The artistic word as a resource of historical memory and public diplomacy: on the 85th anniver-sary of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War

Abstract

The article examines the mobilizing and memorial function of the artistic word in the first months of the Great Patriotic War. The relevance of the topic is determined by the need to combine factual historical analysis of the war with the study of cultural forms through which society interpreted threat, resistance and the image of future Victory. The study focuses on wartime poetry and music of 1941–1942: the song “The Sacred War”, Konstantin Simonov’s poem “Wait for Me”, Dmitri Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony and Samuil Marshak’s satirical poem “All Europe”. Special attention is paid to how Marshak’s concise satire turns a newspaper text into an expressive image of the era: in just a few lines it shows the composition of the Nazi coalition, exposes the fictitious pan-European support for the aggressor and strengthens the reader’s confidence in the moral rightness of resistance. The novelty of the article lies in considering the artistic text not only as a literary monument, but also as a means of public communication that connects the front, the rear, international perception and contemporary memory policy. The article concludes that wartime culture does not replace historical knowledge, but helps make it emotionally convincing and therefore serves as an important resource of historical memory and public diplomacy.