Description:
<jats:p>The article reviews sources for studying cultural politics in the sphere of preservation of military memorial heritage. Lack of scientific works on this topic makes the study significant. Its object is national military memorial heritage as a phenomenon of Russian culture, its subject is historical and cultural sources necessary for a comprehensive analysis of the development of Russian military memorial space in pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet eras. The authors have studied archival sources (16 fonds in 3 state archives); periodical press of the Orenburg region (4 regional and 56 district newspapers); unpublished and published memoirs, private correspondence; unpublished actual filing data of Federal, regional and local authorities (from late 1980s to present day); cumulated publications of monuments of the military memorial heritage of the Orenburg region (compiled by one of the authors in 2008-2015); legislative materials, regulations, and organizational/management acts; brochures, booklets, and memos published by library and Museum institutions within the framework of regional studies and consisting, as a rule, of eyewitness memoirs and periodicals (for the period 1999-2018); narrative sources; Internet resources. After many years of research the authors feel the impossibility of systematic study of the military memorial heritage of the Russian regions solely on archival materials due to lack of necessary information in the archival institutions and contend the need to draw on a wider range of sources for scientific analysis of the most important areas of the state cultural policy in the field of preservation of monuments and memorials dedicated to the fallen defenders of the Fatherland.</jats:p>