RIA Novosti gave the first hundred photos from its archives to Wikimedia Commons

Following the example of the Federal Archives of Germany , the Russian federal agency RIA Novosti announced the transfer of photographs from its archive to the Wikimedia Commons. (Wikimedia Commons is a common repository of free Wikipedia files and other Wikimedia projects.)

The RIA Novosti agency owns a unique archive of documents, photographs and media materials of the Soviet Information Bureau (Sovinformbyuro) and the Novosti Press Agency.
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Today, a block of 100 photos dedicated to the Great Patriotic War has already been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. In total, until the end of the year, about 800 photographs on historical topics will be uploaded to the repository.

All uploaded photos are available on the Wikimedia Commons page and distributed under the free Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

The launch of the project was attended by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who today visited RIA Novosti and pressed a symbolic button, uploading the last of the first hundred photos to Wikimedia Commons.