Theme of Memory in Modern Prose About the Great Patriotic War

The article is devoted to the problem of memory in Russian prose of the second half of the XX–XXI centuries. The periodization of this literature, its leading directions are presented: historical, ontological, existential, and aesthetic, which characterizes the literature of recent decades. A detailed description of the main texts, features of their ideology, poetics for the interpretation of the theme of memory (from ‘lieutenant’s prose’ to the works by I. Boyashov, E. Vodolazkin, G. Yakhina and S. Samsonov) is given. It shows how the understanding of the mission of Russians in the Great Patriotic War, the interpretation of the image of the enemy, the very structure of memory are changing. The socio-historical memory of the war is analyzed, which includes the motif of ancestral memory. The motifs of cultural memory play a huge role. It becomes obvious that our memory of the war is latent, alive, non-military, in the works of recent years, however, there are elements of destructive memory associated with the tragic awareness of the terrible cost of Victory, doubts about the life-affirming value of our mission.