To forget to remember (memory of pioneer-heroes in the XXI century)
The cult of pioneer heroes in the late Soviet period relied on both literary representations of children's heroism and the ritual practices of commemoration. After the abolition of the pioneer organization in 1991, the cult underwent a serious transformation: ritual support was lost, textual support went through a period of oblivion. Since the 2000s, there has been a revival of the cult of children heroes of the Great Patriotic War. In the absence of ritual support, the only restored form of the cult is the reproduction of the biographies of pioneer heroes in books and on the Internet. The article presents the results of a study of modern book products about pioneer heroes and materials posted on the websites of various institutional and non-institutional (nostalgic) communities. The overwhelming majority of book publications rely on the Soviet literary tradition of portraying pioneer heroes. With rare exceptions (E. Verkin “The Cloud Regiment”), their authors (Valery Voskoboinikov, Anna Pecherskaya, Oleg Boyko) replicate the late Soviet understanding of children's heroism. Short editions of the biographies of the pioneer heroes published on various Internet resources also preserve the stylistic features inherent in the original sources of the Soviet era. The loss of the ritual context leads to the transformation of the poetic devices used in the biographies. The focus on the authenticity of child heroism portrayed in Soviet children's literature and journalism is replaced in contemporary biographical "memes" by an epic distance. The official narrative of the pioneer heroes, condensed into short editions of their biographies, and the individual flashback into pioneer childhood are united by the lyrical and epic modality that sets the memory framework that transforms pioneer heroes into characters of ballads and epic legends.