The Presidential Library tells about the first day of the Great Patriotic War

“Today, at 4 o’clock in the morning, without presenting any claims against the Soviet Union, without declaring war, German troops attacked our country, attacked our borders... This unheard of attack on our country is an unparalleled treachery in the history of civilized peoples”, - the appeal of People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR Vyacheslav Molotov sounded like a bolt from the blue for millions of our fellow citizens on the radio at noon on June 22, 1941.

The Presidential Library’s collections contain memories of those who themselves heard these terrible words.

“I jumped out into the street and was immediately surprised: passers-by froze, turning their heads towards the loudspeakers, cars braked with a screech, trams were empty, and Molotov’s voice came out of the loudspeakers ... At first I could not understand anything: either some kind of calls, not then threats to ‘enemies of the people’… – then someone nearby quietly said: ‘War’”, - says Irina Filippovich in her Memoirs (2008).

The People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs wrote an appeal to the Soviet people as soon as he received information about the invasion of German troops into the territory of the USSR. This text was not easy for Molotov. This is evidenced by a draft document available on the Presidential Library’s portal. It contains many corrections, from which it is clear how urgently and how responsibly it was prepared.

“Our cause is right. Victory will be ours” and the insertion “the enemy will be defeated” – with these words the historic speech ends, after which tragic changes begin in the lives of millions of our compatriots.

The war did not bypass a Soviet family. The memory of the heroes is passed down from generation to generation, all the relics associated with the participation of relatives and friends in those terrible events are carefully preserved. One has an opportunity to learn about family stories, photographs, letters of the participants of the Great Patriotic War thanks to the major electronic collection of the Presidential Library Memory of the Great Victory, which is regularly updated with new materials.

Children's memory stores everything, this is how Ninel Krasnolutskaya, a resident of besieged Leningrad, called her memoirs neatly recorded in a notebook.

Leningrad resident Irina Neustruyeva in her memoirs Impossible to Forget (2018) wrote: “The news of the beginning of the war caught us with my mother and sister in a dacha on the shores of the Gulf of Finland ... near the confluence of the Black River with the Gulf of Finland. We returned to Leningrad in a truck full of women and children; When the war began, I was 5 years old..."

Ivan Pintsov in the book So it was (2008) said: “On June 20, 1941, we passed the last exam for the 8th grade and in two weeks we had to leave for a summer camp. <...> On June 22, 1941, at 4 o'clock in the morning, the war against Nazi Germany began. With the categoricalness characteristic of youth, we began to convince each other that the war would not last long ... We regretted that we would not have to take part in this war”.

Boris Lerman, in his notes The Fate of a Siegeman and a Soldier (2016), recalled: “And then thunder struck from a clear sky. June 22, Sunday, we sat in the dining room and dined. <...> At this time, the craftsman Tolya came late for dinner and announced that the war had begun. I did not immediately realize what kind of war, where the war came from, what kind of war.

Unique historical materials telling about the first day of the Great Patriotic War are available in the Collection of Digitized Archival Documents, Film and Photo Materials World War II in Archival Documents on the Presidential Library’s portal. For example, here are Entries in the register of persons received by I. V. Stalin in the Kremlin office, for June 22, 1941, Report ... on the shelling of the Brest fortress by the enemy and the bombing of Soviet airfields, a recording of a conversation with the German ambassador to the USSR V. von der Schulenburg from the diary of the People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR V. M. Molotov dated June 21, 1941 and other archival documents.

In accordance with the List of instructions for the implementation of the Address of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation dated January 15, 2020, the project is organized by the Federal Archival Agency (Rosarchiv), the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation and the Presidential Library.

The Collection is carried out by the Federal Archive and federal state archives with the participation of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation, the state archives of Belarus. In 2020-2021 the Collection includes more than 5.5 thousand archival documents, including maps, diagrams, periodicals, photographs, newsreels for the period from January 1933 to June 22, 1941.

From June 1, 2022 the first 500 resolutions of the USSR State Defence Committee (for the period from July 1 to August 16, 1941) stored in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) are available for study to a wide range of users.