The Presidential Library invited the “Sapsan” train passengers to travel through history with its documents

Developing the partnership relations between the Presidential Library and the “Russian Railways” Joint-stock Company (RZD), staff employees of the railroad service posted on the official Sapsan Media Center’s website selected materials from the Presidential Library stock.

Now every passenger using his own gadget can independently browse through a unique digital content. Travelers can spend four and a half hours of their commute between Moscow and St. Petersburg to the exciting world of Russian history.

The Presidential Library offers Sapsan’s passengers the movies, virtual video tours and the books. For instance, they can virtually walk to video sightseeing through a unique exposition of the Presidential Library entitled “Spreading sound patriotic thoughts. The socio-political publications projects in Russia.”

Train passengers will learn a lot of amazing and interesting facts. For example, it is known that Catherine the Great published magazines herself in which she was both the editor-in-chief and the leading correspondent, was actively exchanging with letters with Voltaire. When the empress just read “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” by Radishchev she cried out loud in anger: “So after all he is a rebel worse than Pugachev!” And later her great-grandson Grand Duke Constantine, already appealed to the powerful of this world: “I was even more convinced of what kind of importance state magazines and newspapers recently gained in the state affairs <...> having a great influence on public opinion.”

In addition to video tours, the Presidential Library offers to the passengers of Sapsan the documentary films produced by its in-house filmmaking studio: The capital city, A development of the Arctic and the Northern Sea Route, The House of Romanov. On 400 anniversary of the Zemsky Sobor of 1613. The last video introduces a collection dedicated to the Romanov dynasty. The collection includes about 900 pieces. Among them — the official documents, memoirs, diaries, business and personal correspondence, the fragments of newsreels, and so on. Among the rarities is “The Diary of Emperor Nicholas II (1890-1906).”

Closer partnership relations between the Presidential Library and the JSC “Russian Railways” began to take quite a while ago: the documentaries as “Chairmen of the expanse,” “Tsar and the President,” “Russian Fleet offshore America” and other films of the Presidential Library have been shown on plasma screens in the Sapsan cars for several years. Owing to cooperation, the library specialists were able to prepare for the 120th anniversary of the West Siberian Railway an electronic collection on West Siberian Railway, featured on the Presidential Library website.

In addition, the Presidential Library has joined the “Beautiful Country” project of JSC “Russian Railways,” which contains a series of documentary movies of “Russia from the train window” series, ten of which are published on the library website: Journey through “Murmanka,” Southern Primorsky Krai, Caucasus, Northern and Polar Urals, and other.

In the future, the Presidential Library and the JSC “Russian Railways” intend to expand cooperation and offer train passengers new rare books, documentaries, virtual video tours. After all, more than 550,000 entries from the Presidential Library holdings are an entire ocean of knowledge from the field of Russian history, where not so long ago there were so many blank spots for us! Now there will be much less of them.