RELIGIOUS MOTIVES IN RUSSIAN BATTLE PROSE

The paper reviews the main trends of battle prose – from Old Russian texts to the literature of the Great Patriotic War and early post-war period. The research focuses on the patriotic values in the context of history and literature and looks into dynamics of religious and philosophical views of Russian writers on war from axiological perspective. This approach accounts for the relevance and novelty of the study. The author explores historical and literary processes changing with time to define traditions and innovations in depicting battle scenes in Russian literature in different historic periods. The analysis is based on works of different genres: battle stories of ancient Russia which first made the link between religious symbols and military themes explicit; hagiographic works which feature motives of protection of the warriors by the Mother of God and consider the conflict between the earthly and the heavenly, self-preservation and duty. The first literary work to try and interpret war and its aftermath religion-wise as an eternal conflict between war and humanity was the collection of stories Milestones (1909). Along with it, perspectives on war by E. Trubetskoy, N. Berdyaev, I. Ilyin are also given prominence to. The author addresses N. Berdyaev’s ideas of eschatological problems of war and salvation of humanity; reviews V. Korolenko’s critique of the revolution and the war from the angle of Biblical principles. It is argued that despite persistent efforts aimed to abolish Christian traditions, Soviet literature on war is entwined with religious undertones. Another avenue of research is the language of military discourse (with a particular focus made on new lexemes, Church Slavonicisms, emphatic intonation). New Soviet concepts embracing spiritual features of the Russians as a nation are examined through Stalin’s public addresses. The message of battle prose is seen in the idea of Soviet people unity in the face of external threat. Its stylistic features are contingent on image of the protagonist seeking and gaining the sense of Homeland through an individual story unfolding against a historic backdrop. The imagery of the prose involves sacral symbols: Home-World-Genus. The paper also explores a new form of sermon, new patriotic prayer, prayer for salvation, memorial prayers and ethical-religious prayers.