Ksenia V. Smirnova
(Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)

Monuments to the Heroes and Victims of the World War II. Memorial Complexes of the 1960s-1970s and the Problem of Historic and Artistic Value.

The study of the problem of artistic and historical value of the monuments to the heroes and victims of the Great Patriotic war is of historical and cultural importance in our country. It is closely connected with the fact, that the attitude to any historical event transforms with the lapse of time. And so the attitude to the work of art highlighting this event does too. The monuments created in the Soviet period were usually made under strict ideological control of the government and the Communist party. So here comes the problem of art critic. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, it became possible to make a detailed art-historical analysis.
The article highlights new trends in Soviet monumental art of the 1960-1970s, the problem of mutual influence of documental and artistic aspects of the monuments, fusion of architecture, sculpture and visual arts, their synthetic character on the whole. There is an intention to make clear, that uncritical approach to that problem leads to discredit attitude to the monuments as works of art.