Writers’ notebooks and military diaries: genre's characteristics

The purpose of the article is to identify distinctive features of the genre inherent to military diaries and notebooks written during the Great Patriotic War. To determine the genre’s essence a method comparing subject-object narrative plans is analyzed. The presence or absence of an indirect addressee is identified. Common features of the texts’ aestheticization in the works of V. Zakrutkin, A. Twardowski, V. Grossman, and A. Platonov are studied. The article draws special attention to the role played by the publisher in popularization of the studied genre. It was pointed out that military diaries and notebooks written during wartime period were used as sources of historical evidence and sometimes even as evidences in military court hearings. The author comes to a conclusion that it is not always possible to distinguish the genre of military diaries from the genre of notebooks, but it is undeniable that this kind of literature should be made public without censorship.