Эволюция военно-исторического романа в российской фантастике 2010-гг. и генезис локального жанра „попаданцы на ВОВ”

The paper investigates the contemporary Russian historical military novel, which is seen as a highly popular speculative fiction genre of the 2010s. The author focuses on defining the boundaries of the local genre “Time Travelers to World War II”. The popularity of the genre seems to stem from increasing interest to the topic of World War II in the Russian public conscience of XXI century and a call for rethinking Russian and Soviet history and “correcting” historical errors. The author defines ideological and artistic boundaries of the genre, which is considered to have been formed as a merge of military speculative fiction, alternate history and the “time traveler” adventurous plot. Analysis of the evolution of the speculative fiction genres in the Russian literature of XIX-XXI centuries revealed the essential eclecticism and internal inconsistencies of the “Time Traveler to World War II” plot. Three main trends in the development of the local genre were identified. The heroic adventure trend focuses on depicting successful actions of a well-equipped and trained time traveler. The alternative history trend represents possibilities of changing the course of the war through a single person’s efforts. The war history trend aims at providing, as far as possible, an objective description of the war.