Features of the representation of the heroic in literature about the Second World War

The article examines aspects of understanding the category of the heroic in the works of Russian writers dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. A comparative analysis of the ideas and values of the works of emigrant writers of the «second wave» (V. Yurasov, L. Rzhevsky, M. Koryakov, B. Shiryaev, S. Maksimov, V. Samarin) and Soviet military prose (A. Tvardovsky, K. Vorobyov, V. Bykov, Yu. Bondarev), which allows us to identify both the general ideological and value segment and the specifics of emigrant literature. The special role of the anthropological aspect of the heroic in the literature of the presented period is noted with an accentuation of the philosophical understanding of universal values in the «lieutenant's prose» and the culture of empathy in the prose of emigrants. The features of the transfer of military discourse by solving the problem of a person's moral choice and binary oppositions «life-death», «cruelty-mercy» are presented. Conclusions are drawn about the unity of spiritual and moral themes that worried Russian writers in the middle of the XX century.