The Presidential Library published the diaries of the missing in action soldiers of the Great Patriotic War

Approximately 150 documents were added to the collection of the Presidential Library entitled Memory of the Great Victory in the year of the 72nd anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War. With such intensity, the formation of electronic collections of books and materials relating to the military and labor exploits of the nation-liberator is continuing. In particular, a large array of materials courtesy of the Surazh Local History Museum of the glorious for its partisan movement Bryansk Oblast – overall about 80 items.

Currently, there are the diaries, photographs, honorary certificates and other documents belonging to the fighters, participants of self-defense and partisan movement from different regions of the country, in open access on the Presidential Library.

Soldier Govorov Viktor Timofeyevich, a native of the Vysokovsky District of the Kalinin Oblast, not accounted for since February 1942 at the front. He did not fight for long, so did not manage to mail too many letters to his beloved wife: “Hello my dear family, my wife Polina Grigoriyevna, my dear son Nikolai Viktorovich…” The letter of the soldier dated July 16, 1941, written in pencil on the notebook page, can now be read on the Presidential Library website.

Of considerable interest are the hand-written diaries of the member of the acting army of Lieutenant Eugene Ivanovich Sementsov A diary of Sementsov Eugene Ivanovich (1923-1944) for July-August 1943, who fell in 1944. The young officer tells in detail about the course of several battles, about trench life. And despite all these difficulties, the notes begin with the words: “July 6, 1943. Sunny bright day; cirrus clouds floating across the sky, the grasshoppers’ chirr and twisting near me flies’ buzz is heard from the grass …” (sic). At any moment, a blind bullet can break the life of a fighter, and he is watching dragonflies and grasshoppers. As the poet-front-line soldier David Samoylov wrote: “How come! How all that synchronized - / Wartime, woe time, springtime and aspiration!”

Besides breaking the plans, the war also crossed out the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people, full of the most daring dreams and ideas. Relatives of the ninth-grader in the blockade time David Sobolevsky published and brought to the Presidential Library A diary of a missing in action. 1941-1943. On December 8, 1941, the young man wrote: “One troubles after another. First of all, Japan declared war on the United States and England. Now they probably will not be able to help us as before. Secondly, misfired in the fall bomb was exploded near the school. All the glass in the windows is broken. Everyone dismissed from the lessons. Third, my parents talk about my departure from Leningrad. To go by myself and leave them here? Never!”

It is striking that in the terrible realities of a hungry and cold blockaded city, a young man is eager to learning, now and then interrupted by bombing and teachers’ deaths, almost in an adult way analyzes the situation in the theater of operations and tirelessly improves himself: “February 26, 1942. I just came from school. Today I passed the third chapter of history. I answered everything perfectly, but still got B. Apparently, she afraid to spoil me. I'm happy with that.”

The rich inner world of a teenager suggests that he could set himself and realize any goal: to become an outstanding engineer or educator, but who knows what else! But there was a war. In the summer of 1943 he graduated from the school with the specialty of a mortar and was sent to the front. And since September 1943 he missed in actions for the liberation of Ukraine.

The relatives waited for years for every missing soldier, carrying their heavy cross without tears and complaints. The parents of the young Leningrader did get a chance to visit his grave. But they carefully collected all his papers and published David’s a diary. This diary and similar records of ordinary Soviet soldiers are another accusation of the war.

To date, the “victorious” collection of the Presidential Library has more than 22 thousand of rare, unique materials related to the war of 1941-1945. The collection includes official documents, photo and newsreels, wartime newspapers, books, publications of agitation and propaganda nature, testimonies of participants in combat battles and workers of the rear, their personal documents, images of combat and labor awards, monuments and memorial complexes, recorded thoughts about the war of veteran’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren.