The victory of the Soviet state in World War II: Peculiarities of early memories in official sources as illustrated by a reference calendar for the year 1946

The aim of the present article is to highlight the problem of official memories of World War II and the Great Patriotic War, the initial scheme for the formation of stereotypes of memories by means of official information. It is possible to reach this aim by referring to the provisions and principles of the theory of cultural memory and the concepts of collective (superindividual) memory. The choice of the calendar as the main source is due to the fact that the calendar, being a cultural phenomenon and an element of everyday life, can structure the world outlook and world attitude of society; it sets and creates stereotypes - memories and stereotypes of upbringing, and it forms rational and emotional memories. The calendar as a historical source can highlight some separate elements in the mechanism of the historical memory formation. Attention to the calendar as a reference book is determined by the encyclopedic content of this type of periodicals that includes: official and operational information about political, social and economic, scientific, cultural events in the country and in the whole world, review articles on the most relevant topics, political agitation notes, as well as political and informational texts. Such traditional official sources of the Soviet period as the copies of the speeches by Joseph Stalin, the copy of the report by Vyacheslav Molotov, as well as statistical materials, reference and review articles, the chronicle of the main historical events included in the 1946 edition, make it possible to single out the problem of the government and the people, the state and the people as the main themes of understanding in the official memories of this period. A great attention is paid to the role of the main parts of the social basis of the Soviet state. The war is seen as a test for the legitimacy and solvency of the state. The victory is presented as the victory of a new type of the state which is superior to other state forms in all spheres. The main provisions and structure of the historical presentation of the Great Patriotic War used in the reference calendar is preserved in scientific publications until the mid-1980s. Some specific political characteristics of the current events and strategic development plans demonstrate the preservation of the ideas about the “common past of a united humanity”, the equality of participants in the world historical process, “global generosity”, Russia as the family of peoples, the peculiarities of national culture and character formed by the Russian social thought in the second half of the 19th -early 20th centuries.

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