Memory of the Great Victory. The Presidential Library’s unique materials

The Great Patriotic War is the most tragic page in the history of our country. The Presidential Library’s portal provides the materials of one of the largest electronic collections Memory of the Great Victory It includes official documents, photographs and newsreels, newspapers, books, agitation and propaganda publications, collections of articles, biographies, testimonies of participants in combat battles and home front workers, their personal documents, images of military and labor awards, monuments and memorial complexes. All materials are divided into seven thematic sections.

The section Authorities and Society during the Great Patriotic War features documents that spotlight various aspects of the activities of state institutions in wartime conditions, the life of people in the rear. A special place is occupied by agitation and propaganda materials: brochures, leaflets, posters that supported the morale of the soldiers, called on everyone to fight the enemy or informed the population about the current situation. The digitized documents of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, which are stored in the collections of the State Archive of the Russian Federation are also available. They cover the issues of providing the Red Army with engineering weapons and food, transferring the economy to a military footing, restoring the national economy in areas liberated from the enemy and others.

The section Anti-Hitler Coalition is devoted to various stages in the formation and development of cooperation between the USSR, the USA and Great Britain in World War II. A large number of materials tells about international conferences held in Tehran (1943), Yalta (1945), Potsdam (1945). The collection features unique photographs from the US Library of Congress. In particular, they depict meetings of the Big Three members.

The materials about the battles of the Great Patriotic War are available in the section The Might of Russian Arms: Combat Operations During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945. Particular attention is paid to the defence of Leningrad, the battle of Moscow, the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, the liberation of Sevastopol and the western territories of the USSR, the Vistula-Oder operation and the capture of Berlin. The section includes scientific publications, maps, photographs, newsreels. Everyone has opportunity to find out what happened at the front from direct witnesses of those events. The materials of correspondents of the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union, made at the forefront, are also available.

The section People's Militia in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 features information about the formation and functioning of the units of the people's militia, extermination battalions and partisan detachments. For example, the documentary Moscow-Berlin tells about the events in the territory of Bryansk Region during the Great Patriotic War and about the partisan movement. The section also contains documents about the Patriotic War of 1812 revealing the theme of the traditions of the people's militia.

The materials about the heroes of the war, the texts of legislative acts relating to the social support of veterans, are provided in the section Fatherland Defenders. Documents from personal archives are also available here, including letters from the front, digital recordings of fragments of interviews with war and home front veterans.

The Presidential Library’s portal features the newspapers of those years that it is possible to "flip through". They are available in the section War on the Pages of the Regional and Front-Line Press.

The memory of the Great Patriotic War will never fade away. It is impossible to forget the feat of people who provided their descendants with a worthy future at the cost of their lives. The materials about how those who won the Great Victory are honored are available in the section Perpetuating the Memory of the Great Patriotic War. These are photographs of individual memorial complexes and monuments located in different regions of our country.

The Memory of the Great Victory collection has been formed since 2010 and is constantly added with new unique materials.