May 9, 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory over Nazi Germany. Thanks to the courage and heroism of the Soviet people and those who fought against fascism in other countries, the world and human civilization itself were saved. To commemorate this date students and teachers of Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University made a special website with students’ essays about the war in the English language.
The site is the result of the conference «Мультикультурный мир: проблема взаимопонимания / Multicultural world: the problems of mutual understanding». This is the first time the conference has been held online. This is a project where young authors, history students of Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University have made one more attempt to present for the large world community the main events of World War II and the Great Patriotic War in the English language.
Instead of an ordinary report presentation on the topic of their scientific research, the students wrote essays in Russian and English on the significant episodes and heroes of the Great Patriotic War. The essays were written under the professors’ scientific supervision and the topics included Nuremberg trial, Victory Day, Siege of Leningrad, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, animals that helped at the war and many others
— The theme of my essay was the tragedy in Khatyn village. The village was destroyed on March 22, 1943 by a punitive detachment as a revenge for the death of some German military officers. The principle of collective punishment was applied and 149 Khatyn inhabitants were burnt alive. I translated the text using Yandex-translator. There were problems with some words and phrases such as «прочесывали лес»/ “searched in the forest”, I had to use synonyms because there is no direct translation or the words have another meaning in English. This conference has helped me to realize that I shouldn’t be afraid of publishing my work and I shouldn’t avoid it. This experience was interesting and useful, I will participate in such projects again. — said Marina Ignatova, a history student.
The supervisors and consultants of the project are professional historians: associate professors of Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University and representatives of Saint-Petersburg Centre of socio-economic and geopolitical development.
— I worked at the topic of Nuremberg trial. This is a trial of ex-leaders of Hitler Germany. At first we (the students) wrote papers in Russian, then the papers were checked by our scientific supervisor Igor Minin and after his approval the papers were translated into English. The main difficulty, in my opinion, was to tell about such an important episode in the history of that war in a limited number of words. It is necessary to do such projects in a foreign language so that people remember the history of the Great Patriotic War not only in CIS but in other countries as well, since it is an inalienable part of world history. Now it is even more important because now and then there appear attempts to distort facts or falsify moments related to the USSR and its participation in World War II. — told Philip Evstafiev, a second-year student of History and Law Institute.
On the site created especially for the project one can not only read the articles but watch videos and listen to audios, telling about the Great Patriotic War. The materials are also available on social networks.
Mediacentre VERBUM based on information presented by О.G. Minina