The Great Patriotic War in Digital Media

Abstract

The discourse of the Great Patriotic War has long been defined by the opposition of feat and loss, paradoxically combining the two extremes. However, this oppo­sition was formed within the framework of Halbwaks’ dichotomy of “history – collective memory”, and did not take into account a completely different format of communication in the digital environment. Representing by its very nature the violence of the past, digital memory at the same time represented a reaction to this violence: the discourse of trauma. For this reason, as time passes, the sub­ject of the Great Patriotic War begins to lean imperceptibly towards a greater representation of this phenomenon, as we can observe in recent video games: the abstract soldiers of the war strategies of 2000s are replaced first by more concrete (but still abstract) tanks and airplanes of 2010s, and in 2020s by more narrative-oriented stories of civilians facing war as a traumatic fact of existence. At the same time, the voice of the local community, muffled by historical dis­course, suddenly finds a new channel of representation, even in the form of a ghost.