Short answers, pulled from the story.
The phrase Patriotic War first appeared in 1844 within Vissarion Belinsky's essay Russian literature in 1843. It was printed in the magazine Otechestvennye Zapiski, volume 32, on page 34 of section 5 Critics.
The newspaper Pravda published an article titled The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People on the 23rd of June 1941. Yemelyan Yaroslavsky wrote this long piece while serving as a member of the Pravda editors' collegium.
Federal Law No 5-FZ dated the 12th of January 1995 established legal parameters for veteran status regarding the war with a standard period running from the 22nd of June 1941 through the 9th of May 1945. For some legal purposes, authorities extended the end date to the 11th of May 1945 to include the conclusion of the Prague offensive.
On the 9th of April 2015, the Ukrainian parliament replaced the phrase Great Patriotic War with Second World War within national law. This legislative change occurred as part of a broader set of decommunization laws enacted across Ukraine.
The term does not cover other conflicts involving the Soviet Union during World War II phases including the occupation of eastern Poland in 1939 and the Baltic states in 1940. It also omitted Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina taken in 1940 alongside the Soviet, Finnish War spanning 1939 to 1940.