History of Saint-Petersburg: Exhibition “Leningrad Victory Day” opened at the National Library of Russia

January 27, 2014 in the Department of Manuscripts of the National Library of Russia opened an exhibition "Leningrad Victory Day", dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi blockade.

It features documents related directly to the events of late 1943 - early 1944: the lifting of the blockade and the subsequent normalization of life in the city. These materials are collected together from personal funds of writers, scholars, artists, stored in the department. They show, first of all, a reflection of events in fiction and memoirs, letters and diaries of the Leningrad figures of science and culture.

The exhibition traditionally pays attention to the testimony of specialists of the Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library about the work of the last period of the blockade. The header section of the exhibition "One fate - all history books of the blockade" is dedicated to the historian of bibliography of M. V. Mashkova, who worked in the library from 1939 to 1979 (with a break in 1951-1954, associated with unfounded repression against it). During the war Mashkova headed the department of the acquisition of the SPL and worked on rare books and manuscript collections in the empty apartments and broken homes. During these years, she kept a diary, used later by A. M. Adamovich and D. A. Granin in developing of "Blockade Book".

The exhibition is complemented with graphic works by Leningrad artists working in the city during the blockade: A. V. Akimov, E. O. Martilla, V. N. Selivanov, E. N. Pomerantseva; artistic postcards of those years.