World history: The opening of the historical and documentary exhibition “On the Eve of the Great Patriotic War. September 1, 1939 - June 22, 1941" to be held in Moscow

July 7, 2021 at 10:00 the Exhibition Hall of Federal Archives in Moscow (Bolshaya Pirogovskaya St., 17) will be hosting the opening of the historical and documentary exhibition “On the Eve of the Great Patriotic War. September 1, 1939 - June 22, 1941".

The exhibition is organized by the Federal Archival Agency, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Archive, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History and the Russian Historical Society.

For the first time, the exposition features a wide range of historical documents stored in federal archives (the Russian State Military Archive, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History and etc.), in Belarusian state archives and also in the departmental archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defence, SVR of Russia. Among them are documents of the highest state and party bodies, foreign policy and military departments of the USSR, intelligence reports, captured German and French documents, military maps, photographs and newsreels, documents from foreign archives - more than 300 in total, many of them are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time.

These and other documents (more than two and a half thousand of them) will enter the complex of digitized archival documents, film and photographic materials "World War II in Archival Documents" posted on the Presidential Library's portal, and will be available in September 2021 to a wide range of users. The organizers of this project, in accordance with the List of Instructions for the implementation of the Address of the President of Russia to the Federal Assembly on January 15, 2020, are Rosarchiv, the Administrative Department of the President of the Russian Federation and the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library.

On September 1, 1939, the Second World War began with the Wehrmacht's invasion of Poland. In two weeks the Germans defeated the Polish troops. The country was left to fend for itself by its leadership. The Soviet Union, worried about the fate of the Ukrainian and Belarusian population, could not allow the further advance of German troops to the east. On September 17, 1939, the Red Army entered the territory of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, where elections of deputies to the People's Assemblies took place. Then it turned to the USSR with a request to reunite the Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples. On November 1 - 2, 1939, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted laws on the incorporation of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus into the USSR and their reunification, respectively, with the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR. This was a significant event in the fate of the three fraternal Slavic peoples.

On September 28, 1939, the Soviet-German Treaty of Friendship and Border was signed, which practically coincided with the so-called Curzon Line, proposed in 1919 by the Entente countries (primarily Great Britain) as a fair border between the Soviet republics and Poland. The exhibition displays the original of the Soviet-German treaty and additional protocols to it from the collections of the Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Federation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.

The Anglo-French allies, contrary to the promises made to the Polish government, became indifferent observers of the death of the Polish state. This "strange war" continued the policy of appeasement of the aggressor by Great Britain and France. The exhibition shows the pages of the diary of the plenipotentiary of the USSR in Great Britain I. M. Maisky about the situation on the Western Front and the responses of the foreign press, photographs of British troops in France.

For the first time presented in the exhibition documents from the collections of the Russian State Military Archive, including captured (German and French), tell about the plans of the Anglo-French allies in relation to the USSR, including plans to strike at the oil-bearing regions of the Soviet Caucasus.

In autumn of 1939, in order to ensure the security of the northwestern borders of the country and Leningrad (which was only 32 km from the border with Finland), the Soviet leadership negotiated an exchange of territories with Finland. Finland's uncompromising position during the negotiations was reinforced by counting on the support of Great Britain, France and the United States. In the conditions of the impending war, the Soviet leadership came to the conviction that the problem of the northwestern borders of the USSR could not be solved diplomatically. The exhibition demonstrates the original peace treaty between the USSR and Finland, which formalized the actual modern border between the two states, as well as a map with the USSR's proposals on the exchange of territories during the Soviet-Finnish negotiations in Moscow in October 1939.

In autumn of 1939, the Soviet Union concluded agreements on mutual assistance with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, gaining the right to establish military and naval bases on their territories. Archival documents highlight the facts of political disloyalty of the governments of the Baltic states to Moscow, show the activities of German and military-fascist organizations in the Baltic States. The exposition reveals the theme of the incorporation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; for the first time, the originals of the declarations of the Baltic republics on their entry into the USSR in the summer of 1940 are presented.

On September 27, 1940, Germany, Italy and Japan signed the Tripartite (Berlin) Pact. After the signing of the pact, military operations began in the Balkans. Hungary, Romania and Slovakia joined the pact very soon. This is how a bloc of aggressive states was formed, the purpose of which was to create and maintain a "new order" in Europe and the East.

The Soviet leadership tried to ensure the security of the southern borders by negotiating agreements on mutual assistance with Turkey and Bulgaria. However, negotiations with Turkey, which relied on guarantees from Great Britain and France, ended unsuccessfully in October 1939. At the end of November 1940, Bulgaria, which joined the Tripartite Pact, refused the Soviet proposals.

USSR People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V. M. Molotov, during an official visit to Berlin in November 1940, tried to find out the intentions of the participants in the "Pact of Three" and to achieve recognition of Soviet interests. However, this visit, the documents of which were first presented at the exhibition, did not yield any results.

On December 18, 1940, Hitler signed Directive No. 21 on the war with the USSR (the "Barbarossa" plan). The exhibition provides this directive (the original is kept in the Federal Archives of Germany), the translation of the directive into Russian made for the Nuremberg trials (from the collections of the State Archives of the Russian Federation), the map "Plan Barbarossa" (from the funds of the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation) and other materials about Germany's preparation for an attack on the Soviet Union.

Much attention is paid to the development of the military-industrial complex of the USSR and the preparation of the Red Army to repel possible aggression. These are documents on the production and adoption of new types of military equipment and weapons, on the development of plans for the strategic deployment of the armed forces in the event of a war with Germany and its allies, changes in the personnel of the Red Army.

In January 1941, the General Staff of the Red Army organized two operational-strategic "map games", during which the skills of conducting front-line and army operations were practiced. After the games, J. Stalin decided to appoint G. K. Zhukov chief of the General Staff. Visitors will be able to learn about a set of documents about these exercises.

The exhibition features documents on the trade and economic activities of the USSR during the war in Europe. Among them are materials on economic cooperation between the USSR and Germany (the Economic Agreement between the USSR and Germany of February 11, 1940 is on display), as well as statistical documents indicating that during this period the main trading partner of the Soviet Union was the United States, which successfully replaced Great Britain. declared a trade blockade of Germany.

In the spring of 1941, Germany began preparations for the seizure of Yugoslavia and Greece to strengthen its positions in the Balkans. The exhibition displays the original of the Soviet-Yugoslav Treaty of Friendship and Non-Aggression of April 5, 1941. The day after its signing, Belgrade underwent a massive bombardment, at the same time the German invasion of Greece began. In a short campaign, the Balkans came under complete German control. In connection with the events in Yugoslavia, Hitler did not manage to complete the deployment of his main forces in the east until May 15, as planned according to the Barbarossa plan, the date of the Wehrmacht invasion of the USSR was postponed to June 22, 1941.

Shortly before the start of the Great Patriotic War, the USSR concluded a pact of neutrality with Japan, which became an essential factor in ensuring the security of the USSR's Far Eastern borders.

Visitors will see documents from Soviet intelligence, including intelligence reports from R. Sorge ("Ramzai"), N. D. Skornyakov ("Meteora"), members of the Cambridge Five, German anti-fascists from the "Red Chapel" and others, whose names still remain unknown to the general public. Soviet intelligence was able to obtain a significant amount of convincing information about the preparation of the Third Reich and its allies for a war against the USSR. A number of these messages contained contradictory information, in particular, it concerned the assessment of the timing of the German attack on the USSR.

The exposition presents the most important documents of May - June 1941: about the mission of R. Hess to Great Britain, a note by the People's Commissar of Defence of the USSR S. K. Timoshenko and Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army G. K. Zhukov, J. Stalin in the event of a war with Germany with the attachment of a deployment scheme, recordings of V. M. Molotov's conversations with the German ambassador to the USSR F. von der Schulenburg and other documents.

For the first time, the project of the last pre-war resolution of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) on the creation of the Southern Front, new appointments and armies of the second line of defense, adopted at an evening meeting in the office of J. Stalin on June 21, 1941 and written by the hand of G.M. Malenkov, and also the directive of the USSR People's Commissar of Defence No. 1 on bringing the troops to combat readiness is on display. The directive was sent for distribution to the encryption department at 23:45 on June 21, and sent to the military districts at 0:30 on June 22, 1941.

At 5:30 am on June 22, 1941, the German Ambassador F. von der Schulenburg read out a note to the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs V. M. Molotov about the outbreak of hostilities. The record of their conversation and pages from the journal of registration of visitors of J. Stalin in the Kremlin for June 22, 1941 complete the exposition.

Thematic sections of the exposition are accompanied by explanatory texts in Russian and English. On the opening day of the exhibition, the official website of Rosarkhiv will provide access to a bilingual Internet project that includes full-text electronic copies of all archival documents, photographs, maps, newsreels exhibited at the exhibition.

Exhibitors:

Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation

State Archives of the Russian Federation

Russian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents

Russian State Archives of Contemporary History

Russian State Archives of Economics

Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation

Archive of the SVR of Russia

National Archives of the Republic of Belarus

Belarusian State Archive of Film and Photo Documents

Federal Archives of Germany

Gosfilmofond of Russia

State Historical Museum

State Central Museum of Contemporary History of Russia

Polytechnic Museum

Museum Association "Museum of Moscow"

Kuntsevo Dacha

T-34 Tank History Museum

The project has been implemented with the support of the Presidential Grants Foundation.

The exhibition is open from July 8 to September 5, 2021.

The exposition is open from 12:00 to 18:00 (entrance is until 17:15), every day, except Monday and Tuesday.

Entrance is carried out upon showing an identity document.

Contact phone number for ordering free excursions: 8 (495) 580-88-25, 8 (495) 580-87-12, e-mail vzal_fa@mail.ru; bolotina@statearchive.ru.