“Knights Without Fear”: Memories of Teachers - Participants of the Great Patriotic War

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2020-50-2/193-205

Abstract

Based on ego-documents, the article tells the frontline stories of teachers who took part in the Great Patriotic War. These stories were written for the 20th anniversary of the victory, but censorship of the Soviet era did not allow the collection to be published. The memoirs preserved in the State Archives of the Kostroma Region (GAKO) testify to the terrible events of the time when the expression “peaceful sky” becomes symbolic. The importance of these ego-documents is that they are direct evidence of the events that happened 75 years ago. Each Russian family has heroes who participated in this historic event: some of them fought, and some worked on the home front. Our objective is to talk about these feats so that they do not fall into oblivion. That is why we prepared an article in which Soviet teachers recall life and deeds on the fronts of World War II. We tried to talk about the main aspects of that difficult period, about how people had to survive and get out of the mental crises after the shocks they experienced.