The bibliographic review of published memoirs of participants in the Great Patriotic War volunteer units of the Rostov region: The comparative source study

The authors accomplished the bibliographic study of the reminiscences on the Great Patriotic War, published within the chronological framework of two qualitatively different historical stages of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The bibliographic review of memoirs on the history of the volunteer movement in the Don region enables to problematize the value of memoirs as the source for studying the motives, actions and social practices of volunteers during the Soviet period. The relevance and novelty of the study are determined by the extensive gaps in the regional historiography and the absence of contemporary bibliographic review of this topic in the regional dimension. The materials used are the memoirs and reminiscences on the events of 1941–1945, published in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, which authors are the veterans of Rostov region volunteer troops. The memoirs of the veterans of the Fifth Don Cossack Guards Cavalry Corps’, that took over Don region volunteer Cossack units, make the core of the bibliography. The collections of Don State Public Library provided the basic materials for the study. Based on the comparative analysis of memoirs and reminiscences by Rostov region volunteers, the authors conclude that there are significant qualitative differences in the content of these types of sources about the Great Patriotic War. The authors argue that personal publications of the Soviet post-war period offer some limited information value due to the political, ideological and censorship restrictions of the era. The memoirs and reminiscences of this period emphasize the leading role of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1941–1945 and heroic patriotic themes, while overlooking diverse stories of everyday front life, experiences and feelings of soldiers, etc. On the contrary, the memoirs and reminiscences published in the post-Soviet period are free from ideological and censorship restrictions and look much more enlightening. While they are still calling for the careful critical analysis, they are extremely important for the historical reconstruction of everyday military life, thoughts, opinions, and the psychology of Soviet soldiers, in particular the Don volunteers.