“So that they remember...”: the activities of state archives in preserving the people’s memory of the Great Patriotic War

The article examines the efforts of the USSR state archives to preserve public memory of the Great Patriotic War by collecting the memoirs of war veterans and home front workers. The author explores the evolution of archives from the repositories of administrative documentation to the institutions of memory engaged in proactive documentation. Particular attention is paid to the experience of the Sverdlovsk Region State Archives in compiling the collections of war veterans’ memoirs.

This work is based on the analysis of Collection 1274 of the State Archive of Social and Political History of the Sverdlovsk Region (GASPISO), which contains 253 storage units, including 121 manuscripts of memoirs. The documents date from 1995-2006 and represent the deferred memories of the authors born between 1920 and 1928. The article proposes a typology of the memoirs (“memoirs”, “messages”, and “complaints”) based on their originators’ motivations. The author explores the unique characteristics of deferred memories, demonstrating their dual nature: they contain an emotionally authentic portrayal of everyday life in the war, but, at the same time, they are influenced by the media environment.

A separate section is devoted to students’ reminiscences of the daily life of young students during the war, including the issues of nutrition, housing, education, and work throughout the wartime. The research demonstrates the value of popular memory as a source for studying the labor exploits on the home front, emphasizing the need for critical analysis when working with deferred memories.

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