[1] The opera deals with the fate of the youth resistance group The Young Guard in Krasnodon, Ukraine, during the Second World War.

In Ukraine, the first works of this type were The Honour of Herman Zhukovsky, The Only Life of Dmytr Klebanov and Oscar Sandler, which are considered by musicologists to be artistic failures.

[1] Yuliy Meitus chose one of the most popular books of post-war Soviet literature[broken anchor], Alexander Fadeyev's The Young Guard, a story about the Komsomol resistance in the Ukrainian Donbas, as the basis for his opera.

The author's intention that The Young Guard was about a collective of personalities was preserved, and none of the characters (including leaders like Oleg Koshevoy) are typical operatic heroes.

[3] On February 10, 1948, a resolution of the VKS Central Committee about V. Muradeli's opera Great Friendship was issued, which attacked its "formalism".