The Presidential Library presented films about the heroism of defenders and residents of Leningrad

On January 26, 2023 the Presidential Library hosted a press conference and a film screening dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the breaking of the siege of Leningrad and the Day of the complete liberation of the city from the Nazi siege.

Opening the event, Director General of the Presidential Library Yuri Nosov said: “Leningrad lived and fought for almost 900 terrible days. It's hard to believe, but even during the siege, documentary filmmakers continued to work in the besieged city. They filmed a chronicle of the life of Leningrad - how bread is baked, how fires are put out, how water is drawn from the Neva”. During the first siege winter, cinemas did not work, but since the spring of 1942, cinemas began to open. They showed siege chronicle. Film screenings were held with full halls, despite the fact that in the event of an air raid it was necessary to interrupt the viewing and go to the bomb shelter.  

The president of the foundation himself spoke about the films dedicated to the Great Patriotic War and the siege of Leningrad, which were created with the assistance of the Grachya Poghosyan Charitable Foundation. Grachya Poghosyan also donated 15 books to the Presidential Library, telling about the courage of Leningraders and the defenders of the city.

Then Vsevolod Vasilyevich Vorobyov, a resident of besieged Leningrad, read out his poems.

People's Artist of Russia Nikolai Burov, Honored Artist of Russia Vladimir Litvinov, writer and screenwriter Dmitry Karalis, writer Andrey Bogdanov attended the press-conference.   

The script for a new feature film by Dmitry Karalis "Blood of the Siege", a documentary film with the same title shot by Dmitry Nikolayevich in 2017, was presented.

As part of the event, documentaries directed by Pavel Gladunov, filmed with the support of the Hrachya Poghosyan Charitable Foundation, were shown.

The film "Train to Eternity" tells about the terrible tragedy that occurred on October 14, 1941 at the railway station of the city of Tikhvin. More than 2,000 people died that day - wounded Red Army soldiers, women and children evacuated from Leningrad. They seemed to be already far from the war, famine and the horrors of the siege: there were only a few kilometers to the mainland. But a massive raid of Nazi aviation began. For several hours, the enemy mercilessly dropped high-explosive and incendiary bombs on defenseless people. Ammunition trains and fuel tanks exploded. A severe fire began... The exact number of deaths at the Tikhvin station is still not known.

In 2016, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the tragedy, a monument to the Leningrad children who died during the evacuation in October 1941 was erected on the Tikhvin station square. It depicts a mourning woman against the backdrop of a burning train station, and nearby, on the rails, a fallen children's toy - a teddy bear...

The film "Train to Eternity" was the first documentary filmmakers’ address to the events associated with the bombing of Tikhvin. According to the film director, Pavel Gladunov, the idea of the film is that "people, after watching such a film, seeing these shots, overestimate something in their lives".

Another film by Pavel Gladunov, which was shown at the Presidential Library’s cinema club meeting, is “In Memory of the Heroic Defenders of Sukho Island”. The film marks the 80th anniversary of the heroic defence of a small island north of Novaya Ladoga, where the base of the Ladoga military flotilla was located during the war. On October 22, 1942 the garrison of the island took the battle with the enemy squadron and won.

Honorary philanthropist of St. Petersburg Grachya Poghosyan managed to implement more than 300 projects over the years of charitable work aimed at preserving the historical heritage and passing on memory to the next generations. Half of these projects are devoted to the events of the Great Patriotic War Including  the installation of a monument to Leningrad children in the city of Tikhvin.

At the end of the film screening, the audience was able to ask questions to Grachya Poghosyan and the film crew led by film director Pavel Gladunov.

The Presidential Library pays much attention to preserving the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War and the Siege of Leningrad. The library’s portal features the electronic collection Memory of the Great Victory, which contains official documents, photographs and newsreels, wartime newspapers, books, memoirs of battle participants and home front workers, photographs and postcards, as well as the collection Defence and Siege of Leningrad, which preserved the chronicle of this tragic page in the history of our country. This digital collection presents a complete picture of the siege of the city on the Neva. It includes official documents, periodicals, leaflets, bread cards, memos, newsreel, TASS photo chronicle. A large part is made up of memoirs, diaries and letters from the personal archives of the residents of the besieged city. More than 4,000 documents were transferred to the Presidential Library for digitization by Leningraders themselves, their children and grandchildren, as part of a major project announced by the library in 2019 on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi siege.

In addition, the portal features the Collection of digitized archival documents, film and photo materials World War II in archival documents, which includes more than 10 thousand documents about the prehistory and history of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War. The organizers of the Collection are the Federal Archival Agency (Rosarkhiv), the Administrative Directorate 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 and etc.