One of the current tasks of the Russian Federation at the present stage is to protect the historical memory of the events of the Great Patriotic War, since the causes and conditions for the outbreak of that war and the role of the USSR in the events of 1941-1945, are increasingly being deliberately distorted. The purpose of this work is to analyze the historical memory of the peoples of the Russian Federation about the events of the Great Patriotic War as an object of criminal law protection. In order to achieve this purpose, the author completes the following tasks: the author studies the regulatory legal acts establishing the regime for the protection of historical memory, considers the history of the formation of historical memory about the events of the Great Patriotic War, identifies a group of crimes that can be designated as crimes against the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War and carries out a systematic analysis of the criminal legislation of the Russian Federation to determine the specific, generic and direct objects of crimes against the historical heritage of the Russian Federation. In the process of research, modern methods of cognition are used, such as: general scientific (dialectical, system-structural, comparative legal), as well as specific scientific (formal-legal, descriptive-analytical). Results: in order to prevent a free interpretation of the category «historical memory», the author proposes her own definition of historical memory and justifies the need to include it in the current regulatory legal acts.