PROBLEM OF WAR AND PEACE IN THE BASHKIR LITERATURE OF THE FIRST HALF OF THE 19th CENTURY
The problem of war and peace was crucial for any people and country at all times. Any war, regardless of its scale, brings grief, suffering, and excruciation. In order to achieve political goals, it primarily uses violent forces armed with various means of destroying the living force, socio-economic, spiritual, and cultural objects of the opposing sides. In a human society including different social strata and people with different views, attitude to war has always been ambiguous. This is due to the political content of the war, which characterizes its progressive or reactionary role. Depending on this, any war is just or unfair. In the Bashkir literature of the pre-Soviet period, there are small number of works devoted to the events of previous wars. These wars are reflected mainly in folklore and scholarly literature. All these works are quite diverse both in content and in poetics. In this article, the political content of Patriotic War of 1812-1814 is revealed. The study is based on the analysis of folk and literary works about this war. It is shown that the works devoted to it were imbued with vigorous, life-affirming motives, the spirit of patriotism, heroism, the struggle for a peaceful future for the common homeland, and pride of fulfilling the duty, the ideas of peace and friendship of peoples. In the works on wars of the early twentieth century, such tendencies are very weak. The motives of hopelessness, sadness, and despondency, sometimes reaching a deep drama, are prevailed in them.