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, as opposed to a campaign abroad, and later was reinterpreted as a war 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 ; 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 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 and Great World Patriotic War were also used during World War I in Russia. The term Great Patriotic War re-appeared in the Soviet newspaper Pravda on 23 June 1941, just a day after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. It was found in the title of "The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People", a long article by Yemelyan Yaroslavsky, a member of Pravda editors' collegium. The phrase was intended to motivate the population to defend the Soviet fatherland and to expel the invader, and a reference to the Patriotic War of 1812 was seen as a great morale booster. The term Отечественная война was officially recognized by establishment of the Order of the Patriotic War on 20 May 1942, awarded for heroic deeds.
Usage
The term is not generally used outside the former Soviet Union, and the closest term is Eastern Front of World War II. Neither term covers the initial phase of World War II in Eastern Europe, during which the USSR, then still in a non-aggression pact with Germany, invaded eastern Poland, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina and fought with Finland. In Russia and some other post-Soviet countries, the term is given great significance; it is accepted as a representation of the most important part of WWII. Uzbekistan is the only nation in the Commonwealth of Independent States that does not recognize the term, referring to it as World War Two as well as the Victory Day holiday as the Day of Remembrance and Honour. On 9 April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament replaced the term "Great Patriotic War" in the country's law with "Second World War", as part of a set of decommunization laws. The term is political; accepting it means accepting the Soviet Union's views on WWII, and rejecting the term means breaking away from the Soviet heritage, as in the case of Ukraine.
