“And the Day Lasts Longer Than a Century” in memory studies

The article considers the war memorialization in the USSR of the post-war years in the context of Ch. Aitmatov’s novel “And The Day Lasts Longer Than A Century”. Authors’ attention is paid primarily to the symbolism of the novel. The symbolism is both in its text and in the novel’s title itself. It is the symbolism that allows the authors to consider the novel not only as fiction but also as a historiosophic text. The article describes the main quality of the war memorialization in 1945-1980. It is a competition of different generations’ historic memories - the memory of the generation that survived the war and the memory of the generation that was born much later. In that regard the authors define two value orientations outlining the framework for such a memorialization. The article analyzes reasons for the legitimation of the present through the past. It also raises the question of an “intermediate state”, of external and internal factors that determine it, and an issue of the memory’s existence in the transition from one state to another. Besides, the article analyzes the historic policy of the Soviet state and its influence on the memory of the Great Patriotic War. It includes the methods for creating images of the war and their translation to different generations.