Based on Soviet painting of the 1940s–1950s the article explores the features of the genre, that became especially popular in the last years of the Great Patriotic War and the first post-war years. It represents military leaders and statesmen standing against the battle scenes or directly on the battlefield. Traditions, semantics, compositional techniques of this genre developed in Modern era. Analysis of the socialist realism paintings allows seeing the process of “appropriation” of the imperial tradition.