Death in Russian Soldiers Correspondence (1939-1945): Reactions, Reflection and Practices of Justification

Abstract

This paper analyzes soldiers' ruminations in their private correspondence about the death at war as an 'event' from the philosophical and anthropological perspective. It aims at recovering the value orientations and the moral principles, which are operative in their reflection about death. Conceptually, this research relies on the works of Petar Bojanić, Georg Simmel, Ivan Ilyin, Emmanuel Lévinas and Jürgen Habermas. The analysis focuses on the published letters of soldiers who took part in the Soviet-Finnish war (1939-1940) and the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). These texts shed light on the perception of death at war, conceptualizations of the death-related moral experience, the impact of religion and ideology on soldiers' reflection on death. It should be noted that the existing practice of analysis of such documents puts the main emphasis on the values formed by the Soviet ideology neglecting the impact of religious culture. © 2021 Matica Srpska. All rights reserved.