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The dialogue of generations and the theme of memory in Yuri Yakovlev’s stories about the Great Patriotic war // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2023. Issue 6 (230). P. 132-142

The focus of our attention is on the works of Yu. Ya. Yakovlev, which are in demand in school literary studies, have educational potential, but are insufficiently studied by literary critics. A review of articles devoted to the writer’s stories about the Great Patriotic War allows us to highlight their common features: central are the motif of memory and the technique of retrospection, providing a “link” of two time layers – the 1940s and the present (for the characters); the importance of dialogues of characters of different generations, attention to the inner world of characters. The article explores the theme of memory and the peculiarity of intergenerational dialogue in the works of Yuri Yakovlev of the 1970s, dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. The literary material (“Girls from Vasilievsky Island”, “Memory”) is interpreted based on the structural-semiotic research method. The writer uses a number artistic techniques: retrospection, the juxtaposition of two space-time planes (war and modernity), in the center – a pair of characters “child-adult” or “child-child”, the first represents the post-war generation and is the bearer of knowledge about the war or initiates the acquisition of this knowledge, and the second - having direct experience wars/blockades. Yu. Yakovlev reveals the idea of spiritual kinship, the unbreakable bond of the front-line and post-war generations. In order for the deceased to continue to live in the memory of their spiritual descendants, personal efforts, work and courage are needed to preserve knowledge about the war, loyalty to friendship. The analysis of the stories makes it clear that the writer inherits some features of the “lieutenant’s prose” (laconism of narration, attention to the inner world of the character, reliance on documentalism, a combination of lyricism, psychologism and naturalism). At the same time, there are differences due to the time of the creation of texts – the 1970s. The depiction of the events of the 1940s is mediated by the consciousness and imagination of the characters-children born after the war, which means they cannot be direct witnesses or bearers of military experience. This feature allows you to interpret the stories of Yu. Yakovlev in the context of the concept of “post-memory”, justified by M. Hirsch.

Keywords: literature for children, Yu. Yakovlev, the Great Patriotic war, the theme of national memory, recollections, communication of generations

The specifics of the artistic interpretation of the theme of war in the stories of Yu. Yakovlev’s “Where the battery stood” and “Ivan-Willis” // Tomsk State Pedagogical University Bulletin. 2024. Issue 4 (234). P. 128-135

The research material is two short stories by the classic of Soviet literature for children Y. Ya. Yakovlev, united by the theme of the Great Patriotic War: “Where the Battery Stood” (1967) and “Ivan-Willis” (1982). The analysis revealed the artistic features of understanding this topic. The writer combines two plans in space-time poetics (the post-war and the military world being restored in memories), the presence of two generations in the character system is significant – veterans and schoolchildren who were born already in peacetime. Yu. Yakovlev uses various techniques to show the process of starting the work of the memory of the war. In the story “Where the battery stood” these are symbolic images connecting war and peace (poplars destroyed by the Nazis and a school bell resembling the sound of a siren); in “Ivan-Willis” – a car that was perceived by the owner, and then by a teenager as a comrade, colleague, songs and even the weather, evoking memories of military events. In the poetics of short stories, the techniques of psychologism are significant (the use of various syntactic constructions to convey the inner state of a character, portrait characteristics and behavior showing emotions, feelings, thoughts and their dynamics). The stories have a weakly expressed plot level, the emphasis is on the inner life of the characters, on changing their consciousness, on the formation of values. At the center of the ideological content of the stories is the familiarization of post–war generations of schoolchildren with the memory of past events, the formation of post-memory (in M. Hirsch’s terminology) and the joint experience of different generations through dialogue, friendship, and common cause. Yuri Yakovlev defends the importance of the idea of the continuity of time, that modern peaceful life has been achieved at the cost of the efforts of the front-line generation. Therefore, it is important for new generations to realize their responsibility to contemporaries and descendants for preserving historical memory. In the texts of Yu. Yakovlev on the Great Patriotic War comprehends the way of formation of the child’s personality and the formation of his worldview through familiarization with the memory of the tragic past of the Motherland and the people.

Keywords: literature for children, Yu. Yakovlev, The Great Patriotic War, the theme of memory, post-memory, remembrance