The Defense of the Osovets Fortress (1914-1915) in Modern Historiography: A Historical Sketch; Оборона крепости Осовец (1914-1915 гг.) в современной историографии: исторический очерк

This historiographical study is devoted to the analysis of historical research on the defense of the Osovets fortress during the First World War, and is dedicated to the 110th anniversary of this event. Scientific research on this topic served as the material, and the historiographical method, the classification method, and the synthesis method were used as methods. Due to the limited scope of this work, the authors analyzed only the works of Soviet and modern Russian historiography, since the study of foreign scientific literature on the defense of Osovets requires a separate study. It seems advisable to divide historiography by period (Soviet and modern), as well as by subject of research: research analyzing the defense of the fortress as a whole; works on individual pages of defense, in particular, “attack of the dead” as its most famous and famous event; and interdisciplinary research at the junction of military, military-historical, medical and cultural scientific disciplines. Most of the work consists of works analyzing the defense as a whole: the chronology of events, the features of the fortification, command, personnel, etc. are described in detail. The second category, namely, “attack of the dead”, has also been studied in great detail: the authors establish the events preceding this heroic counterattack, the personalities of its participants, the chronology of the event, etc. Finally, interdisciplinary research analyzes the psychological state of troops and their support in unpredictable situations, the features of fortifications that made it possible to effectively repel attacks, the work of chemists and the military chemical industry during the First World War, etc. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.