As part of the "Academic Regiment" campaign, we are publishing materials about the fate of students and faculty of the Moscow State Institute of History and Archives during the Great Patriotic War.
The years of the Great Patriotic War are a tragic and heroic period both for the country as a whole and for the Institute of History and Archives, when, thanks to the personal initiative of the historian Pavel Smirnov and the help of a small group of students and faculty, the Institute was saved and brought back to life.
The first directive from the beginning of the War was the decree from the directorate of the Institute: “There will be no holidays, we continue to study with a reduced program, two years instead of four years. Classes start on August 1, 1941"