THE WAR YEARS OF SVERDLOVSK THROUGH THE WITNESSES EYES

Abstract

Taking into account the experience of creating an image of the Urals in the war years’ literature, the article explores how not only consolidation but clarification and extending both general and specific moments of life and destiny of Sverdlovsk in the years of war took place in the following decades. The main methods of philological reconstruction of the changing image of Sverdlovsk are historic-functional and genre methods. It is shown that the genre palette changes significantly: publicist prose, dominant in the war years, is complemented by the genre of oral narrative, literally processed or present in the author’s version, as well as by а huge variety of memoirs and autobiographical literature. The main aims of these texts are imprinting and preservation of memory. It is noted that between the particular personal memory and the established system of state “politics of memory,” a complicated dialogical relationship is created. It can be based on the principles of complete understanding, when it comes to uniting around the slogan “All for the Victory”, or on the principles of important supplement, when witnesses of wartime everyday life in Sverdlovsk remember, what was the price for the Victory for them personally. Different genre optics, including variants of ego-documents, memoirs, fiction, and various generational and social identities of the actors create the multifaceted and integral image of Sverdlovsk, consisting at least of three components: appearance, way of life, and socio-psychological portrait of the city. © 2023 Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS. All rights reserved.