Abstract: The object of this research is the phenomenon of war memorial heritage in national culture. The subject is the genesis of the phenomenon of war memorial heritage in national culture over the period of mid XIX – XXI century. The article sets a goal to analyze the evolution of representations on the war memorial heritage as a complex of objects that preserve memory about the events of military history and their participants based on the reference and encyclopedic literature published during the different epochs of national history, as well as current national legislation. The research allows determining the common and distinctive characteristics within the conceptual apparatus of pre-Soviet, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods. In the course of examination of the period after 1991, the author refer to the federal legislation, because it reveals the definitions related to war memorial heritage, allowing carrying out a more in-depth analysis of the problem at hand. The war memorial heritage implies the architectural and sculptural constructs with or without the ashes of the military personnel that were established for retaining the memory about the events and participants of military history. The analysis of pre-revolutionary encyclopedias allowed concluding about the descriptive interpretation of the material, with maintenance of its accessibility. The terms had extremely broad definitions, at times being synonymous to each other. Soviet period is characterized with the renewal of conceptual apparatus dues to dissemination of the “class approach”. The post-Soviet terminology forms primarily under the influence of legislators rather than the scholars, affecting the quality of definitions that leads to their vagueness. At the present stage, Russia marks the formation of a special cultural policy associated with preservation and popularization of the war memorial heritage. Based on the analysis however, it manifests as a continuation of the tradition that existed in pre-revolutionary time, attributed to honoring of the fallen defenders of the Motherland. A particular attitude of the government to the war memorial heritage impacts the development of special terminology; its formation is not in the hands of the scholars (military personnel, propagandists, legislators, officials, public figures, etc.), which does not allow to fundamentally analyze and reveal the specific variety of the war memorial heritage in Russia. In addition, it is worth noting that the scientific research with regards to the national war memorial heritage is capable of making the government policy more efficient, form an integrated legal platform, recovering from the presence of multiple normative legal acts that at times duplicate and contradict each other.

Keywords: Walk of fame, Eternal fire, War cemetery, Memorial headstone, Memorial sign, Monument, Memorial construct, Theory of culture, War memorial heritage, Terminology