65 Years of Victory. The Great Patriotic War. Belarus

About the project

The Project “65 Years of Victory. The Great Patriotic War. Belarus” is a special jubilee rubric of the Archives of Belarus website, an internet resource of the State Archival Service of the Republic of Belarus.

This project is a contribution of the state archives of the Republic of Belarus to the memorial events commemorating the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

Objectives and expected results

The project aims to raise awareness of WWII events in Belarus, to show the tragic and heroic pages of this war, to honour the memory of war victims, to express respect and gratitude for people whose bravery and heroism brought the Victory over Nazi Germany, and to show the extent of the contribution the Belarusian people made in the struggle against the Nazi occupiers.

The project is expected to create in the Internet network a more complete picture about the subject based on primary documentary sources and to expand knowledge of the history of Belarus in the Great Patriotic War.

This also serves to acquaint the general public with the wartime records held in the state archives of the Republic of Belarus, to make them more accessible, to increase interest in the national history, to foster patriotism in the Belarusian citizens, to strengthen antiwar attitudes in the society, and to raise awareness of Belarus among the international community.

The structure of the project

The rubric consists of the three main sections containing the following material:

In all, the online exhibition features 405 wartime records (digital copies of the originals) available from the Belarusian State Archives of Films, Photographs and Sound Recordings (262 items), the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (89), the Belarusian State Archives-Museum of Literature and Art (15), the Belarusian State Archives of Scientific and Technical Documentation (12), the regional state archives in Brest (4), Gomel (6), Grodno (1), and Mogilev (3), and the local state archives in Baranovichi (6), Kobrin (1), Mozyr (1) and Molodechno (5).

The records in the exhibition are arranged into nine topics illustrating different stages and aspects of the Great Patriotic War.

The material is structured in two levels:

– List of records, including their title, place and date of creation, location index.

– Digital copies of textual records, photographs, film records and sound recordings performed in the way most appropriate for this website (with the most suitable size, content and view).

The prevailing majority of the documents are the originals. Nearly 70 % of them are photographs; about a quarter are textual records. There are also drawings, charts, maps,12 sound recordings and two film recordings.

The exhibition features historical documents from the pre-war, war and after-war periods. These are the official records, including previously classified material (created by the governing bodies of the Soviet Union and the Belarusian SSR, the local authorities, the occupation authorities and army formations, the Extraordinary State Commission for Investigation of Nazi Crimes) and personal records (diaries, memoirs, letters etc.). The sound recordings include the radio announcement of Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, orders by the Supreme Commander in Chief, operational reports on the liberation of Belarusian towns, the act of the German surrender etc. read by the famous Soviet newsreader Yury Levitan, and war songs. The war newsreel gives an insight into the occupation regime in Belarus and the partisan parade celebrating the liberation of Minsk.

Among the textual records more than a half are typescripts, nearly a third are prints, and a number of hand-written documents. Some documents bear autographs of military leaders and the chiefs of the partisan movement. The majority of records are in the Russian language, part of them being a translation from German into Russian. The others are in Belarusian and German.

The offered materials are by no means exhaustive and suggest that further work in this direction may be worthwhile.

Project participants

General supervision of the project – O. V. Biryukova, first deputy director at the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Republic of Belarus.

Coordination for the collection of archival material, selection of records, and revision of reference data – G. S. Zholnerkevich, adviser at the scholarly use of records and information division at the Department for Archives and Records Management of the Republic of Belarus.

The content of the section is developed by the Belarusian Research Center of Electronic Records:
– Project idea, contents and structure development – D. A. Glazovskaya;
– Reference materials – A. I. Solomevich;
– Development of the English version – S. A. Marasanova.

The Archival Documents on the War page is developed with a significant contribution from the Belarusian State Archives of Films, Photographs and Sound Recordings – T. L. Rakhmanko, P. N. Kravchuk, E. K. Polishchuk, and G. N. Dubotovka.

In the identification of records and making of digital copies also participated the National Archives of the Republic of Belarus (T. G. Voronova, T. S. Mikheenok), the Belarusian State Archives-Museum of Literature and Art (T. V. Kekeleva), the Belarusian State Archives of Scientific and Technical Documentation (G. I. Shostak), the regional state archives in Brest, Gomel, Grodno and Mogilev, and the local state archives in Baranovichi, Kobrin, Mozyr and Molodechno.

Web design and graphics by the Belarusian Research Center for Electronic Records:
– Web management, graphics, sound recordings, html-version – G. A. Kokhanova;
– Page layout, graphics, html-version – G. Z. Dashkevich;
– Scanning and processing archival material and documents – V. V. Adamchik;
– Film recordings – E. A. Gaichuk;
– Home page, sound recordings – Yu. L. Zaranko.

Notes

The use of the material featured in the section “65 Years of Victory. The Great Patriotic War. Belarus” requires a reference to the source of the information: the Archives of Belarus website and the individual archive in which the records are held. For other issues relating to the use of the featured records, please contact the individual archives (their contacts can be found on the Archives and Institutions page on this website).

For your comments and opinions please email: ed@archives.gov.by.