5 books that supported Russians during World War II

1. ‘The Captain's Daughter’ by Alexander Pushkin

This story is about a young nobleman who sets out to defend a fortress near the town of Orenburg. There, he meets his commandant's family and falls in love with his daughter. Against the backdrop of their relationship, the Pugachev Rebellion unfolds; the rebels capture the fortress and the hero, who was accidentally helped by Yemelyan Pugachev himself, is forced to make a difficult moral choice between his military oath and human gratitude. Of course, one shouldn't compare the siege described in the novel to the Siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), for example. However, for people living through wartime, this book was extraordinarily important for its moral message, just like the author’s other books. The collection of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow houses a unique artifact – a small volume of Pushkin's lyceum poetry, riddled with shrapnel.

2. ‘Borodino’ by Mikhail Lermontov

It's no coincidence that Russia’s war with Nazi Germany was called the Great Patriotic War –  a direct reference to the War of 1812. Lermontov's poem served as a bridge between two eras: the heroic deeds of the ancestors who fought against Napoleon’s troops were projected onto the heroic deeds of their descendants fighting against Hitler’s army. On June 23, 1941, ‘Pravda’ newspaper reported that one detachment of Soviet soldiers on the Western Front set out singing Lermontov's ‘Borodino’, which was perceived as a pledge by the entire army to uphold its "oath of loyalty" to the Fatherland – to "stand firm to the end". In the context of the first two years of the war, filled with heavy losses and retreats, ‘Borodino’ offered a clear and redeeming model of behavior. It taught people to view temporary setbacks not as defeat, but as a stage on the path to inevitable victory.

These parallels are captured, among other things, in the famous poster ‘It’s No Wonder All of Russia Remembers…’, created by the Kukryniksy in 1942 as part of the ‘Portraits of Great Ancestors’ series.

3. ‘War and Peace’ by Leo Tolstoy

In her memoirs, renowned writer Lidia Ginzburg testifies that, during the Great Patriotic War, everyone reread Tolstoy's novel to "check their feelings". In ‘Notes of a Man Under Siege’, she recalls: "During the war, people avidly read ‘War and Peace’ – to test themselves (not Tolstoy, whose sanity no one doubted). And the reader would say to themselves: “So, this means I’m feeling this correctly. That means it's true." Anyone who was able to read devoured ‘War and Peace’ in besieged Leningrad. Tolstoy spoke once and for all about courage, about the man who contributes to the common cause of the people's war. He also said that those captivated by this common cause continue to pursue it even unconsciously, when they are, it would seem, occupied with solving their own life problems.

4. Short stories by Anton Chekhov

Many classics were published during the war and Chekhov ranked among the foremost on that list. His stories were published in "pocket-sized" editions, printed on poor-quality paper, with the expectation that they would be read in the field. The now classic stories – ‘Kashtanka’,‘Chameleon’,‘The Lady with the Dog’ and ‘Dushechka’ – were read aloud on the front lines, in hospitals and in the rear and were passed from hand to hand. Chekhov's works, with their humor, were intended to lift the spirits of the soldiers. Troupes of actors, who traveled to the front lines regularly, staged Chekhovian vaudeville plays like ‘The Bear’ and ‘The Festivities’.

5. Short stories & fairy tales by Maxim Gorky

‘The Song of the Falcon’, ‘The Song of the Stormy Petrel’, ‘The Old Woman Izergil’, ‘Childhood’, ‘Among People’ and ‘My Universities’ –  during the war years, Gorky's works were published in massive print runs. His romantic "songs" and legends called people to battle, his autobiographical trilogy taught perseverance and his journalistic writing helped people make sense of what was happening. Together, these works served to boost morale, glorified heroism and reminded readers that, even in war, a person remains human as long as they remember honor, duty and a willingness to sacrifice themselves.