15th Anniversary of the Russian Competition
This year, the Russian EUSTORY competition celebrates its 15th anniversary. Since the MEMORIAL Society Moscow announced the first Russian competition for high-school students in March 1999, more than 36,000 young people from all over Russia have handed in research papers regarding the topic “Man in History - Russia in the 20th Century”. The participants interviewed eye-witnesses and their descendants. They set out in search of shut down and abandoned buildings, historical monuments or cemeteries. They studied in archives or worked in libraries, discovered new facts and found valuable documents in order to reconstruct the lives and fates of people and their individual stories. Thus, they filled in the gaps in the history of their region. Natalia Kolyagina, staff-member at MEMORIAL Moscow pointed out: “The participants help rescue our historical memory - not a designed one with victories and achievements only, but a real one, including the tragedies people in Russia went through in the 20th century”.
On 29 April 2014 the award ceremony for the finalists of the 15th Russian competition 2013-2014 took place in Moscow. 1,554 works from 72 regions of Russia and the Russian Commonwealth (CIS) were handed in. Forty-three works were awarded by the jury which consisted of well-known Russian historians and specialists of local history. Alexey Rakov, finalist of the first Russian competition in 1999 and now professor of contemporary history at the Russian State University of Humanities and professor of economic methodology at the Higher School of Economics, congratulated the organisers and the prize winners. He stated: “Patriotism means knowing history with all its difficulties. You are not only the winners of the competition; you are the winners in the battle for the history under way in the present-day society”.
Before the ceremony started, an open presentation of the winners' works took place, and the attendants could meet the winners personally and ask questions about their works. Some of the students prepared remarkable collages and posters to illustrate their works.
This year the ceremony was hosted by the TV moderator Mikhail Shatz. At the beginning of the ceremony the jury chair and distinguished writer Ljudmila Ulitskaya held the opening speech and congratulated the students as well as their teachers. The students also received congratulations from well-known scientists and public figures such as Ljudmila Alexeyeva, Vladimir Lukin, Irina Yasina, Nikita Sokolov and Rüdiger Freiherr von Fritsch. Wojciech Zajączkowski, Polish ambassador in Russia, noted in his welcoming speech: “What is history? Historian Leopold von Ranke, for instance, answers, that this is a science that is supposed to tell what really happened. But is that true? (…) If we compare the books by various historians, we'll see they all interpret the same events in a different way. Today there are people among us who study history for themselves – and without these people, the society dies, as does its memory. It is extremely important to ensure the freedom of historical studies. The history born as a result of legal regulations or ideological premises is a weak history. Your participation in this competition testifies to the fact that Russia has a future.”
The competition winners received diplomas and valuable prizes. The best teacher-tutors were awarded prizes by the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation. Since 2009 the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation awards scholarships for obtaining a higher education to several winners of the Russian history competition. The main donors of the Russian competition are: The Moscow Government, the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation (RF), the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" (Germany), the Körber Foundation (Germany), the Heinrich Böll Foundation (Germany) and Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom (Germany). The Russian competition is also supported by: The Egor Gaidar Foundation, “Na Strastnom” (theatre center of theatre workers of RF), “ROSSPEN” (publishing house), “Photo Soyuz” (agency), “Otechestvennye zapiski” (magazine), “Novaya gazeta” (newspaper) and “Serebryanyi dozhd” (radio station).
Click here to see the list of prize winners.