Descendants of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War can now exchange their family war stories on a separate social network created by the social movement ‘Immortal Regiment of Russia’. As stated by the co-chairman of the pan-Russian public movement ‘Immortal Regiment of Russia’, Nikolai Zemtsov, last year this movement, surpassing the borders of Russia, was not only a military-memorial action for perpetuating the memory of the soldiers, but an event uniting people.
"Our society, our compatriots, have preserved and increase different databases for 70 years – books of memory, which are now scattered throughout cities and villages, and regional museums. And last year the 'Immortal Regiment' of Moscow gathered 137,000 records about soldiers, which Muscovites have entrusted to us. Far more people are part of the movement than one procession can gather. It is necessary to somehow provide an opportunity to link these people together, so they can see each other. If we imagine the number of heirs of the soldier-victors, it may well be the same, so we thought, about 300 million people scattered throughout the world. The families of these soldiers saved memory fragments, and some documents of that epoch, certificates of the awards the soldiers received when they were injured. All this is a huge amount of information that requires analysis," Nikolai Zemtsov said.
‘’Thanks to programmers, mail.ru helped us, we have created a web portal that works with the use of social networking technologies. It is possible to log in through social networks, through VKontakte, through Odnoklassniki or Facebook. If you have an account on these social networks, without registering you can enter and create your own cabinet, where you can upload a photograph of your soldier. There can be more than one picture, there may be several. We have families with up to 10 and 15 veterans. I urge people to write the information as precisely as possible, the number of the military unit, for example. Because if you at least specify a division, then all the soldiers of this division will be visible to you. That is, you will be able to contact each of them."
Nikolai Zemtsov focused on the fact that "The 'Immortal Regiment' attracts people who love Russia, who are aware of what Russia did for the world. This year the procession of the ‘Immortal Regiment’ with anti-fascist intonations will be held in many countries of the world. Montenegro, the USA – there will be processions in five American cities – have already joined our movement. France will connect, activists who retain the memory of the 'Normandy-Niemen’ unit will come to the march of the ‘Immortal Regiment’, and 100 people want to walk through Red Square.
