The article is devoted to the work of Finno-Ugric (Permian) writers of the second half of the 20 century E. Zagrebin, I. Toropov. Both of them belong to the generation of authors whose childhood and youth were spent during the Great Patriotic War. It is natural that the theme of wartime childhood is one of the most significant in the work of this generation of authors. Literary research, conducted on the material of the works of these writers devoted to this topic, made it possible to identify their main artistic features. It is autobiography, deep lyricism, emotionality, strengthening of the personal and subjective principles in the work, symbolization and metaphorization. In the course of a comparative literary analysis, it was established that the key and most significant in the works of this series is the motif of memory of the events of the past - memories of childhood during the war. The genres of short prose (story, prose miniature) allow authors to pay closer attention to the disclosure and solution of moral and philosophical problems, to address the personality of a growing person and his/her inner, spiritual world, to the psychology of a child and teenager. In addition, in the course of the study of the prose works by E. Zagrebin and I. Toropov, devoted to the war childhood theme, their lyrical character was identified and analyzed, as well as the image of the hero-narrator having the properties of a lyrical hero, romantic poetics and stylistics in the transfer of the inner world of a person. As a result of the study, it was concluded: the generation of writers who grew up during the war years not only continued, but also further developed the layer of literature on military subjects, the initiators of which were front-line writers.