Аннотация:Political caricature is an art genre, a means of fighting the enemy, a “mirror of life”, an indicator of publicopinion, and an effective way of creating it. The influence of this genre on the minds of people during thePatriotic War of 1812 is obvious. Political caricature is a component of the public consciousness of the eraand a source of information about the Patriotic War of 1812. The alphabet “A Gift for Children in Memoryof the Events of 1812” provided readers with the opportunity to learn the patriotic ideals and spiritual valuesof Russian society, to instill patriotism and humanism in the younger generation. The creolized texts of the“Terebenev ABC” form an idea among the recipients about the formation of the national Russian mentalityfeatures, about the national cultural realities that are part of the cognitive base of the Russian linguistic andcultural community and have an impersonal invariant character. Visual information has a causalrelationship with reality, so caricatures play a major role in visualizing images of defenders. The caricaturemodels representations and offers the recipient a ready-made image that supports national identity, showingthe superiority of Russians and, therefore, contributing to their victory over the enemy. The specificity ofthe national mentality, and consequently the decoding of caricatures, lies in the various values inherent ina particular culture, archetypes, and stereotypes. Defenders of the Homeland are represented by threegroups of characters: 1) military; 2) female images; 3) adolescents and children.