The Heroism of the Battle of Kursk: A Cultural Interpretation of Collective Feat
The article provides a cultural interpretation of the heroism of the Battle of Kursk as a special type of collective feat that is embedded in the symbolic, value-based, and memorial structure of Russian culture. The relevance of the article is determined by the intensification of information warfare surrounding the events of the Great Patriotic War, attempts to de-sacralize Soviet military heroism, and the need for a conceptual framework that combines military-historical factual information with cultural analysis. The novelty of the approach lies in considering heroism not as a sum of individual acts, but as a holistic cultural phenomenon in the unity of four planes, namely: value-symbolic, agitation-communicative, ego-documentary, and commemorative. Based on the material of scientific publications (monographs, articles, and dissertation abstracts), the mechanisms of translating a military event into a symbolic system of national identity have been identified. It is shown that in 1943, the collective feat of the Battle of Kursk was placed in the ranks of Russia's "third battlefield" along with the Battle of Kulikovo and the Battle of Borodino, and the figures of the artilleryman, pilot, infantryman, medic, and worker acquired the characteristics of cultural archetypes. The heroism of the Battle of Kursk retains its status as a core spiritual value of Russian culture and requires a comprehensive reconstruction through the use of military history, semiotics, and symbolic politics.
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