Literary stories by military writers in the moral education of modern youth

Introduction. The article studies the problem of using literary stories by military writers as a source of historical memory for modern Russian youth in the formation of the value-semantic space within educational process and social immunity to attempts to falsify history. The purpose of the article is a comparative analysis of the literary stories by military writers as applied to the moral educational process and their correlation with archival evidence of the relevant military operations. Materials and Methods. The research methodology consists in a comparative analysis of how the events of the Great Patriotic War are presented in literary fiction by military writers, war logs of the units in which they served and data presented in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The research is based on the documents from the Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defense, presented on the websites and other archival data. The research focuses on the post-war prose by military writers who served in the Soviet Armed Forces as soldiers and junior officers during the Great Patriotic War. Results. The article substantiates that military fiction and archival materials should be considered as mutually complementary sources which contribute to revealing complex ambiguity of the real picture of the war years. They help shape the historical memory of younger generations. Conclusions. In conclusion, the authors summarize the results of a comparative analysis of the literary stories by military writers as applied to the moral educational process and their correlation with archival evidence of the relevant military operations.