Great Patriotic War (term)

The term Great Patriotic War (Russian: , Velikaya Otechestvennaya voyna) is used in Russia and other former republics of the Soviet Union (except for the Baltic States, Georgia, and Ukraine) to describe the conflict fought during the period from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945 along the many fronts of the Eastern Front of World War II between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and its allies. For some legal purposes its period might be extended to 11 May 1945 to also include the end of the Prague Offensive.

The Great Patriotic War is commemorated on 9 May.

The term "Patriotic War" refers to the Russian resistance to the French invasion of Russia under Napoleon I, which became known as the Patriotic War of 1812. In Russian, the term "отечественная война" originally referred to a war on one's own territory (otechestvo means "the fatherland"), as opposed to a campaign abroad (заграничная война), and later was reinterpreted as a war for the fatherland, i.e. a defensive war for one's homeland. Sometimes the Patriotic War of 1812 was also referred to as the Great Patriotic War (Великая отечественная война); the phrase first appeared no later than 1844 and became popular on the eve of the centenary of the Patriotic War of 1812.

After 1914, the phrase was applied to World War I. It was the name of a special war-time appendix to the magazine Theater and Life (Театр и жизнь) in Saint Petersburg, and referred to the Eastern Front of World War I, where Russia fought against the German Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The phrases Second Patriotic War (Вторая отечественная война) and Great World Patriotic War (Великая всемирная отечественная война) were also used during World War I in Russia.

...
Wikipedia