The day when the war began, the Soviet people began with "peaceful" newspapers. They were signed to print at around midnight, and at 4 am, when the bombing began, they were already being delivered to newsstands.
But on that warm June Sunday, which did not bode well, newspaper headlines wrote about the weekend in Baku, published theater posters and sold vouchers to sanatoriums in Khosta and Odessa.
June 22 in Kiev was supposed to be a real football holiday: the large sports stadium named after NS Khrushchev was ready to receive spectators - this event occupied the front page of Izvestia. The newspaper wrote about the agricultural exhibition and grain harvesting, and the editorial wrote about the diligence and efficiency of "all parts of the state apparatus."
A new reservoir was to be solemnly opened in Minsk, and new "fabrics, shoes, ready-made clothes, fashionable hats, jerseys, and underwear" were brought to GUM. Zvyazda wrote about this.
Soviet newspapers still wrote about the war on June 22, but still as a stranger, although the hostilities had already been going on for several hours on the territory of Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic states.
"Komsomolskaya Pravda" wrote on the front page about the Athlete's Day, mass hay making and how to spend the summer weekend, published poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Promotional video:
and called on the Komsomol members to collect scrap metal.
Maxim Gorky was recalled on the pages of the newspaper "Soviet Art". They talked about conferences dedicated to the writer, his youth and theatrical performances based on his plays.
People learned about the beginning of the war only at noon on June 22, 1941 from a speech by Vyacheslav Molotov on the all-Union radio. A few hours later, the text of Molotov's speech was repeated by Yuri Levitan. Thanks to his soulful voice and the fact that Levitan read the front-line reports of the Soviet Information Bureau throughout the war, many thought that the famous announcer was the first to read the message about the beginning of the war on the radio.
Kislov Fedor / TASS.
"Leningradskaya Pravda" came out in an urgent issue, where one of the first to publish a speech by Vyacheslav Molotov, which began with the words:
Already on Monday - June 23 - all newspapers will come out with messages about the beginning of the war. On the front pages there will be an appeal by Vyacheslav Molotov, Decrees on martial law, and mobilization, reports from the fronts.
The lives of millions of people will never be the same, and the headlines will also be different. Theatrical posters will replace war chronicles, youth news - appeals to learn how to handle weapons, and cultural news - slogans “to protect our native land from the enemy at all costs”.