Kiesel is a small city in the foothills of the Middle Urals, 140 kilometers north-east of Perm. The settlement on the Kiesel River arose in the XVIII century - at the place where the iron ore was first discovered, then coal. Coal production grew until the middle of the 20th century (then the population of Kizel reached 60 thousand), but the developments became more and more unprofitable, and after the collapse of the USSR, subsidies stopped, the mines were closed.

75 years ago, in the fall of 1944 in Prague, the manifesto of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (also called the Vlasov manifesto) was published. About the history and reasons for its creation, about the political and ideological problems related to this page of history, says historian Kirill Alexandrov, a participant in an international conference that has recently ended in Prague.