The film "LIBRARY FRONT 1941-1945" presented on the Presidential Library’s portal

The documentary "LIBRARY FRONT: 1941-1945", created by the Presidential Library in cooperation with the Eurasian Library Assembly is now freely available on the Presidential Library’s portal. Its premiere took place on May 27, 2020, on the All-Russian Day of Libraries, and became an event in the library world.

The film is available in the Audiovisual Materials section on the Presidential Library’s portal and on the institution's YouTube channel.

The main idea of ​​the film "LIBRARY FRONT: 1941-1945" is the reflection of the contribution of libraries and librarians of the USSR to the victory over fascism.

...The first to take the blow were the National Library of Belarus in Minsk and about 14 thousand institutions of the library network of the union republic: their collections of books were destroyed by two-thirds by the Nazis in the course of redevelopment of the buildings of book storages to fit their needs. The threat hung over all the libraries of the European part of the USSR, and they began to take urgent measures to preserve their collections. The film shows how all the most precious things were loaded into the wagons, "literally taken from the machine tools being transferred to the East, the heavy equipment of the relocating factories". 

The Saltykov-Shchedrin State Public Library of the Order of the Red Banner of Labor provided a clear plan to evacuate the collections, sending echelons of rare publications to Melekess, a small town in Ulyanovsk Region. The Rossica collections, Plekhanov's archive and library, and other rarities were among the first to leave their home on the Fontanka.

The library was not closed for a single day throughout the Great Patriotic War. The film tells about the heroic drama of those days in newsreel documents and comments by specialists from the National Library of Russia - this is the name the Public Library today.

The cold in the first blockade winter was unprecedented, the frosts stood at 30 degrees. But people went to libraries, worked in halls at temperatures below zero and were amazed at how quickly, clearly, kindly, almost like in pre-war time, the library staff served them. "138 people of the most intelligent elite" of them, as stated in the film, died from hunger and cold during the blockade. 50 employees of the Public Library went to the front. Its staff has halved.

The V. I. Lenin State Library of the USSR in Moscow - now the Russian State Library, which kept 9.5 million books in the languages ​​of all the peoples of the USSR, saved its collections by transferring them to the lower floors of the reinforced concrete book depository. Carts with books and manuscripts - there were several tons of them - were carried by the female staff of the institution. The library team has created its own local air defense platoon and air surveillance posts.

The film contains a striking example of wartime caring for the library's young readers. In the first war winter, the schools were closed, and the children had to continue to be taught and educated - and the library opened the Children's Reading Room in the Pashkov House. The event took place on May 24, 1942; Samuil Marshak, Agnia Barto, and other favorite writers of the children came to the opening. A meeting with a book in the warmth and comfort of the library was always exciting, in the Children's Hall they read poems and prose, held concerts; even animals from the zoo were brought here to please little readers.

The film "LIBRARY FRONT: 1941-1945" spotlights the activities of the republican libraries (now - the national libraries of the CIS countries) of the Soviet republics in the period from 1941 to 1945 in the occupied territories, on the front line, in the rear. According to Zhyldyz Bakashova, director of the Alykul Osmonov National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic in Bishkek, the country's invaluable library collections were saved largely thanks to the well-coordinated actions and selfless dedication of Soviet librarians.

The documentary was based on diaries, letters, telegrams, memoirs of eyewitnesses and participants who worked in libraries in 1941-1945, official documents regulating the activities of libraries in wartime, photographs, drawings, documentary chronicles, postcards, video materials (footage from archives and filming at the scene), articles from newspapers and magazines, monographs.

The idea of ​​its creation arose during the twenty-second General Meeting of Members of the Library Assembly of Eurasia, held at the I. A. Osmonov National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic in Bishkek in May 2019.

Libraries of the Russian Federation and other countries were involved in the work on the film. They are the Presidential Library, the Russian State Library, the National Library of Russia, the National Library of Udmurtia, the State Public Historical Library of Russia, the Margarita Rudomino All-Russian State Library for Foreign Literature, the N. I. Zheleznov Central Scientific Library – the K. A. Timiryazev Moscow Agricultural Academy; the Mirza Fatali Akhundov National Library of Azerbaijan, the National Library of Armenia, the National Library of Belarus, the National Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the A. Osmonov National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic, the National Library of Tajikistan, the Alisher Navoi National Library of Uzbekistan.