The event was opened by KarRC RAS Director General Olga Bakhmet, who congratulated the scientists: “I wish you all success! I wish you new ideas, so that they definitely get realized, and the research results find practical applications. I wish your work is appreciated properly by the society and the attitude to scientific work matches the efforts it takes and the long way a scientist covers to obtain the results".
The session started with awarding the researchers whose outputs were recognized by the Head of the Republic of Karelia, the Karelian Government and Ministry of Economic Development. Also, the results of the contest of scientific and popular-science works of KarRC RAS young scientists were announced.
The core of the agenda was the scientific lectures of historians dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Presentation by Sergey Verigin, Professor of the Department of National History, Institute of History, Political and Social Sciences, PetrSU
A lecture on “Karelia during the Great Patriotic War” was delivered by Sergey Verigin, Professor of the Department of National History of PetrSU Institute of History, Political and Social Sciences. The researcher told about the events that took place in the republic during the war years: about the course of the enemy's offensive in 1941, the Petrozavodsk defense lines, concentration camps in the city, and operations to liberate Karelia from the invaders. The historian also showed many interesting historical photos.
Svetlana Yalovitsyna, Head of the History Section at the KarRC RAS Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History, presented the organization's projects dedicated to the anniversary of the Great Victory. One of them was “Little Man in the Great War”. This was a large-scale project implemented in the Kalevala and Kostomuksha districts. It tells about the fates of ordinary people who suffered the hardships of the Great Patriotic War. The key final outputs of the work were infrastructural improvement of a Soviet defense line - reconstruction of the Kis-Kis memorial site, and creation of a new thematic exhibition in the Kalevalatalo Ethnocultural Center. The exhibition tells about the fates of local people: those who fought in the war, as well as those who facilitated the successful advance of the Red Army, were evacuated, lived under occupation. Residents of the district also contributed to the exhibition, bringing household items, documents and letters of their relatives.
Svetlana Yalovitsyna, Head of the History Section at the KarRC RAS Institute of Linguistics, Literature and History
Scientists are also interested in the basic research result. This means studying historical memory: during the project Svetlana Yalovitsyna interviewed local residents, and fragments of these interviews are displayed in the exhibition. They demonstrate how the war is traditionally perceived and narrated.
In her talk, the historian also told about a new project, launched on February 1 – the Interregional Marathon «Hengen vägi muàmàï kieles» (“Fortitude in the native tongue”), timed to the 80th Anniversary of the Great Victory, Year of the Defender of the Fatherland, and the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
– The marathon aims to preserve historical memory by making 1941-1945 written sources in the Karelian and Vepsian languages available to the public. Letters from/to the frontline are going to be collected into a single e-resource and preserved for the future generations, – the researcher explained.
The third lecture on the agenda was given by Viktor Birin, Associate Professor of the Department of Regional Public Administration, RANEPA Karelian Branch. He spoke about how the Great Patriotic War was portrayed in the poetry of Vladimir Vysotsky. The main war themes in his song verses include: people who forged victory in the war (25 songs), memory of the war, including the post-war syndrome (10 songs), war and nature (7 songs). Eight of the poet's songs contain a fragment or several lines mentioning wartime.
Viktor Birin, Associate Professor, Department of Regional Public Administration, RANEPA Karelian Branch
The event was accompanied by thematic exhibitions set up by the KarRC RAS Scientific Archives and Scientific Library in the Conference Hall lobby. In particular, the session participants and all the Center's staff could see archival materials covering the period from 1941 to 1945. These included photographs of the Great Patriotic War veterans, photos of the liberation of Petrozavodsk by the Onega Military Flotilla, documents on the work of the Research Institute of Culture of the Karelian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences during the war years, and materials on the Great Patriotic War collected by the Institute's staff on scientific expeditions.
Photos: Igor Georgievski, Victoria Shvetsova / KarRC RAS
