies of the World War II," "People's volunteer corps in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945," "Defenders of the Fatherland: the living and the fallen," "War on the pages of regional and battlefront press."

Five years ago, the "Memory of the Great Victory" consisted of only 2,000 items. By May 2015 its volume will reach 21,000.

From the beginning, a high emphasis was placed on the newspaper materials - one of the most important and accurate records of the era. The library received a large number of front-line and partisan newspapers. Their appearance in the collection was made possible by a serious work carried out by the Presidential Library in the regions. The last most significant acquisitions are papers from Bryansk and Pskov.

Priceless filings of partisan newspapers were provided by the National Library of the Republic of Belarus. Issues of "Stalingradskaya Pravda" also take a special place in the compilation of papers. The dates of their publication suggest that editors and printing houses continued to work in the already dilapidated city. Newsprint is an unstable material, so only a few issues of these priceless issues have survived. Now, thanks to digitization they will remain intact for centuries.

Leaflets represent another interesting document of the epoch. They also appeared in the collection thanks to close cooperation of the Presidential Library with the regions. The collection even includes leaflets in German, urging fascist troops to surrender and lay down their arms.

Today, the electronic holdings of the Presidential Library present 30 front, 50 guerrilla and about 40 regional newspapers. Soon the library plans to launch an analytical project featuring military newspapers.

Photographic materials are in special focus of the Presidential Library. On the whole, the library holds four thousand photographs. Some of them are dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. The first batch of photographs covering the creation of the anti-Hitler coalition and the opening of the second front was acquired in 2010. Then the collection was enriched with a variety of photos - official, reportage, portraits, of the wartime and modern. The latest acquisition took place in January of this year to update the collection "Road of Life – the imprinted memory of the blockade" enriched with 30 albums of 300 photos. Their author is a modern photographer Valery Gulyakin, which visited with the camera all the memorable places of the Road of Life.

One hundred more unique photos were provided by the Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps. They have never been displayed before and were stored in the museum that is why their appearance in the open collection is particularly valuable.

The Presidential Library has also digitized over 350 posters of the Great Patriotic War issued in different cities of the Soviet Union. Rarities of 1941-1945, which contributed to the struggle against fascism, were delivered by "Scientific Library of the Russian Academy of Arts."

The collection also features rare materials of wartime. For example, the subscription list, which reflected both social assistance, and spiritual support to the front-line soldiers and patronage over the hospitals by non-governmental organizations, and the movement of raising gifts, food and clothing for the wounded. There have been digitized and included into the collection the materials telling about such form patriotic support as donation.

Of particular interest are materials on the Russian abroad, which show the participation of Russian emigrant officers in the fight against fascism in the ranks of the allied troops, for example, in France. According to some estimates, more than three thousand Russian emigrants took part in the actions of the Resistance. The collection also features documents on the role of particular nations in the World War II – of the North Caucasus region, the peoples of the Karelian-Finnish SSR, etc.

The Presidential Library is also working to create digital copies of memorable signs, decorations and medals, which come primarily from private collections. Gems of this part of the collection are match labels from the series "Hero Cities", which can be seen in detail in the electronic reading room of the library.

Materials related to the Great Patriotic War, occupy an important place in the Presidential Library collections, which contain more than 370,000 items. The library will continue to update them.