The Russian Federation Ministry of Defense announced on 21 May the release of a substantial cache of freshly declassified documents relating to the liberation of Prague via its multimedia website, using a number of documents from the Ministry’s seemingly endless Central Archive. The website, entitled “…И Прага была спасена. Не вправе забыть, переписать, исказить” […And Prague was Saved. No Right to Forget, Rewrite, or Distort]. Much like other similar offerings, this site provides looks at memorials through photos, maps, and reference sheets (in some cases, before and after photos for those memorials that had since been taken down after the fall of the Soviet Union), documents from a number of combat logs from various military units engaged in the fighting, and documents listing the names of those Soviet troops killed during the fighting. Additionally, you can find a number of orders and instructions from higher headquarters, up to the General Staff as Red Army forces pushed their way through in their continued advance on Berlin.
There are many documents within this handsome website. At first glance, it does not appear to be as heavily populated with archive documents as others in the same family of websites (Liberation of Poland, Liberation of Hungary). Still, what is here appears no less impressive, and we hope to add a number of them to our files of translated records as we explore these new sites as they continue to emerge.
Translating History 