The Unified City Information Center dedicated to the blockade opened in St. Petersburg

The creation of a center coordinating the work of all media, public organizations and cultural institutions to highlight events marking the 75th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade was announced on December 20, 2018 at a press conference in the Media Center of St. Petersburg (Nevsky Prospect, 66).  

According to the senior researcher of the department for the formation and processing of information resources of the Presidential Library Alexei Voronovich, as early as the 70th anniversary of the final blockade breaking on the Senate Square, 3 they began to collect materials on this topic. The work was especially intensified on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the holiday.  

November 9, 2018, at the round table in the Presidential Library, it was announced that a major project was launched jointly with Radio Rossiya and the Petersburg Diary newspaper, which was dedicated to preserving the historical memory of the life of Leningrad in 1941-1944. Within its framework, an action was launched to collect documents, letters, diaries and photographs from the personal archives of the residents of the besieged city. They will be digitized and will be included in the Presidential Library’s collections, will be available to residents of the whole world, will be widely reflected in the media and will be used while preparing exhibitions, conferences and other events.    

“Unfortunately, not many people left who survived the blockade, received a medal for the defense of the city, have the sign “To the resident of besieged Leningrad”, - said Voronovich. “Therefore, it is especially important to preserve the evidence and materials that they have”.

He spoke about the huge number of calls and messages, about the many diary entries and photographs that people pass to the Presidential Library.

Among the documents received for digitization to the Presidential Library are award certificates, orders and workbooks, delays from mobilization, passes, which allow passing through the city at night, certificates of who the person worked during the blockade, diplomas of education, certificate of residence. These papers carry the blockade themselves, as well as their children or grandchildren.

“Almost all letters and diaries are permeated with two plots”, - said the representative of the Presidential Library. “Initially, residents were frightened by constant air raids, but then almost every day they wrote about how much food they had left”.

It was also said at the press conference that not all blockaders have the opportunity to present documents or photographs, but are ready to just talk about what they have experienced. And in this sense, the creation of the Unified City Information Center is particularly important. It is he who will take over the function of communicating with the blockade and fixing their memories for the history.

According to Katerina Tugolukova, the Director of the City Student Press Center of St. Petersburg, which is the basis for the creation of the Unified Information Center, a large number of active children live in the city, who, studying at universities and colleges, work in student media, on television, blog and create videos.

“We plan to involve them in our project. I can say that there is already interest on their part”, - she emphasized.

With the help of student volunteers, it is planned to create video, audio and photo archives. Within the framework of the information center there will be held a single database of events dedicated to the blockade taking place in schools, universities, museums and various organizations.

Alexander Potekhin, Director General of the St. Petersburg TASS Regional Center and Chairman of the North-West Media Association, noted that in addition to the words “defence of Leningrad” and “blockade” that are familiar to us, there is a much less used “battle for Leningrad” or “Leningrad battle”.  

“It began not even in the autumn of 1941, but on July 10, when the fascists set foot on the Pskov land, which at that time was part of Leningrad Region, and ended not in January 1944, but on August 9, 1944, when Svirsk-Petrozavodsk operation ended”, - he specified.

He called the Leningrad Battle one of the four major battles of the war and called for this to be remembered along with the blockade events.

Yekaterina Khodarinova, deputy editor-in-chief of the St. Petersburg TV channel, in turn noted that since September 2018, the channel has been broadcasting documentaries and films made, including in collaboration with the Presidential Library.

“It's good that now there is a single center, where all the information on the blockade will now flow”, - she added.

The unified city information center will be active throughout 2019. Representatives of all organizations and institutions participating in the blockade events can email information about them to the center: blokada75@studressa.ru.

Earlier we detailed on a joint project of the Presidential Library, Radio Rossiya and the Petersburg Diary newspaper marking the 75th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the fascist blockade.

In addition, the Presidential Library's portal contains the electronic collection “Defence and Blockade of Leningrad”, which includes official documents, periodicals, memoirs of Leningrad, food cards, photo and newsreels. Recently, a virtual tour of the exhibition halls of the temporarily closed State Museum of Defence and Blockade of Leningrad and the museum “Kobona: The Road of Life” was presented.