The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia PDF Author: David L. Hoffmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000430294
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
This volume showcases important new research on World War II memory, both in the Soviet Union and in Russia today. Through an examination of war remembrance in its various forms—official histories, school textbooks, museums, monuments, literature, films, and Victory Day parades—chapters illustrate how the heroic narrative of the war was established in Soviet times and how it continues to shape war memorialization under Putin. This war narrative resonates with the Russian population due to decades of Soviet commemoration, which continued virtually uninterrupted into the post-Soviet period. Major themes of the volume include the use of World War II memory for political legitimation and patriotic mobilization; the striking continuities between Soviet and post-Soviet commemorative practices; the place of Holocaust memorialization in contemporary Russia; Putin’s invocation of the war to bolster national pride and international prestige; and the relationship between individual memory and collective remembrance. Authored by an international group of distinguished specialists, this collection is ideal for scholars of Russia across a range of disciplines, including history, political science, sociology, and cultural studies.

The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia PDF Author: David L. Hoffmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000430294
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
This volume showcases important new research on World War II memory, both in the Soviet Union and in Russia today. Through an examination of war remembrance in its various forms—official histories, school textbooks, museums, monuments, literature, films, and Victory Day parades—chapters illustrate how the heroic narrative of the war was established in Soviet times and how it continues to shape war memorialization under Putin. This war narrative resonates with the Russian population due to decades of Soviet commemoration, which continued virtually uninterrupted into the post-Soviet period. Major themes of the volume include the use of World War II memory for political legitimation and patriotic mobilization; the striking continuities between Soviet and post-Soviet commemorative practices; the place of Holocaust memorialization in contemporary Russia; Putin’s invocation of the war to bolster national pride and international prestige; and the relationship between individual memory and collective remembrance. Authored by an international group of distinguished specialists, this collection is ideal for scholars of Russia across a range of disciplines, including history, political science, sociology, and cultural studies.

The Soviet Myth of World War II

The Soviet Myth of World War II PDF Author: Jonathan Brunstedt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108584888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Provides a bold new interpretation of the Soviet myth of World War II from its Stalinist origins to its emergence as arguably the supreme myth of state under Brezhnev. Jonathan Brunstedt offers a timely historical investigation into the roots of the revival of the war's memory in Russia today.

War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus

War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus PDF Author: Julie Fedor
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319665235
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Book Description
This edited collection contributes to the current vivid multidisciplinary debate on East European memory politics and the post-communist instrumentalization and re-mythologization of World War II memories. The book focuses on the three Slavic countries of post-Soviet Eastern Europe – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus – the epicentre of Soviet war suffering, and the heartland of the Soviet war myth. The collection gives insight into the persistence of the Soviet commemorative culture and the myth of the Great Patriotic War in the post-Soviet space. It also demonstrates that for geopolitical, cultural, and historical reasons the political uses of World War II differ significantly across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, with important ramifications for future developments in the region and beyond. The chapters 'Introduction: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus', ‘From the Trauma of Stalinism to the Triumph of Stalingrad: The Toponymic Dispute over Volgograd’ and 'The “Partisan Republic”: Colonial Myths and Memory Wars in Belarus' are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. The chapter 'Memory, Kinship, and Mobilization of the Dead: The Russian State and the “Immortal Regiment” Movement' is published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

Shadowlands

Shadowlands PDF Author: Meike Wulf
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785330748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Located within the forgotten half of Europe, historically trapped between Germany and Russia, Estonia has been profoundly shaped by the violent conflicts and shifting political fortunes of the last century. This innovative study traces the tangled interaction of Estonian historical memory and national identity in a sweeping analysis extending from the Great War to the present day. At its heart is the enduring anguish of World War Two and the subsequent half-century of Soviet rule. Shadowlands tells this story by foregrounding the experiences of the country’s intellectuals, who were instrumental in sustaining Estonian historical memory, but who until fairly recently could not openly grapple with their nation’s complex, difficult past.

Recalling the Past, (re)constructing the Past

Recalling the Past, (re)constructing the Past PDF Author: Withold Bonner
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789521040986
Category : Collective memory
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Future of the Soviet Past

The Future of the Soviet Past PDF Author: Anton Weiss-Wendt
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253057604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress, control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a good future out of a "bad past." While Putin's regime has acquired nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in which public narrative shapes Russian culture—from cinema, television, and music to museums, legislature, and education—as well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.

The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe

The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe PDF Author: Richard Ned Lebow
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822338178
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Comparative case studies of how memories of World War II have been constructed and revised in France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Italy, and the USSR (Russia).

Bringing Stalin Back In

Bringing Stalin Back In PDF Author: Todd H. Nelson
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498591531
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
While Joseph Stalin is commonly reviled in the West as a murderous tyrant who committed egregious human rights abuses against his own people, in Russia he is often positively viewed as the symbol of Soviet-era stability and state power. How can there be such a disparity in perspectives? Utilizing an ethnographic approach, extensive interview data, and critical discourse analysis, this book examines the ways that the political elite in Russia are able to control and manipulate historical discourse about the Stalin period in order to advance their own political objectives. Appropriating the Stalinist discourse, they minimize or ignore outright crimes of the Soviet period, and instead focus on positive aspects of Stalin’s rule, especially his role in leading the Soviet Union to victory in the Second World War. Advancing the concepts of “preventive” and “complex” co-optation, this book analyzes how elites in Russia inhibit the emergence of groups that espouse alternative narratives, while promoting message-friendly groups that are in line with the Kremlin’s agenda. Bringing the resources of the state to bear, the Russian elite are able to co-opt multiple avenues of discourse formulation and dissemination. Elite-sponsored discourse positions Stalin as the symbol of a strong, centralized state that was capable of great achievements, despite great cost, enabling favorably portrayals of Stalin as part of a tradition of harsh but effective rulers in Russian history, such as Peter the Great. This strong state discourse is used to legitimize the return of authoritarianism in Russia today.

The Russian Version of the Second World War

The Russian Version of the Second World War PDF Author: Graham Lyons
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
"Graham Lyons has taken the two main textbooks used in the senior forms of Russian secondary schools and here presents, in direct translation, the story of the War as seen through Russian eyes. Anyone remotely familiar with 'history' as taught on the western side of the Iron Curtain will read with bemused fascination of the 'real' origins of the Second World War, of the 'true' meaning of the Russo-German Non-Aggression Pact, of why the Russians stopped before Warsaw - and so on, and so on. But why indeed should one version be any more 'true' than the other? This fascinating book not only presents the other side of the coin but poses the much deeper question of the true meaning of the evidently much-abused word 'history'."--

The Future of the Soviet Past

The Future of the Soviet Past PDF Author: Anton Weiss-Wendt
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253057612
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress, control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a good future out of a "bad past." While Putin's regime has acquired nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in which public narrative shapes Russian culture—from cinema, television, and music to museums, legislature, and education—as well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.