Concept of “Native Land” in Journalism of War Years

Main purpose of the article is to examine the concept of “native land,” the content of which was formulated by Yu.S. Stepanov (“pain” for one’s land, “natural wealth,” the land itself, a dear person, nature crowned with a native word). The range of texts under study includes publications from the period of the Great Patriotic War. The author of the article uses the USSR leaders’ official speeches of the first war days, namely V.M. Molotov and I.V. Stalin. They served as a starting point for the development of key directions in the newspaper correspondence of other authors. The article raises question about the growth of the semantics of homeland defense, the concept of which goes back to the motifs of pain, suffering, sorrow. Writers of the war years built a multilevel structure of the concept of “native land,” which consists in a spatial association, a figurative unity, traditionally including natural, cultural, mythological images and specific people and participants in real events. The article concludes that the concept of “homeland” transforms and accumulates not only the functions of the guardian and protection in the subsequent periods of the war. The core of the concept includes connotations of “native land,” that is our land / our country, Soviet land / our land, etc. The periphery of the concept is the military experience of the defender of the country.