Some problems of the history of the Great Patriotic War in official speeches of the first presidents of Russia at the end of the 20th - at the beginning of the 21th centuries

The article is devoted to identifying some features of the formation of an official state discourse on the history of the Great Patriotic War and especially on the holiday of May 9. As the main source for this study, texts of speeches of the first Presidents of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, V.V. Putin, D.A. Medvedev at official events dedicated to the celebration of May 9 at the end of the XX - at the beginning of the XXI centuries. in Russia, as well as the texts of the message of the President of the Russian Federation to the Federal Assembly for the period from 1994 to 2011. The analysis is based on the recognition of the special importance of images of war, which are used in their speeches by the carriers of the highest state power to form images of the government itself. Among the military plots that were found in the speeches of all the first Presidents of Russia, in the framework of this study we can distinguish: a plot about the heroism of the Soviet people, manifested during the war years, a plot about the special nature of the May 9 holiday for Russian society and for interstate relations, a story about lasting the importance of the main lessons of the war.