Wartime Folklore – an Important Source for Studying the Mentality of Soldiers of the Second World War

Abstract

The author of the article, who had fought in the Second World War, recounts how folklore had been collected during the wartime years, how peculiarly the war realities would be reflected in the folklore genre, what it had meant for the soldiers themselves, and discusses the value of this particular folklore genre as a source for the humanities. He suggests that the records of oral lore that have been long kept in archives should deserve a new unprejudiced look, and believes it is the time the scholarly discourse should embrace what had not been used during the Soviet time for ideological reasons.