The Presidential Library marking Daniil Granin’s birthday. Memoirs of the writer about pre-war Leningrad

January 1, 2020 marks 102 years since the birth of Daniil Granin, an outstanding writer, screenwriter, blockade and front-line soldier, an honorary citizen of St. Petersburg, who was awarded a number of state awards.

The Presidential Library’s e-collection Daniil Granin (1919–2017), dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the writer, features The Siege Book compiled by Daniil Granin in collaboration with Ales Adamovich; collection of photographs Daniil Granin and the Youth; Natalia Rogova's lecture About War and Victory through the Language of a Book (Olga Bergholz and Authors of The Siege Book), recorded within the framework of the Presidential Library's video lecture Knowledge of Russia, photographs from the presentation of Daniil Granin's book "Alien Diary" (2018) and many other materials.

The writer had a long-term creative relationship with the Presidential Library; their result was, in particular, the creation of a documentary film Daniil Granin, where an outstanding Russian prose writer, recalling the past, reflects on the future of culture, art and society. At the very beginning of the film, which is available on the Presidential Library's portal, Granin warns his interlocutors: "Please note, you are not dealing with a politician, not with a statesman, not with a historian - I am just a writer".

The author of world-famous works, Daniil Granin did not refuse from the so-called small forms in literature. From this point of view, the catalog of photographic postcards of 1895-1945 Petersburg - Petrograd - Leningrad from the collection of the Peterhof Museum-Reserve is highly interesting.

Granin was asked to write a preface to the catalog of unique old postcards with views of the city and its environs - and he made a real great literature out of it, because he knew the city, native from childhood, like the back of his hand. Here he was studying, there he was going to the front to defend the Motherland during the Great Patriotic War.

What was it like, pre-war Leningrad, according to the memoirs of Daniil Granin?

“The city of the 1930s is preserved in the memory of former boys and girls. In this reserve, it is watercolor seductive. There is always a yellow sun with thick rays, and there are demonstrations. In fact, the city was not so good, but it has recognizable features, uniquely passionate. Inspiration and call...Since then, many years. The city became much more beautiful, richer, healthier, sounded in the shoulders. Why do we look again and again at its appearance, looking for in it first of all that, not so prosperous and yet happy, past?"

“…Unfortunately, we have almost no museums of the history of our Soviet life. There will be such museums, of course, but there are things that will not be included in these museums, they cannot be placed there - for example, the crackling of birch logs in the stove ... <...> Or take a pavement made up of black wooden ends. They paved Mokhovaya Street, even Nevsky Prospect. Well, how can you convey the loud clattering sound of horseshoes in a museum on dry trimming? How to repeat the tarry smell that smoked in the summer heat on the streets lined with tarred checkers..."

 “From the Liteiny Bridge, there was a view of the Vyborg side, all covered with black sheets of factory smoke. Then it was beautiful, today it would seem ugly".

“What were we playing at? For some reason, first of all "Cossack robbers" are recalled. <…> Our battles took place in the courtyards, but mainly in the garden near the Church of the Savior. In fact, it was the Transfiguration Cathedral ... <...> At the entrance to the square, on diabase pedestals, there were two Turkish cannons - war trophies of the Russian-Turkish campaign of 1828-1829. Several more cannons stood inside the square near the walls of the church. The guns were real, on carriages, wiped with our pants to a bronze shine - the best place for games that I have ever seen".

“What fascinated and attracted us most was travel, flights, expeditions. The epic of the Chelyuskinites, Chkalov, the Nobile expedition, the flight of Amundsen ... <...> Nevsky Prospect, overcrowded as never before, on the day the Chelyuskinites returned. A crowd of jubilant Leningraders. Brass thunder of orchestras. <…> And a common delight that unites everyone!"

“It was a joy to get to the demonstration, to walk to the Palace Square. We walked, sang, shouted slogans, we cursed the intrigues of Lord Curzon and glorified Stakhanov, Busygin, Maria Demchenko, we knew the names of the first drummers of the first five-year plans better than the names of film actors, poets, and singers".

Daniil Granin lived a long life. He died in St. Petersburg at the 99th year of his life..."Just a writer", who will be called "the conscience of the nation" and "the man of the era".