10 billion. That’s how many letters were sent and received by Soviet soldiers during WWII... Since June 1941, when Nazi Germany attacked Soviet borders, until May 1945 these letters became a thin thread, at times the only one, to connect families and friends torn from each other by a terrible war. These letters found their way from battlefields and hospitals, from evacuation zones and abandoned homes. Words of hope, love and worry addressing dear ones. How many of those words would become farewells...
To mark 75 years of Victory over Nazism in 2020, we created a unique graphic series on Instagram. In Stories, we published hundreds of original wartime letters, each illustrated by young students from RANEPA School of Design. Emotional, often poignant extracts built up into a kind of Endless Letter, whose original score was written by musician Maxim Makarychev.
Now you can experience the Endless Letter as a unique web-page. This website connects the peace of today to the awful times of war, and us to those who despite the agony surrounding them, still loved and hoped. This is a story of ordinary people. Soldiers. Wives. Mothers. Children. Fathers. This is a story of millions of families, of those who lived and died during WWII. And most of all — this is a story of love.