70th anniversary of the Great Victory

GRODNO, 3 June (BelTA) – The Belarusian and Russian archive services will implement joint projects on the history of the Second World War, Vladimir Adamushko, director of the archives and records department at the Belarusian Justice Ministry, said as he met with the head of the Russia archive service in Grodno, BelTA has learned.

The archive services have carried out a number of projects to make the facts about the war available to users in the two countries. "This year the archive service of Belarus jointly with the Russian colleagues carried out the exhibition project We Held Out and Won to mark the 70th anniversary of the Victory. Today the exhibition is on display at the National Academy of Sciences, and will travel around the country. To the same end we have published 76 collections of documents over the past 15 years. Half of them has been published with the assistance of our Russian colleagues,” said Vladimir Adamushko.

According to the head of the Russian Federal Archival Agency Andrei Artizov, the Russian archive services undoubtedly have the greatest amount of information on this topic. Archivists are trying to make these documents available not only to Russians but also for nationals of other states. The most ambitious project in this respect is the Memory of the People database (the portal integrated the existing projects Memorial and The Feat of the People of the Russian Defense Ministry). This will be the world's largest database about the Great Patriotic War. The database of about 17 million entries is online and fully available. People can enter the last name, first name, patronymic of their relative and get the information: where he served, the awards he received, which combat operations he took part in.

"Work is underway to improve the database. It is updated with the information on the participation of the Soviet Union in other wars and on places of burial,” Andrei Artizov noted. The majority of military graves have been categorized. Thus people can learn about the exact place where their ancestors were buried.