Blurred lines between non-fiction and fiction in contemporary prose about the Great Patriotic War

The paper analyzes the lines between non-fiction and fiction in contemporary prose about the Great Patriotic War. The main research question involves exploring the possibility and the scope of a “contemporary” view on the heroic events of the past. In contemporary Russian literature, there is a tendency towards blurring the lines between non-fiction and fiction. On the one hand, it is due to influence of postmodernism. On the other hand, the understanding of a fact is changing under the pressure of “new sincerity”, alternative reality, and tolerance. This is confirmed by the contemporary prose dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. The authors know about the war from books, memoirs, and films. Secondary perception of the war events allows writers to treat a historical plot as fiction, boldly and freely. The writers’ goal is to penetrate into the war philosophy and psychology, the existential nature of evil, and to understand the “soul’s dialectics” of man in war. The dominant feature of the Great Patriotic War prose is pacifism.