Rossiyskaya Gazeta presents multimedia project "Half of Victory: rear to the front"

On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory, Rossiyskaya Gazeta launches a large-scale video project "Half of Victory: rear to the front", dedicated to the feat of the home front workers during the Great Patriotic War. While fierce fighting was going on at the front, intense work was underway in the deep rear: factories evacuated from the west of the country were producing tanks, planes, ammunition and uniforms for the Red Army for days. In the first months of the war, a critical task was to evacuate, restore and accelerate industrial production in the rear. There were not enough workers in factories and factories — women, teenagers, and the elderly stood at the machines.

The project tells about the labor feat of the home front through the stories of descendants — those who today work at the same enterprises where their grandfathers and great-grandfathers forged Victory. It is based on archival documents, rare wartime footage and personal stories that became part of the overall Victory.

The special feature of the project is the stories told by the descendants of the heroes: about Georgy Savelyev, a metallurgical engineer from Magnitogorsk, who risked rolling armored steel on an unintended bluming, about 16—year-old Nikolai Tsyupka, who participated in the assembly of T-34 tanks, about the Chikov family from the former Kuibyshev, who riveted Il-2 attack aircraft and many other home front workers. In each episode, the fates of people who forged Victory at machine tools: metallurgists, tank builders, aircraft builders, textile workers.

"The rear is half of the Victory, and even more," Marshal Zhukov said. The project reminds us that without the daily feats of workers, engineers and collective farmers who worked in conditions of cold and hunger, victory would have been impossible.