Object: the sociocultural space in Donbass Region during the Second World War; purpose: to clarify the essence of cultural processes in the Donbas during the Second World War, to identify regional features of cultural life and their influence on the further formation of regional identity; methods: general scientific (analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction) and general historical (chronological, comparative historical), interdisciplinary (citation, content analysis, interpretative analysis); principles of historicism, impartiality; in the work the complex, systematic, anthropological, value and hermeneutical approaches are used. The scientific novelty of the research is due to the very formulation of the problem. It lies in the fact that cultural processes in the Donbass during the Second World War for the first time in Ukrainian historiography were the subject of a special study. Firstly: the definition of a «cultural scenario» which is applied to the implementation of the Soviet and Nazi cultural policies is introduced; the author’s approach in the form of the introduction of the appropriate political power of the regional scenario for the study of cultural processes was proposed; a holistic picture of the cultural life of Donbass at various stages of the Second World War is reproduced; a new actual material on the research topic has been put into scientific circulation; qualitative and quantitative indicators of the cultural life of the region during the war years are characterized; the specific features, forms and contents of the cultural space in the Donbass during the study period are determined; it was found that the events of the Second World War consolidated the concept of the Soviet cultural scenario for Donbass with the dominance of the Soviet, industrial, urban culture, socio-economic determinants leveled the national factor of cultural construction; it was established that the Soviet «cultural scenario» for Donbass, due to the events of the Second World War, the impact on the further formation of a separate regional identity. Clarified: defining the role of art in shaping the image of Donbass; the volume of repression against the intelligentsia of the Donbass during the war; understanding of the specifics of the cultural life of Donbass during the occupation; quantitative and qualitative indicators of the state of the cultural sphere of Donbass during the war. Received further research: features of the Soviet and Nazi cultural policy; characteristics of cultural institutions in the region during the study period; process of evacuation of cultural institutions and cultural intelligentsia of the region; features of recovery processes in the field of culture of the region; characteristic of the cultural leisure of the population during the war. The practical value of the paper is that the materials, provisions and conclusions of the research can be used in writing monographs and generalizing works on related and tangent topics, teaching a course on the history of Ukraine, preparing special courses, in-depth study of the history of Donbass, cultural history in Ukraine, creating textbooks, encyclopedic publications, manuals. Determining the role of certain cultural scenarios on the formation of regional identity on the basis of empirical data and generalizations of the study on the proportionality of analogies with modern realities can be taken into account when forming a de-occupation policy and restoring certain regions of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions freed from the temporary Russian occupation.
