MOSCOW, June 21. /TASS/. Russia’s presidential National Center for Historical Memory has for the first time publicly presented a copy of the "Green Folder" (Oldenburg Plan) - a collection of directives on economic control and command of the newly occupied eastern regions, compiled by Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Goering in 1941. The document was shown after the signing of a memorandum of partnership between the center and the TASS news agency.

"It was the economic component of the Barbarossa plan: Nazi Germany's strategic documents for converting the territories of the Soviet Union and its resources into a raw materials base for Nazi Germany. It began to be shaped in April 1941. Adjustments and amendments continued to be introduced to it until November 1941 as the occupation progressed and in view of the resistance that the Nazi armies ran against in the territory of the Soviet Union. The Barbarossa plan, the plan for a blitzkrieg, was thwarted, but the plan for the economic exploitation was partially enforced in the occupied territory. <...> The original is kept in the central archive of Russia’s Defense Ministry. It was the color of the cover from which this set of documents derives its name: Green Folder," Yelena Malysheva, the head of the presidential National Center for Historical Memory, told TASS.

The directives contained in the Green Folder, seen by TASS, ordered the immediate and full use of the occupied territories of the Soviet Union for supplying Germany and meeting the needs of its troops, primarily with food and fuel.

"The opinion that the occupied areas should be put in order as soon as possible and their economy restored is completely inappropriate," the document reads.

As TASS Director-General Andrey Kondrashov said at the meeting, the disclosure of such archives dating back to the Great Patriotic War is especially relevant against the backdrop of the Western countries' attempts to cancel Russian culture and crack down on Russian citizens' rights.

"Isn't this an equivalent of the Holocaust in relation to another nation? They (the governments of the Western countries - TASS) need to be reminded with the help of such documents again and again who they really are. And, of course, time is ripe for avoiding to follow the trail of their information initiatives. We must not just preserve the memory of the Great Patriotic War and historical truth in general. We must also use it to show them their place in history," Kondrashov said.

TASS and the National Center for Historical Memory under the President of the Russian Federation signed a memorandum of cooperation on June 21. It envisages the launch of an information and educational project on key moments in history, one of them being June 22 and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War.