Internet and History: The Bakhrushin Museum to provide open access to documentary chronicles of the Great Patriotic War in an online project “Front-Line Roads of the Theatre”

The online project Front-Line Roads of the Theatre will provide wide access to the previously unpublished historical documents from the museum’s archives. Dozens of unique materials from the museum’s collections will be available on the portal https://fdt.gctm.ru/.

“For the first time ever, we will present online a unique document – the issue log of journals of the front-line troops Theatre at the Front of 1942-1943, which was produced and given out to artists by the workers of the Bakhrushin Museum. Today, these 60 preserved handwritten pages with receipts on receiving the journals are the true evidence of support for our soldiers by the theatre community during the Great Patriotic War.

The miraculously preserved transcripts of conversations with artists, who was at the front, will introduce users to the live narration of the opera soloist of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre of the USSR Galina Nechayeva and the brigadier of the front-line troops of the Gorky Leningrad Bolshoi Drama Theatre. Their stories tell about fortitude, unity and the true service to art and people – values that are important at all times”, – Director General of the Bakhrushin Museum Kristina Trubinova commented.

The portal will feature an album of the keeper of the museum Veniamin Yermolov with photographs that captured the life of the museum in the wartime, as well as a journal of the theatre Iskra (Spark) – an ensemble of artists The Red Army Estrada of the Moscow Leninist Komsomol Theatre. It was kept by the artistic director of the theatre Grigory Palin. The front life of the theatre is described on 139 pages from September 1941 to June 1945. It is a unique opportunity to explore historical notes of the artists page by page, to read warm reviews of soldiers and commanders, see sketches on the margins and drawings of front-line performances of theatre troops.

Photographs, theatre posters, programs and repertoire of the front-line troops of the Maly Theatre, Central Children’s Theatre and the concert crew of the NKVD Central Department of Militia will be available online.

On digitized pages of the front-line newspapers Boyevoy tovarishch (Comrade in Arms), Boyevaya kavaleriyskaya (Combat Cavalry), Krasny chernomorets (Red Chernomorskian), Za Rodinu (For the Motherland), Boyevaya Krymskaya (Combat Crimean), Vperyod na vraga (Forward to the Enemy), Krasny Krym (Red Crimea), Znamya Communy (Banner of the Commune), Boyevoye znamya (Combat Banner), Sovetskaya Kirgiziya (Soviet Kyrgyzstan), one has a chance to read articles about front-line actors, about performances of theatre groups from Leningrad, Moscow, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and concert front-line troops of masters of arts of Kyrgyzstan. They performed on the stage in front of heroic defenders of Sevastopol, in parts of the North-Western front, Crimean and other fronts.

The section, dedicated to the wartime performances, will be complemented by materials about the play A Long Time Ago based on the work of Alexander Gladkov, written in 1940 and performed on stage for the first time in 1941. Viewers will see photographs from various productions of the Drama Theatre of the Northern Fleet in Polyarny and Murmansk, and the Red Army Central Theatre in Moscow.

Rare photographs and playbills from the collection of Valentin Pluchek, who directed this play at the Drama Theatre of the Northern Fleet in 1942-1943, will also be published. The role of Shura Azarova was played by the actress Zinaida Pluchek, spouse of the director.

In addition, photographs of the workers of the Bakhrushin Theatre Museum of the wartime will be available as well.