May 07 2010
Wow. Just . . . wow.
Courtesy of the Russian Ministry of Mass Communications, a major new site has just gone live in time for victory day. Entitled Chronicle of Victory, 1941-1945, it’s an historian’s dream come true.
The site is simply breathtaking in what it makes available. Aerial photographs, operational maps, complete runs for the war years of Vestnik frontovoi informatsii, Izvestiia, and Krasnaia zvezda (viewable on screen or downloadable as .pdfs) . . . it is truly spectacular.
Sure, I have some quibbles. The site requires a Microsoft silverlight plug-in, there’s no navigational aids in English, you can’t browse the newspaper holdings but instead have to search by date, and the offerings of archival documents are very slim. Plus, I could get the newsreel footage to work, but not the audio-only clips . . . but that shouldn’t detract from the ridiculous mass of material free for the asking.
[...] Russian Front introduce a historian’s dream come true – the Russian Ministry of Mass Communications have just released a major historical resource [...]
[...] months back, Dave Stone drew attention to the new website, 1941-1945: Chronicle of Victory, recently established by the Russian Ministry of [...]