Religious concepts in Russian prose during the Great Patriotic War and the first post-war years

The article claims that war literature in the 1940s, as the voice of power and authorities, allowed the emergence of religious concepts for the purpose of agitation and propaganda. However, the appeal to ancient archetypes evoked the recent past in the people’s memory, and not completely forgotten religious ideas represented in socialist-realist discourse. The canonization of Christian ideas shows the closeness of the discourse of authorities with religious discourse, since literature could not but reflect the war as a holy war of the Russian people. In the officious works by V. Vasilevskaya, P. Pavlenko, B. Gorbatov and A. Fadeev we could see the appearance of such concepts as apostolic sermon, god’s torment, atoning sacrifice and others depicting people's faith in victory as a victory of absolute good over the infernal forces of evil.