The Soviet Myth of World War II
Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR

Provides a bold new interpretation of the origins and development of World War II's remembrance in the USSR.

Jonathan Brunstedt (Author)

9781108498753, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 July 2021

320 pages
23.5 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.66 kg

'Clearly and effectively dissecting a wide range of archival and ideological sources relating to memory policy, Brunstedt shows that during the war and late Stalinism, the leader and his ideologues alternated between or sometimes combined the two strands of the war myth. During de-Stalinization, however, the Russocentric strand became associated with Stalin's excesses … It is refreshing to see such a tightly argued, seriously researched academic monograph … In light of Brunstedt's work, we can see more clearly how the broader struggle between reform and counter-reform, westernizers and Russophiles, anti-Stalinists and neo-Stalinists not only survived but intensified after 1991 and 2000.' Michael David-Fox, Slavic Review (2023)

This pioneering monograph – a Foreign Affairs Best Book of the Year – asks how a socialist society, ostensibly committed to Marxist ideals of internationalism and global class struggle, reconciled itself to notions of patriotism, homeland, Russian ethnocentrism, and the glorification of war. Through the lens of the myth and remembrance of victory in World War II, arguably the central defining event of the Soviet epoch, the book shows that while state historical narratives reinforced a sense of Russian primacy and Russian dominated ethnic hierarchy, the story of the war enabled an alternative, supra-ethnic source of belonging, which subsumed Russian and non-Russian loyalties alike to the Soviet whole. The tension and competition between Russocentric and 'internationalist' conceptions of victory, which burst into the open during the late 1980s, reflected a wider struggle over the nature of patriotic identity in a multiethnic society that continues to reverberate in the post-Soviet space. The book sheds new light on long standing questions linked to the politics of remembrance and provides a crucial historical context for the patriotic revival of the war's memory in Russia today.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Maps
Introduction: War and the Tensions of Patriotism
1. Stalin's Toast: Victory and the Vagaries of Postwar Russocentrism
2. Victory Days: The War Theme in the Stalinist Commemorative Landscape
3. Usable Pasts: The Crisis of Patriotism and the Origins of the War Cult
4. Monumental Memory: Patriotic Identity in the High War Cult
5. Patriotic Wars: Late-Soviet War Memory and the Politics of Russian Nationalism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Second World War [HBWQ], Postwar 20th century history, from c 1945 to c 2000 [HBLW3], European history [HBJD]