Zukunft Memorial launches an educational online project “Talking Archives” dedicated to private memory. This project is about why talking about the past and working with it is very important and very interesting. And about why it is relevant to everyone's life.

The project was created by Zukunft Memorial in partnership with the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen, with the support of the Foundation for Memory, Responsibility and the Future (EVZ) and Zimin Foundation.

“Talking Archives” shows that the world of the archive is more than shelves and dusty boxes; the archive is filled with magic, mystery, and hidden truths. The world of the archive is accessible to everyone, not just professionals. It’s interesting, engaging, and very important, because the archive is a first-hand account of history.

Most of the materials for this project are concerned with the history of political repressions and resistance in the USSR. That’s because the project is based on the archives of Zukunft Memorial and the Research Centre for East European Studies and has seen us working in concert with our colleagues at those organizations. Both Zukunft Memorial and the Research Centre for East European Studies deal with the history of the USSR and the countries of Eastern Europe in the Soviet period.

The central part of the project is the stories of archivists and historians about their work. Searching through the archives is more than a profession: it’s magic, mystery, detective. Their stories include incredible stories about searching for missing relatives, about letters accidentally found 70 years later, about a granddaughter who changed her last name to her great-grandfather's, and also about why the work of an archivist is exciting.

An archive is memory itself. Sometimes that means a photograph, a manuscript, a drawing, a napkin, a jacket, or even a homemade violin. Here you can see the gallery of various artifacts from different parts of the Memorial collection.

Archival search can be done not only by a professional, but also by anyone. What could be more interesting than getting to the bottom of the history of old family things found in the attic? Or finding a relative that the whole family had considered missing for several generations? Here you’ll find  Eleven examples of the beautiful, clever, and infinitely various ways to display the stories hidden in archives, and we've also put together great archival finds and discoveries made by amateurs.

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