BOOK — FIGHTER

A collection of books and stories by front-line soldiers whose wartime fates were connected with the works of N. A. Ostrovsky, items from various museums on a digital site accessible to all. The project, timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, initially suggested the creation of a catalog and exhibitions of project participants at three venues, but due to the epidemiological situation it was decided to transfer the project to a digital format — a website where everyone can learn about the history of the books. The project is a website of an intermuseum online collection of books by the writer N. A. Ostrovsky (1904–1936) which accompanied the soldiers throughout the Great Patriotic War. The site also features the memories of front-line soldiers whose books were lost in the fighting. Initiator and organizer of the project: Ostrovsky Integratsia State Museum and Cultural Centre Project participants: Literary and Memorial Museum of N. Ostrovsky in Sochi; Novorossiysk Historical Museum-Reserve. Pavel Korchagin, the protagonist of the novel “How Steel Was Tempered”, was looked up to by the generation that went off to war right after the graduation parties. Such character traits as a sense of deep love for one’s homeland, the willingness to give one’s life for it, the ability not to bend under the weight of the most terrible circumstances were close and consonant to that generation. That’s why yesterday’s graduates took this book with them to the front, and after the war they brought it to the writer’s museums and talked about their exploits inspired by the book. These books are in various museums, and this thematic collection is literally scattered all over the country. During the summer-fall period of 2020, the museum items were digitized; texts were translated into foreign languages, the website was created, and on November 7, 2020, on the date marking the anniversary of the Red Square parade of 1941, the Project, transformed into digital format, began to be realized on the Internet at the website книга-боец.рф

Project goal: use the example of the collection and its stories to shift the public perception perspective in which the works by N. A. Ostrovsky are perceived as Komsomol and Communist propaganda, to seeing them as a vivid example of vital strength and fortitude of the spirit. This was exemplified by the exploits of participants in the Great Patriotic War, who read the works by N. A. Ostrovsky.   Tasks: - to promote understanding of the role of creativity in the Great Patriotic War Victory; - to foster respectful attitude to the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War and its heroes; - to raise interest in the work by Nikolai Ostrovsky through stories about the deeds of front-line soldiers; - to search for and digitize editions of Nikolai Ostrovsky’s books, replenish museum collections, replenish the digital resource.