66th anniversary of Great Victory: “Manuscripts don’t burn” project unveiled in Belarus

The project called “Manuscripts don’t burn” was presented May 4, 2011 in the Yakub Kolas Central Science Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. This is a joint project undertaken by TUT.BY portal and Yakub Kolas Central Science Library, whose holdings contain unique photographs, books, and even little-known documents, manuscripts of famous Belorussian workers of science, literature, culture and art.

The project provides access to rare books, leaflets, newspapers of the Great Patriotic War from the library’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection.

The library keeps 570 newspaper issues (95 titles), which came out during the war. Its holdings were growing due to donations. Thus in 1965-66 Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Belorussian SSR, people’s writer Kondrat Krapiva (K. Atrakhovich) presented a set of the newspaper–poster “Razdavim Fashistskuyu Gadinu” (Let Us Crush the Fascist Beast) spanning 1942–1944. It was right then that the library started building a collection of periodicals, which came out in Belarus during its occupation by Nazi invaders.

In May 1980 the library received an archive of the Belorussian historian, Academician of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus I.S. Kravchenko. Those documents featured a selection of underground periodicals of the Great Patriotic War. His collection is a fruit of a many-years work on searching and collecting war-time periodicals of underground press. The collection numbered 33 newspaper titles, which were published in the enemy’s rear between 1942 and 1944. Almost every copy has preserved owner’s notes of I.S. Kravchenko.

In 1986 the collection grew to include Belorussian partisan newspapers (totally 62 titles), which were donated to the library by the war correspondent V. Stalnov, who during the Great Patriotic War and in the post-war years had been working in editorial offices of Belarus.

Of particular interest are wall partisan ephemera newspapers and newspaper-leaflets, which came out in partisan detachments, as well as illustrations (drawings, photos, cartoons), included into partisan newspapers.

One of the exhibition’s sections highlights the books which were issued between 1941 and 1945. These are books originating from collections of P.F. Glebka, P.K. Ponomarenko and the Belorussian collection “B-ХХ” of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection. Stands show books about partisan movement, booklets dated 1943 with stories about Heroes of the Soviet Union, and war-time works of Belorussian writers and poets: Ya. Kupala, Ya. Kolas, P.Brovka, A.Kuleshov, K. Krapiva.