The Presidential Library discloses revolutionary documents

In the year of the 100th anniversary of the 1917-year revolution in Russia the Presidential Library will present an extensive collection entitled “1917.” It will include the electronic copies of archive files, rare books, research works, letters, photographs, film documents, diaries and many other valuable documents. All the collected materials will be combined into thematic sections, which will be featured on the Presidential Library website during the year.

The first section of the new collection entitled “Labor movement, strikes in the beginning of 1917” will be published on February 20, 2017. The materials reveal some aspects of the labor movement in Russia shortly before the February Revolution, in particular, the strikes, which took place in St. Petersburg in the beginning of 1917. The next array entitled “The February Revolution” will be presented in open access on February 27, 2017. “The abdication of Nicholas II” selection of electronic copies of rare archive sources will be released on March 6, 2017.

The electronic copies of resolutions of the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party RSDLP (consolidated), Petrograd Ammunition Plant, Rechkin Plant, Nevsky Shipbuilding Yard, Obukhov Factory, and Vargunin Factory, containing economic and political demands of the workers, are in open access on the Presidential Library website as well.

Women also participated and the protests against the decline of the quality of life of working class. “On the 23rd of February at many factories (in Okhta one and the others) in commemoration of Women's Day women workers arranged the meeting, where they adopted struggle resolutions with the requirements that were broader and deeper than were usually proposed this day. After meeting workers marched chanting slogans like “give us the bread,” “down with the war,” “Return our husbands back home!” moved “to dismiss” people who were working in the enterprises, - Vladimir Perazich says in his book Textiles of Leningrad in 1917.

Among the materials of the “revolutionary” collection of the Presidential Library the telegram from Secretary of the Interior minister addressed to the name of the palace commandant informing of the beginning of the revolution in Petrograd is of particular interest. Visitors of the Presidential Library website will be able to read the manifesto of abdication of Nicholas II, and the abdication of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich in electronic copies of the issues of the “Herald of the All-Russian Chamber of Agriculture.”

The materials about Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and others will also be presented in the Presidential Library stock. The visitors of the centers of access to the resources of the Presidential Library will be able to get acquainted with the works of L. Kamenev and G. Zinoviev, who on the eve of the October uprising opposed the armed seizure of power.

These and other unique materials replenished the Presidential Library fund owing to the cooperation with the State Public Historical Library, the Russian State Historical Archive, the Russian Geographical Society, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Children's Museum of Postcards and many others. 

Along with the creation of a digital collection in the framework of the 100th anniversary of the 1917-year revolution in Russia the exhibition, revealing the key revolutionary events of February - October 1917 that took place in Petrograd, will open in the Presidential Library on March 15.