The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia 9780367701765, 9780367701772, 9781003144915

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

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. David L. Hoffmann is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History at The Ohio State University, USA. He is the author of four monographs, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941 (1994); Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity (2003); Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939 (2011); and The Stalinist Era (2018). He also edited Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices (2000) and Stalinism: The Essential Readings (2002).

Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe

The nations of Central and Eastern Europe experienced a time of momentous change in the period following the Second World War. The vast majority were subject to Communism and central planning while events such as the Hungarian uprising and Prague Spring stood out as key watershed moments against a distinct social, cultural and political backcloth. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, German reunification and the break-up of the Soviet Union, changes from the 1990s onwards have also been momentous with countries adjusting to various capitalist realities. The volumes in this series will help shine a light on the experiences of this key geopolitical zone with many lessons to be learned for the future. Communist Propaganda at School The World of the Reading Primers from the Soviet Bloc, 1949–1989 Joanna Wojdon Politics and the Slavic Languages Tomasz Kamusella Dissident Legacies of Samizdat Social Media Activism Unlicensed Print Culture in Poland 1976–1990 Piotr Wciślik Central Europe Revisited Why Europe’s Future Will Be Decided in the Region Emil Brix and Erhard Busek The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia Edited by David L. Hoffmann Czechoslovakism Edited by Adam Hudek, Michal Kopeček, Jan Mervart For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Histories-of-Central-and-Eastern-Europe/book-series/CEE

The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia Edited by David L. Hoffmann

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, David L. Hoffmann; individual chapters, the contributors The right of David L. Hoffmann to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-70176-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-70177-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-14491-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For my children, Sarah and Jonah

Contents

List of figuresix List of tablesx Notes on contributorsxi Acknowledgmentsxv

Introduction: the politics of commemoration in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia

1

DAVID L. HOFFMANN

PART I

Soviet remembrance of the war15   1 Wartime mobilizational strategies and the origins of Soviet war memory

17

JONATHAN BRUNSTEDT

  2 Situating Stalin in the history of the Second World War

41

YAN MANN

  3 Victory Day before the cult: war commemoration in the USSR, 1945–1965

64

MISCHA GABOWITSCH

  4 Teaching and remembering the Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools

86

OLGA KONKKA

  5 Representations of gender in Soviet war memorials DAVID L. HOFFMANN

107

viii Contents PART II

Soviet and post-Soviet war memory 6 Veterans remember the war in Soviet and post-Soviet fiction

131 133

ANGELA BRINTLINGER

7 Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory

155

OLGA KUCHERENKO

8 Politicizing war memorialization in Soviet and post-Soviet Sevastopol

180

KARL D. QUALLS

9 World War II memories and local media in the Russian North: Velikii Novgorod and Murmansk

202

TATIANA ZHURZHENKO

10 Parades in Russian memory culture

229

YVONNE PÖRZGEN

PART III

Representations of the war in the Putin era

247

11 Performing memory and its limits: Vladimir Putin and the celebration of World War II in Russia

249

ELIZABETH A. WOOD

12 Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia as a foreign policy tool

276

ANTON WEISS-WENDT

13 The war film and memory politics in Putin’s Russia

299

STEPHEN M. NORRIS

14 Jews, gender, and just wars: remembering and rewriting the Great Patriotic War in 2015 war films

318

ADRIENNE M. HARRIS

15 The 21st-century memory of the Great Patriotic War in the “Russia – My History” Museum

340

KAREN PETRONE

Index

361

Figures

5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

“The Motherland Calls!” statue at the Battle of Stalingrad Memorial “Stand to the Death!” statue at the Battle of Stalingrad Memorial Grieving mother statue at the Battle of Stalingrad Memorial “The Crossing of the Dnieper” statues at the Battle of the Dnieper Memorial 5.5 Panfilov Guardsmen Monument, Dubosekovo 5.6 Panfilov Guardsmen Monument, Almaty 5.7 Statues of male soldiers at the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad 5.8 Statues of male snipers at the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad 5.9 Statues of female metalworkers at the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad 5.10 Statues of siege victims at the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad 7.1 A three-ruble coin celebrating the Arctic Convoys, 1992 7.2 A monument to the members of the Grand Alliance, Moscow 9.1 A wedding party in front of the monument to Anatolii Bredov in Murmansk 9.2 Representatives of local youth organizations march through Velikii Novgorod, 2013 9.3 Wreath-laying ceremony, Column of Military Glory, Velikii Novgorod, 2013 9.4 Memorial cemetery Miasnoi Bor near Velikii Novgorod 9.5 Memorial to the Murmansk harbor workers killed by Nazi airstrikes 9.6 Murmansk monument to the Defenders of the Soviet Arctic 9.7 Murmansk monument to the Countries of the Anti-Hitler Coalition 9.8 Velikii Novgorod memorial to the Heroes of the Soviet Union 15.1 Admiral William Blandy and his wife cut a mushroom cloud cake, 1946 15.2 “Russia – My History” display of Vladimir Putin in the Immortal Regiment parade

112 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 159 162 203 206 208 210 211 212 213 220 353 354

Table

7.1

Russian Public Opinion on the Allies’ Contribution to the Victory in World War II

161

Notes on contributors

Angela Brintlinger is a professor of Russian literature and culture and director of the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at The Ohio State University. She is the author of Chapaev and his Comrades: War and the Russian Literary Hero across the Twentieth Century (2012) and Writing a Usable Past: Russian Literary Culture, 1917–1937 (2000) as well as several edited volumes, including Seasoned Socialism: Gender and Food in Late Soviet Everyday Life (2019) and Madness and the Mad in Russian Culture (2007). She has also published dozens of articles in English and Russian, including “A Murky Business: The Post-Soviet Enemy” in The Enemy in Contemporary Film (2018). Jonathan Brunstedt is an assistant professor of History at Texas A&M University. His research focuses on nationalism and cultural memory in the Soviet Union and wider world, with a particular emphasis on the representation and commemoration of war. He is the author of The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and is presently a research scholar at the Kennan Institute. Mischa Gabowitsch, historian and sociologist, is a senior researcher at the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, Germany, and a research fellow at the HumaNET Research Centre, University of Tyumen, Russia. His most recent book publications in English are Protest in Putin’s Russia (2016) and Replicating Atonement: Foreign Models in the Commemoration of Atrocities (2017). He has edited several books in Russian and German on war memory and commemoration, most recently Pamiatnik i prazdnik: etnografiia Dnia Pobedy (2020), and is currently working on a history of Soviet war memorials as well as a book on Victory Day celebrations since 1945. Adrienne M. Harris is an associate professor of Russian at Baylor University. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures from The University of Kansas. She has published articles on the Soviet collective memory of the Second World War, heroism, combatants’ memoirs, war poetry, gender, and masculinity in Czech film. Most of her research has focused on representations of Hero of the Soviet Union Zoia Kosmodem’ianskaia and on poet Iuliia

xii  Notes on contributors Drunina’s poetry. She is currently drafting a monograph on 21st-century Russian war films. David L. Hoffmann is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History at The Ohio State University. He is the author of four monographs, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941 (1994); Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity (2003); Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939 (2011); and The Stalinist Era (2018). He also edited Russian Modernity: Politics, Knowledge, Practices (2000) and Stalinism: The Essential Readings (2002). Olga Konkka, Ph.D., is a lecturer and researcher at Bordeaux Montaigne University and at Sciences Po Bordeaux and a post-doctoral fellow of the French Holocaust Memory Foundation. In 2016, she defended her thesis, “Looking for a new vision of 20th-century Russian history: analysis of the secondary school history textbooks in post-Soviet Russia (1991–2016).” Later, she extended her research to a larger number of questions related to history and memory in Russia, combining different disciplinary approaches. Her current research interests are the militarization of secondary education, school museums, and the teaching of the Holocaust in Russia. Olga Kucherenko is a historian of World War II and a faculty associate at Arizona State University with an interest in socio-cultural history of the war. She is the author of a number of articles on the Soviet war effort and two monographs: Little Soldiers: How Soviet Children Went to War, 1941–1945 (OUP, 2011) and Soviet Street Children and the Second World War: Welfare and Social Control under Stalin (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). She is currently working on a new book-length project investigating Anglo-Soviet interpersonal relations in the 1940s. Yan Mann obtained a Ph.D. degree in history from Arizona State University for his dissertation titled “Contested Memory: Writing the Great Patriotic War’s Official History During Khrushchev’s Thaw” (2016). He is currently a clinical assistant professor of History and the program lead of the online World War II Studies master’s degree program at Arizona State University. His research revolves around the relationship between individual and collective memory of the Great Patriotic War, the Stalin cult, censorship, propaganda, and the production of the war’s first official history. Stephen M. Norris is the Walter E. Havighurst Professor of Russian History and director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies at Miami University (OH). He is the author of two books, including Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, and Patriotism (2012), and the editor or co-editor of six other books, including Museums of Communism: New Memory Sites in Central and Eastern Europe (2020). His short book on Fedor Bondarchuk’s film Stalingrad will appear with Intellect Books in 2022. Along with Eugene Avrutin, he co-edits the series “Russian Shorts” with Bloomsbury Press.

Notes on contributors  xiii Karen Petrone is a professor of History at the University of Kentucky and inaugural director of its Cooperative for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Her books include Life Has Become More Joyous, Comrades: Celebrations in the Time of Stalin (Indiana University Press, 2000), The Great War in Russian Memory (Indiana University Press, 2011), and three co-edited volumes including Everyday Life in Russia: Past and Present (Indiana University Press, 2015). She is currently at work on a book on war memory in Putin’s Russia. Yvonne Pörzgen is a scholar in literary and cultural Slavic studies. She currently is the study program coordinator at the University of Bremen, Institute of European Studies. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Slavic Literature from the University of Bamberg. In her dissertation, she analyzed Russian and Polish drug literature. Her second book is dedicated to the concept of free will as a tool for the analysis of works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Stanisław Lem, and Meša Selimović. Her further research interests are phantastic and science-fiction literature, cultural transfer, and cultural memory. Karl D. Qualls is a professor of History and John B. Parsons Chair in Liberal Arts and Sciences at Dickinson College. His Stalin’s Niños: Educating Spanish Civil War Refugee Children in the Soviet Union, 1937–1951 (Toronto, 2020) examines special boarding schools designed for the refugee children and the methods used to develop the children into Hispano-Soviets. His From Ruins to Reconstruction: Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol after World War II (Cornell, 2009) challenged notions of totalitarianism, investigated the creation of historical myths, and outlined the role of monuments and urban spaces in identity formation in a city torn between Ukraine and Russia. Anton Weiss-Wendt is a research professor at the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies in Oslo. He holds a Ph.D. degree in modern Jewish history from Brandeis University. He is the author and/or editor of 11 books, including The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention (2017); A Rhetorical Crime: Genocide in the Geopolitical Discourse of the Cold War (2018); Putin’s Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control over the Past (2020); and (with Nanci Adler) The Future of the Soviet Past: The Politics of History in Putin’s Russia (2021). Elizabeth A. Wood is a professor of Russian and Soviet History at MIT, where she also directs the Russian Studies Program and the MIT-Russia Program. Her books include The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia (1997); Performing Justice: Agitation Trials in Early Soviet Russia (2005); and Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine (co-authored, 2016). She has also published a number of articles in Theory and Society, International Feminist Journal of Politics, Slavic Review, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, The Russian Review, and Gender and History. Tatiana Zhurzhenko teaches East European Politics in the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna. She earned her Ph.D. from V. N. Karazin

xiv  Notes on contributors Kharkiv National University (Ukraine) in 1993, and she has been a visiting scholar at the University of Helsinki, Harvard University, and the University of Toronto. Her recent publications include War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (co-edited with J. Fedor, M. Kangaspuro, J. Lassila) (Palgrave, 2017) and “The Soviet War Memorial in Vienna: Geopolitics of memory and the new Russian diaspora in post-Cold War Europe,” in Remembering the Second World War, ed. by Patrick Finney (Routledge, 2017).

Acknowledgments

As I have discovered, writing a book during a pandemic poses many challenges. I originally planned to write a monograph on World War II memorialization in the Soviet Union, but due to limitations on research, I instead chose to produce an edited volume on war memory in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. To do so, I enlisted leading international scholars to submit research they had already completed on the topic. The contributors come from a range of disciplines—history, political science, sociology, literary criticism, film studies, and cultural studies— and present some of the latest scholarship on World War II memory, a subject of enormous importance in Russia today. I would like to thank the American Council of Learned Societies for awarding me a fellowship for the 2020–2021 academic year. The fellowship gave me the time to write my own contributions to this volume as well as to edit the other chapters. This publication has also been made possible, in part, through support from the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at The Ohio State University and through funding from the International and Foreign Language Education division of the US Department of Education. I would also like to thank my colleagues and friends at The Ohio State University for providing a stimulating and collegial environment for many years. Our strong group of faculty members in Russian, East European, and Eurasian history includes Nicholas Breyfogle, Mary Cavender, Theodora Dragostinova, Scott Levi, and Jennifer Siegel. And our equally strong faculty cohort in the Modern Europe field includes Elizabeth Bond, Bruno Cabanes, Alice Conklin, Elizabeth Dillenburg, Robin Judd, Stephen Kern, Christopher Otter, and Birgitte Soland. In addition, I would like to acknowledge colleagues from the Center for Slavic and East European Studies, in particular, Director Angela Brintlinger and Assistant Director Eileen Kunkler. The editorial team at Routledge has been unfailingly helpful and enthusiastic about the project. In particular, I am grateful to Robert Langham for commissioning the volume and to Zoe Thomson and Ganesh Pawan Kumar Agoor for overseeing its production. I would also like to acknowledge Tanushree Baijal for responding to several queries and Easwari and Jac Nelson for copyediting and indexing the manuscript. In addition, I thank my friends Stephen M. Norris and

xvi  Acknowledgments Kenneth Pinnow for offering valuable suggestions to improve my own contributions to the volume. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my family members. My father, George Hoffmann, has been extremely supportive throughout my career. He has always been eager to talk about history with me and has taken great interest in my research. My sisters, Jill and Karen Hoffmann, have been not only siblings but cherished friends and allies throughout my life. Particularly when I was dealing with the deaths of my late wife, Patricia Weitsman, and of my mother, Irene Hoffmann, they both offered a great deal of emotional support. My children, Sarah and Jonah Hoffmann-Weitsman, have been a source of enormous joy for me ever since they were born. Even now that they are grown, we continue to be close and to do many things together. I will always think of them as the greatest blessings in my life, and it is to them that I dedicate this book. D.L.H. Lancaster, Ohio

Introduction The politics of commemoration in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia David L. Hoffmann

It is essential to pass on to future generations the memory of the fact that the Nazis were defeated first and foremost by the Soviet people. —Vladimir Putin, 2020

On the 75th anniversary of the victory in World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin made the statement above to stress the importance of war memory. He hailed it as a linchpin of national identity and wrote that Russians today should recall their ancestors’ “love for their homeland, their Motherland. That deep-seated, intimate feeling is fully reflected in the very essence of our nation and became one of the decisive factors in its heroic, sacrificial fight against the Nazis.”1 Putin’s government has made World War II remembrance a pillar of Russian official culture and a centerpiece of national pride. Yet Putin was not the first leader to utilize the memory of the war for the purposes of political legitimation and patriotic mobilization. Soviet leaders glorified the wartime victory as a symbol of their system’s legitimacy—a symbol that, under Leonid Brezhnev, surpassed even that of the October Revolution in ubiquity and importance. Through history books, parades, monuments, museums, literature, and films, Soviet authorities constantly invoked the war and the role of the Communist Party in leading the country to victory. Warfare between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany (1941–1945) was the largest armed conflict in world history, leaving some 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians dead. It is, therefore, fitting that the memory of the war has held a significant place in postwar Soviet society and in Russia today. But the enormity of the war as a historical event did not in itself determine why or how it was remembered. In the years immediately following the war, Joseph Stalin postponed plans for large memorials. Only under Nikita Khrushchev and especially Brezhnev did Soviet war remembrance assume immense proportions, with large-scale ceremonies and monuments, and (in 1965) the reinstitution of Victory Day as a nonworking holiday. As Nina Tumarkin has described, however, war commemoration began to wane when Mikhail Gorbachev and a new generation of leaders came to power in the mid-1980s.2 And after the collapse of the Soviet system, Boris Yeltsin cancelled the Victory Day military parade in 1992 and stripped all Soviet symbols from Moscow’s Victory Park memorial before its opening in 1995.3 With

2  David L. Hoffmann the wartime generation having mostly passed and the Soviet Union itself having disintegrated, it seemed that the era of war memorialization was over. The dramatic revival of World War II commemoration under Putin, therefore, requires explanation, and here let us focus first on the political instrumentalization of war memory. The collapse of Communism left a large ideological void in postSoviet Russia. During the years of Yeltsin’s presidency, the country experienced not only economic decline but also a crisis of national identity. Having rejected the Communist past, the Russian government searched for alternative traditions to unify the population. Tsarist history (particularly the reign of Nicholas II) offered few symbols of national unity and strength. The revival of the Russian Orthodox Church provided one national institution, though not all citizens of the Russian federation were Orthodox Christians. What stood out as the finest emblem of national pride was the historic victory in the Second World War. In the early 2000s, at a moment of diminished international standing for Russia, Putin revitalized war commemoration to recall a time when the Red Army had defeated Nazi Germany and saved Europe from fascism. In 2011, Putin even called war memory “an excellent cement, uniting people of different nationalities, different ethnicities and different religions into one indivisible Russian nation.”4 The Putin government has also used war memory as a tool of foreign policy. Russia’s revival of large-scale World War II commemorations coincided with NATO’s 2004 induction of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. With the advance of a Western military alliance right up to their borders, Russian leaders found it advantageous to recall a historical moment when their country had triumphed over a ruthless Western invader. Focus on the Nazi invasion also allowed them to amplify their version of World War II history in response to increasing Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Polish condemnations of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.5 More recently, Second World War analogies have figured prominently in the Russian government’s rhetoric about its 2014 annexation of Crimea and military intervention in eastern Ukraine. Russian authorities have portrayed these military actions as a continuation of the struggles of the Second World War, and they have also condemned Ukrainian forces as “neo-Nazis” who perpetrate genocide against Russian and Jewish minorities.6 While the political utility of war commemoration is clear, we should also ask why World War II memory continues to hold popular appeal. Seventy-five years after the war, and three decades after the Soviet Union’s collapse, Soviet commemorative culture somehow still resonates with the population, particularly in Russia but in other parts of the former Soviet Union as well.7 In fact, current Russian war memory draws extensively on the myths, symbols, and rituals developed by the Soviet regime. Despite significant discontinuities—no longer is the Communist Party credited for the victory—there are striking continuities between Soviet and post-Soviet war commemoration. The master narrative of the war remains largely the same—the fascist invader was vanquished by the people’s unity and the Red Army’s heroism. All suffering is attributed to the enemy’s ruthlessness, while leadership failures and popular panic are not mentioned. Indeed, any criticism of the Soviet war effort is now prohibited by Russian law.8 Volgograd is still referred

Introduction  3 to as a “hero city,” and tour guides there tell the same story of soldiers ready to give their lives to defend the motherland.9 Even Soviet-era rituals continue, including Victory Day celebrations, no longer with World War II veterans (who have passed away) but with the “Immortal Regiment” of Russian citizens holding portraits of their ancestors who fought in the war.10 The lasting resonance of Soviet commemorative culture stems in part from the fact that it was so pervasive in education and public life throughout the postwar period. School programs and rituals of memorialization instilled in people’s consciousness the story of collective sacrifice and military triumph. What gave this master narrative its emotional pull was the way it tied the larger struggle to the tragic personal losses suffered in the war. World War II monuments served as sites of mourning for the millions of Soviet citizens who had lost family members. Particularly during the Brezhnev era, war memory focused on the country’s “fallen heroes”—a formulation that combined both mourning the dead and celebrating the victory. Not all aspects of the official narrative were accepted by everyone, but many people found meaning in the commemorative symbols and ceremonies as an expression of their own grief, pride, and national identity.11 The heroic narrative of the war, therefore, retained meaning for Russian citizens even after the Communist political and economic system was forsaken. Victory Day was and remains the most genuinely popular holiday in Russia.12 The purpose of this volume is to bring together research on war remembrance during both the Soviet and post-Soviet eras. This work highlights certain continuities in commemorative practices and helps to explain the continued valence of war memory 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—the chapters in this volume illustrate how the master narrative of the war was established in the Soviet Union and how it continues to shape war memorialization in Russia today. At the same time, this comparative approach underscores significant discontinuities in war remembrance. The post-Soviet historical narrative erased not only the role of the Communist Party but also the wartime “brotherhood of Soviet peoples,” so that Putin’s government depicts the war as a glorious national victory for Russia alone. The Holocaust, rarely acknowledged by Soviet officials, today receives attention from Putin and the Russian Foreign Ministry. In another significant departure from Soviet war remembrance, the Russian Orthodox Church now figures prominently in World War II memorialization. As part of the 75th anniversary of the World War II victory, Putin and Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, attended the opening of the Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces in Kubinka, just west of Moscow. The cathedral contains stained glass windows with images of Soviet war medals as well as mosaics portraying key battles of the Second World War.13 The fact that the Russian government has promoted World War II memory as a linchpin of national identity in itself makes this book’s subject worthy of study. But the research presented here also speaks to the politics of historical commemoration. It demonstrates how regimes selectively use the past to mobilize their

4  David L. Hoffmann populations. The Soviet government fashioned a historical narrative of the Second World War that served to unify its population and legitimate its rule. Putin’s government then resurrected select elements of this already selective narrative to bolster patriotism in contemporary Russia. Beyond the politics of commemoration, this volume also raises more elemental issues surrounding collective remembrance. Some chapters address the popular reception of official war memory and examine local initiatives to commemorate the war.14 Others discuss how individual memories of the war interacted with official narratives and representations. World War II memory in the Soviet Union and Russia, then, exemplifies the complex relationship between people’s own memories and official commemorations orchestrated by the state.

Individual memory and collective remembrance In oral history interviews conducted in the early 2000s, Catherine Merridale found that Russian World War II veterans could not recall much beyond the official history of the war. They told of bravery and unity—all soldiers fighting courageously for the motherland—but did not recollect instances of panic, blunders, or repression. Indeed, they seemed to have forgotten the grimmest scenes of combat and instead relied on Soviet platitudes to describe the Red Army’s heroic struggle.15 Of course, veterans could not be expected to precisely recall traumatic wartime events that occurred a half-century before. Nonetheless, their reliance on official tropes to express personal reminiscences draws attention to the intersections of individual memory, collective remembrance, and official commemoration. Maurice Halbwachs posited that all human memory is essentially social. In contrast to Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud, he argued that people’s memories could not be purely individual, because they were always formed through communication with others. Halbwachs (a pupil of Emile Durkheim) thus understood individual memories as a reflection of master narratives within a society, and he saw collective memory and its ritualization as a way for people to find meaning in their lives and build bonds with their communities.16 Indeed, individuals rely upon the narratives and symbols of their societies to organize and recall their past experiences, so individuals’ memories cannot be separated from their societies or cultures. Recent neurological research underscores the importance of collective remembrance. Neuroscientists have identified three stages of human memory. Sensory memory accurately records external stimuli, but it lasts for less than a second. Short-term memory holds a limited amount of information in the brain at a readily available state, but without a conscious effort to retain it, this material is quickly lost. The process by which information is transferred to people’s long-term memory involves physiological changes in neural networks that require rehearsal and meaningful association. Encoding information into neural circuits is more easily accomplished when following previously established pathways. And repetition is crucial for the strengthening of neurons’ cortical synapses and the consolidation of long-term memory.17 The fundamentally associative nature of human memory

Introduction  5 means that people’s memories are shaped by the narratives they have heard and the representations of the past they have seen. While acknowledging the social dimensions of memory, some theorists are still uncomfortable with the term “collective memory.” They point out that memory ultimately resides in the minds of individuals, not collectives, and that there is no way to determine if a publicly propagated representation of the past “translates into an equivalent mental image held by a collectivity of viewers.”18 Both Lisa Kirschenbaum and Vicky Davis prefer “myth” to describe the shared narratives that give meaning to the past.19 “Myth” here does not connote falsehood, though these narratives are simplified and even distorted, but rather signifies a society’s dramatized stories and imagery about its history. Other scholars use the phrase “collective remembrance” to emphasize communal practices involving both officials and average citizens in “the act of gathering bits and pieces of the past and joining them together in public.”20 Of course, in the Soviet case, average citizens’ input into World War II remembrance was limited, given state censorship. The Soviet government under Brezhnev, like the Putin government today, sought to monopolize war memory to achieve the political goals described earlier. In place of “collective memory,” some scholars speak of “official memory” to emphasize the divergence, particularly in authoritarian societies, between state commemorations and personal memories.21 In contemporary Russia, there are few people still alive who were eyewitnesses to the war, so the personal memories of individuals provide little basis to contest official war memory. But in the Soviet period, there were a myriad of individual recollections of the war, and the regime’s official war memory had to compete with or co-opt these personal memories. It would be wrong, however, to dismiss Soviet war commemoration as mere propaganda. Amir Weiner argues against a sharp dichotomy between public and private domains of war memory.22 Soviet authorities who created patriotic rituals did so not only to augment their power but also to mark what they saw as a watershed moment in world history. And the soldiers and civilians who survived the war needed to make sense of the horrific carnage and loss they had experienced. Most of all they had a psychological need to remember and mourn loved ones who had perished, and war memorialization served that need. Beyond that, official commemoration provided coherence to people’s chaotic, wrenching memories, and it granted meaning to their sacrifices and suffering. If, over time, many citizens came to express their personal memories using official language, it was because Soviet war narratives, ceremonies, and monuments offered this broader meaning.23 Pierre Nora’s seminal work on “sites of memory” introduced public memorialization as an important topic for historical study. Nora argued that collective memory in peasant societies was organically interwoven into everyday life via rituals, traditions, and folktales. He contrasted these milieux de mémoire with lieux de mémoire—memorial sites where a particular version of past events is codified and presented.24 He noted that monuments, museums, and other sites of memory in the modern era both serve contemporary political interests and respond to people’s

6  David L. Hoffmann desire to remember, even as they subsume individual memories within a common, public memory. Nora’s ideas helped inspire a rich literature on war and memory, especially on the memorialization of the First and Second World Wars in Western Europe.25 Until recently, corresponding scholarship on the Russian/Soviet case has been more limited—a surprising fact given that World War II commemoration in the Soviet Union far surpassed that for any other country.26 The function of this volume is to present exciting new research on the memory of the Second World War in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia. To do justice to this multi-faceted subject, the contributors examine various media through which the war has been represented and remembered. Written forms—official histories, school textbooks, newspaper articles, and literature—are the focus of several chapters. Monuments, parades, Victory Day celebrations, speeches, and commemorative ceremonies are the subjects of other chapters in the volume. In addition, two chapters analyze representations of the war in Russian films, and one considers museum exhibitions about the war. These sites of memory all present a certain version of the Second World War and convey lessons in patriotism, self-sacrifice, and national unity.

Overview of chapters The volume’s first section focuses on World War II memory during the Soviet period. How the war would be remembered began to be formulated while the war was still in progress, and the first two chapters address this topic. Jonathan Brunstedt examines tensions in wartime propaganda between historical-patriotic appeals and Soviet-oriented propaganda, and he argues that these tensions carried over into the postwar period. Despite the efforts of Soviet propagandists and historians, the invocation of tsarist-era national heroes could not easily be reconciled with Marxist-Leninist ideology. After the war, the victory was alternately presented as an extension of past Russian military glory or as the product of the Soviet system and the leadership of the Communist Party. By the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras, official histories of the war emphasized the latter, though the national-patriotic line continued as well and rose to preeminence in the postSoviet era. In the second chapter, Yan Mann addresses the equally fraught topic of Stalin’s role in the victory. During the war, Stalin was hailed as a brilliant leader and military genius, and this adulation continued throughout the postwar Stalin years. Following his death, and particularly in the wake of Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech,” Stalin was suddenly denounced for wartime failures. The Communist Party and military commanders now assumed credit for the victory, while the war’s disastrous beginning was blamed on Stalin. Mann explores the work of a Khrushchevera commission charged with writing the official history of the war. While intent on disparaging Stalin’s contribution, historians and veterans on the commission discovered that he was firmly entwined with the war’s history. They could not simultaneously blame Stalin for every failure while denying him any credit for the victory. Mann notes that the debate over Stalin’s wartime role continues in

Introduction  7 Russia today, and that separating the World War II victory from Stalin has become impossible under Putin’s government. In his chapter, Mischa Gabowitsch challenges the widespread misconception that Victory Day was not celebrated in the Soviet Union prior to the Brezhnev era. While Victory Day only gained its status as a non-working holiday in 1965, the victory was commemorated annually on May 9 through ceremonies, veterans’ speeches, and the awarding of medals. What distinguished the cult of the Great Patriotic War under Brezhnev was not so much an invention of new commemorative practices as a unionwide diffusion of rituals that had emerged locally. As Gabowitsch shows, the Communist Party leadership’s ultimate decision to re-establish Victory Day as a full holiday was based on both domestic and international considerations. In addition to bolstering the regime’s legitimacy, the holiday gave the population an occasion to honor war veterans, and it also showcased the country’s victory over fascism—a major source of international prestige. Olga Konkka’s chapter makes clear how the official narrative of the war became so deeply ingrained in the minds of many Soviet citizens. She analyzes the primers, readers, and history textbooks used in Soviet primary and secondary schools from the 1940s through the 1980s. All editions of these books relied upon the same periodization, the same stories, and the same heroes—Zoia Kosmodem’ianskaia and the Panfilov Guardsmen—to describe the war. Book learning was augmented by school museums, which contained photographs, extracts of songs and poems, and references to wartime prose, such as The Young Guard, also studied in school. Schoolchildren took field trips to monuments and participated in ceremonies to honor veterans. The younger generations’ war memory was thus shaped by a complex of mutually reinforcing media. The textbooks, museum exhibitions, and commemorative speeches all used the same expressions and style, with references to “fascist invaders,” “heroism,” and “self-sacrifice.” The impact of Soviet education was lasting—even in post-Soviet Russia, school lessons and official ceremonies still employ the same vocabulary to remember the war. In the section’s final chapter, I  consider another component of official war memory—Soviet war monuments. In particular, I examine gendered images in several major memorial complexes, including the Battle of Stalingrad Memorial. The central statue there, “The Motherland Calls!” portrays a powerful woman, but she is an allegorical figure representing Mother Russia. All the combatants in this and other war memorials are depicted as men. Despite the fact that some 900,000 women served in the Soviet military, including 120,000 in combat positions, their service was not officially recognized. Instead, war monuments portray women as victims, nurses, or mothers in mourning, while men are shown to be strong, valiant soldiers. I argue that the gendered images in Soviet memorials were part of the postwar erasure of women’s military contribution, also evident in history books, literature, and films. This erasure served to re-establish the prewar gender order, with an emphasis on promoting men’s authority and women’s roles as mothers. The volume’s second section contains scholarship that bridges the 1991 divide, examining war memory in both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Angela

8  David L. Hoffmann Brintlinger’s chapter analyzes both the early and later works of three writerveterans, Bulat Okudzhava, Viktor Astaf’ev, and Vasil’ Bykau. She demonstrates that, over their long careers, these writers wrote in a changing literary landscape, where the lifting of censorship in the post-Soviet era allowed them to revise their own depictions of the war. Astaf’ev, for example, published several works after 1991, in which he stripped away the remembered glory of the war and instead emphasized filth, injustice, and loss. Okudzhava acknowledged that soldiers’ memories sometimes came to dovetail with the official war narrative, but in the 1990s he spoke out against that collective memory and rejected the very concept of the “Great” Patriotic War, stating that there was great suffering but not a great war. Brintlinger’s contribution thus investigates not only the changing literary representations of the war but also the tensions between individual and collective memory. While political leaders have highlighted certain aspects of the war’s history, they have downplayed others, and such is the case for the Soviet Union’s wartime alliance with the United States and Britain. Olga Kucherenko’s chapter discusses Russian attitudes toward Lend-Lease—British and American military aid sent to the Soviet Union during the war. Kucherenko notes that in both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, political discourse has emphasized the exceptional nature of the Soviet war effort and has minimized Western Allies’ contributions. This exclusivist narrative formed already during the war, and it continued over the next half a century, with some fluctuations in tone depending on relations between the former allies. Given current Russian-American antagonisms, the Putin government has continued to downplay Lend-Lease and the British-American contribution to the war effort. Kucherenko observes that there is a trend among historians in Russia to place the Soviet war experience in a global context—an approach that acknowledges the contributions of many countries—though government efforts to stifle debate may reinforce the exclusivist narrative of the Great Patriotic War. While most of the volume concerns Russia as a whole, the next two chapters present case studies that describe local memorial landscapes in Sevastopol, Velikii Novgorod, and Murmansk. These case studies permit a closer look at the agency of local officials and residents in connection with commemoration. Karl D. Qualls assesses war memory in Sevastopol, an especially interesting case given that the city has been under Soviet, Ukrainian, and now Russian control. Largely destroyed during the war, Sevastopol was rebuilt by urban planners who included monuments connecting the “two great defenses” of the city—the Crimean War and World War II. As Qualls describes, war memorialization there remained tied to the theme of protecting the Russian homeland over the ensuing decades. Even following the Soviet collapse, this heritage continued to underpin Sevastopol’s identity, though the city was part of Ukraine. When Putin seized Crimea in 2014, he praised Sevastopol’s long history of defending Russia, thus relying on rhetoric developed over the preceding 70 years. Tatiana Zhurzhenko considers the cases of Velikii Novgorod and Murmansk. She points out strong continuities between the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, as local elites in these cities have presented themselves as the guardians of the Great

Introduction  9 Patriotic War’s memory. But she also notes in the post-Soviet period a democratization of local war memory, as new museums and memorial sites have resulted from initiatives by local politicians, religious organizations, and professional associations of historians, archeologists, and architects. Local newspapers and television provide space for debates over historical commemoration, and some journalists have protested both the commercialization of war memory and the perpetuation of Soviet-era myths. Local media thus play a crucial role in commemorative politics in the provinces. Zhurzhenko concludes that World War II memory has been more pluralistic and less politicized in these provincial cities than on the national level. The section’s last chapter, by Yvonne Pörzgen, discusses the place of parades in commemorative culture and the prominence of Victory Day parades in Russian war memorialization. Military parades on Red Square functioned as an important ritual on Soviet holidays, but Pörzgen notes that, during the 1990s, Russian military parades were discontinued. Only in 2005 was the Victory Day parade revived, and it has been held annually since then. As the number of veterans still alive dwindled, the Russian government incorporated into the parades the Immortal Regiment—Russian citizens marching with portraits of their ancestors who participated in the war, either at the front or on the home front. Initially a grassroots initiative, the Immortal Regiment was co-opted by the Russian government, and Putin himself has marched in it. In addition to her analysis of parades, Pörzgen includes a discussion of Putin’s latest statements about the war, and she thus provides a segue to the next section of the volume. The volume’s third section explores war memorialization during the Putin era. Elizabeth A. Wood analyzes multiple ways that Putin has attached himself to World War II memory to enhance his own authority. From the time of his first inauguration as Russian President in 2000, Putin has marked virtually every anniversary of the war’s major battles. He has accentuated his personal connections to the war by telling of his father’s combat injuries and his brother’s death during the Siege of Leningrad. He has also presented himself as a dutiful son of the Orthodox Church and as a father figure for students at a boarding school for daughters of military personnel. Wood argues that, beyond seeking political legitimation, Putin invokes war memory to promote national unity and Russia’s status as a world power. At the same time, she observes that the cult of Putin and World War II may have reached its limits, as shown by the recent reversal of a plan to include a mosaic of Putin in the Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces. In his chapter, Anton Weiss-Wendt examines Holocaust memory in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia. He points out that the discussion of the Holocaust has been highly politicized, so much so that during the Soviet period, the Nazi mass murder of Jews was seldom mentioned. That silence was broken in the post-Soviet period, and, beginning in 2005, the Putin government began to refer to the Holocaust on a regular basis. But as Weiss-Wendt argues, this shift reflected not the pursuit of historical truth but rather Putin’s use of Holocaust references as an instrument in foreign policy. Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Putin gave a 2015 speech on the Holocaust that emphasized how Russian and Jewish

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Red Army soldiers fought against Ukrainian Banderites and Baltic Nazis to rescue the Jewish people. The Putin regime’s narrow depiction of the Holocaust, then, serves only to condemn Nazi collaborators in Eastern Europe and glorify Russia’s role in defeating the Nazis. The chapter by Stephen M. Norris analyzes a wave of World War II films that followed the Russian Ministry of Culture’s 2013 call for more films with “patriotic” content. Three of the films feature female warriors—an interesting contrast to Soviet-era war monuments—and thus promote the idea that women too have an important role to play in national defense. Norris also discusses the 2018 film Sobibor, which tells the true story of a Jewish Red Army soldier who was imprisoned at the Nazi death camp and led a successful revolt there. In line with WeissWendt’s findings, this film (a brainchild of the Russian Minister of Culture) used the subject of the Holocaust to promote Russian patriotism by touting the heroism of a Red Army soldier. Norris analyzes several other patriotic war films as well and concludes that they reflect an increasing “Putinization” of war memory. At the same time, he contends that the mixed reception of these films, along with the release of several unconventional war films, reveals a more complex picture about contemporary patriotic culture in Russia. Adrienne M. Harris also considers recent Russian cinema, with a focus on three 2015 films. She too notes the inclusion of Holocaust themes in these films and explains the political purposes they serve. Whereas Soviet World War II films generally ignored the Holocaust, contemporary Russian films portray Jewish civilians as helpless victims—both to vilify the Nazis and their collaborators and to provide a contrast to the masculine strength of Red Army soldiers. Harris points out that the 2014 war in eastern Ukraine broke out while these films were in production. She concludes that cinema portraying Ukrainian collaborators’ persecution of Jews during World War II served to mobilize public sentiment behind Russian military intervention in Ukraine. World War II films offered Russian audiences both a model of heroic patriotism and an implicit warning about the danger of “fascists” today. Museums represent a quintessential site of memory, and in her chapter, Karen Petrone describes the “Russia – My History” Museum. “Russia – My History” has 23 branches in cities across the country, and each branch of the museum contains identical exhibits on the history of Russia from its origins to the present. Petrone argues that the museum seeks to define the Russian nation and places World War II memory at the center of its efforts. Depicting the war as the crucial moment of the 20th century, the museum reinforces canonical narratives of wartime heroism and unity. Echoing earlier chapters by Mann and Kucherenko, Petrone discusses how the museum depicts both Stalin’s role in the war and the (limited) American contribution to the war effort. She also analyzes the exhibit on recent history that interprets Putin’s safeguarding of World War II memory as a historical event in its own right—with the implication that Russians have found unity under the Putin regime just as they did during the war itself. Petrone concludes that “Russia – My History” weaves the story of the Second World War into an overarching narrative

Introduction  11 of Russian history, where unity is shown to be essential to protect the country against foreign foes. Taken together, the chapters in this volume demonstrate a remarkable continuity in the official memory of the Second World War. Despite a temporary decline in remembrance at the time of the Soviet collapse, war memory is still central to national identity and regime legitimacy in the Putin era. Even the master narrative of the war has remained strikingly constant. True, the Communist Party’s leading role has been removed from the story, the Holocaust is now included, and the Russian Orthodox Church has won a new place in war commemoration. But the same tale of invasion, heroism, unity, and triumph is still propagated by the government. Putin has revitalized the myth of the war to build patriotism, bolster international prestige, and legitimate his rule, much as Brezhnev did before him. The Putin government even relies on the same techniques and rituals of war commemoration as did the Soviet government. Indeed, another major contribution of this volume is to illustrate the mutually reinforcing means by which the myth of the war has been sustained. The Soviet government integrated the history of “the Great Patriotic War” into the school curriculum and reinforced it through literature, films, museums, monuments, and Victory Day celebrations. The Putin regime uses the same channels to perpetuate war memory, now with parades featuring the Immortal Regiment marching in place of veterans who have passed. The heroic war narrative resonates with the population in part due to decades of Soviet commemoration and education, which continued virtually uninterrupted into the post-Soviet period. The official memory of the war has not gone entirely uncontested. During Khrushchev’s Thaw, writer-veterans developed “lieutenants’ prose” that presented a still heroic but much grittier picture of warfare in the trenches. And as Brintlinger shows, some of these writers took advantage of the end of censorship in 1991 to reassess the war completely, concluding that it was not a triumph but instead a great tragedy. At the same time, some veterans remembered only the “heroic struggle,” not wartime slaughter and suffering, while others recalled some combination of official myths and personal experiences.27 Given the social nature of memory, it is not surprising that public remembrance deeply influenced people’s recollections of the war. As mentioned earlier, official commemorations bestowed coherence and meaning on wartime upheavals and casualties. Today, living memory of the war is rapidly vanishing, as there are few Russians still alive who witnessed the war. War commemoration, then, is no longer about shaping recollections but rather about instilling patriotism in subsequent generations. Challenges to the official narrative have come from historians and journalists, some of whom seek to debunk long-standing war myths in favor of a more complex, nuanced, and truthful account of the past. Yet given the Putin government’s consecration of World War II remembrance, it has become difficult— indeed illegal—for Russians to critically reevaluate the war effort. Not only have Russian authorities outlawed revisionist histories, but they have also redoubled their own memorialization efforts, particularly since the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

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Putin’s speeches, the Ministry of Culture’s patriotic war films, and “Russia – My History” Museum exhibits all fortify official war memory. Several contributors, however, raise doubts about the Putin regime’s continuing ability to impose its account of the war. Gone are the days when the Soviet government exercised complete control over information, through censorship and a monopoly on public media. Kucherenko notes the spread of new historical interpretations in the internet age, and Zhurzhenko reveals an increasing democratization of war memory in provincial cities. Wood asks, in the wake of recent foreign and domestic controversies, whether the cult of Putin and World War II has reached its limits. Norris describes audiences’ mixed reception of patriotic war films, while Petrone draws attention to historians’ critiques of museum exhibits. Because the Putin regime has deemed war commemoration essential to its ideology of Russian national unity, World War II memory remains an issue of enormous political importance and contestation. This volume addresses both the origins and the continued relevance of that memory in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia.

Notes 1 Putin, “The Real Lessons.” 2 Tumarkin, Living and the Dead, 29. 3 Yeltsin did reinstate the Victory Day military parade on a smaller scale in 1995, as well as opening Moscow’s Victory Park that year. See Davis, Mythmaking, 25; Wolfe, “Past as Present,” 277. 4 As quoted in Davis, Mythmaking, 20. 5 Putin, “The Real Lessons.” 6 Fedor, Lewis, and Zhurzhenko, “Introduction,” 5. See also Anton Weiss-Wendt’s chapter in this volume. 7 Fedor, Lewis, and Zhurzhenko, “Introduction,” 12. 8 Koposov, Memory Laws, chapter 6. 9 Trubina, “You See,” 25–27. 10 See Fedor, “Memory.” 11 Tumarkin, Living and the Dead, 35–36; Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege, 13. 12 See the chapter by Mischa Gabowitsch in this volume, as well as Levinson, “Voina kak proshloe.” 13 Walker, “Angels and Artillery.” The Cathedral is located at Patriot Park, a theme park with museums of military equipment and even a model of the German Reichstag building where participants have re-enacted the Battle of Berlin. 14 On this topic, see also Davis, Mythmaking. 15 Merridale, Ivan’s War, 10, 387. Merridale notes that veterans in all countries often find it impossible to recall or communicate the horrors of combat. See also Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege, 10–11. 16 Halbwachs, La Mémoire collective. 17 For further discussion, see Schacter, Searching for Memory. 18 Fogu and Kansteiner, “Politics of Memory,” 288. 19 Kirschenbaum, “World War II,” 99; Davis, Mythmaking, 17–23. 20 Winter and Sivan, “Introduction,” 6. 21 See Bucur, Heroes and Victims. Nancy Wood employs the term “public memory” to describe the intentionality of “some social group or disposition of power” in promoting particular representations of the past. Wood, Vectors of Memory, 2.

Introduction  13 22 Weiner, Making Sense of the War, 18. 23 A study of Soviet war memoirs found that in some ways they deviated from the official narrative of the war, but that in other ways they conformed to it. See Scheide, “Kollektivnye.” 24 Nora, ed., Les Lieux de mémoire. 25 Among the wealth of important scholarship on Western Europe are Winter, Sites of Memory; Mosse, Fallen Soldiers; Evans and Lunn, eds., War and Memory. On Eastern Europe, see Herf, Divided Memory; Bucur and Wingfield, eds., Staging the Past; Subotic, Yellow Star; Etkind, “Memory Events.” 26 Among the pioneering works in this field are Tumarkin, Living and the Dead; Weiner, Making Sense of the War; Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege; Davis, Mythmaking; Markwick, “Great Patriotic War.” Scholarship on Soviet war memory in films and literature includes Youngblood, Russian War Films; Chalmaev, Na voine ostatsia chelovekom. 27 Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege, 13.

Bibliography Bucur, Maria. Heroes and Victims: Remembering War in Twentieth-Century Romania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Bucur, Maria, and Nancy Wingfield, eds. Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2001. Chalmaev, Viktor. Na voine ostatsia chelovekom: Frontovye stranitsy russkoi prozy 60-90-kh godov. Moscow: Moskovskii universitet, 2000. Davis, Vicky. Mythmaking in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev’s Hero City. London: I. B. Tauris, 2018. Etkind, Alexander. “Memory Events in Transnational Space.” www.memoryatwar.org. Evans, Martin, and Ken Lunn, eds. War and Memory in the Twentieth Century. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1997. Fedor, Julie. “Memory, Kinship, and the Mobilization of the Dead: The Russian State and the ‘Immortal Regiment’ Movement.” In War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, edited by Julie Fedor et al. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Fedor, Julie, Simon Lewis, and Tatiana Zhurzhenko. “Introduction: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.” In War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, edited by Julie Fedor et al. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Fogu, Claudio, and Wulf Kansteiner. “The Politics of Memory and Poetics of History.” In The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, edited by Richard Ned Lebow et al. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Halbwachs, Maurice. La Mémoire collective. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1950. Herf, Jeffrey. Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Kirschenbaum, Lisa. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad: Myths, Memories, Monuments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ———. “World War II in Soviet and Post-Soviet Memory.” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 38 (2011): 97–103. Koposov, Nikolay. Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Levinson, A. 2015. “Voina kak proshloe i kak budushchee.” Neprikosnovennyi zapas 101 (3). Accessed November 14, 2016. http://nlobooks.ru/ node/6369.

14  David L. Hoffmann Markwick, Roger D. “The Great Patriotic War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Collective Memory.” In The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, edited by Dan Stone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Merridale, Catherine. Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–1945. New York: Picador, 2006. Mosse, George. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Nora, Pierre, ed. Les Lieux de mémoire, vol. 3. Paris: Gallimard, 1984. Putin, Vladimir. “The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II.” The National Interest, June 18, 2020. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ vladimir-putin-real-lessons-75th-anniversary-world-war-ii-162982. Schacter, D. Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past. New York: Basic Books, 1996. Scheide, Carmen. “Kollektivnye i individual’nye modeli pamiati o ‘velikoi otechestvennoi voine’ (1941–1945 gg.).” Ab Imperio 3 (2004): 1–26. Subotic, Jelena. Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Commemoration after Communism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. Trubina, Elena. “ ‘You See Now Just How Small All of You Are’: Rhetorical Spaces of Volgograd.” In Recalling the Past—(Re)constructing the Past, edited by Withold Bonner and Arja Roseholm. Jyväskylä, Finland: Aleksanteri Institute, 2008. Tumarkin, Nina. The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Walker, Shaun. “Angels and Artillery: A Cathedral to Russia’s New National Identity.” The Guardian, October 20, 2020. www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/20/orthodoxcathedral-of-the-armed-force-russian-national-identity-military-disneyland. Weiner, Amir. Making Sense of the War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Winter, Jay. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Winter, Jay, and Emmanuel Sivan. “Introduction.” In War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, edited by Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Wolfe, Thomas. “Past as Present, Myth, or History? Discourses of Time and the Great Fatherland War.” In The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, edited by Richard Ned Lebow et al. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Wood, Nancy. Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe. Oxford: Berg, 1999. Youngblood, Denise J. Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.

Part I

Soviet remembrance of the war

1 Wartime mobilizational strategies and the origins of Soviet war memory Jonathan Brunstedt

Krymov was feeling confused. He felt uncomfortable when political instructors praised Russian generals of past centuries. The way these generals were constantly mentioned in articles in Red Star grated on his revolutionary spirit. He couldn’t see the point of introducing the Suvorov medal, the Kutuzov medal and the Bogdan Khmelnitsky medal. The Revolution was the Revolution; the only banner its army needed was the Red Flag. —Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate1

In 1965, shortly after the Soviet Union celebrated the landmark 20th anniversary of victory in the Second World War, a group of anonymous Ukrainian writers and filmmakers sent a letter to the leadership of the Communist Party which pointed to two contrasting legacies of the war. First, the authors contended that the conflict had reinforced a sense of ethnic hierarchy among the multiethnic population—the inevitable result of the state’s wartime persecution of suspect ethnic minorities and near-continuous praise of the Russian people and their martial pedigree. This dynamic, the letter asserted, led to ethnic antagonism and widespread displays of Russian chauvinism after the war. It was not uncommon to “overhear such conversations”: “Only Russians can be trusted. The Russians endured all the hardships of the war both at the front and in the rear. It is not without reason that even Stalin was compelled to propose a toast to the Russian people.” Behind all this was the notion: “How good it is when you are a true Great Russian and not a national minority”. . . . And if before the war, we were unconcerned about our national origins, then after the war the question of nationality came to the fore, became natural, acquiring elements of suspicion and anxiety. At the same time, the letter underscored a second, more positive holdover from the war years. This was the unprecedented level of “international” cooperation among Soviet nations. Not only had the war improved unionwide proficiency in the Russian language as a method of “international communication,” but the phenomenon of Soviet peoples fighting alongside one another against a common

18  Jonathan Brunstedt enemy had also fostered a horizontal, supraethnic sense of identity that was previously lacking. This wartime tendency, the letter maintained, gave rise to a feeling that “the normal geographical and ethnographic borders [of the country] had been erased.” With the war’s public veneration now a core priority of the Communist Party, the letter’s authors considered it essential to draw the leadership’s attention to these dual legacies, which vied to define the nature and meaning of the war 20 years after its conclusion.2 The competing tendencies of Soviet war memory identified in the letter—an almost primordial sense of Russian exceptionalism on the one hand and “internationalist,” pan-Soviet solidarity on the other hand—derived in large part from unresolved ideological tensions embedded in wartime mobilization. Although mobilization involved a wide range of patriotic appeals, including those to Russian and “non-Russian” national histories and identities, pan-Slavism, the Orthodox Church, “home and hearth,” among others, Soviet media outlets gradually narrowed the range of acceptable propaganda themes.3 As the war entered its final year, two ideological lines dominated popular mobilization.4 The first, a Russian “historical-patriotic” line, emphasized the Soviet-German war’s connections to earlier, decidedly Russian patriotic conflicts. It was an ideological amalgam in that it blended “images of the Russian past . . . with those of the Soviet past and present.”5 That is, while it did not ignore the “Soviet” aspects of the war effort, it framed the prospect of victory over the Nazis as the latest in a centuries-long string of predominantly Russian military accomplishments. The proclamation made during the announcement of the German invasion that the ensuing struggle would be a “Great Patriotic War” reflected the historical-patriotic orientation of much wartime propaganda. The epithet recalled the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon’s invading Grande Armée, helping buttress later Soviet and post-Soviet notions that 1941–1945 constituted a uniquely Russian national triumph. At the same time, the party leadership fostered a parallel “Soviet” mobilizational line that was in many respects antithetical to the historical-patriotic theme.6 Where the latter merged Russian historical and Soviet socialist images within an overarching Russo-centric framework,7 the Soviet tendency cast the war as an achievement wholly without precedent, as the shared triumph of the Soviet people writ large rather than any “hierarchy of heroism.”8 The Soviet tendency stressed those aspects that distinguished the 1941–1945 war from Russian historical models and oriented the impending victory around postrevolutionary sources—for example, Soviet industrial might, Communist Party organization, Stalin’s cult, and socialist-inspired “friendship” between peoples. This notion, too, lived on in the decades after the war, offering authorities a postrevolutionary and “internationalist” counterpoise to the concurrent, Russian-dominated account of victory. This chapter examines incongruities between these two mobilizational lines, surveys efforts to reconcile them late in the war, and suggests how they went on to shape official conceptions of victory after 1945. The chapter first scrutinizes Russian historical-patriotic themes in wartime propaganda, arguing that this was an inconsistent aspect of a generally cacophonous and at times contradictory mobilizational agenda. Mobilization produced a set of competing ideological strands

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  19 that did not always cohere into a stable fusion of Marxism-Leninism and Russian national patriotism. As the chapter proposes, “Soviet” calls to arms increasingly worked to temper rather than meld with Russian historical-patriotic imagery. The chapter then turns to late-wartime attempts to reconcile these disparate mobilizational lines, which culminated in the “historians’ conference” of the summer of 1944. Finally, the chapter considers the aftermath of these efforts and contends that a fledgling myth of the war victory, which cast 1945 as an achievement without parallel, rendered possible only under conditions of socialism, coexisted uneasily with the late-Stalinist leadership’s wider veneration of the Russian people and their unique history. Ultimately, as the anonymous authors of the 1965 letter indicated earlier, these competing understandings of victory fueled tensions in the war’s official memory that Soviet authorities never fully resolved. *** At no time in the Soviet Union’s history was the Russian past more present than during the Second World War. As the Wehrmacht bore down on Moscow in November 1941, to cite one of the more famous examples, Stalin summoned the “great ancestors” of the Russian people before columns of Red Army troops readying to march to the front. From an open-air platform atop Lenin’s Mausoleum, the country’s leader urged the soldiers to “[l]et the heroic image of our great ancestors inspire you in this war—Aleksandr Nevskii, Dmitrii Donskoi, Kuz’ma Minin, Dmitrii Pozharskii, Aleksandr Suvorov, Mikhail Kutuzov.”9 Throughout the war, state propaganda continued to hold up Russian warriors and tsarist commanders as heroic models and predecessors. “You are not alone in this firestorm, Russian man,” wrote the playwright Leonid Leonov in July 1943: From the heights of history, you are being watched by the . . . wise Minin, the lion Aleksandr Suvorov, the illustrious Pushkin, the master Peter [the Great], Peresvet and Osliabia, who were the first to fall during the Battle of Kulikovo. In difficult moments, these stern Russian people, who brought together our country in bits and pieces, will guide you, even if you are alone among a host of enemies.10 Along with Leonov, writers such as Konstantin Simonov, Ilya Ehrenburg, Aleksei Tolstoi, and the poet Dem’ian Bednyi popularized the war’s association with past Russian military glory.11 This campaign not only revived selected aspects of the Russian past but also promoted and integrated non-Russian national histories within a broader, Russian-dominated historical framework.12 Of course, the leadership intended this historical emphasis to buttress postrevolutionary political authority and loyalties. The historical-patriotic line, therefore, tended to pair imagery of the Russian past with Soviet themes. Such ideological hybridity was already pronounced during the first months of the war. Placards depicting Russian and proto-Russian military commanders rallying Red Army soldiers to battle became a pillar of wartime iconography. And it was certainly not

20  Jonathan Brunstedt coincidental that Stalin chose the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution in November 1941 to invoke the great ancestors of the Russian people. This same speech pointed to the “banner of Lenin” and recalled the more immediate martial precedent of the Russian Civil War.13 The wartime adoption of a patriotic state hymn in place of the old “Internationale” can likewise be viewed as an attempt to blend notions of Russian greatness and benevolence in the past with Sovietera motifs. Introduced in January 1944, the new anthem began by alluding to “Great Rus’ ” which “united forever” [splotila naveki] the multinational population, before turning to imagery of Lenin, Stalin, and the “Soviet banner.”14 And yet, many observers recorded the presence of distinctly “Soviet” appeals, which often manifested as implicit rejections of the prerevolutionary lineage. The BBC’s wartime correspondent in Moscow, Alexander Werth, emphasized that together with symbolism associated with the Russian past, there persisted a rather discordant concern for “Leninist purity” and “Soviet-consciousness.” As he recalled, “There was below the surface something of a conflict at that time between ‘Holy Russia’ and the ‘Soviet Union.’ Sometimes compromises were reached between the two.”15 The British journalist Ralph Parker, who had been in Moscow since the war’s outbreak, discerned a similar incongruity between Russian and Soviet appeals. Parker writes that even amid the quite visible Russocentric turn in public culture, Russian man is “man as he is” while Soviet man is “man as he is in the process of becoming.” Parker observes: “Nowhere are the faults of the Russian nature, the ‘birth-marks of the past,’ so sharply criticized as in Soviet Russia itself.”16 Aleksandr Shcherbakov, the head of the Red Army’s Political Directorate and Soviet Information Bureau, purportedly balked during an interview when the journalist asked him about the traditional martial bravery of Russian men-at-arms: “Don’t talk to me about the Russian soul,” Shcherbakov retorted, “Let me recommend you to study the Soviet man.”17 Scholars have understandably devoted a great deal of attention to highlighting the ways mobilization merged Russian historical and Soviet socialist patriotic elements. However, it is useful to pursue this practice’s limitations and ambiguities. For it was the incongruities and tensions within wartime messaging that underpinned many later debates about the war’s representation. Particularly after the existential threat to the Soviet state subsided, authorities routinely enforced a tension between what were distinct historical-patriotic and Soviet mobilizational lines rather than a merger of the two.18 Indeed, from the first days of the war, alongside propaganda pairing Soviet socialist and Russian national themes stood an ideological line that emphasized historical rupture over continuity, horizontal rather than hierarchical allegiances, and the unprecedented rather than analogous nature of the war effort.19 Many early newspaper reports described a Soviet people bound not by any prerevolutionary heritage but by “moral and political unity,” “the red banner of liberation,” “the gains of October,” and “our glorious Bolshevik Party.”20 Together with press accounts highlighting pages from Russia’s thousand-year history were numerous others centered exclusively on “the course of the past twenty-three years,” when “our Soviet country became immeasurably stronger” and “the trials of conflict

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  21 demonstrated the invincibility of the Soviet system.”21 As Stalin declared in his radio address of July 3, 1941, the Soviet people were motivated by precisely those aspects of the Soviet project that distinguished it from its prerevolutionary forebear. The enemy “was out to restore the rule of the landlords, to restore tsarism . . . to convert [the Soviet people] into the slaves of German princes and barons.” It was necessary for “Bolshevik virtues” and the “chief virtues of Soviet men and women,” to be “acquired by the millions and millions of men of the Red Army [and] by all the peoples of the Soviet Union.”22 The evocative images produced in 1941 by the artist team Kukryniksy, which famously paired the “grandchildren of Suvorov” and the “children of Chapaev,” contrasted equally prolific Soviet visions of Lenin or Stalin urging on an army of homogeneous citizen-soldiers under the banner of socialism,23 as well as those featuring cross-ethnic friendship,24 the Russian Civil War, and successes in Soviet industry.25 By the second half of 1942, as the linguistic and ideological challenges associated with the mass recruitment of troops from Central Asia and the Caucuses were becoming clear, the Soviet tendency often tempered the prevailing hierarchical view of Russians as the Soviet Union’s “first among equals.”26 To this end, articles and published letters in the central press at times advanced a lateral rather than vertical sense of patriotic loyalty: “Russians alongside Ukrainians and Belarusians, next to Uzbeks, Georgians, Armenians, Azeris, along with the sons of the entire multinational Soviet state.” Ethno-territorial borders, according to this narrative, mattered little in comparison to the Union as a whole: “In fierce battles in Stalingrad, near Leningrad, in the Caucasus . . . the blood of Russians and Uzbeks, Ukrainians and Tajiks, Belarusians, Azeris, Georgians . . . is mixed.” It was not explicitly the Russian people that this Soviet line urged the country to rally around but rather “the Bolshevik Party and the great military leader Comrade Stalin.” This Soviet sense of patriotic identity did not dissipate at the borders of one’s republic but extended throughout “the common Soviet motherland” [obshchei sovetskoi materi-rodiny]: “Stalingrad—from it, rays [of light] beam to all corners of the Soviet Union . . . to it, run roads from all Soviet republics. In Stalingrad, the son of the Russian people is defending his Russia, the son of the Georgian people, his Georgia, the Uzbek—his Uzbekistan. . . . They are inseparable from one another.”27 While the relative strength of the Soviet line vis-à-vis historical-patriotic messaging is difficult to gauge, it is clear that certain mobilizational spheres privileged Soviet themes. One important measure of this trend are programs detailing the anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution in the years after the famous 1941 jubilee. The complete list of thematic priorities for the 25th anniversary in 1942 is instructive. Authorities ordered central and local newspapers to adhere to the following topics: “the Party of Lenin-Stalin—organizer and leader in the struggle for the freedom and independence of our motherland”; “the friendship of the peoples”; “the great strength of the collective farm system”; “the Red Army in the struggle for the great achievements of October”; “socialist industry in wartime”; and “Stalinist five-year plans and the strengthening of the military might of the Soviet state.”28 Other media outlets were instructed to follow suit and maintain

22  Jonathan Brunstedt focus on the Soviet era and its achievements rather than dredging up the tsarist past, although film production was given somewhat more leeway. Among 20 proposed films, two dealt with prerevolutionary figures or events.29 The emphasis on postrevolutionary imagery was even starker in the reported public addresses of Stalin and other high-ranking officials on the October Revolution anniversaries in 1942, 1943, and 1944. Absent were references to the great ancestors; even the role of Russians as first among equals was carefully omitted.30 In place of Russian heroes of old, what dominated public discourse in the month surrounding the festivities were the achievements of the preceding quarter century.31 In his comprehensive study of Soviet wartime propaganda, Karel Berkhoff observes that public acclaim of the Soviet system began to appear from late 1943.32 In fact, a full year earlier, during the days of the revolutionary celebration, Stalin was extolling “the strength and durability of the Soviet system,” which included “[s]ocialist industry, the kolkhoz system, [and] the friendship of the peoples of our country.”33 “What is the basis of the strength and durability of the Soviet Union?” asked a Pravda editorial earlier the same year. “The durability and might of our state . . . is found in the truly popular character of the Soviet system, in the victory of socialism in the USSR, in the boundless love of the peoples of the Soviet Union for their socialist motherland, in the correct line of the leadership of the country, which is guided by the Bolshevik Party.”34 As with the revolutionary jubilees, anniversary dates marking significant moments from the present war underscored the Soviet system as the embodiment of a “new historical epoch.”35 Looming victory signified less a demonstration of the well-proven martial pedigree of Russians than a trial by fire of an altogether new fighting entity, capable of surpassing its enemies “in economic development and organization.”36 The groundwork for success in the war lay in the immediate rather than distant past: “During the years of Stalinist Five-Year Plans, the Soviet people built more than Russia had done over the course of many centuries. And in this war, when the German fascists are wreaking havoc, the Soviet people continue to build.”37 This theme became one of the primary rallying cries directed at those brought up after the revolution. Leaflets distributed behind enemy lines in late 1942 urged Soviet young people to “[r]emember how we lived in the years before the war. Our people, and especially our young people, reaped the fruits of [the Bolsheviks’] struggle and labor in full.” The Germans “designed to take away this new life from us. . . . One idea, one feeling, one desire permeates all activities of Soviet youth—to defend the gains of October.”38 The idea that wartime mobilization involved holding historical-patriotic and Soviet-oriented propaganda in uneasy tension with one another rather than fusing them into a single, dominant ideological line might explain the frequent high-level statements that either downplayed or signaled ambivalence toward Russian historical-patriotic analogies. Although the published text of Molotov’s June 1941 radio address announcing the German invasion referred to Napoleon’s defeat, declaring the “same will happen to arrogant Hitler,” Stalin’s own mention of the Napoleon analogy, published during the 1941 celebration of the October Revolution, was critical of such comparisons.39 “Reference is made to

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  23 Napoleon,” observed Stalin, “and it is said that Hitler is acting like him, that he resembles Napoleon in every way.” “But,” he added, “Hitler no more resembles Napoleon than a kitten resembles a lion (laugher, applause). For Napoleon fought against the forces of reaction and relied on progressive forces, whereas Hitler, on the contrary, relies on the forces of reaction and fights the forces of progress.”40 The following year, in his report on the 25th anniversary of the revolution, Stalin again contrasted the two Patriotic wars: “The German invasion of our country is often compared to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. But this comparison does not hold up to scrutiny. . . . [T]here are now over three million troops facing the Red Army, armed with all the tools of modern warfare. How can there be a comparison here?”41 Cultural productions also sometimes used the analogy with 1812 to draw contrasts rather than parallels. Although the most famous piece of visual propaganda recalling Napoleon’s ill-fated invasion repeated Molotov’s warning to Hitler, the poster’s artwork echoed Stalin’s negative assessment of the analogy. Napoleon’s noble shadow looms in the background of a feeble Hitler dressed as a poor imitation of the French conqueror. In 1941, the historian E. V. Tarle drafted a treatise titled The Two Patriotic Wars in which he argued that if Napoleon, “the greatest general in world history,” could be defeated on Russian soil, then so too could the “pathetic adventurer” Adolf Hitler.42 Taking his cues from Stalin, Tarle increasingly contraposed the experiences of the two wars.43 A short film coproduced by TASS and Mosfilm titled The Lion and the Kitten depicted Napoleon dressed as the titular lion intercepting a kitten-clad Hitler on his way to Moscow. “If I, a lion, was defeated and driven out,” Napoleon warns, “then you, a kitten, shall be ground into dust.” Ignoring Napoleon’s word of caution, Hitler arrives at Moscow only to be defeated and chased from Soviet territory. A final title card then reiterates Stalin’s kitten and lion statement.44 After 1942, comparisons with the 1812 Patriotic War were sporadic and increasingly removed from their Russian context. Stalin’s final wartime reference to Napoleon, for instance, came after the Allies’ long-awaited cross-channel invasion. Stalin noted that both Napoleon and Hitler had boasted of their forces’ ability to transport and land an invasion force across the English Channel. In reality, however, “[o]nly the British and American forces have been able to honorably accomplish the ambitious plan of crossing the channel and effecting a mass landing of troops.”45 At nearly every turn after 1942, the party’s highest echelons dampened pleas to push the link with the Russian martial past further than was necessary to achieve victory.46 Stalin seems to have rejected calls to promote the experiences of veterans of tsarist conflicts like the Russo-Japanese War and First World War, which were within living memory, not because these were Russian defeats but because of their association with the tsarist regime.47 The party leadership also resisted proposals for the new patriotic national anthem that directly linked the USSR to tsarist antecedents, such as the draft submitted by S. Kirsanov, which proclaimed: “Since distant times our state/Remembers the glory of the Petrine banners,/The pride of Russia—the year [18]12.”48 Far from reviving tsarist or

24  Jonathan Brunstedt Russian nationalist themes,49 the introduction of the new anthem in January 1944 was, as Aleksandr Dubrovskii summarizes, a case where “the revolutionary tendency overcame the tendency to resurrect pre-October values.”50 Likewise, once the existential threat to the USSR was at an end, the party rejected various plans to issue new military awards based on illustrious prerevolutionary figures. Patterned on military orders named for Nevskii, Suvorov, and Kutuzov established in 1942, officials abandoned initiatives for decorations bearing the names Peter the Great and the 19th-century guerilla leader Denis Davydov among others.51 Such ideological tension created obvious seams where the grafting of prerevolutionary and Soviet imagery did occur. As the ideologist D. Zaslavskii explained late in the war, propaganda utilizing the Russian national past necessitated only a perfunctory link with the Soviet era, if any at all. Zaslavskii pointed to Stalin’s “great ancestors” speech as a case in point. For Zaslavskii, the mere “joining” [prisoedinenie] of these names to the words “the great banner of Lenin” in the concluding section of the speech sufficiently demonstrated the “practical expression of the harmonious union of national traditions with the vital interests of working people.”52 In this vein, mass-produced and widely consumed historical biographies of great Russian military commanders issued by the State Publishing House typically added brief addendums to the works regarding the present war with Germany, with little in the way of ideological harmonization. Indeed, these addendums sometimes drew contrasts between epochs.53 One 1944 radio broadcast devoted to extolling the triumphs of Russian warriors since the time of the Mongols concluded with an abrupt turn to the present that seemed to distance the Great Patriotic War from conflicts that predated the Revolution. In this case, the speaker, K. V. Vasil’evich, closed his report by clarifying that the present war was “the most just war in history” not because it was being waged by Russians but only “because it protects the Soviet land, the Soviet system, the happiness and future of generations to come.”54 The historian E. N. Burdzhalov, who at the time served as a frontline lecturer, opened a 1944 article on the course of the war by pointing out the Russian people’s age-old legacy as protectors of European civilization. Burdzhalov followed this historical exposition with a sudden change of tenor that characterized the remainder of the piece: “In our time, in the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union against Hitlerite Germany, the Soviet people saved humanity from the enslavement of fascism . . . because it is supported by the powerful socialist system and is led by the Bolshevik Party and its wise leader, Comrade Stalin.”55 How the Soviet public received the multivalent official messaging is, of course, a separate question. Examinations of the popular reception of wartime propaganda and mass culture suggest that Russian-speaking Soviet people often internalized patriotic themes in a way that conflated prerevolutionary with Soviet imagery and the USSR with “Russia.”56 Others have contended that, outside the intelligentsia, the response was more mixed.57 The important point is that by limiting most positive associations with the Russian national past to crude juxtapositions, the leadership could, with minimal ideological adjustment, pivot to exploiting the Soviet epoch and its achievements as a distinct theme. Indeed, by 1944 a number

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  25 of leading ideologues were calling for the Soviet mobilizational line to take precedence over other ideological tendencies in the emerging official narrative of the war victory. *** The Red Army’s success in driving the bulk of the Wehrmacht from Soviet territory signaled a change in priorities; cultural and political elites turned from the task of mobilizing society by any means necessary to the work of political consolidation. Part of this effort involved slowing the campaign celebrating the prerevolutionary military pedigree of non-Russian peoples. From 1944 into the postwar period, the Central Committee issued multiple condemnations of works of history, literature, and art, and opened investigations into the ideological conduct of several party organs in non-Russian territories.58 Most notably, the once lauded History of the Kazakh SSR, edited by the historian A. M. Pankratova and M. A. Abdykalykov, ran afoul of authorities in mid-1944 for its positive depiction of Kazakh resistance to tsarist encroachments.59 Historians have generally viewed this process as emblematic of the state’s growing support for Russian preeminence that would go on to define the postwar era. By permitting the celebration of Russia’s pre-socialist history and culture but precluding such forays by non-Russians, Serhy Yekelchyk writes that the new policy amounted to “re-educating the peoples of the USSR to identify with the Soviet present and the Russian imperial past.”60 However, in the party discussions, resolutions, and ideological texts produced in 1944 and 1945, the war narrative emerges as something of a counterpoint to this trend of Russian historical exceptionalism. Moscow’s attempt to tighten the reins of ideological discipline also involved instilling a “correct” grasp of the war’s “Soviet” dimensions and a corresponding turn away from even many of the Russian historical analogies that the regime had deployed to great effect. More so than in 1941–1943, official treatments of the war began to home in on the postrevolutionary aspects of the impending victory. This shift in emphasis was largely connected to reports that Russian-speaking citizens were interpreting the historical-patriotic line in ways that elided all political context.61 In the words of one 1944 report, some otherwise loyal citizens appeared to be reading historicalpatriotic themes as evidence that the Soviet system was “unsatisfactory” and socialist ideology “outdated.”62 It was in an environment of reasserting ideological and political controls late in the war that the early myth of the war victory began to take shape. The idea that the war narrative itself could serve as an effective conduit for the Soviet line, and by extension provide an ideological corrective to excessively historical popular understandings of Soviet patriotism, was evident from oblast reports assessing the introduction of courses on the war into higher education curricula in 1942–1943. According to the summary provided by the Sverdlovsk district secretary, students responded enthusiastically to the war as a topic of study, “asking questions in lectures and seminars of such a vast quantity, [it was] like

26  Jonathan Brunstedt nothing ever seen from the course on the foundations of Marxism-Leninism.”63 Drawing on these and other indicators, Aleksandrov issued a major Agitprop memo in March 1944 calling for a return to “the history of the Soviet period,” which “has completely disappeared” from historical scholarship and instruction. The memo went on to criticize established social science teaching methods in universities and institutes, which were giving a “dry, abstract, and dogmatic account of Marxist-Leninist science  .  .  . without including specific historical material, without organically linking Marxist-Leninist science with modernity, with the [Great] Patriotic War.”64 Aleksandrov apparently saw in the war narrative a means of coupling patriotism and Marxist-Leninist principles without having to package the latter in Russian historical-patriotic imagery. The memo is significant for setting off a debate between two factions of party historians, both of which, in Aleksandrov’s view, advanced erroneous historical interpretations. These included, on one side, those who depicted Russia before 1917 solely through the lens of tsarist colonial policy without properly acknowledging the progressive role of the Russian people and its various luminaries—criticism that extended to the editors of History of the Kazakh SSR among others. No less flawed were productions suffering from “anti-Marxist, bourgeois views,” which implied an overzealous celebration of pre-socialist Russia and the “tendency to deny the role of class struggle as the driving force” of historical development.65 Throughout the first half of 1944, defenders of these two historiographical tendencies dug in and clashed over the nature of the revolutionary divide, most famously in a conference sponsored by the Central Committee that summer. Largely seen as inconclusive given the ambivalent official response, these clashes in fact helped solidify a version of the war narrative that presented victory as an exclusively postrevolutionary and supraethnic achievement. The historians’ conference resulting from Aleksandrov’s memo has been the subject of much scholarly debate. While some view the whole affair as a last gasp of resistance to an ascendant Russian historical-patriotic line, others point out the persistence after the conference of a Marxist-Leninist framework beyond which historians could not stray.66 At first glance, conceptions of the war articulated during the conference seem to follow the more general interpretative fault line. “Internationalists,” such as Anna Pankratova and her supporters, envisaging the USSR as “not a continuum but the negation of the ‘one and indivisible’ Russia,” advocated the war as a purely Soviet feat, while certain historians of the prerevolutionary generation, such as Aleksei Iakovlev and Boris Grekov, were more ambivalent, proclaiming that “the Russian people in this noble endeavor belong in the first order.”67 Yet the most significant voices at the conference insofar as the emerging victory myth was concerned were the “centrists” who pointed to positive and negative aspects of both factions. These participants’ evenhandedness usually amounted to praising certain features of pre-socialist Russia and the Russian people’s role in the creation of the USSR, while isolating victory in the war as an event possible only in a postrevolutionary and pan-Soviet context. For instance, Isaak Mints, the head of the Commission on the History of the Great Patriotic War, criticized

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  27 the wartime emphasis on ethno-historical heroism. For Mints, Germany’s defeat derived exclusively from Soviet sources. Mints went on to cite a 1943 work based on the exploits of the young Chechen soldier Khanpasha Nuradilov. Mints noted that the Chechen hero of Machine-Gunner Khanpasha embodied the ideal Soviet citizen-soldier: “He grew up in our environment, was educated under Soviet power, under our nurturing. What could be better? It’s possible to show what Soviet authority did for the upbringing of such heroes. . . . [I]t’s possible to say what Soviet power means for such peoples.” However, to the dismay of Mints, the author provided Khanpasha with unnecessary additional inspiration by suggesting that the young Chechen was “continuing the traditions of the [18th century Chechen resistance leader] Sheikh Mansur.”68 It is, of course, doubtful whether Mints would have castigated a Russian soldier for “continuing the traditions” of his prerevolutionary forebears. Nevertheless, Mints exemplified a view held by the majority of conference speakers that explanations for the approaching war victory need not be tied to themes and developments before the revolution. The Russophile historians conceded this point. Nikolai Derzhavin, the author of a number of patriotic historical texts, distinguished between the narrowly Russian patriotism expressed by some writers, which, he added, was based on “old legends of the landowners and bourgeoisie,” and Soviet patriotism exhibited during the Great Patriotic War. For Derzhavin, the latter was solely the “brainchild of the October Socialist Revolution.”69 Aleksei Efimov took issue with historical comparisons between earlier conflicts, especially 1812, and the current war with Germany, since only the latter postdated the construction of socialism’s foundations and hence embodied a socialist unity “unprecedented in history.”70 Even Evgenii Tarle, the most prominent of the old-school historians, seemed to acknowledge the Soviet roots of victory. In a heated exchange with Pankratova, in which she criticized Tarle’s argument that the Soviet Union’s ability to withstand the German invasion derived from tsarist-era expansionism, Tarle rather sheepishly responded that while it is advantageous to be a large country at war, this was a “minor” factor in the current conflict. In the unfolding victory over Germany, Tarle allowed, the main element “is not territory, but other factors.”71 Shcherbakov, who had been chairing the session, apparently offered a rare nod of agreement favoring Pankratova’s critique of Tarle.72 The concluding document based on the conference proceedings was never published.73 Known after its author as the “Zhdanov theses,” the text is significant for what it reveals about high-level thinking on the meaning and nature of victory. By striking a middle path, calling for a fight “on two fronts,” Zhdanov essentially reiterated the centrists’ position. The Russian nation had produced great cultural and revolutionary figures. Its working class had “led the peoples of the USSR to create the most advanced social system, the Soviet system.” And yet, Zhdanov was clear on the significance of the war. Its course had epitomized the achievements of the postrevolutionary age and the fulfillment of the new Soviet patriotism. Drawing selectively from Stalin’s wartime statements, Zhdanov’s analysis of victory centered on Stalin’s speech from November 1943 extolling the Soviet system as “the best form of organization” in wartime. Not that the “great ancestors”

28  Jonathan Brunstedt were absent from the theses. Rather, they were parsed out of Zhdanov’s discussion of the nature of the war and repurposed to demonstrate the Soviet state’s more general respect for national histories and traditions. The theses, therefore, did not seek to impose a dominant Russian historical-patriotic line but rather balanced a Soviet-oriented framing of the Great Patriotic War with a Russo-centric account of the prerevolutionary and early Soviet periods. That is, it sought to temper hierarchical ethnic diversity in the past with a vision of lateral friendship and postrevolutionary loyalties rooted in the experience of 1941–1945.74 It is unclear precisely why Zhdanov’s theses remained unpublished and resulted in no sweeping resolution on historiographical matters.75 Echoes of the historians’ meeting and the theses abounded, however, in official considerations of the unfolding Soviet victory. Shortly after the conference, an important Central Committee journal published an article criticizing interpretations of the war that did not highlight its Soviet quality. “Unfortunately, not all of our propagandists fully realize how important it now is to constantly explain the principles on which our system is based,” the article explained. “[O]nly the presence of the Soviet socialist state—with its public ownership of the means of production, with its kolkhoz system, with its monopoly on foreign trade, with its friendship of the peoples—could save humanity from enslavement by German fascism.” The article explicitly condemned explanations for victory that looked to tsarist precedents. Such views “belittle the role of the Soviet state, the role of the socialist system born of the October Revolution, without which Russia inevitably would have been pillaged to pieces.”76 Shcherbakov restated these ideas during the September Plenum of the Moscow Party Committee.77 In October, an article in the Red Army’s main propaganda journal was more explicit. Almost as a concession, the article acknowledged Russians’ historical contributions on the battlefield against Mongols, Teutonic Knights, Swedes, and the French. “But,” the author asserted, “the patriotism of the pre-Soviet period remained historically limited”: “In a society consisting of antagonistic classes, Marxism-Leninism teaches that only under especially favorable historical conditions can patriotic sentiment unite all sections of society for anything like an extended period.” It was only during the most recent war that a “new patriotism,” “born together with the appearance of the new Soviet system,” achieved an unprecedented level of “strength and depth” within society.78 The same month, A. Solodovnikov, writing in the journal Bolshevik, lambasted propagandists’ uncritical scouring of “negative, conservative, or irrelevant” aspects of the pre-socialist age. This included the study of Russia’s “glorious traditions” and the way their “relationship to Soviet culture is sometimes substituted with all-out restoration, with the attempt to revive everything [from the Russian past], good and bad.”79 The prevailing view of the war as an event dissociated from any prerevolutionary lineage was unequivocal during a meeting of Pravda ideologists in February 1945. Almost universally, the discussants identified the patriotism associated with the war as possible only in a postrevolutionary guise. Several commentators even alluded to the patriotic veneration of iconography associated with “great ancestors” as being outdated. The speaker Kornblium, for instance, contended

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  29 that such an archaic brand of patriotic sentiment would soon “die out” as the current generation studies the “labor heroism” exhibited in the current war. Another speaker, Kiriushkin, warned of the unbridled revival of the names Nevskii, Suvorov, and Kutuzov in texts and the titles of military honors. Although these figures “inspire our soldiers,” Soviet patriotism represented the ability to disentangle their heroic qualities from their social and political context: “We must not forget,” Kiriushkin urged, “that prerevolutionary Russia . . . was not the fatherland of the working people. . . . We must not forget to distinguish the best from the worst, and the contradiction that is the history of our country.”80 Evidently swayed by the course of the discussion, the meeting’s organizer, Pravda chief editor and ideologue Petr Pospelov, reasserted the unprecedented character of the unfolding victory. Pospelov had originally proposed that the Great Patriotic War represented the third in a successive string of victorious wars waged in defense of the homeland, following the war against Napoleon and the Russian Civil War.81 During the conference, several speakers made forceful arguments that such comparisons with past wars were unwarranted due to the differing bases upon which the patriotisms of each emerged. Kiriushkin’s comments are instructive: “I think it is not enough to say that Soviet patriotism is a new and higher stage of patriotism. This is quite true, of course, but it seems to me . . . that the qualities found in Soviet patriotism are completely new. . . . Our Soviet patriotism was developed on the basis of a radical change in the class structure of our society.” Kiriushkin maintained that since the last remnants of exploiting classes had been declared defeated during the 17th Party Congress in 1934, the proletariat “now has a fatherland. . . . It is precisely during this [Great] Patriotic War against the German invaders that we are defending our very own socialist fatherland.” This was enough for Pospelov, who dropped entirely his earlier comparative framework. Victory in the present war, the Pravda head concluded, depended most of all on a patriotism without precedent, underpinned by the Soviet system and the “inspirational and organizational role of our glorious Bolshevik Party.”82 Pospelov would publicly reiterate this consensus on multiple occasions in the war’s immediate aftermath.83 Between February and April 1945, it was no longer requisite to draw even opaque connections between eras. Hairsplitting over the truly unprecedented nature of wartime patriotism not only pervaded the speeches of high-level political figures but also impacted local and frontline agitation.84 In April, a worker for the newspaper Izvestiia, V. A. Khmelevskii, issued instructions on “the essence of Soviet patriotism” in a private correspondence with the editor of the frontline newspaper Suvorovets. Khmelevskii criticized a lead Suvorovets article in which the author, describing a soldier’s particularly daring feat, had not distinguished between service to one’s “motherland” [rodina] and service to the “Soviet motherland” [rodina sovetskaia]. By not using the signifier “Soviet,” the author had made a grave error since the two concepts differed markedly. Such seemingly minor clarification was anything but trivial for Khmelevskii. “Is it necessary,” he asked, for Suvorovets “to operate with less than perfect ideological depth when something more perfect has been created?”85

30  Jonathan Brunstedt Despite the growing number of calls to differentiate Soviet patriotism from the prerevolutionary variety, this was not an explicit policy prescription but rather manifested from vague signals “from above.” Many propagandists continued to promote the historical-patriotic line throughout 1944–1945. Others were perplexed by the apparent divide between historical-patriotic and “Soviet” mobilizational strategies. One Lecture Bureau official, observing a thematic division of labor between historical- and contemporary-themed subject matter, called for the creation of a “coordination committee” within his organization. Speaking during a meeting on May 24, 1945, the official argued that such a committee could assist in merging modern and historical themes in public lectures. “I repeat,” he added, “this [would be] a union of two tendencies” [smychka po dvum napravleniiam].86 The lecturer’s call to bring together what he considered to be two distinct wartime “tendencies” at an organizational level—heroic models from the Russian past and the martial feats accomplished under the aegis of Soviet socialism—received an indirect bit of support from Stalin several hours later. That evening, Stalin delivered a remarkable address before the assembled party and state leadership—his famed victory toast, in which he singled out the Russian people as the USSR’s “most outstanding nation,” crediting it as the “decisive force” in the recent victory over fascism.87 Among members of the political and ideological establishment, victory had engendered the notion of a patriotism without precedent, made possible by the Revolution and resulting Soviet system, the leadership of Stalin and the Party, and a supranational patriotic identity. In the aftermath of Stalin’s victory toast, this idea would compete with an official embrace of all things Russian. *** Distinguishing between Soviet and pre-Soviet patriotisms continued to preoccupy ideologists well after the war.88 Indeed, Stalin’s widely publicized toast did not establish an unambiguously dominant line on the war’s memory. Stalin himself vacillated between the Soviet and historical-patriotic narratives while references to his victory toast disappeared from Pravda’s lead Victory Day commemorative articles throughout the late 1940s. Observing such fluctuations, the Moscow Party Secretary Georgii Popov complained in 1947 that “[w]e have nothing to say about Russia. We talk about the Soviet Union, about Moscow, but where is Russia, where are the Russian people?”89 Of course, by the early 1950s, Popov could have pointed to any number of monuments that linked the war to prerevolutionary Russian antecedents. Most famously, the architect A. V. Shchusev designed the interior of Moscow’s Komsomol’skaia metro station, unveiled in January 1952, as the embodiment of Stalin’s 1941 “great ancestors” speech, with a series of mosaics linking past Russian feats of arms with the Stalin-led victory of 1945.90 It was not until Stalin’s death and subsequent denunciation that ideologists again turned to the task of reconciling historical-patriotic and Soviet accounts of

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  31 the war. Sometimes this involved the rejection of the historical-patriotic imagery of the war years in favor of a purely Soviet interpretation of victory. Following a spate of official pronouncements between 1953 and 1956 emphasizing the primacy of Soviet-era patriotic themes,91 party historians took aim at the wartime “idealization” of the great ancestors. During a historians’ conference in early 1956, for example, one of the discussants complained that wartime mobilization had taken Russian historical personalities out of context: Suvorov, Kutuzov, Nakhimov, and others were brilliant military leaders and naval commanders, but one should not attribute to them political views that were alien to them and to which they could by no means adhere. It is known that Suvorov commanded the soldiers who suppressed Pugachev’s Rebellion. Suvorov participated in the wars of the Second Coalition against France. This coalition was of a counter-revolutionary nature.92 Such negative appraisals of the state’s co-option of Russian national-patriotic themes and images during the war generally squared with official commemorations and pronouncements. Leonid Brezhnev’s May Ninth addresses during the late-socialist war cult, for instance, focused exclusively on the Soviet sources of victory and a lateral, pan-Soviet vision of patriotic identity. His 20th-anniversary report in 1965, which proclaimed that the “chief hero of the Great Patriotic War was the entire close-knit family of peoples of our country,” further broke with Stalin-era precedents by listing Soviet nationalities, who “rose as one person to defend their country,” by population size rather than according to supposed wartime contributions.93 At the same time, aspects of the historical-patriotic line persisted. Although designers replaced Stalin with Lenin in the Komsomol’skaia station’s central interior mosaic, the “great ancestors” imagery remained. Local commemorations and military-patriotic activities also occasionally played up the links between the Soviet war victory and prerevolutionary Russian military glory.94 Press accounts of a Komsomol commemorative rally in the city of Tula in 1985 drew a direct link between the Great Patriotic War and the 1380 Battle of Kulikovo Field, which had become an important source of local pride. In general, however, such explicit conflations of the past and present were atypical of post-Stalinist commemorations.95 Official histories, which could not avoid addressing the historical-patriotic orientation of wartime propaganda, generally sought to contextualize such imagery with adjoining passages emphasizing the overriding Soviet nature of mobilization. This was the case with the official multivolume history of the war, completed in 1965. The editors of the second volume, which covered the early period of the war, cited Stalin’s “great ancestors” speech as an important component of the campaign to highlight “the glorious pages of the history of the Russian people.” However, the editors balanced this historical-patriotic speech with additional text stressing the primacy of Soviet factors. By “paying tribute to the heroic past

32  Jonathan Brunstedt of our Motherland, by drawing historical parallels,” the text went on, the Soviet leadership emphasized with all their might that the enemy was now dealing with the Soviet people, with the new, socialist Russia, whose strength has increased tenfold since the Great October Revolution. The main thrust of journalism involved articles and essays . . . that educated the Soviet people in the spirit of devotion to the socialist Fatherland, urging perseverance and fearlessness. The idea of defending the Soviet Motherland became the main theme of all [wartime] literature.96 While the official history clearly privileged the Soviet over the historical-patriotic, readers were essentially free to draw their own conclusions. As during the war, the two ideological lines remained in tension with one another as the USSR entered late socialism. It was amid the waning of the Soviet epoch that the tensions of the war’s memory became a matter of sustained public debate. One of the catalysts had been the appearance in print of Vasily Grossman’s long-suppressed masterpiece Life and Fate in the USSR in 1988. The novel’s publication generated a great deal of public discussion about the legacies of Stalinism and the war at a time when the state was actively encouraging historians and opinion journalists to shed light on the “blank spots” of Soviet history. Among the novel’s major themes, as emphasized at the time by the critics V. Kulish and V. Oskotskii, were the evident contradictions between “national and international, patriotic and revolutionary traditions, their role and significance in the war.” Both critics interpreted Grossman’s novel as an indictment of the historical-patriotic line: Stalin turned not to the revolutionary, but to the national traditions of the Russian people. . . . It cannot be ruled out that the promotion of Russian military traditions by way of examples of great commanders of the past was more intelligible for the masses. However, this does not change the fact that such a formulation belittled and immobilized revolutionary, internationalist traditions which had developed in the struggle for socialism. Where Grossman’s earlier novel Stalingrad [Za pravoe delo] had hewed to the message of Stalin’s victory toast, Life and Fate by contrast pointed precisely to the toast’s “negative consequences.” The two critics came away from the novel convinced of Grossman’s disdain for the “attempt to elevate one people over another, to separate it from the common community of nations,” which “contradicted the very nature of the war.” “Fortunately,” they concluded, “such attempts at that time were neither decisive nor universal.”97 *** Wartime mobilization produced a set of contrasting ideological currents that went on to influence the war’s later official representation. During the war,

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  33 distinct historical-patriotic and Soviet ideological lines remained in tension with one another. By 1944, many leading ideologists were advancing the Soviet mobilizational tendency as the foundation of the fledgling official victory narrative. Although Stalinist authorities never explicitly repudiated this Soviet conception of the war, recollections of wartime Russo-centric pronouncements and policies, Stalin’s victory toast, and the wider celebration of Russian history and culture after May 1945 imbued the war’s memory with lasting tensions, even contradictions. On the one hand, these tensions enabled the post-Stalinist party leadership to spin the victory narrative in a way that legitimated the revolutionary metanarrative, the Soviet economic system, Communist Party authority, and that presented the multiethnic Soviet people as a lateral community of equal socialist nations. On the other hand, nationalist-oriented writers and critics, historical preservationists, and many national-patriotic party activists would play on these tensions to revive the idea that 1945 constituted a uniquely Russian achievement; that it was the natural extension of past Russian military glory. As indicated by the anonymous letter to the Central Committee that opened this chapter, these tensions were apparent even if they were not publicly acknowledged before the late 1980s. In postmillennial Russia, the resurgence of a myth of the Great Patriotic War has derived, in part, from a government-led campaign to promote a positive and unifying sense of Russian historical memory. But the war’s resonance in Russia today is also, perhaps overwhelmingly, the result of decades of Soviet-era mythmaking. As the present-day political leadership struggles to craft a coherent national mythology of the war, one that is both inclusive of and appealing to the multiethnic population, while still recognizably “Russian,” it is navigating tensions that had characterized the Soviet victory myth from its inception.

Notes 1 Grossman, Life and Fate, 426. 2 RGANI 5/30/462/204-215. On the rise of the late-socialist war cult from the mid1960s, see especially Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead; Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege; Davis, Myth Making; Edele, Soviet Veterans. 3 On wartime mobilization and its impact on popular loyalties, see, for example, Carmack, Kazakhstan in World War II; Schechter, The Stuff of Soldiers; Enstad, Soviet Russians; Peri, The War Within; Edele, Stalin’s Defectors; Budnitskii, “The Great Patriotic War and Soviet Society,” 767–98; Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger; Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought; Maddox, “These Monuments Must Be Protected!”; Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 115–82; Brooks, Thank You, Comrade Stalin, 159–94; Kirschenbaum, “Our City, Our Hearths, Our Families,” 825–47; Brody, Ideology and Political Mobilization. 4 On the waning of other, particularly non-Russian mobilizational themes, see Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 115–32; Carmack, “History and Hero-Making,” 102–7; Shin, “Red Army Propaganda,” 39–63. 5 Quote is from Suny, “The Contradictions of Identity,” 27. See especially Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 115–239; Kozhevnikov, Russkii patriotizm, 333–403; Hosking, “The Second World War,” 178. 6 Here I  am indebted to Jeffrey Brooks: Brooks, “Pravda Goes to War,” 20–21. More recently, see Florin, “Becoming Soviet,” 495–516; Shaw, “Soldiers’ Letters to Inobatxon

34  Jonathan Brunstedt and O’g’ulxon,” 517–52; Hellbeck, Stalingrad, 18–68; Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger, 206–7. 7 The historical-patriotic line corresponds with David Brandenberger’s notion of “national Bolshevism,” which paired images of the Russian past with Russian-­ dominated accounts of Soviet-era achievements, including the war victory, within a larger Russocentric ideological framework. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 183–96. 8 On the informal “hierarchy of heroism,” in which Soviet nationalities were loosely ranked according to perceived wartime contributions, see Weiner, Making Sense of War, 191–235. 9 Krasnaia zvezda, November 9, 1941, 1. Also, Merridale, Red Fortress, 329. 10 Leonov, V nashi gody, 41. 11 Well known examples of the Russian basis of the war can be found in Simonov, Russkie liudi and the various entries in Erenburg, Voina. 12 See, for example, Carmack, Kazakhstan in World War II; Shaw, “Soldiers’ Letters to Inobatxon and O’g’ulxon”; Florin, “Becoming Soviet”; Amar, The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv; Shin, “Red Army Propaganda”; Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory; Schechter, “The People’s Instructions,” 109–33; Weiner, Making Sense of War. 13 Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 37–40. 14 Service, Stalin, 442–48. 15 Werth, Russia at War, 248–49, 740–41. 16 Parker, Moscow Correspondent, 152. 17 Quoted in Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger, 206. 18 On tensions between historical-patriotic and Soviet narratives in public discourse more generally, see Blitstein, “Nation and Empire,” 197–219; Budnitskii, “Izobretaia Otechestvo,” 157–67; Hoffmann, Stalinist Values, 152–65. 19 See, for example, “Nash otvet,” Pravda, June 23, 1941, 2; “Sviashchennaia nenavist’ k vragu,” Pravda, June 23, 1941, 2; “Vse sily na zashchitu,” Krasnaia zvezda, July 3, 1941, 2; Iakutenok, “Moia mechta,” Krasnaia zvezda, July 4, 1941, 2. 20 “Pobedonosnoe znamia velikogo Lenina,” Pravda, November 17, 1941, 1; Iudin, “Lenin—Osnovatel’ sovetskogo gosudarstva,” Pravda, January 21, 1942, 3; “Boevoe bratstvo narodov,” Pravda, October 31, 1942, 1. 21 “Pobedonosnoe znamia velikogo Lenina,” 1. 22 Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 9–17. 23 Among the most famous is A. P. Voloshin’s 1941 “Under the banner of Lenin, onward to victory!” This poster was taken out of circulation apparently because Stalin objected to his own absence in the work. See Maksimenkov, “Mne strogo nakazali,” 19. See also A. V. Vasil’ev’s 1944 variant, “Under the banner of Lenin—onward, to the west!” 24 E.g., A. V. Vasil’ev’s “Sons of all peoples [narodov] of the Soviet Union are battling for the Soviet homeland [otchiznu].” 25 E.g., V. N. Selivanov’s untitled 1943 placard depicting the call “For the freedom of Leningrad.” 26 On the challenges presented by non-Russian recruits, see Schechter, “The People’s Instructions,” 109–33; Dreeze, “Stalin’s Empire.” 27 “Boevoe bratstvo,” 1; “Sovetskii narod splochen,” Pravda, July 16, 1941, 1. 28 RGASPI 17/125/105/43-45. 29 These included Suvorov in the first instance and Minin and Pozharskii in the second. Ibid. 30 Reporting on the 1942 anniversary celebrations included references to the “ancient Kremlin” which played witness to the “grandeur and glory of the Russian people.” This type of slip was largely corrected the following years. See “Torzhestvennoe zasedanie,” Krasnaia zvezda, November 7, 1942, 3. 31 “Prikaz Narodnogo Komissara Oborony,” Krasnaia zvezda, November 7, 1942, 1. 32 Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger, 206.

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  35 33 “Prikaz Narodnogo Komissara Oborony,” 1. 34 Mitin, “Velikii povorot v istorii,” Pravda, October 30, 1942, 1. See also Merridale, Ivan’s War, 227. 35 The quote is from Mitin, “Velikii povorot,” 1. For examples, see RGASPI 17/125/105/27-35; GARF 4459/11/1252/102-110; GARF 8080/2/90/1-5; Livshin and Orlov, Sovetskaia propaganda, 337–43. 36 Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 119. See also “Prikaz Narodnogo Komissara Oborony,” Krasnaia zvezda, November 7, 1942, 1; “Dva goda Otechestvennoi voiny,” Krasnaia zvezda, June 22, 1943, 1; “Tri goda otechestvennoi voiny,” Krasnaia zvezda, June 22, 1944, 1. 37 Pravda, January 10, 1943, 1. 38 RGASPI 17/125/142/13-13ob. On the mobilization of Soviet youth, see Bernstein, Raised under Stalin, 188–222; deGraffenried, Sacrificing Childhood; Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought, 104–6. 39 On the wartime analogy with 1812, see Budnitskii, “Izobretaia Otechestvo”; Datsishina, “Tema Napoleona”; Shein, Voina 1812 goda. On its reception, see Peri, The War Within, 217–22; Budnitskii, “Izobretaia Otechestvo,” 165–67. There was no reference to Napoleon in Molotov’s original radio address; this was a subsequent addition. Compare the published address in Pravda, June 23, 1941, 1, with AVPRF 7/1/2/24/1-4. 40 Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 31–32. 41 Ibid., 69. The contradictory nature of Stalin simultaneously critiquing and promoting the analogy with 1812 has been noted in Golubev and Podmazo, “Dve Sviashchennye voiny—dve velikie pobedy.” 42 Tarle, Dve Otechestvennye Voiny, 78–80. 43 On these contrasts as well as Stalin’s influence on Tarle and vice versa, see Budnitskii, “Izobretaia Otechestvo,” 161–64. 44 GARF 4459/11/1253/1-3. For another example, see Datsishina, “Tema Napoleona,” 149. 45 Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 148–49. 46 Berkhoff, Motherland in Danger, 221. 47 “Pis’mo,” 16–17; Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought, 184–85. 48 Dubrovskii, “Glavnaia pesnia,” 174. 49 For the view that it was a nationalist anthem, see, for example, Cohen, Russian Imperialism, 95. 50 Dubrovskii, “Glavnaia pesnia,” 181. 51 Vdovin, Russkie, 150. Naval decorations had a somewhat different timeline. Authorities issued decorations with names of the imperial admirals Ushakov and Nakhimov as late as 1944. On the introduction of these awards, see Schechter, The Stuff of Soldiers, 58–72. 52 RGASPI 629/1/83/9-10. 53 Danilevskii, Kuz’ma Minin, 23. See also Danilevskii, Dmitrii Pozharskii, 25. 54 GARF 6903/12/87/649. 55 Burdzhalov, “Velikaia zasluga,” Krasnaia zvezda, Dec. 30, 1944, 2 (emphasis added). 56 Merridale, Ivan’s War, 381; Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 160–80. 57 Budnitskii, “Izobretaia Otechestvo,” 165–67. 58 For an excellent overview, see Blitstein, “Stalin’s Nations,” chap. 1. See too Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 129–30, 318, n. 63; Tillett, The Great Friendship, 76–109. 59 Abdykalykov and Pankratova, Istoriia Kazakhskoi SSR. 60 Yekelchyk, Stalin’s Empire of Memory, 71. 61 Alexis Peri has demonstrated that historical analogies with 1812 created expectations that often reflected negatively on the regime. Peri writes that comparisons with 1812 “mostly seemed to magnify the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht, the brutality of

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62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

Jonathan Brunstedt Soviet policies, the failure to evacuate or otherwise save civilians, and the agony of the unknown future. The 1812–1941 analogy did inspire them but to feelings other than confident triumphalism.” Peri, The War Within, 214–22, qt. 221–22. GARF 8080/2/79/245-8. GARF 8080/2/90/1-5. Livshin and Orlov, Sovetskaia propaganda, 495–523. Ibid., 523. See Tikhonov, “Koleso istorii,” 58–67; Dubrovskii, Istorik i vlast’, 408–89; Tikhonov, “The Russian State”; Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 121–32; and Tillett, The Great Friendship, 70–83. Quotes from “Stenogramma soveshchaniia,” no. 2, 72; “Stenogramma soveshchaniia,” no. 4, 87. “Stenogramma soveshchaniia,” no. 3, 105–10. Ibid., no. 5–6, 101–2. Ibid., no. 4, 71–72. Ibid., no. 5–6, 81–82. Ibid., no. 2, 68, 71–72. For an in-depth treatment of the various drafts of the theses, see Brandenberger and Dubrovskii, “Itogovyi partiinyi dokument,” 148–63. RGASPI 17/125/222/49, 58–59, 76–78, 85–90. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 129–30. “Ob ideologicheskoi rabote,” 4–8. Burdei, Istorik i voina, 157–59. For additional examples, see Orlov, “Natsional’nyi i internatsional’nyi komponenty,” 406–15. “Lenin i Stalin o sovetskom patriotizme,” 15–17. Solodovnikov, “Za vysokuiu ideinost’ sovetskogo iskusstva,” 54. RGASPI 629/1/83/20, 44, 54, 64–66. Referred to by D. Zaslavskii under RGASPI 629/1/83/3-4. RGASPI 629/1/83/68-69, 107–11. RGASPI 629/1/53/75-94; RGASPI 629/1/36/127-8. See, for example, the comments of the Soviet ambassador to France before a group of Russian emigres in Novoe russkoe slovo, Mar. 7, 1945, 1–2, quoted in Towster, Political Power in the USSR, 102 n. 30. See also Weiner, Making Sense of War, 336–37. GARF 8127/1/33/176-184, cited in Orlov, “Natsional’nyi i internatsional’nyi komponenty,” 413–14. GARF R-9548/1/12/52. Pravda, May 25, 1945, 1. Brandenberger, National Bolshevism, 185–87. OKhDOPIM 3/67/12/2-4. For a discussion on the station’s décor, see RGALI 2466/1/194/esp. 19–23. For background, see Bouvard, Le Métro de Moscou, esp. 212–16. See Brandenberger, “Ideologicheskie istoki sovetskogo patriotizma,” esp. 28–30; Donovan, “How Well Do You Know Your Krai,” 466. “Istoricheskaia nauka v SSSR,” 206, 210. “Velikaia pobeda sovetskogo naroda,” Pravda, May 9, 1965, 1–4. The list of nationalities was based on the 1959 census. See Chislennost’ naseleniia SSSR. In 1962, for example, a Minsk military club attempted to play up links with past Russian military glory for the local Komsomol organization. See RGASPI M-1/47/496/12-14. See Hornsby, “Soviet Youth on the March,” 441. Pospelov, Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 2, 571–74 (italics added). Kulish and Oskotskii, “Epos voiny narodnoi,” 75–79.

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  37

Bibliography Archives AVPRF: Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossiiskoi Federatsii. GARF: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii. OKhDOPIM: Otdel khraneniia dokumentov obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii Moskvy—Fondy byvshego Tsentral’nogo arkhiva obshchestvenno-politicheskoi istorii Moskvy. RGASPI: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii.

Published works Abdykalykov, M. A., and A. M. Pankratova, eds. Istoriia Kazakhskoi SSR. S drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei. Alma-Ata: Kazogiz, 1943. Amar, Tarik Cyril. The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv: A Borderland City Between Stalinists, Nazis, and Nationalists. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2015. Barghoorn, Frederick C. Soviet Russian Nationalism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956. Berkhoff, Karel C. Motherland in Danger: Soviet Propaganda During World War II. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. Bernstein, Seth. Raised Under Stalin: Young Communists and the Defense of Socialism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017. Blitstein, Peter A. “Stalin’s Nations: Soviet Nationality Policy Between Planning and Primordialism, 1936–1953.” PhD diss., University of California, 1999. ———. “Nation and Empire in Soviet History, 1917–1953.” Ab Imperio 1 (2006): 197–219. Bouvard, Josette. Le Métro de Moscou: La Construction d’un Mythe Soviétique. Paris: Sextant, 2005. Brandenberger, David. National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. ———. “Ideologicheskie istoki sovetskogo patriotizma.” Unpublished manuscript, July 2020, typescript. Brandenberger, David, and A. M. Dubrovskii. “Itogovyi partiinyi dokument soveshchaniia istorikov v TsK VKP(b) v 1944.” Arkheograficheskii ezhegodnik za 1998 god (1999): 148–63. Brody, Richard J. Ideology and Political Mobilization: The Soviet Home Front During World War II. Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies. Pittsburgh: CREES, University of Pittsburgh, 1994. Brooks, Jeffrey. “Pravda Goes to War.” In Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia, edited by Richard Stites, 9–27. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. ———. Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Budnitskii, O. V. “Izobretaia Otechestvo: istoriia voiny s Napoleonom v sovetskoi propaganda 1941–1945 godov.” Rossiiskaia istoriia 6 (2012): 157–69. ———. “The Great Patriotic War and Soviet Society: Defeatism, 1941–42.” Kritika 15, no. 4 (2014): 767–98. Carmack, Roberto J. “History and Hero-Making: Patriotic Narratives and the Sovietization of Kazakh Front-Line Propaganda, 1941–1945.” Central Asian Survey 33, no. 1 (2014): 95–112.

38  Jonathan Brunstedt ———. Kazakhstan in World War II: Mobilization and Ethnicity in the Soviet Empire. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019. Chislennost’ naseleniia SSSR po perepisi na 15 ianvaria 1959 goda po respublikam, kraiam, oblastiam, natsional’nym okrugam, raionam, gorodam, poselkam gorodskogo tipa, raionnym tsentram i krupnym sel’skim naselennym mestam. Moscow: TsSU pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR, 1960. Accessed July 2020. www.demoscope.ru/weekly/ssp/ ussr59_reg1.php. Clark, Katerina. “Engineers of Human Souls in an Age of Industrialization: Changing Cultural Models, 1929–41.” In Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization, edited by William G. Rosenberg and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, 248–64. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Cohen, Ariel. Russian Imperialism: Development and Crisis. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. Danilevskii, V. Dmitrii Pozharskii. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1943. ———. Kuz’ma Minin. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1943. Datsishina, M. V. “Tema Napoleona i voiny 1812 g. v sovetskoi i natsistskoi propagande v khode Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny.” Voprosy istorii 6 (2011): 149–56. Davis, Vicky. Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War Two in Brezhnev’s Hero City. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2018. deGraffenried, Julie K. Sacrificing Childhood: Children and the Soviet State in the Great Patriotic War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2014. Donovan, Victoria. “ ‘How Well Do You Know Your Krai?’ The Kraevedenie Revival and Patriotic Politics in Late Khrushchev-Era Russia.” Slavic Review 74, no. 3 (2015): 464–83. Dreeze, Jonathon. “Stalin’s Empire: Soviet Propaganda in Kazakhstan, 1929–1953.” PhD diss., The Ohio State University, 2019. Dubrovskii, A. M. Istorik i vlast’: istoricheskaia nauka v SSSR i kontseptsiia istorii feodal’noi Rossii v kontekste politiki i ideologii (1930–1950-e gg.). Briansk: Izd. BGU, 2005. ———. “Glavnaia pesnia, ili Gosudarstvennyi gimn SSSR.” Forum noveishei vostochnoevropeiskoi istorii i kul’tury, no. 2 (2013): 167–83. Edele, Mark. Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society 1941–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ———. Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers Became Hitler’s Collaborators, 1941– 1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Enstad, Johannes Due. Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Erenburg, Il’ia. Voina: Aprel’ 1942–Mart 1943. Moscow: Voenizdat, 2002. Florin, Moritz. “Becoming Soviet Through War: The Kyrgyz and the Great Fatherland War.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17, no. 3 (2016): 495–516. Golubev, A. V., and A. A. Podmazo. “Dve Sviashchennye voiny—dve velikie pobedy: 1812–1814 gg.—1941–1945 gg.” In Otechestvennaia voine 1812 goda v kul’turnoi pamiati Rossii, edited by L. V. Mel’nikova et  al., 298. Moscow: Kuchkovo pole, 2012. Grossman, Vasily. Life and Fate. Translated by Robert Chandler. New York: NYRB Classics, 2006. Hellbeck, Jochen. Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich. Translated by Christopher Tauchen. New York: PublicAffairs, 2015. Hoffmann, David L. Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917–1941. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.

Mobilization and the origins of war memory  39 Hornsby, Robert. “Soviet Youth on the March: The All-Union Tours of Military Glory, 1965–87.” Journal of Contemporary History 52, no. 2 (2017): 418–45. Hosking, Geoffrey. “Istoricheskaia nauka v SSSR. Konferentsiia chitatelei zhurnala Voprosy istorii.” Voprosy istorii, no. 2 (1956): 199–213. ———. “The Second World War and Russian National Consciousness.” Past and Present 175, no. 1 (2002): 162–87. Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. “ ‘Our City, Our Hearths, Our Families’: Local Loyalties and Private Life in Soviet World War II Propaganda.” Slavic Review 59, no. 4 (2000): 825–47. ———. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza. Kommunisticheskaia partiia Sovetskogo Soiuza v rezoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s’ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov TsK, vol. 15. Moscow: Izd. politicheskoi literatury, 1983–1989. Kozhevnikov, A. Iu. Russkii patriotizm i sovetskii sotsializm. Moscow: Prometei, 2017. Kulish, V., and V. Oskotskii. “Epos voiny narodnoi.” Voprosy Literatury, no. 10 (1988): 27–87. “Lenin i Stalin o sovetskom patriotizme.” Agitator i propagandist Krasnoi Armii, no. 19–20 (1944): 15–17. Leonov, Leonid. V nashi gody. Publitsistika 1941–1948. Moscow: “Sovetskii pisatel’ ”, 1949. Livshin, A. I., and I. B. Orlov, eds. Sovetskaia propaganda v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: “Kommunikatsiia ubezhdeniia” i mobilizatsionnye mekhanizmy. Moscow: Rosspen, 2007. Maddox, Steven. “These Monuments Must Be Protected! The Stalinist Turn to the Past and Historic Preservation During the Blockade of Leningrad.” The Russian Review 70 (2011): 608–26. Makhalova, I. A. “Istoriia napoleonovskikh voin v propagande voiuiushchikh derzhav v period Vtoroi mirovoi voiny.” Novaia i noveishaia istoriia, no. 5 (2017): 215–25. Maksimenkov, Leonid. “ ‘Mne strogo nakazali—delat’ ego khorosho i interesno’: Aleksei Surkov—Iosifu Stalinu o zhurnale ‘Ogonek. 1946 g’.” Ogonek, no. 24 (2007): 19. Merridale, Catherine. Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939–45. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006. ———. Red Fortress: History and Illusion in the Kremlin. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013. “Ob ideologicheskoi rabote partorganizatsii.” Partiinoe stroitel’stvo, no. 15–16 (1944): 4–8. Orlov, I. B. “Natsional’nyi i internatsional’nyi komponenty sovetskoi voennoi propagandy.” In Sovetskie natsii i natsional’naia politika v 1920–1950-e gody: Materialy VI mezhdunarodnoi konferentsii, Kiev, 10–12 oktiabria 2013, 406–415. Moscow: Fond “Prezidentskii tsentr B. N. El’tsina”, 2014. Parker, Ralph. Moscow Correspondent. London: F. Muller, 1949. Peri, Alexis. The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. “Pis’mo V. E. Markevicha.” Istoricheskii arkhiv 2 (2005): 16–17. Polivannyi, I. M. Plan lektsii i kruzhkovykh zaniatii po knige tovarishcha Stalina “O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza”. Vladivostok, 1942. https://search.rsl. ru/ru/record/01005262277 Pospelov, P. N. et al., eds. Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza 1941– 1945, vol. 6. Moscow: Voennoe izdat. Ministerstva Oborony Soiuza SSR, 1960–65.

40  Jonathan Brunstedt Reese, Roger R. Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011. Schechter, Brandon M. “ ‘The People’s Instructions’: Indigenizing The Great Patriotic War Among ‘Non-Russians’.” Ab Imperio, no. 3 (2012): 109–33. ———. The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. Service, Robert. Stalin: A Biography. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2005. Shaw, Charles. “Soldiers’ Letters to Inobatxon and O’g’ulxon: Gender and Nationality in the Birth of a Soviet Romantic Culture.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 17, no. 3 (2016): 517–52. Shein, I. A. Voina 1812 goda v otechestvennoi istoriografii. Moscow: Nauchno-politich eskaia kniga, 2013. Shin, Boram. “Red Army Propaganda for Uzbek Soldiers and Localised Soviet Internationalism During World War II.” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 42, no. 1 (2015): 39–63. Simonov, Konstantin. Russkie liudi: p’esa. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1942. Solodovnikov, A. “Za vysokuiu ideinost’ sovetskogo iskusstva.” Bol’shevik, no. 19–20 (1944): 54. Stalin, I. V. O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza, 5th ed. Moscow: OGIZ, 1947. “Stenogramma soveshchaniia po voprosam istorii SSSR v TsK VKP(b) v 1944 godu.” Voprosy istorii 2–7, no. 9 (1996). Suny, Ronald Grigor. “The Contradictions of Identity: Being Soviet and National in the USSR and After.” In Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities, edited by Mark Bassin and Catriona Kelly, 17–36. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Tarle, E. V. Dve Otechestvennye Voiny. Moscow: Voenmorizdat, 1941. Tikhonov, Vitalii Vital’evich. “The Russian State and the Interpretation of History During the Second World War: The Impact of B. I. Suromyatnikov’s The ‘Regulated’ State of Peter the Great and Its Ideology.” In Power and Culture: Identity, Ideology, Representation, edited by Jonathan Osmond, 139–50. Pisa: Pisa University Press, 2007. ———. “ ‘Koleso istorii rabotaet v nashu pol’zu’: Istorik kak propagandist v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny.” Bylye gody 3, no. 25 (2012): 58–67. Tillett, Lowell. The Great Friendship: Soviet Historians on the Non-Russian Nationalities. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969. Towster, Julian. Political Power in the USSR, 1917–1947: The Theory and Structure of Government in the Soviet State. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1975. Tumarkin, Nina. The Living & the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books, 1995. Vdovin, A. I. Russkie v XX veke. Moscow: OLMA, 2004. Weiner, Amir. Making Sense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Werth, Alexander. Russia at War, 1941–1945. New York: Dutton, 1964. Yekelchyk, Serhy. Stalin’s Empire of Memory: Russian-Ukrainian Relations in the Soviet Historical Imagination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.

2 Situating Stalin in the history of the Second World War Yan Mann

On March 19, 1953, two weeks after his death, Joseph Stalin’s name disappeared from journals and newspapers. The Central Committee was flooded with letters from the public requesting an explanation, but they were greeted with silence. His name was also omitted from May Day slogans, followed by a May 9 decision to remove all portraits of leaders during holidays, living and dead, which was rescinded two months later.1 The uncertainty of what to do with the name and image of the deceased Generalissimo set a tone that divided the population and the collective memory around his accomplishments and crimes. It took an additional three years for Nikita Khrushchev to denounce Stalin before the 20th Party Congress. On the eve of the congress, Khrushchev claimed he wanted to “put Stalin in his place” and to “get rid of his posters and pictures in the literature before the congress.”2 Echoing the Stalinist period, anyone portrayed as an “enemy of the people” soon turned into “ghosts” in historical publications. Stalin’s temporary disappearance from the press created a precedent that Khrushchev’s denunciation exploited and opened a space for debating Stalin’s role in the Second World War. As debates unfolded over how to offer Soviet readers a more nuanced and objective understanding of the war, authors and editors put in charge of creating the first official history of the Great Patriotic War struggled to find their voice and move beyond the narrative created under Stalin. The arguments they employed were reminiscent of the “circular” voice Alexei Yurchak pointed to in his study of the Soviet Union in the post-Stalinist period.3 Instead of attempting to address insufficiently developed ideas, debates continuously reiterated proclamations from previous meetings. Although decades removed from the war, the discourse around how to best portray the Soviet leader and his actions continued to rely on Stalin-era rhetoric, terminology, and logic, thwarting objectivity while reinforcing familiar slogans and clichés. This chapter begins by examining how Stalin began to shape the history of his role in the war effort, in no small part thanks to military commanders whose publications in newspapers such as Pravda and Krasnaia zvezda, created a record of Soviet, Red Army, and Stalinist accomplishments visible as early as the Moscow Counteroffensive in late 1941. The second section concentrates on the post-Stalin period and showcases to what extent the narrative created under Stalin continued

42  Yan Mann to haunt publications on the war, none more so than the first official history of the Great Patriotic War.

Situating Stalin in the war The absence of Stalin from the press after his death was not the first time his name and image were toned down in media reports. Soon after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Stalin became less of a permanent fixture in reports. After Viacheslav Molotov announced Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, Pravda still invoked Stalin’s name in some reports or when reassuring the populace: “With Stalin’s name we have triumphed, with Stalin’s name we will triumph.” On June 24, it coined the phrase “For the Motherland, for Stalin!”4 Although a state of war presented new challenges, the rhetoric in the press featured the usual clichés associated with Stalin’s image. The disaster on the frontlines could still be hidden from most of the population while using his image as a rallying point for the defense of the state. Soviet journalists appealed to the country’s patriotism, bypassing Marxist-Leninist rhetoric, and linked it to Stalin. As the Red Army’s retreat continued, attention began to shift away from the leader. If at the beginning of the war Stalin was still present in newspapers, with the situation further deteriorating at the front between August and October, he slowly faded from view. Quotations from his speeches and publications were still evident, but they became shorter and less frequent, while his images and discussions of his “virtues” disappeared. Reporters, such as Ilia Ehrenburg and Konstantin Simonov, momentarily replaced Stalin’s voice. In order to deflect present and future blame from the Soviet leader, new narratives were allowed a place in the spotlight.5 This, however, had an unintended side effect: the disastrous initial period of the war created a limited space to question Stalin’s abilities and knowl­ edge, leading to a “spontaneous de-Stalinization,” to use historian M. Ia. Gefter’s words.6 It took a stubborn Red Army defense combined with a German defeat outside Moscow, for Stalin to reappear in the media. Stalin’s decision to remain in Moscow, while government institutions and party personnel were evacuated, and his speech on the anniversary of the October Revolution in early November helped this revival in the press. His portrait was published in Pravda on November 7, for the first time in many weeks, and his cult was soon resurrected with the qualities of a victorious general. Stalin began to be associated with Red Army achievements.7 In wartime reports, he appeared in various guises as a leader, organizer, head of the army and government, and before long, a genius commander. In the earliest months of the war, Stalin himself contributed to his own decentering as he was not yet “the manipulator of events.” He appealed to various segments of the population to take on the responsibility of fighting the enemy as their vital contributions to the war effort were highlighted. Simultaneously, scapegoats were identified and blamed for previous failures. This diffusion of leadership was a result of the uncertainty associated with the war’s duration and eventual outcome. With descriptions of initial battles censored, the current wellknown narrative of the “ultimate and preordained victory” had not yet taken root.8

Stalin and the Second World War  43 When Stalin addressed the nation on July 3, he tried to assuage public fears by justifying his administration’s previous actions. He claimed the non-aggression pact with Germany meant the Soviet state had gained additional time to strengthen its defenses.9 Since the radio address came several days after the Wehrmacht’s first major encirclement of the Western Front near Minsk on June 29, Stalin had to find scapegoats. In addition to emphasizing Germany’s “sudden and treacherous” surprise attack, the Wehrmacht’s mobilized state, and the Red Army’s inexperience, he announced that the initial Soviet setbacks were the fault of the Western Front’s commander, General Dmitrii Pavlov, and his command staff. Within the first few days of the war, Stalin was able to put a face and name on the immediate failures of the Red Army.10 Stalin’s excuses for the root causes of the early defeats were inconsistent partially because he was to a large extent responsible.11 His military knew this, but the denunciation of commanding generals set a precedent while Pavlov’s eventual execution ensured his colleagues’ quiet compliance. Stalin continued to associate mistakes with frontline commanders rather than the Supreme Command, which he headed.12 Stalin set another precedent with respect to the catastrophic losses sustained by Soviet forces at the front. Stalin’s refusal to mobilize the country on the eve of the war had made these losses a fait accompli. Needing to address how the Red Army could stand up to a far superior Wehrmacht, Stalin stressed the higher quality of Soviet equipment and claimed that “defeat makes us stronger.”13 He viewed the spirit of a nation fighting a defensive, just war as stronger than that of the aggressor. The Wehrmacht’s defeat outside Moscow, bought with hundreds of thousands of casualties, seemed to prove Stalin’s assertion, and they came to be regarded as acceptable.14 Even after the Soviets irreversibly turned the strategic balance to their advantage, many commanders who survived 1941 did so with a mentality that allowed for ready justifications for future casualties. As German forces retreated from Moscow in January 1942, Stalin assumed greater control and began to redefine his role in the war. He started by limiting the public recognition of commanders; thus, Georgii Zhukov was stricken off a list of those awarded orders for their role in the Battle of Moscow on January 2, 1942. Soon newspapers began to portray the Soviet leader as a strategic genius. In a January 4 Pravda article, Major-General Konstantin Golubev wrote how he was “fulfilling the instructions of Comrade Stalin about destroying the German fascist occupiers,” and assured readers that the Maloiaroslavets operation was only part of Stalin’s “more grandiose” general plan to defeat the enemy.15 Previous setbacks were transformed into Stalin’s strategy to lure the Germans beyond their logistical net, while preparations were made for their ultimate defeat in a rehashing of 1812.16 Soldiers at the front joined their voices to those of generals propagating this new approach to understanding the war’s direction. In a letter to his parents in April 1942, a frontline soldier wrote how Stalin’s “ingenious strategy” was responsible for the successful defense of Moscow.17 The rhetoric that the reading public encountered was reflected in an internal 360-page study titled “The Defense of Moscow with Troops from the Moscow

44  Yan Mann Defensive Zone.” Commissioned by the Moscow Committee in December 1941 and submitted in February 1942, it was supposed to produce a “historic” narrative describing the defense of Moscow.18 It claimed that the Moscow Counteroffensive revealed the “full force” of “Stalinist strategy” and credited Stalin’s July 3 address for the surge of “patriotic enthusiasm” among the masses. Describing the German lunge toward Moscow, the report noted how the Wehrmacht was forced to “quickly abandon the frontal attack against Moscow” due to the Red Army’s “tactics of active defense.”19 In actuality, the mentioned “active defense” ran counter to the contemporaneous Red Army commanders’ orders.20 Yet it soon became associated with Stalin’s genius and entrenched in Soviet thinking about 1941, masking the reality of chaos and semi-controlled consistent retreat. The narrative surrounding the first six months of the war now centered around a carefully thought-out, wise Stalinist strategy: new divisions, corps, and armies moved into positions from the rear and delivered counterstrikes at specific strategic points. The tactic of “active defense” lured enemy forces into the Soviet interior, allowing the Red Army to amass resources and manpower to defeat the Wehrmacht by a perfectly timed Stalin-led offensive that resulted in a “fracture” along the front. According to the report, the result of Stalin’s strategy showcased his “masterful” grasp of military, social, and political matters—he was once again the master of the situation, whose genius destroyed an opponent that all Europe previously could not resist, less so defeat.21 Still, though Stalinist propaganda managed to turn mistakes into foreseen consequences, there remained a disconnect between the supposedly planned retreats of 1941 and the fate of those made responsible for them. By early 1942, therefore, the central figure in the Red Army’s ability to resist the Germans outside Moscow and dictate the course of events was Stalin.22 Adding to his strategic talents was his ability to foster a new breed of officers needed to win the war. A good illustration of Stalin’s omnipotence was Aleksandr Korneichuk’s play, The Front. Published in Pravda in August 1942, it was a required read for the command staff, whose views were then submitted to front military councils.23 The play featured a battle between generations: a relic of a front commander, who made his reputation during the Civil War, and an army commander, who rose through the ranks under Stalin’s tutelage after the German invasion. This narrative reinforced the idea often raised in army newspapers of a previously inexperienced Red Army that needed to learn to wage war as a result of Germany’s surprise attack.24 The play reassured readers that Stalin remained at his post, working behind the scenes to ensure final victory.25 The success of the Moscow Counteroffensive was short-lived. In July  1942, continued Red Army retreats were met with Stalin’s order 227 that shifted blame for the setbacks onto soldiers and officers and retreating units were shamed. Read out to every formation in the Red Army but never published in Stalin’s lifetime, it commanded the troops to stand firm or else. Army and national newspapers urged servicemen to take “Not a step back!” The motivation the soldiers were supposed to feel by reading about the alleged ultimate sacrifice of the well-known 28 Panfilov Guardsmen during the defense of Moscow was reinforced by a threat to

Stalin and the Second World War  45 those who retreated without orders.26 Stalin was portrayed as the father of Soviet peoples, exhibiting a strict but fair approach to the situation as veterans reminisced after the war how “inevitable” the order was and the “vital part” it played during the battle.27 Victory at Stalingrad in February 1943 caused a reinvention of Stalin’s image as the genius war lord. The same month, readers noted how “Stalinist strategy” and “the Stalinist military school of thought” were making a comeback in Soviet press reports.28 The Soviet triumph brought forth a narrative that featured Soviet advances against the Wehrmacht as the norm. Any reverses of fortune on the field of battle only gave the Wehrmacht false hope as the Red Army continued its inexorable westward advance with the awareness that the enemy had yet to be critically weakened. In the beginning of 1943, while visiting the Voronezh Front, the Chief of the General Staff, Aleksandr Vasilevskii, along with other front commanders, proposed in a coded message to Molotov, Beria, and Malenkov to give Stalin the title of “generalissimo of the Soviet Union.” Stalin was described as the “organizer of our victories, a genius and great commander.” The proposal made it to the Politburo but, for the time being, Stalin filed it away. Even with a looming triumph over Stalingrad assured, Stalin was not yet fully convinced of the Soviet Union’s chances of victory, accepting the title only after the war’s conclusion in 1945. In the meantime, he continued to separate himself from those who could still be held responsible for future failures.29 Stalin’s primary role in Soviet achievements during the turning point in the war was codified in another internal document, called “The Defeat of the German forces near Moscow.”30 Published in 1943 under the aegis of the General Staff’s military-historical section and edited by Marshal Boris Shaposhnikov with the assistance of other high-ranking commanders, the study essentially reiterated Stalin’s 1941 justifications for earlier setbacks. The German defeat near Moscow became part of a greater plan, masking the true nature of the ad hoc measures implemented by Stalin and the general staff to slow down the German advance with any and all available forces, which often resulted in enormous losses of men and equipment.31 Most importantly, the report placed Stain above all the commanders who were indeed responsible for the successful defense of Moscow. The latter became mere “executors” of “the operational plans of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief.” Moreover, he was credited with inspiring the rank and file and transforming their understanding of the war.32 Both internal reports were riddled with inaccuracies and hosannas to Stalin. He not only commanded the army and the air force, while presiding over the Soviet people, but also simultaneously managed to organize reserves and their timely arrival at needed sectors of the front, which “played a decisive role in the course of the Battle of Moscow.”33 The study relied heavily on Stalin’s speeches, commissioned internal studies, and newspaper publications. The seeds of a dominant wartime and postwar narrative, which continuously featured Stalin as a master manipulator of events, were thus planted.

46  Yan Mann

Controlling the memory and appropriating the history of the war Much of this Stalin-centered narrative remained set in stone throughout the rest of the war. In the immediate postwar period Stalin and his censors worked on erasing anything that was not part of an accepted, sanitized version of Soviet experiences in the war. According to a 1969 samizdat article, even private opinions could result in arrest. A letter from Colonel Mikhail Meshcheriakov to Stalin, wherein he questioned aspects of the Stalinist narrative of the war, serves as one example— he lost six teeth during the ensuing questioning. Stalin viewed the war’s memory as a threat to his demigod status, which was cemented in the minds of the population with the victory in the war.34 Every aspect of the war’s memory came under attack as Stalin silenced literary figures, historians, filmmakers, photographers, and veterans themselves. Discussions and public expressions revolving around the memory of the war were discouraged until his death. The first Victory Day parade was held on June 24, 1945, but Victory Day itself was done away with as a state holiday two years later, only to be resurrected in 1965. Demobilized soldiers were prohibited from forming veterans’ organizations in the immediate postwar period, precluding their public recognition.35 Historians lacked access to archives and could not engage in original research on the war while generals were discouraged from publishing their memoirs, having been told to wait for proper objectivity to set in and for historians to “handle it when we are dead.”36 The film industry was also censored and a “film famine” set in until Stalin’s death. War films that were produced consistently featured Stalin as the central figure as he soon became the only recognized “hero” of the war.37 Photographs from the war were also heavily censored; few war photos could be republished until the late 1950s.38 One source alleges that Stalin ordered photographers to destroy their negatives, except those that best represented the “heroic struggle.”39 Ultimately, Stalin did not want the public to dwell on the war years; instead, he needed the war to be viewed as a steppingstone with focus oriented on the future rather than the past. Victory over Germany became a justification of his actions in the 1930s and created a bridge to a new society, built on the blood and sacrifice of millions. With Stalin consistently presented as the sole authority at the center of events, historians were denied the ability to research the war. When recording his memoirs in the late 1960s, Khrushchev commented that in general “no one else had the right to think as Stalin did. He was the only genius. Therefore he should be the only one to say anything new.” Others were only allowed to “propagandize” and “popularize” his ideas, no matter the topic.40 Military science suffered as progress was forfeit in place of Stalinist rhetoric and historical arguments and publications relied on phrases snatched out of context.41 Although veterans and historians were silenced, the state still needed to write about the war. The produced familiar narrative centered on Stalin and included the ideas of “active defense” and “counteroffensive.” The two military concepts were reconfigured for political expediency to signify how retreats were preplanned

Stalin and the Second World War  47 defensive actions. Initially contextualized in a 1946 publication, titled “The Strategic Counteroffensive” by Major-General N. Talenskii, they soon entered the public sphere to serve Stalin’s needs.42 Stalin introduced the term “counteroffensive” to the public in an open letter written to Colonel Razin in February 1947. The author claimed that he employed a highly complex yet subtle strategy against the German onslaught. His counteroffensive theory explained the reason for Soviet retreats and the need for an active defense. Several months later, Talenskii transported the closed-off military discourse into the public sphere in his Pravda article of June 22, 1947. He reiterated Stalin’s justifications, invoking the war of 1812 to explain how 1941 unfolded, while arguing how the strategy of the counteroffensive was honed to perfection in the Second World War—under Stalin’s guidance.43 As evidence of his genius, Stalin pointed to the publications penned by military professionals, who, in turn, had built their argument on Stalin’s own wartime statements.44 The imposed limits on analyzing World War II meant no one could question his claims of strategic prowess.45 His far-sightedness, moreover, purportedly extended into the prewar period: all the sacrifices had merely set the stage for an inevitable victory in the war. Germany’s defeat at the hands of the Red Army not only showed the endurance of the socialist system but also proved to the world that it was superior to its capitalist counterpart. Additionally, the popular unity in the war confirmed that the USSR, as a multinational state, offered the best answer to cooperation among nationalities, while the might of the Red Army placed the USSR among the great powers.46 The Soviet Union’s ability to contain the German invasion and eventually triumph over the Wehrmacht as part of the Grand Alliance was facilitated by the production and material potential of collectivization and industrialization, including the huge bureaucracy created as Stalin assumed greater control. These accomplishments, along with the purges, were in preparation for an eventual showdown with Nazi Germany. The purges ended up strengthening the Soviet state. The public was presented with a narrative that claimed Stalinist methods were the foundation that built a system which went on to save the country from Germany’s genocidal campaign, omitting any mention of Stalin’s guilt in making the war so costly for the Soviet population.47 Focusing on accomplishments from the prewar period helped shift the popular attention from soldiers and commanders to the system that taught, trained, and led them. In this narrative, the Red Army’s heroism was bolstered by the Party’s wisdom and the robust socialist economy built in the interwar period, which made possible the strategy of “active defense.” The bravery and valor of Soviet troops were secondary while Party policies and politics, represented by Stalin and the system he presided over, were the primary medium for victory. These ideas represented the foundation of the Stalinist history of the war. They were supplemented by a select group of texts and pamphlets, as well as speeches and publications by the dictator himself. Centered around Stalin, the war became just another chapter of his impressive biography.48 Information about failed operations was suppressed and anyone who attempted to utilize source material deemed

48  Yan Mann unacceptable would lose access to key documents.49 Stalin’s military talents were glorified as Lenin’s legacy “was consigned to oblivion.” Stalin became associated with successful operations like the encirclement of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, and the “ten blows of 1944” were soon christened “Stalin’s blows.” During Stalin’s last years in power, histories detailing Soviet operations in 1944 devoted more attention to him than the heroic actions of Soviet troops. Commanding generals assumed the role of middlemen who garnered little if any attention as they were the “transmitters of STAVKA directives to the troops.” Stalin’s “leadership, his insights, his alleged extraordinary military genius” dominated all publications on the war.50 The stage was set for a programmatic publication of the history of the war. The ensuing 24 pages A Commander of Genius of the Great Patriotic War by Kliment Voroshilov, with a 300,000-print run, in 1949, cemented many of the previously discussed themes revolving around Stalin’s leadership.51 For Voroshilov, Stalin the commander translated into an all-knowing genius who could foresee the “inevitable defeat” of German forces from the start. Reportedly, Stalin relied on his “knowledge of the relative political-economic and social weakness of Hitlerite Germany . . . and on the certitude of the stability of the Soviet rear, that is, of our whole state.” Voroshilov praised the collectivization and industrialization of the 1930s, which created the infrastructure necessary for Germany’s eventual defeat.52 An analysis of Stalin’s command abilities at Stalingrad featured a discussion of “active defense” and “counterattacks,” which culminated in a “counteroffensive in the most important strategic directions.” Soviet strategy “broke . . . the striking force of the fascist army and buried the German strategy of ‘lighting’ war.” Optimal conditions coalesced as the Red Army gained operational and strategic initiative and altered the nature of the confrontation on the Eastern Front.53 “The genius of Stalin’s leadership,” in conjunction with Red Army courage, exploited German weaknesses and multiplied Soviet strengths. Soviet partisans and workers were praised for their selfless efforts as the population achieved a unity “never seen before on such a scale.” Though Voroshilov seems to have singled out the Soviet people as the beneficiaries of his praise and gratitude, in fact, his admiration reflected the idea that the only reason the Soviet state was able to wage war was thanks to Stalin’s leadership abilities, both on and off the battlefield. Paying “serious attention” to Red Army reserves while “creating command cadres” resulted in a new crop of Soviet officers, reared under Stalin’s tutelage, who turned his “strategic and operational-tactical plans into living reality.” Stalin inspired commanders and rank and file alike to perform “heroic feats” and his planning allowed for numerous fronts to work together to attain ultimate victory. Soviet triumphs, from the Moscow Counteroffensive and Stalingrad to the storming of Berlin, were a result of Stalin’s brilliance.54 The censorship and silence associated with the war period translated into an information famine throughout the rest of Stalin’s life. Soviet scholars had virtually abandoned work on the war’s history. As Matthew Gallagher wrote, “a striking paradox of the Soviet postwar reinterpretation of the war is that it was effected without a propaganda campaign, in the usual sense of the word, and without a

Stalin and the Second World War  49 history text.”55 Even without an official publication on the war, there were still enough texts to propagate previously described theories and ideas, which became the backbone of the war’s history even after Stalin’s death. Little could be done as the public and military commanders saw the war’s history transformed into something they barely recognized, setting the stage for future battles over a contested narrative prone to manipulation and abuse.

Situating Stalin and the war in Khrushchev’s Thaw Under Khrushchev, the memory of the war was reconfigured to serve his administration’s immediate political needs, namely a legitimization of personalities who began to compete for leadership. The framing of their own myths—intertwined with the history of the war—began to be established on paper. The Party immediately assumed a dominant position in the war’s history as illustrated by a Central Committee document, published in July of 1953, which “portrayed the war as a triumph of Party policy and ignored Stalin.”56 With the Party assuming a dominant role in the war’s new narrative, Stalin-era literature came under attack. A spring 1955 article in the military journal Voennaia mysl’ declared that military literature on the war contributed “not only to the distortion of the actual military events of 1941, but to the idealization of this form of combat.” Military historians were accused of having a “subservient attitude toward Stalin.” While viewing Soviet performance in 1941 as a defeat, the article ridiculed the idea of a planned “active defense” and claimed that the concept concealed Red Army defeats and simultaneously denied “due credit to the soldiers, commanders, and people for their patriotism, staunchness, and courage.”57 The following year, Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin’s personality cult at the 20th Party Congress made numerous references to the dictator’s failures during the Great Patriotic War. In so doing, Khrushchev created a space for a revision of the war’s history.58 Appeals for additional information resulted in the eventual publication of the first official six-volume history of the Great Patriotic War, and hundreds of full-length books and articles appeared in the following decade. However, most of this new wave of war literature had yet to cease paying homage to Stalin. Attempts were made to mask the continuation of familiar rhetoric and attribute it to Lenin. Thus, Stalin’s “permanently operating factors” were repackaged in a 1957 Krasnaia zvezda article, titled “V. I. Lenin on the Fundamental Factors Which Decide the Course and Outcome of Wars.”59 Others, including future participants in the creation of the official history of the Great Patriotic War, the economist Grigorii Deborin, doctor of economic sciences, and Boris Tel’pukhovskii, repeated practically verbatim Stalin’s established ideas.60 The narrative and concepts established by Stalin proved difficult to forsake. With Stalin’s cult under attack by the Khrushchev administration, military commanders who published their memoirs or added their voice to the discourse steered the conversations away from an objective analysis and used Stalin as a scapegoat for their failures. In a repeat of scapegoating from the war period,

50  Yan Mann when commanders suffered for Stalin’s blunders, now Stalin’s legacy was that of an inept bureaucrat bordering on traitor. Credit for Soviet victories, previously enjoyed by Stalin, was now parceled out to those who could immediately benefit.61 Stalin, however, again assumed a larger-than-life role, bearing guilt for all failures, and as such established new obstacles for historians aiming for objectivity.62 Attempting to appease those in power, some authors amended their histories by replacing Stalin’s name with institutions such as “Party,” “GKO,” and “STAVKA.” Institutional infallibility replaced Stalin’s as the history of the war began to serve the Party’s needs. This signaled a further removal of the human element from the war.63 Khrushchev’s decision to explore the Second World War resulted in a commission to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism to write the war’s official history on September 12, 1957, titled “The History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941–1945.”64 The multivolume history was supposed to come out by 1961, but the final volume only appeared in 1965.65 The work was carried out by the Department on the History of the Great Patriotic War. The department’s head, Major-General Evgenii Boltin, an author, a veteran, and former head editor of Krasnaia zvezda, held more than two dozen meetings to discuss the creation of the official history of the war and Stalin’s role in it. The commission’s editors and authors included representatives from a broad spectrum of institutions and public organizations; all had participated in the war effort in one capacity or another. Most of them carried a rank of either colonel or general.66 P. N. Pospelov headed the project. He was previously head editor of Pravda, director of the second edition of Stalin’s Short Biography, and now headed a commission focusing on “violations of socialist legality.”67 During numerous meetings, historians, specialists, high-ranking veterans, and party representatives proved unable to escape familiar Stalinist rhetoric and conclusions. Since Stalin had failed to set the parameters of how to objectively understand and explain the war to the population, attempts to engage the subject, even using archival sources, raised more questions than authors and editors were able to answer. In addition, Khrushchev’s Thaw, while allowing for more objective assessments of the Soviet war experience, was nevertheless based on ambiguous language and direction, engendering contradictions.68 Moreover, the dearth of historical publications on the war, up to this point, limited what could be written, while authorized publications needed to adhere to the “party line.”69 The commission’s meetings revealed that Stalin’s name, image, and cult of personality were firmly entwined with the war’s history in one form or another. This was most evident in discussions regarding the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, which leaned on existing justifications that exonerated Stalin’s decision to make a deal with Hitler. Marshal of the Soviet Union Vasilii Sokolovskii wanted the official history to emphasize that the Soviet state was working to prevent war, while Pospelov championed the pact as a counterbalance to a “single bloc” of capitalist states oriented against the Soviet Union. Stalin’s actions in the summer of 1939 were portrayed as robbing Germany of its ability to wage an all-out war with Western support against the USSR.70 Though the pact was not viewed

Stalin and the Second World War  51 as a miscalculation, Stalin was criticized for his actions in underestimating the “advancing threat of war” and incorrectly assessing Soviet needs, which resulted in a failure to adequately prepare the country for war. This equated to Stalin squandering the achievements of the Five-Year Plans, including collectivization and industrialization, while failing to appreciate the international situation and properly utilizing the time and space bought by the pact.71 Consequently, the discourse revolving around the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact not only relied in part on Stalin’s justifications but also singled him out for blame. The initial period of the war was considered the most “difficult” and “complex.” Commission members underscored that the second volume, which covered the German invasion of the Soviet Union, carried “a great significance for the present generation and for future generations.” There had to be an explanation for Red Army failures, but authors needed to work carefully around “complicated” issues. It was the Party, not Stalin, that would receive accolades for resisting the Wehrmacht, and “inspiring and guiding” the people.72 However, someone had to be made responsible for the initial blunders. If Stalin were to serve as a scapegoat, commission members urged the authors to precisely outline what Stalin was guilty of, “otherwise the reader will be none the wiser.”73 The lack of literature on the war combined with silence about initial defeats and retreats undoubtedly left the public ignorant of the real reasons for the 1941 disaster. Ironically, the inspiration for discussing early mistakes came from Stalin himself who in his 1945 speech mentioned that the government made “enough errors.” The commission seized upon Stalin’s words and pointed to the need “to show where exactly the mistakes were made.”74 Hence, the parameters set by Stalin’s rhetoric continued to impose artificial limits on knowledge about Soviet losses, since discussing the true costs of the war threatened international humiliation. Stalin continued to be a divisive figure. Major-General N. Fokin, the head editor of the second volume, accused historians—without mentioning any names or titles—of holding “Stalin guilty of everything.” He elaborated: “they put everything on Stalin’s shoulders, all . . . mistakes, committed by others on other occasions, are in some ways swept away.” In Fokin’s opinion, such a “one-sided” analysis undermined “our Party’s authority.” Unable to separate the Soviet leader from the Party, Fokin argued that blaming Stalin for everything took attention away from the “positive work” done by the Party in the prewar period. The Red Army’s training and Soviet industrial potential were overlooked as the emphasis shifted to a country ostensibly unprepared for war, and an army forbidden from mobilizing and deploying on the border.75 Others supported Fokin and reiterated that given the threat of war, the Party and government “did significant work to prepare the country and the armed forces to repel” the German invasion. Although Stalin’s attempts to delay the outbreak of war by Germany were deemed the correct course of action, he was nonetheless viewed as guilty of holding “the party line as much as possible” thereby miscalculating the impact of his political and diplomatic efforts and misjudging “the political adventurism and treachery” of “Fascist Germany.” Stalin’s resulting failure to predict accurately when the invasion would commence translated into “organizational mistakes” that delayed the

52  Yan Mann economy’s transition to a war footing and impeded the timely production of military equipment and weapons while delaying the mobilization of the army in the border military districts.76 Stalin’s opposition to the Red Army’s mobilization in accordance with existing plans placed him at the center of the failure in stemming the German invasion. This built on what was considered the erroneous decision to issue an official TASS announcement on June 14, which “resulted in a psychological calm” that mentally disarmed the country when “Stalin said that the Germans would not go to war.”77 Additionally, the nature of the ensuing surprise invasion came under review. Sokolovskii required more nuanced analysis, because blaming the unfolding disaster of 1941 solely on the “element of surprise” would result in the commission being “laughed at” by the reading public who would “say the commission has not seriously come to address such an important issue.” Both the General Staff and the People’s Commissar of Defense were made responsible for the situation on the border, but their guilt was intertwined with that of Stalin who, based on available evidence, refused to “allow troops to be brought to full readiness in accordance with existing plans.” After the German invasion, the commission viewed Stalin’s role as subordinate to the “organizational role of our party,” which took up where Stalin had failed. The Party’s will, combined with that of the Soviet people, was able to “radically alter the situation” and create conditions for a future victory, namely the evacuation of vital industry to the hinterland.78 The men and women behind this gigantic effort often went unnamed, similar to Stalin-era literature.79 Whereas Stalin previously dictated all aspects of the war effort, it had now become an arduous task to apportion credit, with the Party, military, and government personnel all claiming responsibility. The diffusion of credit for wartime successes meant that Stalin was further removed from deciding the fate of the country, which, in turn, meant that he could not be blamed for all the failures and “miscalculations.” It allowed Stalin’s supporters to highlight his ability to expose weaknesses, delegate work to the right people, and correct previous mistakes made by others, which inevitably led “to the excessive praise of Stalin” as well as his associates.80 As early as 1965, Stalinists were pushing back against the dictator’s cult “in reverse,” whereby he was continuously accused of having mismanaged the state and armed forces.81 Stalin, nonetheless, remained the central figure, and his decision-making process constrained how the commission analyzed the Soviet war effort. For example, the commission was unable to find any documentation regarding the organization and planning of the Moscow Counteroffensive, one of the most significant operations of the Great Patriotic War. The commission had to admit defeat and suggest that Stalin disliked giving written orders.82 There is also evidence that Stalin banned conference participants from taking notes without his permission and commanders such as Zhukov and Vasilevskii were forced to memorize decisions and instructions, writing them down in secret notebooks from memory when they returned to their offices; these notebooks were then periodically destroyed by a special commission in adherence to rules governing classified document management.83 The lack of documentation resulted in other major operations and

Stalin and the Second World War  53 campaigns coming under similar scrutiny. Commission members argued that the organization of the Lvov-Sandomierz and Iassi-Kishinev offensives were presented as if they occurred spontaneously with some going as far as to argue that throughout the war “no campaigns were planned.” This was in direct opposition to the Stalinist narrative that considered all the aspects of the war preplanned by Stalin himself.84 Vasilii Moskovskii, a military historian who at one point was tasked with creating a museum to Stalin, had enough of the pointless debates and stated that he had personally seen the plans and maps for counteroffensive operations.85 With Stalin being relegated to nothing more than a criminal, it was seemingly easier for some to present the war’s progress as a result of the Party and people coming together and creating an inexorable momentum, despite Stalin, that eventually brought the Red Army to Berlin. Conversations about sources inevitably touched on order No. 227. The order came under scrutiny as commission members debated its merits, impact on the battle, and the overall course of the war. A. Emel’ianov, one of the editors, described how the official history evaluated the order purely “in terms of propaganda and agitation, as a document which demanded an intensification of political work among troops.” There was no mention, however, that unauthorized retreats resulted in the punishment of servicemen and allowed for disciplinary actions, including executions, to be viewed as acceptable, even the norm.86 Consequently, this order was viewed as a continuation of Stalin’s repressive policies toward military commanders and an attempt by Stalin to shift blame for the disastrous Kharkov Offensive in 1942. Emel’ianov even linked Order 227 to the 1930s and Stalin’s article “Dizzy with Success” when he, similarly, attempted to blame party functionaries for their excesses during collectivization.87 The official history’s authors and editors continuously invoked Stalin’s name and rhetoric. One of the most outspoken members of the commission, historian and veteran Lev Leshchinskii, argued that “any excuse is made to quote Stalin’s speeches and to attribute to him personally NKO [People’s Commissariat of Defense] orders.” He noted further that the author’s voice was either replaced by or reflected Stalin’s as he was being consistently promoted instead of excised or contextualized. When authors quoted Stalin in the second volume, they claimed his November 1941 speech “outlined the harsh truth” that explained the reasons for “temporary military failures” sustained by the Red Army. The authors failed to offer any type of context for understanding where Stalin’s statements reflected or deviated from the truth.88 Praising Stalin and justifying his actions were viewed as anathema to the 20th Party Congress, as was some of the documentation now serving as a basis for historical interpretations.89 Going a step further, Ilia Starinov, one of the most famous partisans of the Second World War, as well as a member of the commission before he was forced out, wrote a letter denouncing Stalin’s continued presence in the official history including his name, illustrations, and even derivatives of his name. Boltin’s written response to Starinov stressed that neither Stalin nor his positions could “be erased from history” as they included Secretary General of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), Chairman of the State Committee of Defense, Chairman of

54  Yan Mann the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR, Supreme Commander, and People’s Commissar of Defense of the Soviet Union. Moreover, “derivatives” of Stalin’s name were unavoidable, especially in the third and fourth volumes, which dealt with the Battle of Stalingrad, including actions by the Stalingrad Front.90 As Stalin continued to be a regular presence in the official history, his victims remained mired in the shadows. Pavlov, who was blamed for the Wehrmacht’s successful Minsk encirclement, merited a single mention in the second volume— he was listed as the commander of the Western Front.91 Nothing was said about his execution or, indeed, about the prewar purges of the Red Army. Though Leshchinskii argued that “the repressions—were one of the main causes of our defeats and casualties,” the first two volumes omitted “this obvious truth.”92 Worse was the blaming of prewar military theorists for the disastrous beginning of the war— Stalin once again avoided the majority of the blame. Georgii Isserson, one of the few prewar theorists to survive Stalin’s purges, wrote a “closed letter” in November 1960 to the commission arguing that military theory alone could not have foretold “the drama of the beginning of the Great Patriotic War,” nor should it “have been able to predict” the invasion.93 To the commission’s credit, the first volume discussed Stalin’s impact on the evolution of military strategy and concluded that there were “a number of weaknesses and gaps.”94 Unfortunately, such an admission did not go far enough: the first volume made no mention of numerous repressed commanders and theorists, which was readily evident to readers.95 Ignoring the accomplishments of military theorists and omitting a detailed discussion of the impact of the purges effectively meant recycling Stalin’s wartime narrative. The Soviet Union’s position on the eve of the war and its disastrous beginning was explained away in part by the Stalin-era concept that a peaceful Soviet Union suffered under the surprise attack of a stronger aggressor.96 More­ over, Stalin was placed at the center of achievements in victorious campaigns like the Battle of Stalingrad. Explaining the German Sixth Army’s defeat, the official history reverted to the idea of the Red Army learning to wage war through bloody battles, while a younger, experienced generation of commanders replaced the old cohort.97 In the wake of Khrushchev’s administration renaming Stalingrad and the premiere’s eventual removal in 1964, the commission held a meeting devoted entirely to discussing the continuing impact of Stalin and his cult on the war’s history. Deliberations covered the prewar period, including the purges and diplomacy, the 1939–1940 Winter War with Finland, the German invasion, and the element of surprise. As it attempted to offer an objective assessment of Stalin’s accomplishments and failures, the commission regularly found itself not only wanting to condemn Stalin but also praise him for the eventual Soviet victory. Consequently, Soviet foreign policy on the eve of the war was effectively split into two. Maxim Litvinov’s tenure was seen as a successful attempt to create preconditions for an antiHitler coalition, but Stalin and Molotov’s foreign policy decisions were deemed failures. However, since Stalin presided over both foreign ministers, he received praise for Litvinov’s accomplishments but stood condemned for Molotov’s actions

Stalin and the Second World War  55 that resulted in the failure of collective security.98 Similarly, the rearmament of the Red Army on the eve of the German invasion was viewed positively, but the introduction of dual command and the continued repressions of commanding officers, combined with an erroneous view of Germany’s intentions, which led to a lack of combat readiness on the eve of the war, were held against Stalin.99 The commission also justified the non-aggression pact, since it offered respite before the German invasion, but blamed Stalin for “misunderstanding and overestimating” it and thus squandering those two years instead of preparing for an imminent war.100 Neither did the Soviet Union fully prepare for the Winter War against Finland. The commission directly linked Soviet miscalculations to the 1938 purges of the Red Army, though the official history placed the blame on Voroshilov and the institution of Military Commissars, introduced in May 1937 and abolished in August 1940. Stalin avoided blame, despite the fact that everyone understood that Voroshilov did not act in a vacuum and could not possibly “undertake any principal decisions” without Stalin’s knowledge or direction.101 Similar issues appeared when discussing the German invasion of the Soviet Union. While the official history addressed some of the reasons for early Red Army failures, Fokin claimed that the question of what happened and why “is not developed fully or deeply enough.” He hoped that the forthcoming sixth volume would cover these issues in greater detail, including the disastrous Winter War, and he was not above associating blame with Stalin and Voroshilov but also Semion Timoshenko and Zhukov, to explain the situation in 1941.102 A thread that touched on both Stalin and his military commanders was the failure to place Red Army forces on alert on the eve of the invasion. The navy was able to issue an alert for battle readiness on June 19 without any repercussions, partly thanks to their independent status. Army commanders, however, failed their troops and needed to take responsibility for their inaction as they were “directly responsible for the fact that in an environment of an immediate threat of war the border military districts continued to live and engage in combat training for peacetime, and proposals by more visionary commanders from border military districts about the need to bring the troops to battle readiness were rejected as a provocation.”103 This failure, combined with the TASS announcement on June 14, 1941, which signaled to “the world” that Germany was not intending to break its pact with the Soviet Union, were viewed as two of Stalin’s greatest miscalculations. They directly resulted in the failure of military industry to prepare for wartime production and delayed mobilization of the armed forces in the border districts where units were often caught engaging in “maneuvers” with officers on leave.104 The resulting chaos and confusion, directly linked to Stalin and the factor of surprise, meant that needed procedures for timely evacuation were not taken, nor was there a switch to a war footing or deployment of military assets to needed areas. The extent to which the Soviet state and its armed forces was unprepared for war “came to light when the war had already begun.”105 Looking at the war in its entirety, proposed changes by commission members included the decision to remove all references to Stalin’s book, On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. Furthermore, mention of Stalin’s name was

56  Yan Mann to be reduced as much as possible; any institutions or enterprises retaining his name were to be retitled; the “Stalin prize” was to be replaced with “the national prize” and chapters devoted to the Battle of Stalingrad were to be renamed. The proposed changes drastically reduced Stalin’s presence, but it was agreed that wholly eliminating his name was “impractical.”106 Members came to an additional impasse when discussing the impact of Stalin’s speech during the war, which attempted to explain what happened during the initial six months of the German invasion. Its presentation in the official history failed to correlate Stalin’s utterings with the reality on the ground. Members argued over how much Stalin could have divulged to the population in a time of war. In the end, no consensus was reached over this issue and its ideal presentation.107 Finally, evident throughout many of these meetings was a fear of the “cult in reverse.” A middle ground needed to be taken, otherwise, a commission member warned, “if we cast all blame on Stalin this will be wrong, this will be the cult of personality from the other side.”108 Such a position could result in a “slide into a nihilistic position of indiscriminate denial bent on maligning all that was done by Stalin and on his behalf.”109 To offset those fears, members consistently wanted others to share in the blame for what happened during the war. Whether it was Molotov and Beria or Voroshilov and Stalin’s commanding generals, or after his ouster, Khrushchev, the only figures that were consistently spared any type of criticism were Lenin and the Party itself.110 Under Leonid Brezhnev, the war’s history underwent a regression as Stalin’s cult was partly reconfigured as the cult of the Great Patriotic War—the two became intertwined. Thus, even if the aforementioned changes were implemented, they were too little and too late. Already in late 1965, historians were urged to “render the complete historical truth” with respect to Stalin, which meant including “instances in which Stalin had held correct theoretical and political positions and had supported Lenin.”111 By the early 1970s, a new 12-volume History of the Second World War 1939–1945 began publication as Brezhnev’s regime welcomed back a Stalin-centered narrative of the war.

Conclusion Stalin’s role in the war was defined by a narrative initially created in wartime and immediately transformed into a nostalgic collective memory with Stalin at the center of events. He was depicted as a brilliant leader whose expertise was championed in publications by military commanders as their reasoning and rhetoric made their way into the public sphere and exaggerated Stalin’s accomplishments. Khrushchev’s succession in the wake of Stalin’s death offered up the dead dictator as a scapegoat for wartime failures while a select group of bureaucrats and commanding generals benefited from associating themselves with wartime accomplishments. Fears of a “cult in reverse” limited how much blame could be assigned to Stalin and ideologues continued to struggle with not only holding Stalin responsible for his failures but also praising him for what they considered correct decisions in hindsight. Stalin persisted in being a dominant personality,

Stalin and the Second World War  57 partially due to the numerous positions he held in the government and military, as other important bureaucrats and commanders continued to be omitted. During the debates and critiques of the war’s official history, a “hypernormalization” of text took place. Historians evaded offering opinions or analysis, which made them mere transmitters of knowledge rather than its creators. Discussions were shifted “into the past” as limits on archival access, combined with a continued reliance on canonical texts by Stalin or Lenin, meant a lack of original or new “authoritative language.” Arguments were built on “prior temporalities” where information, whether new or old, appeared “as knowledge previously asserted and commonly known.”112 Therefore, the war’s narrative persisted in relying on past ideas complemented by Stalin’s words and actions, while debates were settled by leaning on familiar concepts, forgoing examination of evidence that could potentially endanger the foundations of the Soviet system. The debate over Stalin’s role in the Second World War continues into the 21st century as contemporary Russians increasingly associate Stalin with victory. Separating the war effort and victory from Stalin has become an impossible task under Vladimir Putin, whose administration has turned to the war to help define Russia’s contribution to the 20th century and as a ready source of patriotism for the population. Under Putin, an attack on the war was transformed into “a personal insult, a sacrilege.”113 The sacred aura encircling the war thrives from the seeds planted under Stalin and the nostalgia currently sustained by May 9 celebrations. It is further reinforced by the recent creation and appropriation of the “Immortal Regiment” by Putin’s administration, wherein Russians join in victory celebrations with photographs of their veteran relatives, in essence taking their place and creating a new generation of victims. Focusing on the victory in the war means drawing attention to Stalin’s role and, more so, to his narrative. In his recent interview, Professor of Russian Studies Evgeny Dobrenko concluded that Putin’s attention to the Second World War is not only tinged with but reliant on Stalin era “rhetoric, omissions, manipulations, tropes, metaphors, even the same sarcasms toward the adversary.”114 Stalin’s legacy thus lives on in Putin’s magniloquence.

Notes 1 Zhukov, Stalin: Tainy Vlasti, 638, 644. 2 Hopf, Reconstructing the Cold War, 153. 3 See Yurchak, Everything was Forever. 4 Barber, “The Image of Stalin,” 38, 40–41. 5 Brooks, “Pravda Goes to War,” 160. 6 Hosking, “The Second World War,” 173. 7 Barber, “The Image of Stalin,” 42, 43. 8 Gallagher, The Soviet History, 12–13. 9 Privitelli, “Two Different Wars?” 261. 10 Pavlenko, “Stalinistskie Kontseptsii Voennoi Istorii,” 354, 356; Privitelli, “Two Different Wars?” 261; Mawdsley, “Explaining Military Failure,” 136. 11 Mawdsley, “Explaining Military Failure,” 151. 12 Pavlenko, “Stalinistskie Kontseptsii Voennoi Istorii,” 357. 13 Mawdsley, “Explaining Military Failure,” 149.

58  Yan Mann 14 Jukes, Stalingrad to Kursk, 225. 15 General-Major K.D. Golubev, “Maloiaroslavetskaia operatsiia,” Pravda, January 4, 1942, 2; Brooks, “Pravda Goes to War,” 15. 16 Ehrenburg, The Tempering of Russia, 191–92; Mikhail Bragin, “1812—Borodinskaia Bitva—1942,” Pravda, September 7, 1942, 3; “Rasshirenie vystavki ‘Otechestvennaia voina 1812 goda’,” Pravda, July 2, 1941, 3. 17 Al’tman, Terushkin, and Brodskaia, Sokhrani Moi Pisma, 137. 18 “Oborona Moskvy Voiskam Moskovskoi Zony oborony.” RGASPI, Fond 17, Opis 125, Delo 204, L. 9. Recently this study was reprinted, Elizarov, Kostina, Bitva za Moskvu. 19 Ibid., l. 16, 17, 27. 20 TsAMO, f. 208, op. 2511, d. 191, l. 54, cited in Lopukhovskii, Viazemskaia katastrofa, 117. 21 RGASPI, f. 17, op. 125, d. 204, l. 18–19. 22 Ilia Ehrenburg, “Chudo,” Krasnaia zvezda, February 8, 1942, 3. 23 Pravda, August  24–August  27, 1942; Pavlenko, “Stalinistskie Kontseptsii Voennoi Istorii,” 358. 24 Ehrenburg, The Tempering of Russia, 154; Ilia Ehrenburg, “Martovskii Veter,” Krasnaia zvezda, March 13, 1942, 3. 25 Korneichuk, “The Front,” 479, 520. 26 Pravda, July 30, 1942, 1; Krasnaia zvezda, July 30, 1942, 1. 27 Jones, Stalingrad, 43–44. 28 Werth, Russia at War, 595. 29 Khlevniuk, Stalin, 225–26. 30 Harrison, The Battle of Moscow. 31 Ibid., 29, 30, 36, 58, 65, 69, 71, 80, 95, 188–89, 194, 195, 200, 261, 293, 307, 394, 444. 32 Ibid., 29, 39, 98, 151–53, 436. 33 Ibid., 41, 44, 125, 136, 140, 144. 34 Barghoorn, The Soviet Image, xiii; Cohen, ed. An End to Silence, 121; RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 108, l. 4, 13. 35 Jones, After Hitler, 289; Gill, Symbols and Legitimacy, 152–53; Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead, 104; Lovell, The Shadow of War, 8–9; Barghoorn, The Soviet Image, 150. On veterans’ organizations, see Edele, Soviet Veterans. 36 Lazarev, “Russian Literature,” 31; Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead, 104; Pavlenko, “Stalinistskie Kontseptsii Voennoi Istorii,” 353. 37 Youngblood, Russian War Films, 7, 88, 90, 95–96. 38 Shneer, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, 219. 39 McKay, Letters to Gorbachev, 177. 40 Khrushchev, Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, 123; Shepilov, The Kremlin’s Scholar, 137, 192. 41 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 108, l. 11, 12, 18, 24–25. 42 Gallagher, The Soviet History, 43–4, 68. 43 Ibid., 52, 54; N. Talenskii, “Bankrotstvo Planov Agressora,” Pravda, June 22, 1947, 4. 44 Gallagher, The Soviet History, 11, 70. 45 Garthoff, Soviet Strategy, 62–63. 46 Gill, Symbols and Legitimacy, 153–54. 47 Kulish, “O Nekotorikh Aktualnikh Problemakh,” 298, 348. 48 Aleksandrov et al., Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin; Stalin, O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine; Mints, Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina. 49 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 108, l. 14, 15–16, 17–18. 50 Ibid., 9–10, 87, 111. 51 Voroshilov, Genial’nyi polkovodets Velikoi Otechestvennoi. 52 Voroshilov, A Commander of Genius, 13.

Stalin and the Second World War  59 53 Ibid., 20. 54 Ibid., 6, 16–17, 18–19. 55 Gallagher, The Soviet History, 38, 82. 56 Ibid., 129. 57 Gallagher, The Soviet History, 133; Gebhardt, Soviet Historiography, 19–20. 58 The Russian Institute Columbia University, ed., The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism. 59 Garthoff, Soviet Strategy, 82, 83–84. 60 Gebhardt, Soviet Historiography, 21. 61 Kulish, “O Nekotorikh Aktualnikh Problemakh,” 324. 62 Ziemke, “Stalin as a Strategist,” 179. 63 Kulish, “O Nekotorikh Aktualnikh Problemakh,” 303–4. 64 Boltin, “O khode raboti,” 109. 65 “Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza 1941–1945 gg.” Pravda, July 31, 1959, 2. 66 Dozens of veterans and specialists on the military and military history were among those chosen to participate on the creation of an official narrative of the war’s history, while additional experts included historians of Japan and the Far East, Germany, America, and Poland. 67 Taubman, Khrushchev, 279. 68 Shapiro, “The Soviet Press,” 209. 69 The Civil War also suffered from a lack of literature. Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 132. 70 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 12, l. 13–14, 61. 71 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 27, l. 60. 72 Ibid., 1, 6, 8–9, 17, 78. 73 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 67a, l. 10. 74 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 30, l. 49. 75 Ibid., 6, 7, 11. 76 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 392, l. 243. 77 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 27, l. 55–56, 81; d. 30, l. 45. 78 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 27, l. 12, 13, 51, 52, 61. 79 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 74, l. 74, 75. 80 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 309, l. 103. 81 RGASPI, f. 72, op. 22, d. 916, l. 28, 40, 44. 82 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 73, l. 37–38; d. 28, l. 16. 83 Kulish, “ ‘Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal’ v 1959–1967 gg.,” 66. 84 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 31, l. 35. Others raised similar questions regarding plans. For instance, see Rokossovskii, Soldatskii dolg, 31. 85 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 31, l. 47–48. 86 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 108, l. 62. Originally submitted manuscript chapters lacked any mention of order No. 227, but they were included in the published volume. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 74, l. 7; Fokin et al., Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 430–31. 87 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 108, l. 81, 82. 88 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 309, l. 88; Fokin et al., Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 252–53. 89 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 309, l. 82, 96, 97. 90 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 586, l. 150, 170, 171. 91 Fokin et al., Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 29. 92 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 309, l. 93–94. 93 Ibid., 215–16. 94 Deborin et al., Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 439.

60  Yan Mann 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 309, l. 73. Ibid., 89–93. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 586, l. 208. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 108, l. 65–66, 116, 117. Ibid., 65–66. Ibid., 82, 83–84. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 391, l. 313. RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 108, l. 53–54. The sixth volume placed the blame squarely on Stalin’s inability to correctly dictate the international situation on the eve of the war. Vasilenko et al., Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 190–91. 103 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 392, l. 244–45. 104 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 390, l. 200–1. 105 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 75, l. 55–56. 106 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 32, l. 15–16. 107 Ibid., 14, 59; d. 108, l. 51; Werth, The Year of Stalingrad, 82–83. 108 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 75, l. 57–58. 109 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 391, l. 315–16. 110 RGASPI, f. 71, op. 22, d. 73, l. 25; d. 392, l. 244–45; d. 67a, l. 16; d. 585, l. 39; d. 916, l. 28. 111 Cited in Shapiro, “The Soviet Press,” 197. 112 Yurchak, Everything was Forever, 60, 61. 113 Wood, “Performing Memory,” 174, 188. 114 Khvostunova, “Evgeny Dobrenko.”

Bibliography Archives RGASPI: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii.

Published works Aleksandrov, G. F. et al. Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin: Kratkaia biografiia. Leningrad: Lenizdat, 1947. Al’tman, Ilia, Leonid Terushkin, and Irina Brodskaia, eds. Sokhrani moi pisma . . . : Sbornik pisem evreev perioda Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. Moscow: “MIK”, 2010. Barber, John. “The Image of Stalin in Soviet Propaganda and Public Opinion During World War 2.” In World War 2 and the Soviet People, edited by John Garrard and Carol Garrard. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Barghoorn, Frederick C. The Soviet Image of the United States: A Study in Distortion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1950. Boltin, E. “O khode raboti po sozdaniiu ‘Istorii Velikoi Otechestvennoi voini’.” Voennoistoricheskii zhurnal 1 (1959): 109–13. Brandenberger, David. Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror Under Stalin, 1927–1941. Stanford: Yale University Press, 2011. Brooks, Jeffrey. “Pravda Goes to War.” In Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia, edited by Richard Stites. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. ———. Thank You, Comrade Stalin!: Soviet Public Culture from Revolution to Cold War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Stalin and the Second World War  61 Cohen, Stephen F., ed. An End to Silence: Uncensored Opinion in the Soviet Union. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1982. Deborin, G. A. Velikaia pobeda sovetskogo naroda. Moskva: Voenizdat, 1955. Deborin, G. A. et al. Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1941–1945, vol. 1. Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel’stvo Ministerstva Oborony Soiuza SSR, 1960. Edele, Mark. Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society 1941–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Ehrenburg, Ilya. The Tempering of Russia. Translated by Alexander Kaun. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944. ———. The War 1941–1945 Volume V of Men, Years—Life. Translated by Tatiana Shebunina and Yvonne Kapp. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1964. Elizarov, S. S., and S. V. Kostina, eds. Bitva za Moskvu: Istoriia Moskovskoi zoni oboroni. Moscow: AO “Moskovskie uchebniki i Kartolitografiia”, 2001. Fokin, N. A. et al. Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1941–1945, vol. 2. Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel’stvo Ministerstva Oborony Soiuza SSR, 1961. Gallagher, Matthew P. The Soviet History of World War II: Myths, Memories, and Realities. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976. Garthoff, Raymond L. Soviet Strategy in the Nuclear Age. New York: Praeger, 1962. Gebhardt, James Frederick. “Soviet Historiography of Soviet Foreknowledge of the German Invasion of 1941.” MA thesis, University of Washington, 1976. Gill, Graeme J. Symbols and Legitimacy in Soviet Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Harrison, Richard W., trans. The Battle of Moscow 1941–1942: The Red Army’s Defensive Operations and Counter-Offensive Along the Moscow Strategic Direction. Solihull: Helion & Company Limited, 2015. Hopf, Ted. Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945–1958. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Hosking, Geoffrey. “The Second World War and Russian National Consciousness.” Past and Present 175 (1): 162–87. Jones, Michael K. Stalingrad: How the Red Army Triumphed. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2007. ———. After Hitler: The Last Ten Days of World War II in Europe. New York: New American Library, 2015. Jukes, Geoffrey. Stalingrad to Kursk: Triumph of the Red Army. Barnsley: Pen & Sword Military, 2011. Khlevniuk, Oleg V. Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator. Translated by Nora Seligman Favorov. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. Khrushchev, Sergei, ed. Memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev: Reformer, 1945–1964, vol. 2. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Khvostunova, Olga. “Evgeny Dobrenko: ‘The Soviet Nation’s Mental Matrix is Still Seen Today’ (Part 1).” Institute of Modern Russia, June 29, 2020. https://imrussia.org/ en/opinions/3128-evgeny-dobrenko-%E2%80%9Cthe-soviet-nation%E2%80%99smental-matrix-is-still-seen-today%E2%80%9D-part-i. Korneichuk, Alexander. “The Front.” In Seven Soviet Plays, translated by Bernard L. Kotem and Zina Voynow, 454–520. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1946. Kulish, Vasilii Mikhailovich. “O nekotorikh aktualnikh problemakh istoriografii Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny.” In Stalinism i istoriia, edited by A. N. Mertsalov. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literaturi, 1991.

62  Yan Mann ———. “ ‘Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal’ v 1959–1967 gg.” Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, no. 8 (2009): 63–69. Lazarev, Lazar. “Russian Literature on the War and Historical Truth.” In World War 2 and the Soviet People, edited by John Garrard and Carol Garrard, 28–37. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. Lopukhovskii, Lev. Viazemskaia katastrofa. Moscow: Iauza Eksmo, 2008. Lovell, Stephen. The Shadow of War: Russia and the USSR, 1941 to the Present. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Mawdsley, Evan. “Explaining Military Failure: Stalin, the Red Army, and the First Period of the Great Patriotic War, 1941–42.” In Stalin—His Times and Ours, edited by Geoffrey Roberts. Irish Association for Russian and Eastern European Studies, 2005. McKay, Ron. Letters to Gorbachev: Life in Russia Through the Postbag of Argumenty i Fakty. London: Michael Joseph, 1991. Mints, I. I. Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina Sovetskogo Soiuza. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1947. Pavlenko, Nikolai Grigorevich. “Stalinistskie kontseptsii voennoi istorii.” In Stalinism i istoriia, edited by A. N. Mertsalov. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literaturi, 1991. Privitelli, Tobias. “Two Different Wars? World War II as ‘Second Imperialist War’ and ‘Great Patriotic War’ in the Russian-Soviet Tradition.” In Recalling the Past—(Re)constructing the Past: Collective and Individual Memory of World War II in Russia and Germany, edited by Withold Bonner and Arja Rosenholm. Helsinki: Aleksanteri Institute, 2008. Roberts, Geoffrey. Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov. New York: Random House, 2012. Rokossovskii, K. K. Soldatskii dolg. Moscow: Veche, 2013. The Russian Institute Columbia University, ed. The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism: A Selection of Documents. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. Shapiro, Jane P. “The Soviet Press and the Problem of Stalin.” Studies in Comparative Communism 4, no. 3 (1971): 179–209. Shepilov, Dmitrii. The Kremlin’s Scholar: A Memoir of Soviet Politics Under Stalin and Khrushchev. Edited by Stephen V. Bittner. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Shneer, David. Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011. Stalin, I. V. O Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine Sovetskogo Soiuza. Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1949. Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. Tel’pukhovskii, Boris. Ocherki istorii Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny, 1941–1945. Moskva: Izd-vo AN SSSR, 1955. Tumarkin, Nina. The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Vasilenko, V. A. et al. Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1941–1945, vol. 6. Moscow: Voennoe Izdatel’stvo Ministerstva Oborony Soiuza SSR, 1965. Voroshilov, Kliment. Genial’nyi polkovodets Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. Moscow: Gospilitizdat, 1949. ———. A Commander of Genius of the Great Patriotic War. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1950. Werth, Alexander. Russia at War, 1941–1945. New York: Dutton, 1964.

Stalin and the Second World War  63 ———. The Year of Stalingrad: A Historical Record and a Study of Russian Mentality, Methods and Policies. New York: Simon Publications, 2001. Wood, Elizabeth A. “Performing Memory: Vladimir Putin and the Celebration of World War II in Russia.” The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 38 (2011): 172–200. Youngblood, Denise J. Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Zhukov, Iuri. Stalin: Tainy Vlasti. Moscow: Vagrius, 2007. Ziemke, Earl F. “Stalin as a Strategist, 1940–1941.” Military Affairs 47, no. 4 (December 1983): 173–80.

3 Victory Day before the cult War commemoration in the USSR, 1945–1965* Mischa Gabowitsch

There is a widespread misconception, even among historians, that Victory Day was not (at least officially) celebrated in the Soviet Union after Stalin stripped it of its work-free status in 1947.1 In the form of a narrow “stolen Victory” thesis, this is usually explained by his supposed fear that veterans of the recent war would demand for the Soviet system to be liberalized. More broadly, it stands for the idea that war commemoration was virtually absent in the Soviet Union before the onset of the Brezhnev-era cult in 1965 except as a tool of foreign policy. In this chapter, I examine war commemoration in the Soviet Union until 1965 through a critical discussion of this thesis. My arguments are informed by sources from the USSR’s periphery (especially Belarus and Ukraine) as well as Moscow, and a perspective on foreign and domestic commemorative policies as entangled rather than separate spheres. By looking at the reasons why historians of urban Russia have had more difficulty acknowledging pre-1965 war commemoration than those studying Ukraine, Belarus, or the Russian countryside, I show how commemorative practices in the late Stalinist and Khrushchev eras were different from what we have come to expect since the 1970s: more regionally diverse, less homogenized, less urban, and addressing a different audience. I then propose a fresh look at the reasons why Victory Day regained its work-free status in 1965 and became the centerpiece of a new cult.

The myth that Stalin abolished Victory Day: examining a tenacious misconception Stalin did not in fact “abolish” Victory Day, as some recent authors have claimed.2 The Supreme Soviet decree of December 23, 1947, merely stripped this day of its work-free status in favor of January 1.3 Coming just over a week before New Year’s Day, the decree practically “legalized an already existing practice,” keeping the inevitable post-celebration hangover from affecting productivity.4 But this did not spell an end to war commemoration. May 9 remained an occasion for rallies, lectures, guided tours, exhibitions, athletic competitions, and military shows. New memorials were opened and existing ones mended or adorned. Salutes were fired in a number of cities and newspapers devoted even more space to Victory Day after 1947 than before.5

Victory Day before the cult  65 In addition, May 9, 1948, fell on a Sunday (as did May 8, 1949), turned workfree by a 1940 decree, and thus in practice the transition was much smoother than the idea of a radical rupture between 1947 and 1948 suggests. Conversely, even though Victory Day was work-free in 1946 and 1947 and an occasion for massive celebrations in some places (e.g., with a 6,000 person choir in Kharkiv6), in many other places the scale of the celebrations did not come near that of 1945, with a program that was similar to other (working day) military-commemorative holidays.7 Moreover, not everyone was actually off work, and commemoration often took the form of lectures at enterprises during the work day, with popular revels (gulianiia) confined to the evenings, just as would be the case in later years.8 Thus, the idea that Victory Day was the main people’s holiday in 1946–1947 is just as problematic as the suggestion that Stalin put a radical end to the new celebrations in 1947. So why the persistent misconception that Stalin abolished the holiday or, in a more moderate version of the same claim, “stepped up his efforts to leave the war aside,” causing Victory Day to turn “largely informal, with meetings of veterans, visits to cemeteries, and public strolling?”9 I suggest that it is due to at least four different factors, each of which sheds light on present-day perceptions of both the meaning of Victory Day and of Soviet history. First among them is an anachronistic view of May 9 as the hallowed cornerstone of the festive calendar—a status that Victory Day would in fact never attain in the Soviet period. Given this supposed sacredness, any change in its status must have carried a profound symbolic meaning. Such accounts typically gloss over September 3, even though this was also a work-free holiday in 1945– 1947, celebrating the victory over Japan which Stalin had cast as a fulfillment of four decades of popular aspirations and just revenge for the defeat of 1904.10 This interpretation also overlooks the fact that rosters of holidays and militarycommemorative dates tend to change frequently, as had happened multiple times in the Stalinist Soviet Union and was happening elsewhere in Europe. In 1945 or soon thereafter, Victory Day became a holiday not only in the USSR but also in several other countries that had come under Soviet military or political control. In Moscow but also in Warsaw, the respective Communist Party leadership issued decrees to that effect on May 8, 1945. (Inside the Soviet Union, however, a victory parade took place on May 9 in Kiev but only on June 24 in Moscow.) In Romania, May 9 replaced what was until then the main political holiday, Monarchy Day, hitherto celebrated on May 10. In Moscow, May 9 lost its work-free status in 1947 in favor of New Year’s Day (as did September 3), yet in Poland this happened only in 1951, when a reform brought back religious holidays and dates commemorating events from national history that had been struck from the official calendar in 1946. Meanwhile that same year, 1951, May 9—as Liberation from Fascism Day—became the sole official work-free holiday in Czechoslovakia, notwithstanding the fact that hostilities had not ended in that country until May 11, 1945. Nor were such changes a prerogative of Soviet-controlled republics. Thus, in France, Victory Day was at first celebrated on the Sunday following May  8

66  Mischa Gabowitsch (unless that date was itself a Sunday). May 8 itself did not become a work-free holiday until 1953, before losing that status again in 1959 as part of a reform that sought to limit the number of work-free days. Victory Day was then entirely scrapped in 1975 by Giscard d’Estaing as a sign of Franco-German reconciliation, before being reintroduced as a work-free holiday under François Mitterrand in 1981. In the Soviet bloc, the change in the date’s status did not spell an end to commemorative events. Victory Day was incorporated into the tradition of tightly controlled state festivals. Upgrading New Year’s Day at the expense of one of the central political holidays of the Stalinist Soviet Union (Labor Day, Revolution Day, or Constitution Day) would have been unthinkable, whereas commemorating the victories over Germany and Japan was a very recent practice that did not necessarily require the kinds of mass participation of different population groups traditionally associated with the original socialist festivals. Second, the narrative of Victory Day disappearing appears to dovetail with what we know about late Stalinism. Waves of executions and mass deportations swept the newly incorporated territories. The experience of millions of Soviet citizens— those taken to Germany as slave laborers, Holocaust victims, Soviet prisoners of war, Chechens or Volga Germans deported during the war—was largely or wholly expunged from public discussion. There was the Leningrad affair, the murder of Solomon Mikhoels, and the crushing of the Jewish Antifascist Committee. All of these events, known only through samizdat or hearsay before perestroika, have long since been described by historians drawing on a variety of archival sources. This appears to lend similar credibility to other accounts that once circulated as hearsay and speculation. One such story was the Valaam Myth—the belief that war invalids were “cleansed” from the streets of the main Soviet cities in 1946– 1947 and taken to the island of Valaam. Similar to other myths about the war and the postwar period, this idea creates a framework for making sense of personal recollections (they were there, and then they disappeared) which in turn make the myth itself appear more plausible—a process that has long been described for other countries.11 In fact, as Robert Dale showed in his study of the Valaam Myth, it represented an understandable attempt to make sense of surrounding reality in the face of censorship, lies, and lack of information.12 As to the “abolition” of Victory Day, it coincided with a different reform, one that was experienced as a slap in the face of war veterans—the abolition of the payments and other benefits for recipients of state orders and medals, which also came into force on January 1, 1948. In truth, military decorations were only one among a range of possible criteria for qualification; at the same time, the benefits were quite modest and the overall number of recipients relatively small.13 What’s more, their elimination was part of the larger monetary reform of late 1947, which scrapped the food stamps system and standardized retail prices. Benefits for army members and their families, however, were left intact. Thus, while Stalin was clearly not interested in preserving special privileges for war participants, to say that he was motivated by fear of former front soldiers appears quite fanciful. Unsurprisingly, such claims are typically couched in the language of amateur psychological diagnosis, as illustrated by one historian’s evidence-free

Victory Day before the cult  67 claim that “Stalin’s 1947 decision to downgrade the status of Victory Day is in part understandable in terms of Stalin’s own distorted psychology; a prisoner of his own paranoia, Stalin came to fear that the war’s greatness would with time eclipse his own.”14 Third, the belief that Victory Day was abolished is in many ways Russo-centric, or more precisely metropolitan. Different parts of empires are always ruled differently, and the late Stalinist USSR was no exception. Of course, even in Moscow and Leningrad events marking Victory Day never ceased. Still, for residents of those cities, the conclusion that the memory of the war was to be suppressed entirely would not have been entirely fanciful, even though the chronology of events does not map neatly onto the idea that Victory Day was suddenly abolished in December 1947. The Leningrad Affair saw the closure of the Blockade Museum (in 1949), the Museum of the Defense of Leningrad (in 1952),15 and the Svir’ Victory memorial in the north of Leningrad oblast (in 1951); the trophy exhibition in Moscow’s Gorky Park was shut down in October 1948;16 and the most grandiose projects for a victory monument in the capital remained on paper—even though the sculpture groups in the wartime metro stations and on the Victory Bridge of 1943 served Muscovites as daily reminders of the official image of the war, and the Central House of the Red Army with its eponymous park and exhibition of the Victory Banner served as a focal point for festivities on and around May 9, 1955.17 Yet, at the same time, the military practically turned Sevastopol’ into a theme park of military glory, and Victory Day was very widely celebrated there.18 In Siberia or the Urals, the sprawling industrial installations were the main monuments to the recent war, yet Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia’s western and southwestern regions were strewn with hundreds of small and large obelisks, tank monuments, and standardized or improvised memorials from concrete, plaster, or granite. On the eve of May 9, local residents would tend to the graves—sometimes voluntarily, often on instructions from the authorities, as the record of raion or oblast party committees shows. On the day itself, monuments would be unveiled or serve as sites for rallies or military ceremonies. In addition, May 9, like most military commemoration at the time, served geopolitical functions. Salutes were fired not only in the Hero Cities and republican capitals but also in L’viv and Kaliningrad, the administrative centers of new border regions that were undergoing rapid Sovietization, as well as in Port Arthur. Monument construction, too, was stepped up in the imperial borderlands: large-scale memorials were built in L’viv and Yerevan and planned for Kyiv and Tallinn until the leader’s death cut those plans short. In the new satellite states, from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to Bulgaria, May 9 (or 8) was an occasion to enact friendship with the Soviet Union.19 During the Khrushchev period, official commemoration proceeded in similar ways: with grave care, monument construction, and rallies at home—and parades and summits abroad. Yet it is the fourth explanation that is clearly the most salient: the tenacity of the “abolished Victory Day” myth is due to an anachronistic perspective.20 When post-Soviet commentators say that there was no Victory Day before Brezhnev, what they mean is that it was not celebrated the way it later came to be: as a

68  Mischa Gabowitsch holiday for everyone and an occasion to honor war veterans. Yet that is not how the day was conceived. “Soldiers’ memories,” in any case, “were too complicated to gather into any single act of remembrance. . . . It was all too recent, too alien, and too vivid to make sense.”21 But doing justice to the complexity of demobilized soldiers’ memories was never the intended purpose of the festivities to begin with. From the point of view of the bosses, Victory Day in Stalin’s times was a holiday for celebrating Soviet military might, the state and party leadership, and above all the supreme leader himself. Victory in the Second World War quickly came to be listed among the other achievements of socialism, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, among the mythologized feats of arms of the Russian state, stretching back to Poltava and further to the Battle on the Ice. As for Victory Day, it was incorporated into a larger calendar of military holidays and, in practice, was often indistinguishable from widely celebrated days such as Soviet Army Day (February 23), Aviation Day (August 18), or Tank Crewman Day (September 12),22 the latter soon coming to eclipse the temporally close Victory over Japan Day. Among other things, the day of victory on the Far Eastern front simply lacked material “equipment”: the communal graves of the Manchurian Operation were almost exclusively outside the Soviet Union’s borders. Another important point is that local liberation days started being celebrated during the war itself, well before the date of Victory Day was known, serving not only commemoration and propaganda but also mobilization of production in support of the ongoing war effort, as was Soviet Army Day on February 23.23 Thus, whereas Victory Day came to be seen as the central holiday for war commemoration in Moscow and other parts of the former home front, it did not have quite the same unequaled status in the formerly occupied territories. In the postwar years, both liberation days and Victory Day could serve, for example, as target dates to unveil monuments, open war-related museum exhibitions, or publish catalogs of local war heroes, as could anniversaries of the founding of the Red (now: Soviet) Army.24 Revolution Day on November 7 could be used for wreath-laying ceremonies at the graves of WWIIera Red Army soldiers,25 and surviving World War II heroes would give speeches on Air Force and Navy Days in July and August.26 The similarity between different military-commemorative holidays was also due to the fact that the military itself constituted both the main subjects and the principal addressees of commemoration at the time. Throughout the postwar years and the entire Khrushchev period, Victory Day was officially marked with the publication of addresses by the heads of the military ministries to “the personnel of the army and fleet” rather than front soldiers who had returned to civilian life. Military units created memorials to their own victories, and military engineers designed monuments and oversaw their construction. Members of the military were those who assembled around those monuments on May 9. Rallies and athletic competitions often took place under the auspices of recruiting stations or the Army, Air Force, and Navy Volunteer Service (DOSAAF or its precursor organizations) and were aimed at future soldiers, essentially serving as mobilization events. This was also the purpose of the cults of local and unionwide war heroes singled out for emulation. Officers or specially decorated heroes could speak at

Victory Day before the cult  69 commemorative rallies, but “simple” veterans (most of them still very young) were not suited for that role. This was not their holiday. The view of Victory Day and local liberation days as belonging with other military holidays and associated with the draft, demobilization, and young men pledging loyal military service— rather than being a national political holiday on a par with May Day or Revolution Day—survived in instructions for propaganda workers well into the Brezhnev era even as the day’s status was shifting.27 That is why the idea that Stalin “abolished” the holiday for fear of returning veterans is highly implausible, even bracketing out the lack of archival sources supporting it. The record shows many statements by the leader to the effect that former soldiers should not make undue parade of their victories, not to mention that memoirs were effectively banned and several celebrated military leaders fell into disgrace.28 However, on the one hand, Stalin made such statements well before late 1947. On the other hand, there are no serious grounds for thinking that individual demands or expressions of discontent constituted a real or perceived threat to the regime and an insurmountable challenge for the repressive agencies. Incidents relating to May 9 in 1946–1947 included drinking binges, accidents, attacks on monuments, and even killings of party members in rural areas, but that did not make Victory Day fundamentally different from other work-free days, nor did such occurrences cease after 1947.29 The idea of front soldiers who had seen Europe and decided to change the Soviet system yet were incapable of doing so because a work-free holiday was scrapped in favor of January 1 is an obvious fantasy.

Pre-1965 commemorative practices: secular and religious In fact, Victory Day continued to be widely celebrated—especially though by no means exclusively in the formerly occupied territories. Here, the party-state could not possibly forego commemoration. For, on the one hand, no other stateorganized spectacle referring to past events could draw on such a large pool of living witnesses, providing it with an authenticity that the much shallower bench of surviving revolutionaries from 1905 or 1917 could not ensure.30 On the other hand, the morally complex events of occupation and liberation were still present in local memory, hundreds of thousands of people had occupied professional positions under German rule,31 and both they and the younger age cohort had to be actively trained in the official version of events. Active or prospective soldiers were often the main audience of such practices. Soldiers were taken on tours of memorials;32 schoolchildren heard lectures about the history of the army;33 and war-themed exhibitions prepared by local history museums were specially shown at draft offices to those undergoing pre-conscription military training.34 However, there were also events targeting a more general, often rural, population: in 1952, for example, “May 9—the day of victory over fascist Germany” was among the topics of thematic book displays organized at village libraries in districts across the rural Gomel’ oblast.35 Importantly, lectures and exhibitions scheduled around commemorative dates were not necessarily the

70  Mischa Gabowitsch recounts of military feats that we have come to associate with Soviet and postSoviet commemoration: they could also take the form of agricultural shows illustrating the supposed post-occupation plenty or lectures about the achievements of industry.36 A wide range of war-related commemorative and educational events continued throughout the Khrushchev era. Memorials were built and maintained. Research was done on local war events and heroes. Both research and commemoration were sometimes prompted by the Soviet Union’s new international commitments. Thus, in 1955, a large rally was held in the Yel’sk district near the Belarusian–Ukrainian border, with many international guests as well as residents of the surrounding villages, to pay homage to the Slovak army captain Ján Nálepka.37 (Nálepka had defected to the Soviet partisans near that location in 1943 and later died trying to liberate the nearby Ukrainian town of Ovruch; in the postwar years, he was a central figure in public celebrations of Soviet-Czechoslovak friendship.) In 1957, when the International Federation of Resistance Fighters announced plans to publish a calendar of commemorative dates, the Soviet veterans’ committee sent inquiries to local obkoms.38 All of these activities notwithstanding, the problem with Victory Day, from the point of view of the military leadership, was not that there was so much popular commemoration it needed to be suppressed but rather that there was not enough popular involvement. “In recent years, solemn mourning rallies have been held at communal graves in certain places on May 9. However, these rallies are often pro forma, in the absence of those in charge of the raion, without using the many good popular customs and traditions for honouring fallen heroes,” lieutenant-general Nikolai Aleksandrov of the Kyiv Military District complained to the Ukrainian party leadership in July 1956.39 So far I have mostly considered the state’s attitude toward May 9. In discussions of war memory, this is often contrasted with an authentic perspective from below: the truth of the trenches, an honest account that sometimes breaks through the stereotypical state narrative. For Victory Day, this is expressed in a contrast between a “genuine holiday in 1945 and 1946” and “yet another channel for the mobilization of popular efforts in the service of the state” thereafter.40 That image, however, is an oversimplification. The celebratory program of the supposedly genuine 1945–1947 period in the history of Victory Day was no less orchestrated and mobilizational than later events, though many celebrations on May 9 were indeed spontaneous.41 Conversely, later commemoration also included many grassroots elements. A more general challenge to any clear-cut genuine versus official distinction is that collective memory never evolves outside of any social framework, and even the earliest and most bottom–up commemorative practices were never completely divorced from the framework developed by the party-state, if only because the very date with which they were associated was an artefact of a leadership decision. The only major alternative source of remembrance practices was religion, with its traditions and symbolism, which continued to dominate individual funerals even in Moscow as late as the mid-1960s,42 and naturally extended to

Victory Day before the cult  71 commemorating the war dead. The need to have a place for such commemoration had been a frequent argument used by Orthodox petitioners—sometimes with success—to keep churches open or reopen closed ones during Stalin’s highly circumscribed liberalization of church policy in 1943–1948.43 In rural areas, in particular, such memorial services continued to be held even through the antireligious campaign that Khrushchev launched in 1958. Belarusian villages dwellers put up crosses in memory of fellow residents burned alive by the Germans.44 Holocaust survivors installed tombstones with Hebrew inscriptions.45 In the big cities, clashes between military and ecclesiastical commemoration quickly came to the fore,46 but, in smaller towns and rural areas, religious practices were often tolerated well into the Khrushchev era or even beyond. Another source for the commemorative repertoire were the vernacular Christian rituals of protection and gratitude that had been widespread during the war itself: prayers, pilgrimages to holy wells, baptisms, and relic veneration; carrying crosses or heavenly letters; processions with icons circling or connecting village; and, finally, victory processions.47 Some of these—especially heavenly letters but also icon renewal—are documented throughout the final years of Stalinism and into the late 1950s. The historian of religion Ulrike Huhn interprets them as a combination of mourning the dead, coping with the trauma of war and survivor guilt, and preparing for an imminent and even more destructive new war—with Christians now increasingly picturing the expected conflict as one between the Soviet Union and Western powers rather than one between believers and a Bolshevik anti-Christ.48 All of these aspects, of course, were prominent in the secularized commemorative culture that would later spread through urban Soviet society. The partial rehabilitation of the Russian Orthodox Church and its integration into the USSR’s peace propaganda on the international stage seems to have contributed to stripping religious commemorative practices of their subversive potential, facilitating their later evolution into secularized rituals. For evolution, rather than an overnight break, is what it was: just as religious practices of commemoration never entirely disappeared throughout the Soviet period, so attempts to dislodge or replace them with a Soviet commemorative repertoire did not suddenly start under Khrushchev: as early as the 1930s, memorial days for Bloody Sunday (a work-free holiday in the late 1920s and early 1930s) or Lenin’s death were common in the kolkhozes.49 These new rituals were intentionally introduced as an alternative to religious ones, with help from ethnographers who had closely observed mass religious rituals during their fieldwork in rural parts of the country.50 They formed part of Khrushchev’s twin campaigns, launched in 1958–1959, against vestiges of religion and to raise the quality of life in the countryside. In addition, in 1960, the Central Committee in Moscow issued a resolution “On perpetuating the memory of Soviet soldiers who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War,” focusing the attention of republican and local party bosses on commemorative rituals, in particular. At first, the responses were traditional: thus, in July 1960, the Ukrainian Central Committee proposed to hold mass commemorative rallies at well-known war memorials in the big cities not only on May 9 but also on and around Labor

72  Mischa Gabowitsch Day, October Revolution Day, Soviet Army Day, and local liberation days.51 Soon, however, the campaign for new Soviet rituals merged with the drive for more war commemoration. In 1964, for example, the Rivne obkom organized a Day of Commemorating the Dead in the form of a quasi-religious “civic memorial service” at a cemetery.52 In practice, this looked like one of the Remembrance Days introduced since the late 1950s in a number of Western regions—taking root especially in Estonia, Latvia, Belarus, and Ukraine but eventually spreading as far as Kazakhstan—expressly as an attempt to strip the tradition of taking care of relatives’ graves after the spring thaw of its religious overtones, with dates varying locally between early May and early June.53 One long-running problem for Soviet propaganda, especially in rural areas where the religious commemoration was still strong, was that it was unclear who should be in charge of orchestrating the (often costly) alternatives, with candidates ranging from village clubhouses to registry offices, and the twin dangers of inaction or excessive local creativity always looming large.54 Yet in some places where the Remembrance Days took hold, they would soon—along with the local Liberation Days—become associated with Victory Day as commemorative dates for the war dead.55 More importantly, in the long run, practices developed that were compatible with the official commemorative repertoire while gradually modifying it from within.56 Such practices were not necessarily grassroots inventions in the strict sense: they could be borne by regular people who had experienced the war but more often the initiative was taken by people invested with some authority or access to symbolic resources: local administrators, factory directors, military officers, museum workers, recognized sculptors, and architects. Executive committees installing monuments in cemeteries or atop communal graves found them in the catalogs of state foundries or workshops (izokombinaty). Professional or amateur architects as well as local residents or surviving relatives of the war dead sometimes took the initiative to create monuments that were opened on Victory Day. Local authorities—especially in small towns or villages—often turned a blind eye if the inscriptions or symbols violated only the spirit but not the letter of official tenets. When new bodies or mass graves were accidentally discovered, public ceremonies would often accompany their reburial. Thus, in November 1958, workers building a new bus depot in Gomel’ discovered a mass grave with the bodies of 776 people, both soldiers and civilians, including 92 children. Their reburial at a recent cemetery was accompanied by a funeral procession, a mourning rally, and salutes.57 Public ceremonies also took place in 1956–1960 across the Soviet Union to inaugurate the many new monuments built atop communal graves for soldiers who had died in battle or in hospitals.58 On May 9, former front soldiers gathered in public places or at home. Such meetings were often occasions for drinking bouts. Similar to those dealing with other recent traumas, veterans would often draw a veil of somber silence over their war experiences rather than sharing them with family members. Yet bereaved families would commemorate their dead at home or at cemeteries.

Victory Day before the cult  73 At the other end of the spectrum, some former front soldiers started giving speeches at factories and enterprises in the late 1940s—long before this became a state-supported, let alone a mandatory practice. In Moscow, Vladivostok, and especially in Kyiv, there were associations of veterans of certain units or branches created on the initiative of the veterans themselves; some remained informal while others were incorporated into local party, military, or museum organizations. Ukraine’s republican association for aiding war invalids had over 100,000 members when it was disbanded in 1951.59 Some teachers organized battlefield visits for schoolchildren as early as 1946.60 By the late 1950s, rest homes for vacationers offered cultural programs focused on local history that involved veterans sharing war stories around campfires.61 Museum workers from the republican capitals and other cities started collecting artefacts during the war;62 in the postwar years, they created temporary and permanent exhibitions or even specialized museums and, in formerly occupied territories, organized local history tours for young people that involved sites of partisan struggle, working with a range of local history buffs.63 By the end of the 1950s, such tours as well as meetings with former partisans and Red Army soldiers had become such an expected part of pedagogical activities by schools, museums, and the Komsomol that party committees would censure districts where such activities were deemed insufficiently frequent.64 In addition to sites of heroic battles and partisan struggle, tours eventually came to include places of memory for (some) civilian victims of war.65 Even the USSR’s first Eternal Flame—a type of memorial still considered bourgeois in the early 1950s, just like tombs of unknown soldiers—resulted from such local initiative. It was put up by a veteran who headed a factory in the small new town of Pervomaiskii near Tula not only in memory of soldiers who died in the area but also to demonstrate the achievements of the Soviet gas industry.66 The Eternal Flame template quickly spread across other parts of the Soviet Union touched directly or indirectly by the war, giving rise to other locally developed rituals, such as the Beskozyrka procession in Novorossiisk, invented in 1968 but with roots in the pre-1965 period, which involved lighting a “torch of glory” from the local Flame (set up in 1958) and carrying a sailor’s cap through the city.67 While Khrushchev was focused on future-oriented projects such as building communism, the space race, and the corn campaign, he did not suppress initiatives of this kind emanating from the army or individual veterans. In his study of the Soviet veterans’ movement, Mark Edele even hypothesizes that it was Khrushchev, as head of the Ukrainian Communist Party, who had acted as patron of the Kyiv commission to aid veterans and, therefore, when he went on to head the country, permitted the organization of similar commissions as part of recruiting stations.68 Moreover, many major memorial projects, such as the Mamaev Kurgan complex in Volgograd or Victory Park in Moscow, were launched in the Khrushchev years, even though they were not completed until much later. And finally, the early 1960s saw a revival of local history (kraevedenie) driven by patriotic cultural elites and actively encouraged by the state.69 The local history of the Great Patriotic War was an obvious candidate for promotion, since in one way or another it had touched every place and, by that time, had receded just

74  Mischa Gabowitsch enough into the past to have lost some of its immediate traumatic quality yet was also recent enough to lend itself to research and museification projects, especially those involving young people. Both the new Soviet rituals and the local history revival provided a framework for acknowledging the various war-related commemorative initiatives that had already sprung up and laid the groundwork for combining them in an allSoviet complex of rituals that elicited numerous local echoes, thereby gaining legitimacy and authenticity. “A cult of the Great Patriotic War . . . was in its formative stage.”70

Why did Victory Day return as a work-free holiday in 1965? Khrushchev’s ouster led to a new era in Soviet war commemoration, symbolized by the return of Victory Day as a work-free holiday. The Brezhnev-era victory cult is typically explained with reference to the leadership’s search for a new source of legitimacy. Indeed, by the 1960s the memory of the revolution had faded, while the war had touched every Soviet family, and many in the new leadership could more or less plausibly present themselves as having been part of the war generation. Yet while it may not be misguided, this standard explanation remains speculative and somewhat simplistic. Meanwhile, the archival record on the decision to make Victory Day work-free again is relatively scarce. Nevertheless, the accessible documents do allow us to complicate a number of received ideas, such as the narrative that the new Central Committee, led by Brezhnev, essentially introduced a new holiday from scratch; that it simply resumed the tradition of 1946–1947; that the introduction had been a “move” by Brezhnev’s Dnepropetrovsk faction in their power struggle with the Shelepin group inside the party leadership; or that it was due to Brezhnev’s sentimentality about the war.71 In order to do so, we need to take into account not only the Central Committee’s actual resolutions on May 9, as has usually been done, but also their context, as well as sources from archives outside Moscow. One key document in this regard is a letter by Petro Shelest, secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party’s Central Committee, to the CPSU’s Central Committee, dated January 12, 1965. Two months earlier, Shelest, who had supported the coup against Khrushchev, had been elected a member of its presidium. In his letter, speaking on behalf of Ukraine’s Communist Party, he proposed making Victory Day work-free and holding parades on that day, reserving May 1 for demonstrations. Naming a number of specific regions of Ukraine, Shelest wrote that “new rituals and customs to immortalize the people’s heroic feat are emerging and spreading ever more widely.” Since the 1947 reform, he complained, “the festivities linked to that date have practically been reduced to the regular mass political events that mark commemorative dates.” Shelest proposed celebrating the date more extensively, among other reasons, to “demonstrate the sources of the Soviet state’s and its army’s power and invincible might . . . and the inevitable defeat of any aggressors in war against countries with a socialist system” as “German revanchists are rattling their sabres.” In addition, this would “strengthen

Victory Day before the cult  75 the education of the young generation in the revolutionary and military traditions of our people and mobilize workers to implement the party’s Program with success.”72 The immediate context in which this letter was written remains unclear. Shelest must have informally discussed the proposals with the other presidium members in advance, although no record of such discussions appears in his published diary.73 Moreover, Brezhnev’s personal interest in war commemoration is welldocumented: thus, in 1956, he was one of the authors, along with Zhukov and Shepilov, of a memorandum to Khrushchev proposing to build numerous new war memorials in time for the 15th anniversary of victory in 1960.74 However, there is no reason to doubt that the initiative to make Victory Day work-free again came from Shelest: had an initiative by “the workers of Ukraine” been needed to mask a decision already taken in Moscow, then it would have been widely covered in the press instead of remaining classified. Nor was Shelest, a Khrushchev appointee, a member of Brezhnev’s and Vladimir Shcherbitskii’s inner circle from Dnepropetrovsk as has sometimes been claimed.75 Besides, it is indeed in Ukraine that various local practices of war commemoration were most developed, and, in 1964, the 20th anniversary of the liberation of Ukrainian cities was widely celebrated on May 9, which moreover fell on a Saturday.76 The chronology of events also suggests that the idea did originate in Kyiv: the decision to mark the anniversary with a huge campaign at home and abroad was approved on March 19, less than two months before Victory Day, and the fact that the parade would be moved from May 1 to May 9 was not announced until mid-April.77 Another point is no less important: due to Ukraine’s position on the Soviet Union’s western border and the constant attention it paid to the Ukrainian diaspora, the republican leadership was especially attuned to the international situation.78 Here lies another reason for its heightened interest in the anniversary, put into even starker relief if we examine the other issues on the agenda of the Central Committee presidium in Moscow during the first half of 1965. Foreign policy was among the chief topics. Shelest’s words about “sabre-­ rattling West German revanchists” clearly referred to discussions surrounding the statute of limitations on Nazi crimes, set to expire on May 8, 1965, under West German law. Ludwig Erhard’s government resisted the parliamentary opposition’s initiative to abolish the statute of limitations. From the end of 1964, not only the socialist countries but also the United States, Israel, and Germany’s western neighbors expressed their dismay at this position.79 At its February 5, 1965, meeting the presidium extensively discussed a campaign to put pressure on West Germany. It decided to “broaden the protest movement” and “scale up participation in this movement by various international organizations,” including those representing “war veterans [and] resistance fighters.” Thus, the Soviet leadership needed the veterans not least to express their own position in the international arena. (This was nothing new—after all the Soviet Veterans’ Committee had only been set up in 1956 to participate in the International Federation of War Veterans’ Organizations, created six years earlier.80) Soviet associations were instructed to “conduct in February-April this year events aimed at mobilizing public opinion

76  Mischa Gabowitsch against the intention of the government of the FRG.”81 At the same meeting, the presidium also considered the Soviet Union’s position on the International Congresses of Historical Sciences82 and an invitation to participate in the Military Film Festival in Versailles whose first installment had taken place in the previous year.83 This temporal coincidence does not in itself provide sufficient grounds to speak of a direct causal relationship between international relations and the decision to mark the 20th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe with extensive celebrations. It does, however, draw attention to the great importance that the new collective leadership paid to foreign policy. Amidst the Cold War and in the wake of the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises, the Sino-Soviet split, the war in Vietnam and the rise of the Non-Aligned Movement, the USSR’s global prestige was no less important to Brezhnev and his associates than domestic legitimacy. The Soviet victory in the Second World War remained one of the main sources of such prestige internationally. Israeli officers and Latin American revolutionaries were studying Aleksandr Bek’s novel Volokolamsk Highway, and many West European leftists considered that the victory over National Socialism gave the Soviet Union the moral right to judge West Germany for its unwillingness to face up to its Nazi past, even after violently suppressing the uprisings in Berlin and Budapest. In this context, Shelest’s initiative looked like an elegant answer not only to the proliferating commemorative initiatives within the Soviet Union but also to international challenges. Accordingly, the long to-do list that the presidium approved for the 20th anniversary included many measures aimed at an international audience, echoing the campaign started in February to put pressure on West Germany: showing a series of exhibitions abroad; publishing special issues of foreign-language Soviet periodicals as well as archival documents about diplomatic talks from the Second World War era; sending a huge number of films, magazines, books, and articles to foreign countries and aiming radio and TV broadcasts at them; and organizing press conferences for foreign correspondents. Foreign representatives were invited to receptions in Moscow and in the USSR’s diplomatic missions abroad as well as to the opening of the exhibition in the new building of the Central Museums of the Armed Forces.84 (In the meantime, on March 23, 1965, the Bundestag adopted the compromise solution of letting the statute of limitations for participation in genocide run from January 1, 1950; only in 1969 would it be abolished altogether.) Representatives of foreign countries were also the main audience for addresses by the leadership—Brezhnev’s more than two-hour-long speech in the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses on May 8 and the speech by Defense Minister Marshal Malinovskii during the parade, which for the first time in Moscow took place on May 9 instead of May 1. Brezhnev’s speech, subsequently published in Pravda, was aimed at representatives of countries in the socialist camp and those in the Soviet sphere of influence.85 Few other diplomats were in attendance—the ambassadors of the Western countries and their allies boycotted the event following the publication that morning in Pravda of an article by Malinovskii that mocked the allies’ efforts on the Western front in 1944–1945, accused the United States and

Victory Day before the cult  77 West Germany of preparing for a Third World War and called the US actions in Vietnam worse than Hitler’s crimes.86 Compared with Malinovskii, Brezhnev appeared balanced and charming. The ambassador of neutral Switzerland perceived his speech—including the single mention of Stalin—as a step toward a more objective presentation of Soviet history and of the Western countries’ contribution to the common victory. One month before the celebration, the Soviet Union started delivering surface-to-air missiles to socialist Vietnam to ward off the US aerial attacks—and during the parade, Western diplomats keenly took photographs of Soviet military machinery, which they had never before been shown at such a scale.87 It would be hard not to interpret this choreography of the festivities as an attempt to demonstrate the USSR’s military might to its satellites, allies, and rivals.88 The second complex of issues that was on the Central Committee presidium’s agenda in the first post-Khrushchev year was labor legislation. During the first half of the 1960s, the Soviet Union had experienced a wave of mass unrest, such as the Krasnodar riot of January 1961 and the Novocherkassk strike of June 1962, which was dispersed with bloodshed.89 Among the many sources of this unrest were the harsh working and living conditions that much of the population was experiencing despite the First Secretary’s bombastic promises and the evolution from a mobilizational toward a consumerist mode of development. Theoretically, labor legislation was one of the tools available to mitigate these stresses, but it was a mess: different republican and unionwide laws were at odds with each other. Attempts to streamline them started under Khrushchev, but, unlike the new criminal code (approved at republic level in 1960) and procedural code (approved in 1964), labor legislation remained labyrinthine. Having ousted Khrushchev, the new collective leadership swiftly set about reforming it. Enterprises as well as branches of the party and state apparatus all over the country were asked to report on labor protection measures. In midFebruary, the presidium of the Central Committee for the first time considered a draft law intended to become a template for new labor legislation in each republic. (In the event, the Principles of Labor Legislation were not formally adopted until 1970.) It is here—in the chapter about working hours—that we find the first ­legislative provision for two new days of rest: March 8 and May 9.90 Thus, introducing two new work-free holidays appears, among other things, as a new way of managing the public mood by giving people more free time. This new reform of the holiday calendar did not in fact revise Stalin’s decision from December 1947 but continued the logic at work in transferring Victory Day’s work-free status to New Year’s Day. Except that now the leadership introduced holidays which, on a symbolic level, asked people to celebrate not revolutionary leaders or other past heroes but themselves as participants in relatively recent events: even March 8 was declared a work-free holiday with reference to Soviet women’s bravery in the Second World War, as Brezhnev first announced in his speech on the eve of Victory Day.91 Soon thereafter, in 1967, the USSR switched to a five-day working week; simultaneously, many new professionals and other “new” holidays were introduced that symbolically raised the prestige of workers in various economic

78  Mischa Gabowitsch sectors.92 These innovations were part of a complex of measures which, buoyed by the gold and oil windfall of the 1970s and increased foreign trade, made mass unrest fizzle out. To sum up, the idea—which appears to have originated in Kyiv—of raising the status of Victory Day perfectly accomplished several tasks at once: in addition to highlighting the new leadership’s legitimacy, it also improved the Soviet Union’s international standing and helped defuse the potential for new mass unrest by giving the population more free time as well as an occasion to express pride and celebrate intergenerational family ties, centered on some of the most active age cohorts: the war veterans. What resulted from this decision was not so much an invention of new commemorative practices from scratch as a unionwide diffusion of rituals that had emerged locally in the Western regions of the USSR. In so doing, the new leadership followed time-honored traditions of all imperial administrations and, in particular, established Bolshevik practice: having tested or discovered certain administrative principles or symbolic resources on the periphery, the rulers would homogenize them and start implementing them in the center. This is what led to the emergence of the Great Patriotic War cult such as the last Soviet generations remember it: with veterans giving speeches and being awarded anniversary medals, and schoolchildren presenting them with flowers and standing honor guard. Rituals marking Victory Day required war memorials, and so they now started appearing in great numbers across the entire USSR. All of this was of course very different from Victory Day celebrations in 1946 and 1947. Thus, to see the period from 1948 to 1964 as a mere gap in the history of the holiday, or to assume that Brezhnev resumed a tradition that Stalin had cut short is profoundly misguided. The leaderships’ objectives largely coincided with those of the veterans’ generation which, as Mark Edele has shown, gave rise to a veritable “popular movement” that demanded respect and specific social benefits. The veterans had grown into the fathers’ generation, and the rituals increasingly came to center on children, evolving from primarily mobilizational events to performances of gratitude “for the peaceful skies above our heads.” In addition, the 1960s were a pivotal moment in the formation of a modern urban society in the USSR—a process that Stephen Lovell has described as central to 20th-century Russia and more important from the point of view of social history than even the October Revolution, the Civil War, or the dissolution of the USSR.93 Along with the population, urbanization also transformed war memory: from the battlefields, most of which were located in rural or peripheral areas, it moved to the new urban neighborhoods: here, the war was no longer present in the form of burnt huts, unburied bodies, and unexploded landmines, but in mediated form—in the names of new streets and squares. From collective graves near cities, the dead were transferred to new urban memorial parks that simultaneously provided recreation or even entertainment. Out-of-town memorials were often deliberately built with easy accessibility by bus or automobile in mind. The rituals of war commemoration came to be associated with the relative prosperity of the 1970s which, as in many other post-WWII, Cold Warera societies, created the kind of respite and free time that is a precondition

Victory Day before the cult  79 for mourning. Most directly this meant that May 9 became a date for cemetery visits during which people commemorated not only those who died in the war but also their other dead—something like a secular equivalent to the O ­ rthodox ­Saturday of Souls or even the Jewish yortseit: the switch from religious to ­secular commemoration that required serious corralling in rural areas happened almost naturally in urban contexts once May 9 became a work-free commemorative holiday. The triumph of the television set created a canon of war films that reflected all of these complex feelings. This was the time that gave rise to the peculiar culture of Victory Day celebrations that mix pride and “joy with tears in one’s eyes,” as the inescapable 1975 song describes. That culture—rather than the traditions of postwar commemoration—is what present-day Victory Day celebrations cite and reproduce, even though there are hardly any veterans left to fete.

Notes * This chapter was written as part of a Russian Science Foundation-funded project on “Institutionalized and Non-Institutionalized Rituals in the Structure of Late Soviet Society” at the University of Tyumen (RSF project no. 20–18–00342). The German Historical Institute in Moscow and the German-Ukrainian Historians’ Commission funded my research in Moscow and Kyiv archives, respectively. Serhy Yekelchyk provided pointers to crucial files at the TsDAHOU. The Hamburg Foundation for the Development of Science and Culture has generously supported my work on Soviet war memorials and commemorative practices. Maria Stepanova published an earlier Russian draft of this chapter on colta.ru and authorized publication of this revised and expanded English version. 1 See, for example, Shcherbakova, “Pobeda vmesto voiny?” 2 Artem’ev, “Bol’shaia politika pamiati”; Timoshenko, “Cherez dva goda.” 3 Pravda, December 24, 1947. 4 Lysenko and Gutsu, “Novogodnie kanikuly.” 5 Plamper, The Stalin Cult, 68–69. 6 Sklokina, “Sviatkovi komemoratsiï,” 182. 7 Yekelchyk, “The Leader, the Victory, and the Nation,” 10. 8 For Kharkiv in 1947 and 1949–50, see Sklokina, “Sviatkovi komemoratsiï,” 181–83. 9 Tumarkin, The Living & the Dead, 104. The idea that the change in Victory Day’s status was associated with a desire to suppress war memory is echoed in countless other studies, see e.g. Rolf, Das sowjetische Massenfest, 328. 10 Obrashchenie tov. I.V. Stalina k narodu. Krasnia zvezda, September 4, 1945. 11 Portelli, L’ordine è già stato eseguito. 12 Dale, “The Valaam Myth.” 13 Malinkin, Nagrada kak sotsial’nyi fenomen, 185. 14 Wolfe, “Past as Present, Myth, or History?,” 262. 15 Brandenberger, “ ‘Repressirovannaia’ pamiat’?” 16 Though war-themed exhibitions were resumed even in Moscow and Leningrad soon after Stalin’s death, with a peak during the 50th anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. See e.g. Hasselmann, Wie der Krieg ins Museum kam; Shneer, Grief, 86–87. 17 Popov, “Metamorfozy pamiati,” 149. 18 Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction; Popov, “Metamorfozy pamiati,” 150. 19 Though it was not, of course, the only holiday that could serve this purpose. See e.g. Danyel, “Politische Rituale als Sowjetimporte” for the GDR and Czarnecka, Pomniki wdzięczności, 129–34 for the Polish case.

80  Mischa Gabowitsch 20 Indeed even authors who acknowledge that Victory Day was celebrated before 1965 typically employ the narrative device of defining pre-1965 commemoration ex negativo by the absence of features from the Brezhnev-era cult—at least if their focus is on Moscow. Thus, describing the May 9, 1955, celebrations in the capital, Aleksei Popov (“Metamorfozy pamiati,” 155) writes: “Attributes of the festivities that would later become familiar, such as military parades, mass concerts and spectacles, and anniversary-related conferment of decorations, were lacking.” He then goes on to contrast the 1955 festivities with those in 1985. 21 Merridale, Night of Stone, 242. 22 Plamper, The Stalin Cult, 71, 75. 23 See Sklokina, “Sviatkovi komemoratsiï,” 181 for liberation day in Kharkiv, and GAOOGO f. 3986 op. 1 d. 13 l. 39 for Soviet Army Day in 1945 in the Mozyr’ district of what was then the Polesie oblast’ of Belarus. 24 See, e.g., GAOOGO f. 144 op. 7 d. 100a l. 65, 68, 159–68; f. 144 op. 13 d. 89 l. 144–46 for exhibition and publication projects with a target date of November 26, 1948, the fifth anniversary of the liberation of Gomel’, and an exhibition plan celebrating thirty years of the Soviet Army. 25 E.g., in 1949 in Uvaravichy raion, Gomel’ oblast’: GAOOGO f. 144 op. 19 d. 12 l. 18. 26 E.g., in Rechitsa raion, Gomel’ oblast’, in 1949: GAOOGO f. 144 op. 19. d 12. l. 111. 27 Chekhov, Kniga klubnogo rabotnika, 297–98. 28 See, e.g., Ekshtut, “ ‘Kogda my vernulis’ s voiny. . .’ ” 29 Around midnight on May 9, 1947, a group of four drunk soldiers led by a senior lieutenant beat up the first secretary of the Rechitsa raion komsomol in Gomel’ oblast’ (GAOOGO f. 144 op. 13 d. 38 l. 106). On the night of May 8, 1949, a kolkhoz chairman in the Zuravichy raion of Gomel’ oblast’ was killed with an axe. The obkom report about the incident, in which the attackers also assaulted the chairman and secretary of the village soviet, claimed that they were former politsai (members of the Germanorganized police) who shouted anti-Soviet slogans during the attack. GAOOGO f. 144 op. 19 d. 9 l. 14–15. On incidents during revolutionary holidays in the 1930s see Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 271. 30 In fact, regional newspapers were so full of individual stories on commemorative dates that Iryna Sklokina’s observation (“Sviatkovi komemoratsiï,” 184) that late Stalinist war commemoration always referred to an abstract collective and suppressed individual experience needs to be questioned, although she is right in the sense that the stories were always carefully curated to showcase the achievements of postwar reconstruction. 31 See, e.g., Exeler, “The Ambivalent State.” 32 E.g., in Gomel’ in 1951: GAOOGO f. 144 op. 7 d. 216 l. 97–98. 33 E.g., for Soviet Army Day in February 1952, see GAOOGO f. 144 op. 7 d. 232 l. 228. 34 E.g., in Gomel’ in 1958: GAOOGO f. 144 op. 60 d. 257 l. 23. 35 GAOOGO f. 144 op. 7 d. 232 l. 39, 42. 36 In Kharkiv for example such exhibitions were regularly organized on liberation day starting in 1944. See Sklokina, “Sviatkovi komemoratsiï,” 181. 37 GAOOGO f. 3465 op. 26 d. 32 l. 86–94. 38 GAOOGO f. 144 op. 60 d. 208 l. 162–63. 39 TsDAHOU f. 1 op. 24 spr. 4254 ark. 152–53. 40 Tumarkin, The Living & the Dead, 105. 41 See, e.g., Yekelchyk, “The Leader, the Victory, and the Nation,” 7–10, for the May 9, 1945, victory parade in Kyiv, and Sklokina, “Sviatkovi komemoratsiï,” 180–81, for Kharkiv. 42 Chekhov, Kniga klubnogo rabotnika, 296–97, 301; Merridale, Night of Stone, 278. 43 Huhn, Glaube und Eigensinn, 82–83, 94–99.

Victory Day before the cult  81 44 One example, from the village of Velimov in the Bragin raion of Gomel’ oblast’, is documented in the private papers of the village teacher Akim Starakhatnii (1926– 2019). I am grateful to the late Akim Mikhailavich and his family for giving me access to his archive. 45 Zeltser, Unwelcome Memory. 46 One example is the conflict between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Museum of the History of Religion over Leningrad’s Kazan Cathedral in 1947. The cathedral housed the remains of Mikhail Kutuzov, which attracted thousands of visitors per year, most of them members of the military. See RGASPI f. 17 o. 125 d. 579 l. 98–101. 47 Huhn, Glaube und Eigensinn, 45–54, 82–83, 96, 100. 48 Ibid., 289–97, 324–25. Huhn also suggests that collective Christian mourning for Stalin in 1953 might have been a way to give legitimate expression to Orthodox believers’ grief over their own losses due to collectivization and war (Ibid., 304, 309). 49 Fitzpatrick, Stalin’s Peasants, 270. 50 Huhn, Glaube und Eigensinn, 278. 51 TsDAHOU f. 1 op. 24 spr. 5106 ark. 43. 52 Serbyn, “Managing Memory in Post-Soviet Ukraine,” 118. 53 Lane, The Rites of Rulers, 86–88; Merridale, Night of Stone, 277. 54 Chekhov, Kniga klubnogo rabotnika, 296–97, 302. On the considerable resources poured into such rituals, see Lane, The Rites of Rulers, 87. 55 Lane, The Rites of Rulers, 147. 56 This goes for local ideological and cultural activities in the post-Stalinist USSR more broadly. See White, De-Stalinization and the House of Culture. 57 GAOOGO f. 144 op. 50 d. 257 l. 39–40. 58 E.g., GAOOGO f. 205 op. 15 d. 10 l. 315. 59 Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War, 125. 60 “Gotovit’ vechernie shkoly sel’skoi molodezhi k novomu uchebnomu godu.” Komsomol’skaia pravda. July 20, 1946, p. 1. I wish to thank Maria Maiofis for sharing with me this passage as well as many other relevant excerpts from Soviet pedagogical publications in the late 1940s. 61 Koenker, Club Red, 181. 62 Hasselmann, Wie der Krieg ins Museum kam. 63 GAOOGO f. 144 op. 60 d. 257 l. 27–28, 30. 64 GAOOGO f. 3465 op. 26 d. 32 l. 86–94. 65 On this, and on battlefield and memorial site tourism in the Soviet Union (especially Ukraine) more generally, see Sklokina, “Pami’at’ pro Druhu svitovu viinu,” 203–5. 66 Iudkina, “ ‘Pamiatnik bez pamiati.’ ” 67 Davis, Myth Making, 150–54. 68 Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War. 69 Donovan, “ ‘How Well Do You Know Your Krai?’ ” 70 Tumarkin, The Living & the Dead, 110. 71 For the power struggle explanation see Mitrokhin, Russkaia partiia, 113–16. For the personal explanation see Schattenberg, Leonid Breschnew, 442. 72 TsDAHOU f. 1, op. 24, spr. 6053, ark. 7–10. This document was also cited and discussed in Serbyn, “Managing Memory in Post-Soviet Ukraine,” 116–18. 73 Shelest, Da ne sudimy budete. 74 RGANI f. 4 op. 14 d. 187 l. 63–64, cited in Gavriliuk, “Deiatel’nost’ partiinykh i sovetskikh organov,” 45. 75 Mitrokhin, Russkaia partiia. 76 Cf. Serbyn, “Managing Memory in Post-Soviet Ukraine.” Serbyn erroneously dates May 9, 1964, as a Sunday and reproduces the myth about war invalids being systematically deported to the North, but this does not invalidate his archival finds.

82  Mischa Gabowitsch 77 See the secret report by Swiss ambassador Anton Roy Ganz who was present at the celebrations on May 8 and 9: Siegesfeier 8./9. Mai 1945–1965 in Moskau. BAR E 2300 / 716 / 608. Digital copy: dodis.ch/31029. 78 See Kramer, “Ukraine and the Soviet-Czechoslovak Crisis.” 79 Marc von Miquel (Ahnden oder amnestieren?, 224–319) offers a domestic West German perspective and provides much detail about the impact of U.S. and Israeli and West Germany’s interests in the Middle East. However, he largely glosses over reactions from the socialist states, focusing almost exclusively on the GDR (Ibid., 225–26, 233). 80 Edele, Soviet Veterans of the Second World War, 162–64. 81 RGANI. F. 4. Op. 18 D. 776. L. 118. 82 RGANI. F. 4. Op. 18. D. 776. L. 102–12. 83 RGANI. F. 4. Op. 18. D. 776. L. 59–64. 84 RGANI. F. 4. Op. 18. D. 780. L. 32. 85 Brezhnev, “Velikaia pobeda sovetskogo naroda.” 86 BAR. E 2300 / 716 / 608 (dodis.ch/31029). 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid. 89 Kozlov, Massovye besporiadki v SSSR. 90 RGANI. F. 4. Op. 18. D. 779. L. 136. 91 Brezhnev, “Velikaia pobeda sovetskogo naroda,” 133. On the other hand, as Iryna Sklokina points out, the fact that March 8 was made a holiday alongside May 9 weakens the argument that holiday reform under Brezhnev was an ideological move seeking to ground legitimacy on war memory. (Sklokina, “Sviatkovi komemoratsiï,” 182.) 92 Kelly and Sirotinina, “ ‘I Didn’t Understand It, But It Was Funny.’ ” 93 Lovell, “Kontinuität und Wandel.”

Bibliography Archives Akim Starakhatnii’s private archive, Hrodna. BAR: Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv (Swiss Federal Archives) Teilbestand E 2300: Eidgenössisches Politisches Departement - Politische und militärische Berichte der Auslandvertretungen (digitized) GAOOGO: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv obshchestvennykh ob’edinenii Gomel’skoi oblasti (State Archive of Public Organizations of Gomel‘ oblast‘) F. 144: Gomel’skii obkom KPB F. 205: Gomel’skii raikom KPB F. 3465: El’skii kraikom KPB F. 3986: Mozyrskii raikom KPB RGANI: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (Russian State Archive of Contemporary History), Moscow F. 4: Sekretariat TsK KPSS (1952-1991 gg.) RGASPI: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History), Moscow F. 17: TsK KPSS (1898 g., 1903-1991 gg.) TsDAVOU: Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv vlady ta upravlinnia Ukraïny (Central State Archive of the Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine)

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Published works Artem’ev, Aleksandr. “Bol’shaia politika pamiati.” Lenta.ru, March 3, 2014. https://lenta. ru/articles/2014/03/03/myths/. Brandenberger, Devid [David]. “ ‘Repressirovannaia’ pamiat’? Kampaniia protiv leningradskoi traktovki blokady v stalinskom SSSR, 1949–1952 gg. (na primere muzeia oborony Leningrada).” Noveishaia istoriia Rossii 3, no. 17 (2016). Brezhnev, L. I. “Velikaia pobeda sovetskogo naroda. Doklad na torzhestvennom sobranii v Kremlevskom Dvortse s’ezdov, posviashchennom 20-letiiu pobedy sovetskogo naroda v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine, 8 maia 1965 goda.” In Leninskim kursom. Rechi i stat’i, vol. 1, 118–55. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1970. Chekhov, I. V., ed. Kniga klubnogo rabotnika. Metodika, opyyt, spravochnyi material. Moscow: Profizdat, 1968. Czarnecka, Dominika. “Pomniki wdzięczności” Armii Czerwonej w Polsce Ludowej i w III Rzeczyspolitej. Warszawa: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej-Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2015. Dale, Robert. “The Valaam Myth and the Fate of Leningrad’s Disabled Veterans.” The Russian Review 72, no. 2 (2013): 260–84. doi:10.1111/russ.10691. Danyel, Jürgen. “Politische Rituale als Sowjetimporte.” In Amerikanisierung und Sowjetisierung in Deutschland 1945–1970, edited by Konrad H. Jarausch and Hannes Siegrist, 67–88. Frankfurt Main: Campus, 1997. Davis, Vicky. Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev’s Hero City. London: I. B. Tauris, 2018. Donovan, Victoria. “ ‘How Well Do You Know Your Krai?’ The Kraevedenie Revival and Patriotic Politics in Late Khrushchev-Era Russia.” Slavic Review 74, no. 3 (2015): 464– 83. doi:10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.464. Edele, Mark. Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society 1941–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Ekshtut, Semen. “ ‘Kogda my vernulis’ s voiny. . .’ Pochemu Stalin otmenil prazdnovanie Dnia Pobedy.” Rodina, May 1, 2019. https://rg.ru/2019/05/07/rodina-pochemu-stalinotmenil-prazdnovanie-dnia-pobedy.html. Exeler, Franziska. “The Ambivalent State: Determining Guilt in the Post-World War II Soviet Union.” Slavic Review 75, no. 3 (2016): 606–29. doi:10.5612/slavicreview. 75.3.0606. Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalin’s Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Gavriliuk, Aleksei Vladimirovich. “Deiatel’nost’ partiinykh i sovetskikh organov Kurskoi oblasti po sokhraneniiu pamiati pogibshikh sovetskikh voinov (50-60-e gody XX veka).” Istoricheskie, filosofskie, politicheskie i iuridicheskie nauki, kulʹturologiia i iskusstvovedenie. Voprosy teorii i praktiki 1–2, no. 15 (2012): 45–47. Hasselmann, Anne. Wie der Krieg ins Museum kam. Muzejščiki als Akteure der Erinnerung, 1941-1956. Bielefeld: transcript, forthcoming.

84  Mischa Gabowitsch Huhn, Ulrike. Glaube und Eigensinn: Volksfrömmigkeit zwischen orthodoxer Kirche und sowjetischem Staat 1941 bis 1960. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014. Iudkina, Anna. “ ‘Pamiatnik bez pamiati’: pervyi vechnyi ogon’ v SSSR.” In Pamiatnik i prazdnik. Etnografiia Dnia Pobedy, edited by Mikhail Gabovich [Mischa Gabowitsch], 124–51. Saint Petersburg: Nestor-Istoriia, 2020. Kelly, Catriona, and Svetlana Sirotinina. “ ‘I Didn’t Understand It, But It Was Funny’: Late Soviet Festivals and Their Impact on Children.” Forum for Anthropology and Culture, no. 5 (2009): 254–300. Koenker, Diane. Club Red: Vacation Travel and the Soviet Dream. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. Kozlov, V. A. Massovye besporiadki v SSSR pri Khrushcheve i Brezhneve: 1953—nachalo 1980-kh gg, 3rd revised and expanded ed. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2010. Kramer, Mark, ed. “Ukraine and the Soviet-Czechoslovak Crisis of 1968 (Part 2): New Evidence from the Ukrainian Archives. Compiled, Introduced, Translated, and Annotated by Mark Kramer.” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 14–15 (2004): 273–368. Lane, Christel. The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society: The Soviet Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Lovell, Stephen. “Kontinuität und Wandel in Russlands Gesellschaft seit den 1960er-­ Jahren.” Mittelweg 36, no. 2 (2017): 74–85. Lysenko, Iakov, and Irina Gutsu. “Novogodnie kanikuly: dlinnye, zimnie, tvoi.” Gazeta.ru, December 23, 2017. www.gazeta.ru/social/2017/12/22/11517746.shtml. Malinkin, A. N. Nagrada kak sotsial’nyi fenomen: Vvedenie v sotsiologiiu nagradnogo dela. Moscow and Saint Petersburg: Tsentr gumanitarnykh initsiativ, 2013. Merridale, Catherine. Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Russia. London: Granta, 2000. Miquel, Marc von. Ahnden oder amnestieren? Westdeutsche Justiz und Vergangenheitspolitik in den sechziger Jahren. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2004. Mitrokhin, Nikolai. Russkaia partiia: Dvizhenie russkikh natsionalistov v SSSR, 1953– 1985 gg. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2003. Plamper, Jan. The Stalin Cult: A Study in the Alchemy of Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Popov, A. D. “Metamorfozy pamiati: sravnitel’nyi analiz prazdnovaniia Dnia Pobedy v 1955 i 1985 godakh.” In Ialta 1945: uroki istorii. Sbornik materialov nauchnoi konferentsii, 147–56. Simferopol’: Antikva, 2019. www.elibrary.ru/item.asp?id=41880999. Portelli, Alessandro. L’ordine è già stato eseguito: Roma, le Fosse Ardeatine, la memoria. Roma: Donzelli, 1999. Qualls, Karl D. From Ruins to Reconstruction: Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol After World War II. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Rolf, Malte. Das sowjetische Massenfest. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2006. Schattenberg, Susanne. Leonid Breschnew: Staatsmann und Schauspieler im Schatten Stalins. Eine Biographie. Köln: Böhlau, 2017. Serbyn, Roman. “Managing Memory in Post-Soviet Ukraine: ‘Victory Day’ or ‘Remembrance Day’.” In Ukraine, the EU and Russia: History, Culture and International Relations, edited by Stephen Velychenko, 108–22. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Shcherbakova, Irina. “Pobeda vmesto voiny?” Uroki istorii, June 21, 2012. https:// urokiistorii.ru/article/3222. Shelest, Petr Efimovich. Da ne sudimy budete: dnevniki i vospominaniia chlena politbiuro TsK KPSS. Moscow: Tsentrpoligraf, 2016.

Victory Day before the cult  85 Shneer, David. Grief: The Biography of a Holocaust Photograph. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Sklokina, I. E. “Pam’iat’ pro Druhu svitovu viinu ta natsysts’ku okupatsiiu Ukraïny v povsiakdennykh praktykakh radians’koho suspil’stva (1953–1985).” Visnyk Kharkivs’koho universytetu. Seriia: Istoriia, no. 44 (2011): 199–219. ———. “Sviatkovi komemoratsiï iak skladova ofitsiinoï radians’koï polityky pam’iati pro natsysts’ku okupatsiiu (za materialamy Kharkivs’koï oblasti), 1943–1953 rr.” Istoriia ta heohrafiia, no. 49 (November 13, 2019): 180–85. Timoshenko, Denis. “Cherez dva goda polse Vtoroi mirovoi voiny prazdnik 9 maia otmenil sam Stalin—istorik [interview with Iurii Shapoval].” Radio Svoboda, May 9, 2018. www.radiosvoboda.org/a/donbass-realii/29217835.html. Tumarkin, Nina. The Living & the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books, 1994. White, Anne. De-Stalinization and the House of Culture: Declining State Control Over Leisure in the USSR, Poland, and Hungary, 1953–89. London: Routledge, 1990. Wolfe, Thomas C. “Past as Present, Myth, or History? Discourses of Time and the Great Fatherland War.” In The Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe, edited by Richard Ned Lebow, Wulf Kansteiner, and Claudio Fogu, 249–83. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Yekelchyk, Serhy. “The Leader, the Victory, and the Nation: Public Celebrations in Soviet Ukraine under Stalin (Kiev, 1943–1953).” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 54, no. 1 (2006): 3–19. Zeltser, Arkadi. Unwelcome Memory: Holocaust Monuments in the Soviet Union. Translated by A. S. Brown. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem Publications, 2018.

4 Teaching and remembering the Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools Olga Konkka

In 1942, leading historian and school textbooks author Anna Pankratova was in Almaty, where she had been evacuated along with a group of academics. There, amidst conditions of wartime deprivation and mobilization, she edited a teachers’ manual, Teaching History in the Context of the Great Patriotic War.1 Elementary school reading books published in 1943–1945 also included the theme of fighting against the enemy.2 Incorporating the Great Patriotic War into Soviet schools’ curriculum, then, began already during the war itself.3 Until the collapse of the USSR, its history was an integral part of what Soviet schoolchildren learned about their Motherland. For millions of Soviet citizens, the school provided the first and fundamental account of the Great Patriotic War. When questioning what Soviet pupils learned about the war, one would naturally turn to school textbooks. Indeed, the French historian Marc Ferro has demonstrated that school literature represents a valuable source of information on how history is arranged and distorted to match political and ideological constructions in different countries, including the Soviet Union.4 Textbooks teach a nation’s “collective autobiography,”5 reflect “the image that society wants to give of itself,”6 and play a crucial role in forming its “values and mass memory.”7 In the context of the Soviet educational system, analysis of school literature is particularly relevant. Soviet textbooks were “stable,” which means that they were reprinted and reedited for many years, with only minor changes in every new edition. Only one textbook was generally published every year for each subject and each grade by the state school literature publisher Uchpedgiz (Prosveshchenie from 1964). From the mid-1930s, when stable textbooks for different disciplines were adopted, teaching practices became totally centered on these books.8 Textbooks were used in class and at home, and lessons perfectly reflected their content and structure. Among different types of school media, history textbooks are a privileged tool for teaching about the national past. Alongside monuments, museums, and archives, they have been labeled by Pierre Nora as lieux de mémoire, “sites of memory.”9 From the 1930s, when history, banned shortly after the revolution, was reintroduced as a school subject in the Soviet Union, history textbooks became perfect mirrors of the official vision of the past. The personal interest that Joseph Stalin showed in their writing is well known, and this process was also closely

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  87 monitored under his successors. Textbooks’ chapters about the Great Patriotic War provided the purest “master narrative”10 of the war, matched only by editions of the History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union by the Military publisher Voenizdat, or the war exhibition in the Central Armed Forces Museum. Less “static” because of almost yearly reediting, Soviet history textbooks reflect the official war narrative and show how it changed (or not) through the decades. Although the Soviet educational system and, in particular, history teaching have undergone a number of reforms, the Great Patriotic War usually appeared twice in the history curriculum: during the final year of primary school (4th grade) as part of an introductory course to national history and during the final year of full secondary education (10th grade) as part of the 20th-century history course. However, in the Soviet school, familiarization with the history of the Great Patriotic War started even before the final year of primary education. Parts of this history appeared in other elementary school textbooks, such as primers and readers. They are known as books that not only help to develop reading skills but also convey cultural values and attitudes.11 The particular branch of educational media research known as “primer studies” has demonstrated that they represent an invaluable source of information on historical policies.12 In the Soviet Union, primers “presented children with an official version of the world and of the child’s place in it,”13 immersed “children’s consciousness into the collective memory,” and showed “the country’s heroic past.”14 Soviet Russian-language primers and readers demonstrate a simplified, more literary, and emotional side of the official war saga. The Soviet educational system did not only teach what happened during the Great Patriotic War, but it also explained how to remember it. During the early postwar period, Soviet schools usually marked Victory Day with formal meetings, but in the 1960s–1980s, the war was commemorated through a much more elaborate array of practices and rituals. These included participating in not only voluntary and creative extracurricular activities within search brigades and school museums but also multiple compulsory and very formal ceremonies. An overview of these practices is important for understanding how ubiquitous and redundant the official war saga became within Soviet primary and secondary schools.

The “master narrative” of the Great Patriotic War in 10th-grade history textbooks According to Soviet curricula, the most recent period of history including the Great Patriotic War was covered in the last grade (traditionally 10th grade). At the very end of the 1980s, when general education was extended by one year, the corresponding chapter moved to 11th-grade textbooks. These books for 16- to 17-year-olds illustrate what schoolchildren were supposed to know and understand about the Great Patriotic War while completing their secondary education. There have been only four 10th-grade history textbooks. The first one was a part of a three-volume History of the USSR for the 8th–10th grades (the title “History of the USSR” covered in a somewhat anachronistic manner the history of

88  Olga Konkka the whole Soviet territory from ancient times) directed by Anna Pankratova. The book was first published before the war, in 1940. It went through 22 editions (the last one was printed in 1963) and reflected both Stalin’s vision of history and his cult. The “Great Leader’s” name, quotations, and photos are ubiquitous on its pages. The next textbook, edited by Maksim Kim and slightly influenced by the Khrushchev’s Thaw, was first released in 1964 and reedited until 1971. It was followed by a textbook published between 1971 and 1983, written and edited by mostly the same authors. In 1981, the pilot version of another 10th-grade textbook edited by Yuri Kukushkin was released. In 1984, it became the official textbook and was printed until 1988: debates on recent history brought about by Perestroika explain its short existence.15 The next—and the last—Soviet textbook covering the war period, the 11th-grade History of the USSR edited by Valery Ostrovsky and released in 1990, should be seen as a transition to the first post-Soviet textbooks. In 1992, it was reedited under a new title, History of the Fatherland. The analysis of six editions of 10th-grade textbooks published between 1946 and 1988 testifies to how early the “master narrative” of the Great Patriotic War took shape, and how stable it remained until the very end of the Soviet period, in spite of some reorganizations, additions, and minor changes. (One of the only major changes was from mentioning and quoting Stalin several times on each page in the 1940s–1950s editions to barely mentioning him in the textbooks of the following decades.) The size of the chapters about the war in the 20th-century history textbooks, both absolute and relative (i.e., compared to the other chapters), reveals the growing significance of the war. In the 1952 book, 39 pages of the chapter “The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet people against German fascist invaders” can barely compare to the bigger and better-structured chapter on the 1917 revolutions (62 pages). In the 1965 textbook, the revolutions and the war take about the same number of pages. In the 1970s and 1980s textbooks, the war occupies more space than the revolutions (about 90 pages), with the gap growing over the years. The chapters presenting the Great Patriotic War have a similar, mostly chronological, structure and use the same periodization, although some sections (such as Nazi policies in the occupied territories, the home front, or culture and science during the war) appear in different paragraphs. The authors use the same examples and exploit the common pantheon of war heroes, thus contributing to an even further popularization of the latter. Last but not least, they employ the same terminology, vocabulary, and expressions. History textbooks are undoubtedly among the Soviet texts that use “a limited repertoire of modifiers for particular concepts,” as certain nouns and verbs are often “accompanied by concrete adjectives.”16 All these elements combine to recreate the canonical narrative of the war. In every Soviet history textbook, the chapter on the Great Patriotic War starts with the paragraph narrating the beginning of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, and the expression “perfidious attack” [verolomnoe napadenie] is always used in the paragraph’s title. The first pages explain that the German invasion of the Soviet Union was sudden and unexpected and that it transformed the “imperialistic” Second World War into a just and noble fight for freedom and socialism.

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  89 The terms “Nazism” and “Nazi” are almost never used: according to the Soviet canon, the enemy is referred to as “fascists.” After this opening, the authors face the challenge of explaining how and why the Red Army was constantly defeated in the first months of the war and retreated, abandoning vast territories to the enemy. The uncomfortable attitude toward this period is given away by the swiftness and partiality of the narration. The authors do not list all the surrendered cities and only German losses are counted. While presenting the “defensive battles” of the Red Army, they focus on the “heroic” resistance of the Brest Fortress (in general, the words “hero,” “heroism,” “heroic” are among the most used in the whole chapter). They narrate the “fierce” defense of Smolensk, Odessa, and Kiev which disrupted the Wehrmacht’s plans. The pilot Nikolai Gastello, whose suicide action of “fire taran” on June 26 was widely covered by the Soviet media, is the first in the list of war heroes mentioned in every textbook. Together with Aleksandr Matrosov who in 1943 threw himself on a German machine-gun nest to block it with his body, Gastello became one of the heroes venerated for their acts of individual sacrifice.17 Hundreds of similar acts were performed during the war, yet these names were chosen as the ones that every Soviet schoolboy and schoolgirl was supposed to know. Among the analyzed textbooks, the one that was published in 1965, in the aftermath of Khrushchev’s decade, is the only one to state clearly that in 1941 the USSR was “in mortal danger” and to mention the “unfounded” repressions that had decimated the army’s officer corps.18 The textbooks explain the “temporary misfortunes” which gave “temporary advantage”19 to the enemy as a result of the sudden attack, better equipment, and lack of a second front in Europe. After that, the authors rush to present the Battle of Moscow that “definitely buried Hitler’s blitzkrieg plan.”20 The account of the “heroic defense of the capital,” followed by “the Germans’ crushing defeat,” always includes the stories of the young Komsomol partisan Zoia Kosmodem’ianskaia executed for her acts of sabotage and of “the Panfilov Guardsmen.” This fictional account, although based on some authentic facts, was published in a wartime issue of the army newspaper: attacked by multiple German tanks, the division fought back until the last man died. Almost all the textbooks quote the fictional statement of the political officer Klochkov: “Russia is a vast land, yet there is nowhere to retreat—Moscow is behind us!”21 The words not only “hunger” and “cold” but also “heroism” and “self-sacrifice” systematically appear in the account of the Siege of Leningrad. Described very briefly in the first postwar textbooks, it becomes more detailed and humanized in the later editions, always with the stipulation that Stalin (or the Party) cared about the population of the city. The words “heroism” and “self-sacrifice” appear again on the pages dedicated to the home-front workers, referred to through a specific association of words [truzheniki tyla]. The authors explain that both the working class and the kolkhoz peasantry, led by the Party and united in a common effort, “forged the victory over the enemy.”22 The information concerning life on the territories occupied by the Nazis is mainly reduced to the “barbarities” [zverstva] perpetrated by the “fascist invaders”: robbery, slave labor, forced deportations, violence, torture, terror, and mass

90  Olga Konkka murder. The authors specify that Communists and Komsomol activists were targeted, in particular. According to the well-established Soviet tradition,23 not a word is said about the fact that Jews were supposed to be exterminated entirely, regardless of age, social status, or political views. Only in the 1980s textbooks, Babi Yar in Kiev, site of the largest massacre of Soviet Jews, is mentioned and only as a place where “tens of thousands of Soviet people were shot.”24 The account of the occupation is above all an opportunity to speak about the partisans and the underground fighters, demonstrating once again the unity of the Soviet people against the enemy. All the textbooks illustrate Soviet resistance to the occupation with yet another important part of the war heroes’ pantheon: the Young Guard. This underground Komsomol organization operated in the occupied city of Krasnodon and had carried out multiple acts of resistance and sabotage. Most of its young members were arrested, tortured, and executed in January and February 1943. The Young Guard has become widely known through the eponymous novel that was written by the famous Soviet writer Aleksandr Fadeev in 1946. Unlike newspaper articles about the Panfilov Guardsmen, Fadeev’s work is largely based on real characters and facts, although the role of Oleg Koshevoi, depicted as a charismatic political leader of the group, seems to have been exaggerated due to his mother’s inaccurate testimonies.25 For several decades, Fadeev’s novel was the central if not the only text about the war studied in the Soviet literature course, also taught to 10th graders.26 In the 1950s–1970s literature textbooks,27 The Young Guard is the only writing about the war that can be found in the main section dedicated to different authors and analysis of their works. According to the common pedagogical approach of the time, students were invited to identify themselves with young partisans and draw moral lessons from their lives.28 The Battle of Stalingrad is the central element of the Great Patriotic War chapters in the Soviet history textbooks. Its detailed account is again enriched with some unchanging elements, such as the particularly long and fierce defense of a single building known as “Pavlov’s house,” and the mythical phrase allegedly pronounced by sniper and Komsomol member Vasilii Zaitsev: “For us, there is no land behind the Volga.” Every textbook contains a phrase stating that the Soviet victory at Stalingrad marked the beginning of the “fundamental turn” [korennoǐ perelom] in the war. The next phase of the war is usually referred to as “the mass chasing of the invader out of the Soviet land.” The authors give detailed information about the “tremendous” Battle of Kursk (July–August 1943) which “consolidated” or “completed” the “fundamental turn.” Once again, casualties, if mentioned, are German ones, although the Red Army had lost significantly more men and machines. The Battle of the Dnieper (August–December 1943) is another page of this part of the chapter where both courage and feat are celebrated. The 1988 book quotes Pravda: “Never before has the multitude of brave Soviet warriors included so many super-brave.”29 A brief allusion to the Normandy landings is used as a pretext to blame the allies for having delayed the Western Front operations until it became obvious that the

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  91 Soviet Union was able to win the war alone. In general, speaking about the other theaters of the war is an opportunity to emphasize that the Soviet front required most of the German divisions. Basic information regarding international conferences in Teheran, Yalta, and Potsdam is usually followed by accusations toward British and US leaders, while Lend-Lease is never mentioned without speaking about its insignificance. The final phase of the war, which took place outside the Soviet borders, is insistently presented as “the liberation of the peoples of Europe”30 or “the liberation mission of the Red Army in Europe.”31 It is an opportunity to outline the selflessness of the Soviet people who spilled their blood to protect other nations32 “enslaved by the German fascism.”33 The 1970s–1980s textbooks place particular emphasis on the warm and enthusiastic welcome that the Red Army received in each of the liberated countries. The 1988 book states that “in many countries, monuments and obelisks were erected in memory of the feat of the Soviet soldier who rescued the world from the brown plague of fascism. Grateful nations piously honor them.”34 This edition published on the eve of the emancipation of Eastern Europe testifies to the gap between the last Soviet textbooks and reality. The war memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park representing a Soviet soldier holding a German child, described in the 1980 textbook, illustrates one of the leitmotifs of the Battle of Berlin narrative. It is the story of how Soviet troops managed to break the “desperate resistance of the Hitler’s men”35 who willingly surrendered to the other Allies. The Red Army appears as brave, skilled, and well-equipped. Moreover, Soviet soldiers are presented as demonstrating an exceptional humanism toward German civilians, providing food and help. The solemnly narrated raising of a Soviet flag over the Reichstag together with the military parade on Red Square on June 24, 1945, appear as two culminating points of the paragraph. “The defeat of Japanese imperialism” is the last event presented in the Great Patriotic War chapters. The account mainly outlines that Soviet involvement, unlike the US atomic bombing, played a crucial role in the capitulation of Japan and offered an opportunity to recover previously “invaded” Russian territories. However, the chapters do not end here. In each textbook, they are completed with long sections called “Reasons and sources of the victory” and “Significance of the Soviet victory in the Great Patriotic War for the world history.” In these concluding sections, the authors explain that the USSR won the war because of (in varying orders) “the leading and guiding role of the Bolshevik party”36 which “organized and inspired the Great Victory”;37 the political and economic superiority of the socialism over “obsolete”38 capitalism; solid national, political and class unity, and friendship of the Soviet people; and patriotism and mass heroism of the soldiers, partisans, and home-front workers. The content of the section “Significance of the Soviet victory” slightly varies in different textbooks and editions. Nevertheless, all the texts express in different ways that the Great Patriotic War was a “turning point in the history of humanity.”39 The Red Army and the Soviet people have accomplished a “great international feat,”40 liberated multiple European and Asian nations from fascism, “saved human civilization” which will be

92  Olga Konkka eternally grateful,41 and the Soviet victory has increased the international reputation of the USSR and of socialism. In the 1988 textbook, these statements are repeated twice: first, in the final paragraph of the chapter, then once again in a long and previously nonexistent “Conclusion” directed against “the falsifiers of history” who “try to belittle the significance of the Red Army’s victory and to depreciate the decisive contribution of the USSR in the attainment of the victory.”42 This is typical of the Perestroika history textbooks: unable to ignore the burgeoning debates about the recent past, they explain why the “bourgeois” historians are wrong.43 On the historical battlefields of the Gorbachev era, school textbooks’ authors were among the last to surrender. In his guidelines on school textbooks analysis, Alain Choppin suggests a reading focused not only on what is written but also on what is silenced and omitted.44 In the case of Soviet history textbooks, the list would be too long. Countless aspects of the war are ignored, such as tactical errors of the Soviet government and command, failures of economic management, useless human losses, penal battalions, deportation of several ethnicities, different types of collaboration with the enemy, the Holocaust, the Gulag during the war, and the tragic outcome of the Ostarbeiters’ repatriation and the equally tragic fate of the war invalids. Presenting the whole of Soviet society as united in one common patriotic and self-sacrificial effort, the textbooks do not take into account multiple and sometimes contradictory experiences of different ethnic, social, political, and other groups, as well as different roles and behaviors. They totally ignore crime, speculation, defeatism, fear, and indifference. They conceal each and every darker side of the East European campaign. There is no information about Soviet casualties and losses, either military or civilian. The narrative makes clear that “Many fell on battlefields, perished in fascist torture chambers and concentration camps, died from starvation.”45 How many—textbooks don’t say. The only exception is made for the operations outside the Soviet Union: several textbooks give an approximate number of Soviet soldiers who died while liberating the countries from fascism, to highlight the price that was paid for their freedom.

Getting familiar with the master narrative in elementary school The 10th-grade history textbooks provided a detailed official saga of the Great Patriotic War, which was illustrated by the texts studied in the literature course in the same class. However, one should keep in mind that ten-year secondary education had never been compulsory in the USSR. In 1949, seven-year schooling was extended to all the Soviet children, whereas previously it applied only to those living in the urban areas. Previously, kolkhoz children were bound to study only until the age of ten. Moreover, between 1940 and 1956, schooling in the 8th–10th grades required payment and thus was mostly attended by urban elites’ children. Only at the end of the 1950s, compulsory education was extended to the 8th grade. And although the rate of young Soviet citizens with ten-year secondary education

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  93 constantly increased after that, vocational school or work instead of the last two years of general education was always an option. Political and educational authorities could not allow thousands of Soviet youngsters to leave the educational system without having learned the basics of the national history, including the Great Patriotic War. An introductory course on the History of the USSR was part of the 4th-grade curriculum designed for ten-year-old pupils. This course was intended to provide basic knowledge of ­certain episodes of national history.46 Each of the four analyzed 4th-grade textbooks includes chapters dedicated to the Great Patriotic War. As in the books for older students, these chapters grew over time: from ten pages (3.5% of the volume) in the 1955 book to 31 pages (12–14% of the volume) in the 1976 and 1986 editions. They represent a perfect prototype of the corresponding chapters in the 10th-grade textbooks and use the same structure, arguments, vocabulary, and quote the same heroes, although the stories of the latter are narrated in a more literary manner. Several lesser-known figures are presented through their heroic acts of courage or self-sacrifice. In the 1965 book, the introduction to the whole of Russian-Soviet history, titled “USSR is our Motherland,” begins with the story of a soldier and Komsomol member Yuri Smirnov who was captured by fascists and, refusing to reveal information under torture, was killed.47 All the 4th-grade textbooks are written in a child’s language, which makes them even more dogmatic, as in the following examples: Peoples of the Soviet Union were building their new life and yearned for peace with all the other states. Indeed, those who work do not need war. But capitalists observed with hatred Soviet people’s achievements. In Germany, fascists, known as sworn enemies of the workers, took power over the German people.48 When the enemy invaded their lands, many Soviet people went into the woods. But they didn’t hide, they fought.49 There have never been so many heroes and heroic actions as in this war against fascist invaders.50 Nations enslaved by the fascists gratefully welcomed their liberators. They saw, and they understood that the Soviet Union was their best friend.51 In this war, we defeated an enemy that nobody could vanquish.52 This radical simplification of different categories such as “enemies,” “heroes,” “enslavement,” “liberation” perfectly illustrates what Charles Ingrao notes about primary education textbooks: “There is nothing simpler or more persuasive than elementary school literature and instruction, which impress “knowledge” on the virtual tabula rasa of young children.”53 However, this account of the Great Patriotic War for the 4th graders did not pretend to make children discover the war: they were supposedly already familiar with some elements of the “master narrative” and above all with the heroes’ stories. Some questions and statements that we find in the 1970s–1980s books

94  Olga Konkka suggest that they had already “heard,” “read,” and “know” about them. Indeed, as soon as Soviet children learned to read, they were inundated with the wartime stories. Analysis of 11 Soviet readers for primary schools (1st–4th grades) confirms that the Great Patriotic War history was a part of the values that they sought to convey. At first, texts and poems about the war mingled with other topics, but in the 1970s–1980s, the Great Patriotic War became a separate chapter for study and discussion. Nevertheless, all the analyzed readers offer a rather faithful rendition of the above-presented “master narrative” of the war, and most of the key elements of this rendition remain as stable and unchanged as the narrative itself. In the 1945 reader, the Great Patriotic War is not history yet. Thirteen texts and poems about the war sing of the glory and strength of the Red Army and promise victory over the enemy: “The enemy won’t conquer us”; “Our forces are growing, and our hearts are burning. . . . The Germans won’t find the way out.”54 This edition also provides a number of texts urging children to work hard, explaining that they can help the front wherever they are, and by very different means: by growing foals or harvesting in a kolkhoz, by taking care of soldiers’ families and the wounded in the hospitals, and even by knitting mittens for snipers.55 Apart from these elements that disappear in later readers, the 1945 book lays the foundation of some general trends of writing about the war. First, it contains a draft and unfinished extract of Sergei Mikhalkov’s poem known as A True Story for Children. Its complete version narrates in simple and easy-to-remember verses the whole history of the Great Patriotic War. The account begins with the military invasion on June 22, 1941: One summer night at dawn, When children were sleeping peacefully, Hitler gave the order to his troops And sent German soldiers To attack all the Soviet people Which means us.56 The poem narrates the Nazi plans regarding the Soviet Union and the unity of Soviet citizens who rose together to defend their homeland. It sings of glorious battles and their heroes as well as of “honest” home-front workers, “known and unknown.” The poem ends with an account of the victory: One day, children went to bed All the windows were darkened And when they woke up at dawn There was light in the windows and the war was over.57 These or other extracts of Mikhalkov’s poem appear in many Soviet readers, including the last 1980s editions, alongside some other verses of poetry or texts summarizing the history of the war. They focus on the same aspects as history books: the unity of the Soviet people, the cruelty of the enemy, the bravery,

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools

95

patience, and self-sacrifice of soldiers and workers, and the eternal glory and gratitude that the Soviet Union gained for having rescued the world. Second, stories about the war in the 1945 reader avoid mentioning Soviet losses. Battles might have been “difficult” and attacks “fierce,” but only the Germans are dead: “it is difficult to know how many Germans were killed during the charge, but prisoners witnessed that there were many of them.”58 Likewise, in all the later readers, “fascists” are often attacked and killed, and when alive, they are angry, scared, or frozen. The only narrated Soviet deaths are the acts of self-sacrifice of famous or unknown heroes, such as the iconic young martyrs, or an old man who led a German unit into an ambush, aware that this would cost him life.59 Third, the 1945 reader contains two stories about the rescue of wounded soldiers and three stories where the Germans are tricked by the Soviets. In one of the texts, the army drivers send empty trucks across the bridge supervised by the “fascists” and, when the latter leave their hideout with surprise and anger, shoot them.60 In another one, Soviet scouts escape from a barn in an occupied village pretending to be Wehrmacht soldiers.61 Indeed, in the Soviet readers, almost all the stories about the front or the partisans have three basic plots: rescue, narrow escape, or the hoaxed Germans. Thus, they celebrate moral and intellectual superiority over the enemy. In later readers, some other stable elements complement this array of dominant plots. While in the 1945 book children remotely help the army and participate in the war effort, readers published in the 1950s–1980s contain multiple stories of children actively participating in the operations of the army or the partisans. These stories can be fictional, such as extracts of Son of the Regiment by Valentin Kataev,62 or based on real facts, such as texts about 13-year-old Vanya Adrianov who alerted the Red Army about a German ambush.63 Some of these stories reflect the cult of pioneer heroes which emerged in the early 1960s.64 These teenagers’ self-sacrifice was a part of the war memory conveyed by schools, and the names of Valya Kotik and Lenya Golikov were known to every Soviet schoolboy and girl: countless pioneer groups, camps, clubs, and libraries were named after them. Six of the 11 analyzed readers also contain texts about The Young Guard. Like the stories of the Panfilov Guardsmen65 and other accounts of famous partisans and pilots,66 they familiarize seven- to ten-year-olds with the official pantheon of war heroes. However, Soviet pupils discovered the history and the memory of the war even earlier, at the very beginning of their schooling, while learning to read. The study of educational media would, therefore, be incomplete without an analysis of 12 Soviet abecedaries and primers published between 1946 and 1989. This analysis concerns iconographical and textual components in alphabet sections and short texts in post-alphabet sections. Not only wartime primers but also those published in the second half of the 1940s frequently addressed military themes.67 The primer by Sergei Redozubov (1946) contains about three dozen references to the war: words (such as “tank,” “saber,” “cannon”) and images of weapon and ammunition,68 representations of war scenes and children playing war, phrases and short texts describing such

96  Olga Konkka scenes. Two passages explicitly address the recently ended war: a short text (“The Germans attacked our country. The Germans are our enemies. Our fighters chased the Germans away”69) and Stalin’s short biography (“Our country was attacked by the fascist enemies. Following Stalin’s call, all our people arose to defend the Motherland. The people gained a full victory over the fascists”70). It is difficult to differentiate illustrations of the war in general from those recalling the Great Patriotic War, but multiple pictures representing battle scenes and those of soldiers’ homecoming could hardly refer to another conflict than the one that had just ended. In the late 1940s and the early 1950s, Soviet primers experienced radical, although limited demilitarization. Mentions of the war, the army, and military equipment fell from dozens to less than ten. The Great Patriotic War is only briefly addressed in some primers published in the 1950s and 1960s. Aleksandra Voskresenskaia’s book contains the sentences: “There was a big battle. My father is a hero. He was wounded at war. We have peace.”71 Its 1952 edition also includes Stalin’s biography stating that “the Soviet people led by Stalin have defeated wicked enemies—the fascists.”72 The 1962 Redozubov’s primer does not contain any mentions of the 1941–1945 war. In the mid-1960s, the importance of learning about the war at an early age reemerged. The new primer contains a full-page text about a father walking in the woods with his son, Misha. A shell fragment found by the boy is an opportunity to speak about the war that happened “a long, long time ago”: “there was a battle in these woods. Many of our soldiers died here. I was wounded in the chest.”73 It is interesting to notice that for the first time, the war is addressed through elements that recall its memory: a place (a woods) and an object (a shell fragment). This primer is the first one to mention soldiers who “died,” specifying that there were “many” of them. In earlier books, Soviet soldiers fought, won, came back home: they did not die. The primers of the last Soviet decade illustrate yet another turn. The 1987 and 1989 editions include two full pages with short, illustrated texts.74 The first text says: “Lisa grew roses. She brought roses to a veteran soldier. He fought for peace on Earth. Glory to the Soviet warriors! Glory to peace on Earth!” The second text titled “My grandfather” states: “It was our dear Army’s holiday. We came to visit our grandfather. My grandfather was a sniper. He took part in the Victory Parade.” In addition to that, the 1987 edition contains another text where Lisa speaks about having visited Volgograd with her class: “Volgograd is a hero city. A  flame of eternal glory burns in front of the monument to hero soldiers. Nobody is forgotten! Nothing is forgotten!”75 Both textbooks contain illustrations of war decorations. Therefore, they share features of the late-Soviet cult of the Great Patriotic War: a tribute to the veterans, parades, hero cities, war monuments, and eternal flames, and, last but not least, one of the phrases that became part of almost every discourse about the war. This is indicative of an important change that concerns all the school literature analyzed here. The 1970s and especially the 1980s textbooks teach not only history but also the memory and cult of the Great Patriotic War. They explain

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  97 how different feats, known and unknown, personal and more general, have been immortalized. For instance, the 1976 4th-grade history textbook explains that “in the museums, one can see the Party and the Komsomol cards pierced by bullets and covered with the blood of the heroes who gave their lives in the battles for the Motherland.”76 In one of the readers, the stories of the Panfilov Guardsmen, and of a woman offering to let soldiers destroy her house to build a bridge with the recovered wood, are followed by short epilogues explaining that these actions are remembered by the following generations.77 The 1988 history textbook for the 10th grade presents the most famous war decorations. Many books contain large-scale photographs of famous war memorials in Berlin, Sofia, or Volgograd, and mention monuments to the Soviet “victims of the fascism” in Khatyn and in Kiev near Babi Yar.78 They speak about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Eternal Flame and mention hero cities. Like the above-presented primers, the 1970s–1980s textbooks also outline the importance of the commemoration of the Great Patriotic War and of Victory Day. School literature shows how one should give tribute to the living veterans and honor the dead. The 1986 history book for the 4th grade explains that those who participated in the battles “still live and work,” that “people treat them with gratitude and respect while the Motherland takes care of them.” The authors ask students “how they honor the memory of the fallen” and whether they “meet the war veterans.”79 The 1989 reader for the same grade contains a story about a group of schoolgirls commemorating a local war hero by taking care of her monument and presenting her life through a classroom exhibition. The authors urge readers “to know and to remember the names of the heroes” who “gave their lives for our Soviet Fatherland”80 and who “fought and died for you, for your happiness.”81 These schoolbooks deliver a clear message: one must not forget. This evolution from narrating the history of the Great Patriotic War to presenting its history and memory is certainly the most important change that one can observe through school literature analysis. It reflects the growing importance of the war cult in Soviet primary and secondary education within the last Soviet decades.

Remembering and commemorating the Great Patriotic War through school activities The year 1965 often appears as a milestone year in the emergence of the centralized and instrumentalized cult of the Great Patriotic War. From 1948 to 1964, May 9 was a working day, although special meetings in schools and workplaces were organized.82 Soviet people were free to celebrate the victory anniversary privately, and many did, but the day was often dedicated to everyday activities.83 In October 1964, Leonid Brezhnev replaced Nikita Khrushchev as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The following year, the 20th anniversary of the 1945 victory was widely celebrated, and an extensive array of new measures and initiatives marked the jubilee. From then on, Victory Day became a national holiday and acquired a number of traditional

98  Olga Konkka rituals. A network of war memorials was spreading across Soviet territory. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was built at the Moscow Kremlin wall in 1967. The monument included the Eternal Flame and blocks with encapsulated soil from “hero cities” which were designated as such in 1965. Eternal Flames and Tombs of the Unknown Soldier, statues, obelisks, marble blocks, tanks on stone pedestals, and other kinds of typical war memorials were erected in every city, town, and village. The already established cult of war heroes became the major guideline of the war narrative, and national and local press actively supported the research of the “unknown heroes.”84 The existence of hundreds of thousands of living war veterans was finally recalled: they were invited to share their war experience. The war theme became much more frequently addressed in the official discourse and, as in textbooks, it involved the same limited number of overused phrases. In his study of a Perm oblast newspaper, Andrei Bushmakov concludes that in 1965 there appeared “the style which would later become traditional.”85 The symbolic matrix of the war cult was becoming as rigid and solid as a rock. The Soviet school played a crucial role in spreading and instilling each of the features of the Great Patriotic War cult. The first important large-scale activity related to war memory and aimed mostly at schoolchildren was the movement known as Red Pathfinders [Krasnye sledopyty], the forerunner of the network of search brigades [poiskovye otriady]. The movement received its name through an article published in a Leningrad newspaper in 1957 and was supported by the Komsomol from 1965 on. Ekaterina Melnikova has demonstrated that origins, character, structure, and perception of the movement by Soviet civil and military authorities were full of contradictions.86 She proved that in spite of its obvious instrumentalization in political, ideological, and educational purposes, the movement should not be perceived exclusively as a top–down initiative. Just as with many other movements that emerged during Brezhnev’s era, they represent an institutionalization and further expansion of previously existing isolated local activities: in this case, searching for the unburied warriors. In the Soviet Union, due to an ambiguous policy regarding the bodies of the dead both during and after the war, neither the army nor any other institution has ever been charged with finding and burying the dead soldiers abandoned on the sites of battles. Red Pathfinders suggested this task as a form of extracurricular activity for youth and a tool of patriotic upbringing. Units and clubs were run by teachers and Komsomol leaders and involved children who volunteered for it. They organized expeditions to the former battlefields to find, identify, and rebury soldiers’ remains and, when possible, contact their families. They built war monuments, took care of burial places and cemeteries. A scene on a former battlefield that appears in the 1960s–1970s primer might be an allusion to Red Pathfinders—or at least to a new perception of these places where schoolchildren can learn about the war. Initially, activities of different groups involved in the Red Pathfinders movement had not been centered exclusively on the Great Patriotic War, or even on the past in general. They could include research on local history and even folklore study. However, by the 1980s and in particular with the launch in 1981 of the national

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  99 search expedition of schoolchildren and youth, “Writing the chronicle of the Great Patriotic War,” they have focused on the history of the war. Objects found during hiking expeditions to the former battlefields such as helmets, weapons, ammunition, and soldiers’ personal belongings ended up in museums, many of which were school museums. Supplying museums’ collections was not always the purpose of search expeditions, and many school museums of the Great Patriotic War were established without any link to search activity. Modest “Corners of military glory” created in classrooms often displayed only photos, documents, and newspaper articles. They aimed to commemorate former students who died, and celebrate those who had been decorated. However, since the mid1960s, the Red Pathfinders movement and school museums often went hand in hand, the latter serving as showcases for findings and discoveries of the young searchers. Both activities could involve the same students and teachers or pioneer leaders.87 Many “Corners of military glory” became museums, whose collections were constantly growing. They incorporated new objects discovered during excavations, as well as letters and documents donated by veterans and their families who were contacted by the students to find more about local-born soldiers and officers, or those who fought for their home region. In the 1970s–1980s, hundreds of new school museums were founded all over the USSR. The licensing and registration procedure [pasportizatsiia] created in the 1970s allowed them to obtain an official status and increase their visibility. They played an incontestable role in the glorification of local war heroes88 and were the only museums of the Great Patriotic War in countless neighborhoods, towns, or villages, which explains the fact that sometimes school museums grew into local public museums. While playing an important if not exclusive role in providing the national account of the Great Patriotic War with a local dimension, school museums never distorted the “master narrative” and used the same language as textbooks and other pieces of the official discourse about the war. Hundreds of school museum exhibitions across the USSR had the same titles: “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten,” “They fought for the Motherland,”89 “The saved world recalls,”90 “Everything for the front, everything for the victory.”91 They focused on the military side of the war and tended to ignore multiple aspects of the everyday life of local populations in 1941–1945. Activities such as search expeditions and the composing of museum collections required personal interest and initiative. Documents and recollections about a Red Pathfinders club created in 1965 in Pitkyaranta (Republic of Karelia), or about the Leningrad school no. 235 museum focused on art and culture in the besieged city, relate students’ great enthusiasm and willingness to participate.92 Yet, in the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet school system developed a number of compulsory commemorative rituals in which children’s role was mostly passive. Far from inspiring enthusiasm, they made the symbolic matrix of the war so pervasive that it often generated nothing but indifference, rejection, cynicism, and mockery. Visiting a school military glory corner or war museum, which tended to become static temples of war memory, or going on a tour to a remote war memorial or state

100  Olga Konkka war museum, became a traditional activity. These excursions did not necessarily take place around Victory Day: school groups could be seen at local and national memory sites and museums all year round. During Brezhnev’s decades, meetings with war veterans became another mandatory school activity, which is represented in the 1980s primer. Most of the Soviet schoolchildren had a chance to participate at least once, if not yearly, in such meetings. Veterans were invited to speak about their war experience by different institutions, but their contribution to the patriotic education of younger generations was particularly requested. Being the Great Patriotic War veteran gradually became a profession. Multiple sources relate the artificial character of these talks that children, sensitive to falseness, could not avoid noticing. The veterans said “what one was supposed to say”93 and “repeated what was usually written in the newspapers on May 9.”94 Moreover, while doing so, some of them seemed sincere, since their traumatic personal memories were replaced by the heroic and victorious myth.95 Veterans usually received flowers and sometimes, instead of listening to them, or after their speeches, students gave a concert in their honor. In the 1970s–1980s, Victory Day concerts were organized in the vast majority of Soviet schools. More solemn Victory Day activities included laying wreathes and standing in an “honor guard” at the local war monument. Some teachers also organized commemorative evenings and “lessons of courage” where the Great Patriotic War account was embedded in a more general discourse about being ready to fight for the Motherland. Like school history textbook chapters, these rituals remained untouched until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Conclusion In the Soviet Union, the carefully selected history of the Great Patriotic War was taught from the very beginning of compulsory schooling. Before learning its detailed account, a Soviet pupil was immersed in the world of musical and aesthetic symbols of war memory, stories of war heroes, and, from the mid-1960s, commemorative rituals. Lessons of reading, history, literature, music, and drawing, as well as multiple extracurricular activities, were pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that progressively converged in the official saga of the Great Patriotic War and its full symbolic matrix. The way the war was taught and commemorated within the Soviet educational system is a perfect example of intertextuality and intermediality.96 Primers, readers, and history books, as well as school museums’ exhibitions, contained photographs of war monuments that students might have visited with their teachers, extracts of songs and poems about the war that they had learned, references to the war prose that they studied in the literature course. They described actions and ceremonies that children actually reproduced in real life, such as visiting a war monument or offering flowers to a veteran. The younger generations’ war memory was shaped through a progressive immersion in this web of constant inter-referencing.

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  101 Teaching and commemorating the Great Patriotic War in school also contributed to shaping a certain manner of speaking about the war. Textbooks edited in millions of copies, museum exhibitions, and speeches pronounced at commemorative school events used the same terms, expressions, and style. When addressing the war theme, students were perfectly able to reproduce this language that has deeply marked even post-Soviet Russia. A 2011 article quotes a school newspaper in which a meeting with the war veterans is related by a young pupil “in the tinny voice of Soviet propaganda.”97 The pervasiveness and repeatability of the official war saga often made it invisible: instead of arousing emotions, endlessly repeated slogans and war heroes’ stories seemed bland. Sometimes they even became loathsome, as shown in an interview fragment quoted by Catriona Kelly: “Do you remember pioneerheroes?—As mud. Valya Kotik, Lenya Golikov.—And do you remember what they did?—(sighing deeply) Blew themselves. . . . All of them . . . fought against the fascism, those idiots.”98 Nina Tumarkin recalls Moscow no. 110 school students who at the end of the Soviet era openly made fun of the Victory Day ceremony and “were not buying into any part of those rituals.”99 Nevertheless, other children’s memories, namely about the 1985 celebrations, mention joy, delight, and a feeling of the importance of the Victory Day.100 In Russia, the Soviet way of teaching and remembering the Great Patriotic War in school has perfectly survived the collapse of the USSR. In the 1990s, the conservative segment of teachers managed to preserve it without any support from the state101 which was caught in liberal reforms and historical revisionism. Even post-Soviet textbooks’ authors did not dare entirely rewrite the chapters about the war. Thus, in the 2000s–2010s, when political authorities decided to reengage with this most consensual and pride-inspiring page of the national past, schools were ready to lead the way.102 The impact of standardized Soviet education about the Great Patriotic War has proven to be long-lasting: two decades after the beginning of the new millennium, public commemoration and discourse about the war in and outside schools still remind one of Brezhnev’s USSR.

Notes 1 Pankratova, Prepodavanie istorii v usloviiakh Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. 2 Bezrogov and Caroli, “Soviet Russian Primers of the 1940s,” 18–19. 3 Caroli, “New Sources for the Teaching of History,” 256–57. 4 Ferro, The Use and Abuse of History. 5 Assmann, “Canon and Archive,” 101. 6 Choppin, Les manuels scolaires, 19. 7 Ingrao, “Weapons of Mass Instruction,” 180. 8 Kelly, “Shkol’nyi Val’s,” 133. 9 Nora, Les Lieux de Mémoire, 1: la République, xl. 10 For definition and use of the term, see Bamberg, “Master Narrative.” 11 Zimet, What Children Read in School, xvi. 12 See, for instance, Sroka, “Fibeln und Fibel-Forschung in Europa.” 13 Bezrogov, “ ‘If the War Comes Tomorrow’,” 116.

102  Olga Konkka 14 Bezrogov, “Consolidating Childhood,” 152. 15 See Husband, “Secondary School History Texts in the USSR.” 16 Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, until It Was No More, 66. 17 See Carleton, “Victory in Death,” 140. 18 Berkhin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 253–54. 19 Bazilevich et al., Istoriia SSSR, 368; Potemkin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 36. 20 Potemkin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 55. 21 In 2015, the discussion about the Panfilov Guardsmen resulted in a public conflict between the former director of the State Archive of the Russian Federation Sergei Mironenko and the former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinskii. 22 Potemkin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 80; Esakov, Nenarokov, and Kukushkin, Istoriia SSSR, 117–18. 23 See, for example, Gitelman, “Politics and the Historiography of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union.” 24 Esakov et al., Istoriia SSSR, 57. 25 Petrova, “Istoriia ‘Molodoǐ gvardii’.” 26 Pavlovets, “Chto chitali sovetskie shkol’niki.” 27 Dement’ev, Naumov, and Plotkin, Russkaia Sovetskaia Literatura. 28 Ponomarev, “Literatura v sovetskoi shkole kak ideologiia povsednevnosti.” 29 Esakov et al., Istoriia SSSR, 82. 30 For example, Bazilevich et al., Istoriia SSSR, 385. 31 For example, Potemkin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 97. 32 Bazilevich et al., Istoriia SSSR, 385. 33 Potemkin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 97. 34 Esakov et al., Istoriia SSSR, 103. 35 Berkhin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 303. 36 Bazilevich et al., Istoriia SSSR, 403. 37 Esakov et al., Istoriia SSSR, 119. 38 Berkhin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 309. 39 Bazilevich et al., Istoriia SSSR, 404. 40 Potemkin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 121. 41 Berkhin et al., Istoriia SSSR, 312. 42 Esakov et al., Istoriia SSSR, 122–24. 43 For an analysis of similar additions to the chapter on the 1917 Revolution, see Konkka, “La révolution de 1917 dans les manuels d’histoire du secondaire en Russie.” 44 Choppin, Les manuels scolaires, 167. 45 Esakov et al., Istoriia SSSR, 112. 46 Rudneva, “Evoliutsiia shkol’nogo uchebnika istorii v 40-80-e gody XX veka,” 127. 47 Golubeva and Gellershtein, Rasskazy po istorii SSSR, 1965, 3. 48 Alekseev and Kartsov, Istoriia SSSR, 129. 49 Golubeva and Gellershtein, Rasskazy po istorii SSSR, 1976, 182. 50 Ibid., 185. 51 Shestakov, Kratkii kurs istorii SSSR, 277. 52 Golubeva and Gellershtein, Rasskazy po istorii SSSR, 1986, 201. 53 Ingrao, “Weapons of Mass Instruction,” 182. 54 Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1945, 74, 135. 55 Ibid., 11–12, 31, 132–35, 137. 56 Ibid., 77. 57 Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1964, 233. 58 Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1945, 101. 59 Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1955, 260–65; Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1968, 259–65; Goretskii et al., Rodnoe slovo, 2:82–90. 60 Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1945, 131–32. 61 Ibid., 79–82.

The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  103 62 Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1955, 118–26; Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1968, 118–26; Goretskii et al., Rodnoe slovo, 2, 95–106. 63 Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1964, 148–50; Vasil’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1972, 66–68. 64 Kelly, Children’s World, 132–33. 65 Vasil’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1980, 141–43. 66 Solov’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1955, 252–59. 67 Bezrogov and Caroli, “Soviet Russian Primers of the 1940s.” See also Bezrogov, “Consolidating Childhood”; Bezrogov, “Vyiti iz boia? Dykhanie voiny v Rossiiskikh uchebnikakh.” 68 I do not include as war-related images or words those such as “airplane,” “march,” “hero,” “injury,” “gun,” “drum,” etc. which can refer to both military and civil spheres, unless a link to the war is suggested by the accompanying text or illustration. 69 Redozubov, Bukvar’ dlia obucheniia chteniiu i pis’mu, 71. 70 Ibid., 95. 71 Voskresenskaia, Bukvar’, 1952, 53; Voskresenskaia, Bukvar’, 1959, 53. 72 Voskresenskaia, Bukvar’, 1952, 95. 73 Arkhangel’skaia et al., Bukvar’, 1967, 94; Arkhangel’skaia et al., Bukvar’, 1970, 94; Arkhangel’skaia et al., Bukvar’, 1977, 94. 74 Goretskii et al., Bukvar’, 64, 102; Goretskii et al., Azbuka, 87, 128. 75 This is a quote of a poem by Ol’ga Berggol’ts that appears on a Siege of Leningrad memorial. 76 Golubeva and Gellershtein, Rasskazy po istorii SSSR, 1976, 169. 77 Vasil’eva et al., Rodnaia rech’, 1980, 141–46. 78 Golubeva and Gellershtein, Rasskazy po istorii SSSR, 1986, 177. 79 Ibid., 173. 80 Golubeva and Gellershtein, Rasskazy po istorii SSSR, 1976, 174. 81 Ibid., 168. 82 Tumarkin, The Living & the Dead, 110. 83 Analysis of personal diaries from the database of the European University at Saint Petersburg, https://prozhito.org. 84 Bushmakov, “Pust’ zhivet v vekakh,” 28. 85 Ibid., 29. 86 Mel’nikova, “Rukami naroda: Sledopytskoe dvizhenie.” 87 Interview with Marina Bondarenko, teacher in charge of no. 65 Krasnaia Poliana school (Krasnodar Krai), October 2019; Ibid., 38. 88 Bushmakov, “Pust’ zhivet v vekakh,” 30. 89 Title of a film released in 1975. 90 Quote from a poem composed in 1957, mostly known as a song from a Soviet movie released in 1965. 91 Wartime slogan of the Party that also appears as a paragraph title in many Soviet history textbooks. 92 Mel’nikova, “Rukami naroda: Sledopytskoe dvizhenie,” 38; “Svedeniia o Muzee.” 93 Shcherbakova, “Nad kartoi pamiati,” 197. 94 Pruss, “Sovetskaia istoriia v ispolnenii sovremennogo podrostka,” 216. 95 Shcherbakova, “Pamiat’ o voine: propagandistskii mif protiv ‘okopnoi pravdy’.” 96 Müller, “L’intermédialité, une nouvelle approche interdisciplinaire.” 97 Chapkovskiǐ, “Uchebnik istorii i ideologicheskii deficit,” 130. 98 Kelly, “Shkol’nyi val’s,” 127. 99 Tumarkin, The Living & the Dead, 193. 100 Popov, “Prazdnovanie 40-letiia pobedy,” 20. 101 Sanina, Patriotic Education in Contemporary Russia. 102 Konkka, “Quand la guerre s’invite à l’école.”

104  Olga Konkka

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The Great Patriotic War in Soviet schools  105 Gitelman, Zvi. “Politics and the Historiography of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union.” In Bitter Legacy: Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR, edited by Zvi Gitelman. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Golubeva, Tamara, and Lev Gellershtein. Rasskazy po istorii SSSR dlia 4 klassa, 1st ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1965. ———. Rasskazy po istorii SSSR dlia 4 klassa, 6th ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1976. ———. Rasskazy po istorii SSSR dlia 4 klassa, 14th ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1986. Goretskii, Vseslav, Viktor Kiriushkin, and Anatolii Shan’ko. Bukvar’, 7th ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1987. ———. Azbuka, 4th ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1989. Goretskii, Vseslav, Liudmila Klimanova, Lidiia Piskunova, and Lev Gellershtein. Rodnoe slovo: Uchebnik po chteniiu dlia uchashchikhsia 4 klassa chetyrokhletnei nachal’noi shkoly, 1st ed., vol. 2. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1989. Husband, William B. “Secondary School History Texts in the USSR: Revising the Soviet Past, 1985–1989.” Russian Review 50, no. 4 (October 1, 1991): 458–80. Ingrao, Charles. “Weapons of Mass Instruction: Schoolbooks and Democratization in Multiethnic Central Europe.” Journal of Educational Media, Memory  & Society 1, no. 1 (2009): 180–89. Kelly, Catriona. “ ‘Shkol’nyi val’s’: Povsednevnaia zhizn’ Sovetskoi shkoly v poslestalinskoe vremia.” Antropologicheskii Forum, no. 1 (2004): 104–55. ———. Children’s World: Growing Up in Russia, 1890–1991. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Konkka, Olga. “La révolution de 1917 dans les manuels d’histoire du secondaire en Russie: rejeter le passé, renouer avec le passé.” Connexe: Les espaces postcommunistes en question(s), no. 4 (2018): 113–30. ———. “Quand la guerre s’invite à l’école: les modèles et les pratiques de la militarisation de l’enseignement secondaire en Russie.” Russie.Nei.Reports, no. 118 (March 2020). Mel’nikova, Ekaterina. “Rukami naroda: Sledopytskoe dvizhenie 1960–1980 gg. v SSSR.” Antropologicheskii Forum, no. 37 (2018): 20–53. Müller, Jürgen. “L’intermédialité, une nouvelle approche Interdisciplinaire: Perspectives théoriques et pratiques à l’exemple de la vision de la télévision.” Cinémas: Revue d’études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies 10, no. 2–3 (2000): 105–34. Nora, Pierre, ed. Les Lieux de Mémoire. Vol. 1: la République. Bibliothèque Illustrée Des Histoires. Paris: Gallimard, 1984. Pankratova, Anna, ed. Prepodavanie istorii v usloviiakh Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny. Almaty: Narkompros KazSSR, 1942. Pavlovets, Mikhail. “Chto chitali sovetskie shkol’niki.” Arzamas, March 21, 2017. https:// arzamas.academy/mag/412-school. Petrova, Nina. “Istoriia ‘Molodoi gvardii’: Vzgliad cherez 60 let.” Trudy instituta Rossiiskoi istorii RAN, no. 7 (2008): 201–33. Ponomarev, Evgenii. “Literatura v sovetskoi shkole kak ideologiia povsednevnosti.” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 145, no. 3 (2017): 120–38. Popov, Aleksei. “Prazdnovanie 40-letiia pobedy i tendentsii razvitiia istoricheskoi pamiati o Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine v poslednee Sovetskoe desiatiletie.” Rossiiskie regiony: Vzgliad v budushchee 5, no. 2 (2018): 15–34. Potemkin, Petr, Vasilii Balev, Ilia Berkhin, and Maksim Kim. Istoriia SSSR: Uchebnik dlia 10 klassa. Edited by Maksim Kim, 9th ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1980.

106  Olga Konkka Pruss, Irina. “Sovetskaia istoriia v ispolnenii sovremennogo podrostka i ego babushki.” In Pamiat’ o voine 60 let spustia. Rossiia, Germaniia, Evropa, edited by Mikhail Gabovich, 210–21. Moscow: NLO, 2005. Redozubov, Sergei. Bukvar’ dlia obucheniia chteniiu i pis’mu, 3rd ed. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1946. Rudneva, Larisa. “Evoliutsiia shkol’nogo uchebnika istorii v 40-80-e gody XX veka.” Kursk State University, 2005. Sanina, Anna. Patriotic Education in Contemporary Russia: Sociological Studies in the Making of the Post-Soviet Citizen. E-Book. Stuttgart: Ibidem Press, 2017. Shcherbakova, Irina. “Nad kartoi pamiati.” In Pamiat’ o voine 60 let spustia: Rossiia, Germaniia, Evropa, edited by Mikhail Gabovich, 195–209. Moscow: NLO, 2005. ———. “Pamiat’ o voine: propagandistskii mif protiv ‘okopnoi pravdy’.” Arzamas. Accessed May 9, 2020. https://arzamas.academy/materials/1551. Shestakov, Andrei. Kratkii kurs Istorii SSSR: Uchebnik dlia 4 klassa. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1955. Solov’eva, Evgeniia, Liudmila Karpinskaia, and Nina Shchepetova. Rodnaia rech’: Kniga dlia chteniia v 1 klasse nachal’noi shkoly, 11th ed. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1954. Solov’eva, Evgeniia, Nina Shchepetova, and Liudmila Karpinskaia. Rodnaia rech’: Kniga dlia chteniia vo 2 klasse nachal’noi shkoly, 21st ed. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1964. Solov’eva, Evgeniia, Nina Shchepetova, Liudmila Karpinskaia, and A. Kanarskaia. Rodnaia rech’: Kniga dlia chteniia vo 2 klasse nachal’noi shkoly, 2nd ed. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1945. Solov’eva, Evgeniia, Nina Shchepetova, V. Volynskaia, Liudmila Karpinskaia, and A. Kanarskaia. Rodnaia rech’: Kniga dlia chteniia v 4 klasse nachal’noi shkoly, 11th ed. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1955. ———. Rodnaia rech’: Kniga dlia chteniia v 4 klasse nachal’noi shkoly, 25th ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1968. Sroka, Wendelin. “Fibeln und Fibel-Forschung in Europa: eine Annäherung.” Bildung und Erziehung 64, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 23–38. “Svedeniia o Muzee.” Accessed April 22, 2020. http://spbmbmus.ru/Our.html#bottom. Tumarkin, Nina. The Living & the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Vasil’eva, Mariia, Lyubov’ Gorbushkina, Ekaterina Nikitina, and Margarita Omorokova. Rodnaia rech’: Kniga dlia chteniia v 1 klasse, 1st ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1972. ———. Rodnaia rech’: Kniga dlia chteniia v 2 klasse, 8th ed. Moscow: Prosveshchenie, 1980. Voskresenskaia, Aleksandra. Bukvar’, 9th ed. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1952. ———. Bukvar’, 16th ed. Moscow: Uchpedgiz, 1959. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. Zimet, Sara Goodman. What Children Read in School: Critical Analysis of Primary Reading Textbooks. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1972.

5 Representations of gender in Soviet war memorials David L. Hoffmann

On the site of the largest battle in all human history, there stands what was once the largest statue in the world. It is a gargantuan figure of Mother Russia. With one hand she raises a sword high overhead, and with the other hand she reaches back, exhorting the Soviet people to drive the fascist invaders from their homeland. The Battle of Stalingrad memorial is remarkable not only for its size but also for its representation of war and gender. While the central statue of the memorial complex is of a powerful woman, she is an allegorical figure representing the motherland. Among the smaller statues in the complex, there is but one other prominent figure of a woman—a mother in mourning. Several sculptures depict soldiers in combat, but these are exclusively male. Despite the fact that Soviet women made an enormous contribution to the war effort, including 900,000 who served in the military, they were not represented as combatants in Soviet war memorials. In this chapter, I analyze gendered images in several major memorial ­complexes—the Stalingrad memorial (Volgograd), the Battle of the Dnieper monument (Kyiv), two Panfilov Guardsmen (Panfilovtsy) monuments (Dubosekovo and Almaty), and the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad (St. Petersburg). I place these gendered images in the broader context of Soviet postwar culture—a culture that largely erased women’s military service from the official memory of the war. While the celebration of wartime heroines could have been used to promote women’s equality, official commemorations instead presented women in traditionally feminine roles as mothers, nurses, and victims. To address the question of why Soviet authorities failed to acknowledge women’s wartime contributions, I analyze their reliance on gender stereotypes to re-establish prewar gender norms. Following the demographic cataclysm of the war—and the rift that it produced in the existing gender order—the portrayal of men as valiant soldiers and of women as mothers served Soviet state efforts to bolster male authority and increase female fertility.

Women’s military service and its postwar erasure Officially, the Soviet government espoused the goal of women’s equality. From the 1917 Revolution on, it granted women equal civic rights and encouraged women’s participation in public affairs. But despite official ideology, and the genuine

108  David L. Hoffmann commitment of early Bolshevik feminists to women’s liberation, women in the Soviet Union continued to occupy a subordinate position in society throughout the prewar period.1 While several million women were recruited into heavy industry jobs during the 1930s, this recruitment reflected more an instrumental mobilization of women’s labor than a commitment to equal economic opportunities.2 Moreover, the Soviet pronatalist campaign beginning in 1936 widened gender differences and promoted an essentialist view of women as mothers. Nonetheless, in contrast to Western European countries during this time, the Soviet Union had a gender order that did not confine women to the domestic sphere. Soviet women were expected to be both workers and mothers, and Soviet propaganda encouraged women to think of themselves as builders and defenders of the new socialist society.3 Throughout the 1930s, Komsomol members—male and female alike—engaged in paramilitary activities, such as riflery and parachuting. And Soviet newspapers highlighted women’s accomplishments in military-related areas. In 1938, three women aviators embarked on a well-publicized flight from Moscow to the Far East—a flight that easily broke the women’s world record for straight-line distance flying. One of the pilots, Marina Raskova, stated that their feat showed it was possible for Soviet women to contribute to national defense.4 It was this sense of possibility that prompted thousands of young Soviet women to volunteer for military service following the German invasion in June 1941. The vast majority of female volunteers were initially turned away or enlisted as medical personnel. The 1939 Law on Universal Conscription had specified that it was young men who were to serve as soldiers, and women’s roles in the military were explicitly limited to noncombatant medical and technical support.5 In October 1941, however, Joseph Stalin authorized the formation of an all-female Aviation Group with some 300 servicewomen under Raskova’s command.6 And in 1942, Soviet leaders ordered the mass military mobilization of women, causing the total number to rise from 58,000 to over 900,000 in the armed forces by the end of the war. While most of these women served as combat medics, communications specialists, drivers, and other support staff, roughly 120,000 fought as armed combatants.7 A number of female bomber pilots, machine gunners, and snipers received widespread publicity as military heroines. Red Army sniper Liudmila Pavlichenko, for example, was heralded for having over 300 kills.8 After the war, continued recognition of women’s military service could have furthered the goal of gender equality. Returning soldiers held enormous prestige in postwar Soviet society, and had female veterans been commended and allowed to continue serving, it would have placed women on a par with men as defenders of the country. Instead, female soldiers were quickly demobilized and their contributions to the victory went unrecognized. As nominal head of the Soviet state, Mikhail Kalinin gave a speech to female veterans at the end of the war where he advised them to find civilian employment and not to speak of their military service.9 Subsequently, women were not allowed to enlist in or train for the military. For example, they were barred from the Suvorov officer-training academies— masculinized, homo-social spaces with only male teachers and students. In fact, all primary and secondary schools in major Soviet cities were segregated by sex

Representations of gender in war memorials  109 from 1943 to 1954, and the decree that established single-sex education specified the need to educate boys and girls in separate spaces to promote their respective future roles as “soldiers and mothers.”10 Official memory of the war similarly sought to restore a more traditional gender order. War monuments were central to official war memorialization, but they were just part of the broader postwar erasure of women’s military roles in official Soviet culture. Histories of the war, literature, films, and memoirs largely omitted the contributions of female soldiers. While male soldiers were presented as heroic defenders of the motherland, women were presented as mothers in mourning or martyrs. In the rare instances when female soldiers did appear in literature or films, they were shown as ineffective fighters due to their maternal nature— an essentialist construction of femininity that precluded women’s equal part in national defense. The most widely heralded wartime heroine was Zoia Kosmodem’ianskaia, and she continued to receive attention after the war. A young female partisan caught trying to set fire to a village occupied by German soldiers, Kosmodem’ianskaia was tortured and hanged by her Nazi captors. Her story was told in a wartime film, and in the postwar period she was held up as a heroine for Komsomol members. But Kosmodem’ianskaia was not venerated for military accomplishments. Instead, she was portrayed as a martyr who, despite failing in her sabotage mission, inspired male soldiers to avenge her death and defeat the fascist invaders.11 While a wartime statue of Kosmodem’ianskaia depicted her as an androgynous fighter holding a rifle, postwar monuments instead stressed her youth, femininity, and victimhood. These statues showed her unarmed, with her hands bound behind her, and invoked the moment of her execution when she defiantly called for vengeance.12 Literary depictions of wartime gender roles similarly reinforced traditional gender stereotypes. For example, Viktor Nekrasov’s 1946 novel, In the Trenches of Stalingrad, portrayed the front as a hyper-masculinized space where women were entirely absent. War novels that did contain female characters presented them as mourners or victims. Boris Vasil’ev’s widely read 1969 novel, The Dawns are Quiet Here, featured five Soviet women anti-aircraft fighters but showed them being quickly killed by German paratroopers. Reflecting on their deaths, their male officer explains that their failure to offer meaningful resistance resulted from their passive, feminine nature, calling them “future mothers” who could not fight as soldiers. Vasil’ev’s novel was made into a popular film, and it, along with other World War II films of the Brezhnev era, showed women at the front as vulnerable and incapable of combat.13 In contrast to the publicity given to heroine pilots during the prewar and wartime years, postwar poems depicted women’s roles as supporting male pilots. The poem, “To a Son,” published in 1956, described a mother’s pride at watching her adult son pilot a plane, while the 1957 poem, “I am a Pilot’s Wife,” portrayed a woman waiting at home for her pilot husband to return.14 Larisa Shepitko’s film, Wings (1966), did feature as its heroine a former military pilot, but she is shown in the postwar period working as a school principal, her wartime exploits all but

110  David L. Hoffmann forgotten. Moreover, Wings was an art film, with very limited distribution.15 Mainstream postwar culture assigned women passive roles and showed them expressing gratitude to male soldiers as their protectors and saviors. One Soviet poster, for example, shows a Red Army soldier welcomed into a new house by his wife and children on his return from the war. The caption reads, “You bravely battled the enemy—enter, master [khoziain], a new home!”16 The victorious male veteran thus is rewarded both with a house and with status, as he is the unquestioned master of the household. Veterans’ memoirs also tended to reinforce gender stereotypes. These memoirs were first published in substantial quantities during the Khrushchev era and were mostly written by men. A few female veterans published memoirs, and their number grew in the Brezhnev era. Women writing about their combat experiences suggested an alternative construction of gender—one that did not posit an opposition between men and women but rather presented them as co-combatants against the enemy.17 Female veterans’ memoirs, however, were published in small print runs and remained out of the mainstream. They often appeared in collective memoir anthologies, whose purpose was to inspire patriotism among young people, and were written in a depersonalized style that did not highlight the combat achievements of individual female soldiers.18 The master narrative of the war, promulgated in mainstream history books and memoirs, remained that of male Red Army soldiers courageously fighting to defend the motherland. The contributions of female soldiers were not celebrated.19 Popular remembrance offered no useful corrective to official culture’s erasure of women’s military service. In the popular imagination, female soldiers were seen as sexually loose women and were called “whores” and “prostitutes.” The stereotype of the “mobile field wife”—a female soldier who became an officer’s mistress—tainted the reputations of women who had served at the front. After the war, female veterans were often seen as unfit for marriage. Many women, therefore, hid their military pasts and chose not to wear their medals or speak of their service.20 Had official Soviet culture applauded female veterans and their accomplishments, popular remembrance might have discarded sexualized stereotypes of female soldiers. Instead, the Soviet government’s failure to acknowledge women’s military service resulted in the persistence of these stereotypes, or it allowed women’s wartime contributions to be forgotten altogether. As the following examination of Soviet war monuments will further illustrate, official commemoration of the war drew upon and reinforced traditional conceptions of gender.

War monuments and masculinity The Soviet government built the country’s large memorial complexes only after Stalin’s death. Construction of the Battle of Stalingrad memorial, for example, began under Khrushchev and was completed during the Brezhnev era, when Second World War memorialization swelled to epic proportions. The design of monuments, like the production of Soviet official culture more generally, resulted from the interplay of cultural producers, censors, critics, government officials,

Representations of gender in war memorials  111 and Party leaders. While members of the ruling Politburo retained absolute power to decide cultural matters, they did not dictate the form and content of every war monument. Instead, the Soviet Ministry of Culture held closed design competitions (open only to select members of the Union of Architects) and appointed official commissions to oversee the construction of memorials. Bureaucratic intrigue and patronage, including intervention by Khrushchev himself in the case of the Stalingrad memorial, influenced the final outcome of war memorials.21 Monuments’ designs, therefore, reflected the aesthetic sensibilities and commemorative agendas of architects, commission members, and political leaders, virtually all of whom were male. The individual who played the largest role in the design of Soviet war memorials was Evgenii Vuchetich. Vuchetich was a protégé of Vladimir Shchuko, an architect of the neoclassical revival who helped design the Lenin Library and the never-completed Palace of Soviets. During the 1930s, Vuchetich had denounced formalism and clearly aligned himself with Stalinist monumental art and architecture.22 After the war, Vuchetich was chosen to lead the design team for Berlin’s Treptower Park, the memorial park and cemetery for Red Army soldiers killed in the Battle of Berlin. Opened in 1949, this memorial complex of granite statues and fraternal graves prefigured many of the elements subsequently included in war memorials within the Soviet Union. When the design competition for the Battle of Stalingrad memorial was announced in 1954, Vuchetich submitted a proposal with the assistance of Iakov Belopol’skii, another neoclassical architect who had also worked on Treptower Park. Vuchetich’s proposal won the closed competition, and he was appointed the head of the project in 1958.23 At the center of his design, Vuchetich placed an enormous statue, “The Motherland Calls!” (see Figure 5.1). This statue is of Mother Russia dressed in flowing robes with her windswept shawl extending behind her like two wings—a clear imitation of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, an ancient Greek statue depicting Nike, the goddess of victory. Some members of the memorial commission suggested a Russian national costume for the statue, but Vuchetich demurred, calling the Battle of Stalingrad “an international event” and utilizing a universalist, neoclassical form instead.24 The statue rests atop Mamaev Kurgan, a strategic hill during the Battle of Stalingrad, and is 85 meters high—the tallest in the world when it was unveiled in 1967. Vuchetich’s original plan called for a statue of only half that height, but Khrushchev, in an act of Cold War rivalry, ordered that the statue’s size be increased to surpass the height of the Statue of Liberty.25 The Motherland Calls statue is that of a powerful woman wielding a sword. But it does not symbolize Soviet women’s contributions to the war effort. Instead, it is an allegorical figure representing Mother Russia as she exhorts the Soviet people to come forward and face the enemy. The smaller statues in the memorial complex all depict battlefield soldiers as men. The second most prominent statue, “Stand to the Death!” (see Figure 5.2), is of a bare-chested male soldier (carved in granite) holding a machine gun in one hand while throwing a grenade with the other. The statue’s muscular torso seems to rise out of the solid earth, as no legs are shown, and it conveys a sense of immovable strength and determination. Masculinity is

112  David L. Hoffmann

Figure 5.1  “The Motherland Calls!” statue at the Battle of Stalingrad Memorial, Volgograd. Source: Photograph by Svetlana Dikhtiareva (courtesy of Shutterstock).

Figure 5.2  “Stand to the Death!” statue at the Battle of Stalingrad Memorial, Volgograd. Source: Photograph by Art Konovalov (courtesy of Shutterstock).

Representations of gender in war memorials  113 thus presented as powerful and unyielding, with the tenacity of male soldiers as the key to the momentous victory. The face of the statue was modeled on that of Stalingrad commander Vasilii Chuikov. Vuchetich chose Chuikov’s visage not only to honor him but also to curry favor, given that Chuikov had been appointed chief military consultant of the Stalingrad memorial project and was also a candidate member of the Communist Party’s Central Committee.26 The complex’s third largest statue is of a mother in mourning (see Figure 5.3). With her head covered and bent in sorrow, she holds the body of her fallen son. The statue replicates a common subject in Christian art—the Pietà, which depicts Mary holding the body of Jesus after his crucifixion. Notwithstanding the Soviet government’s official disparagement of religion, Vuchetich employed this Christian motif alongside his neoclassical designs to imbue his work with universal significance. The face of the fallen soldier in the statue is covered, allowing him to stand in for all soldiers killed in the battle. And the role of mourning is here assigned to women, more specifically the mothers of deceased soldiers. Women are thus given a passive role, one that draws on their emotional rather than their mental or physical capacities. The memorial also has a series of smaller bas relief sculptures that portray male soldiers in battle. Only one woman appears in these scenes, a female nurse carrying a wounded soldier to safety. While this sculpture reveals a woman playing an active role at the front, it nonetheless remains within

Figure 5.3  Grieving mother statue at the Battle of Stalingrad Memorial, Volgograd. Source: Photograph by ArtEvent ET (courtesy of Shutterstock).

114  David L. Hoffmann the confines of traditional femininity—caring for the injured. Combat is displayed as a strictly masculine endeavor.27 The Battle of the Dnieper memorial in Kyiv (dedicated 1981) was also designed by Vuchetich and contains many of the same elements as the Battle of Stalingrad memorial, including a huge motherland statue. The complex also has smaller statues depicting “The Crossing of the Dnieper” (see Figure 5.4) that portray Soviet soldiers during the 1943 assault river crossings that recaptured the west bank of the Dnieper. The combatants in the monument are all men, accompanied by a lone female medic who is kneeling to aid a wounded soldier. The male soldiers are shown in motion, brandishing their guns and clenching their fists as they forge ahead. Even the wounded soldier clutches his machine gun and thrusts his fist forward in determination. The female medic appears stoic, but she carries no weapon and only serves to aid the wounded. The monument presents an image of masculinity that fits the master narrative of the war, showing male soldiers’ strength, courage, and determination to defeat the enemy. Two large Soviet war monuments commemorate the Panfilov Guardsmen— soldiers of the Soviet 316th Rifle Division who fought in the Battle of Moscow under the command of General Ivan Panfilov.28 All of the statues in these two memorials portray male soldiers—no women are represented at all. The story of the Panfilov Guardsmen told of 28 soldiers who fought to the death to stop a Nazi tank brigade in November 1941. The unit included soldiers of several Soviet

Figure 5.4 “The Crossing of the Dnieper” statues at the Battle of the Dnieper Memorial, Kyiv. Source: Photograph by OPIS Zagre (courtesy of Shutterstock).

Representations of gender in war memorials  115 nationalities, including Kazakhs and Kyrgyz as well as Russians and Ukrainians. During the war, journalists gave the story widespread publicity, holding up the Panfilov Guardsmen as heroes willing to sacrifice their lives in the face of overwhelming odds. Not long after the war, the authenticity of the story came into question when several of the allegedly deceased heroes were discovered to be alive. An investigation by the country’s chief military prosecutor concluded that journalists had fabricated parts of the story, but to preserve the heroic tale, these findings were suppressed.29 In 1975, the two monuments were dedicated—one where the original battle occurred in Dubosekovo, west of Moscow, and the other in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The Dubosekovo memorial (see Figure 5.5) consists of six very large statues, each ten meters high. Designed by sculptors Aleksei Postol, Nikolai Liubimov, and V. A. Fedorov, the statues show the Panfilov Guardsmen awaiting the German tank offensive.30 In contrast to the Battle of the Dnieper memorial, the soldiers are not presented charging into battle. Instead, they stand resolutely, their guns not raised to fire but held crosswise as a symbolic barrier. One soldier is positioned slightly forward and alone, acting as a lookout. In the center are three soldiers, including one designed to appear to have Central Asian facial features—a way to highlight the multinational makeup of Panfilov’s unit. To the side stand two other soldiers, armed with anti-tank grenades. Military masculinity in this memorial is depicted as impassive, courageous, and steadfast. The Panfilov monument in Almaty (see Figure 5.6) was sculpted by V. Andryuschenko and A. Artimovich. It also presents the Panfilov Guardsmen as an impenetrable bulwark, with figures emerging from a massive copper-chased stone block shaped like a map of the Soviet Union. The soldiers shown in the monument represent the Soviet Union’s 15 republics.31 The memorial’s political purpose, then, was to unite all Soviet nationalities around the memory of a shared struggle and to secure their loyalty to the Soviet government. Of course, this attempt at symbolic unity was problematic in that members of only a few of the country’s nationalities had served in Panfilov’s division. Moreover, while the sculptors attempted to give

Figure 5.5  Panfilov Guardsmen Monument, Dubosekovo. Source: Photograph by Sergei Dziuba (courtesy of Shutterstock).

116  David L. Hoffmann

Figure 5.6  Panfilov Guardsmen Monument, Almaty. Source: Photograph by Diego Fiore (courtesy of Shutterstock).

“Slavic” facial features to some of the monument’s statues and “Central Asian” features to others, their efforts falsely implied that members of each nationality could be identified by distinctive facial characteristics. The monument’s slogan also acted to undermine the very unity its designers sought to promote. It reads, “Russia is a great land, but there is nowhere to retreat—Moscow is behind us!” These words were purportedly spoken by the unit’s political officer, Vasilii Klochkov, just before he hurled himself under a German tank with an armful of grenades. But the use of “Russia” instead of “Soviet Union” conveys a sense that national minorities were fighting for the Russian empire rather than for the USSR (a union of national republics). Reinforcing the insinuation that non-Russians were second-class citizens is the monument itself, which depicts Klochkov, an ethnic Russian, surging forward and leading the nonRussian nationalities. Just as Soviet propaganda referred to Russians as the “elder brother” in the family of Soviet nationalities, this monument placed non-Russians in a subordinate position. Nonetheless, its intended symbolism was of a masculine “brotherhood” of Soviet nationalities fighting side by side, the unity of the Soviet multinational state forged in battle where soldiers of all nationalities were willing to sacrifice themselves to defend Moscow.

Representations of gender in war memorials  117 The Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad offers a different case, given that it honors siege victims as well as soldiers. Architect Sergei Speranskii won the closed competition to design the memorial complex, which was completed in 1975. Speranskii’s plan centers on a broken ring, symbolizing the blockade of the city, with a giant obelisk rising out of it. In front of the obelisk are two large statues—a male soldier and a male worker, giving (male) civilians credit equal to that of Red Army troops for the defense of the city. The complex also has a series of smaller statues sculpted by Mikhail Anikushin.32 The monument’s designers used no allegorical figures and focused instead on representing common people who contributed to the victory. In an article published when the monument opened, Anikushin wrote, “I would like to show Leningraders exactly as they were. . . . These are ordinary people who accomplished this, who became legend.”33 Through his words and sculptures, Anikushin communicated the message that the siege was a people’s struggle, that they were stoic and united, and that they triumphed collectively in the face of horrendous adversity. Two clusters of statues portray members of different branches of the military. One of these shows Red Army soldiers marching off resolutely to face the enemy (see Figure 5.7). The other includes Red Army soldiers, Baltic fleet sailors, and Soviet air force pilots. All of the military personnel are presented as male, despite the fact that there were female combatants in both the army and the air force. Another set of statues depicts the “People’s Militia” (Narodnoe

Figure 5.7 Statues of male soldiers at the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, St. Petersburg. Source: Photograph by konstantinks (courtesy of Shutterstock).

118  David L. Hoffmann opolchenie)—civilian volunteer units that were incorporated into the Soviet military. These statues are also male with two exceptions, one of whom is a female medic and the other who is a mother sending her son off to fight. Like the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of the Dnieper memorials, then, the Leningrad memorial presents only men as combatants. The lone woman headed to the front is a nurse, with women’s other military connections shown to be as mothers of soldiers. Another ensemble of statues includes three male snipers, one of whom is hugging a young girl (see Figure 5.8). While the first sniper provides comfort, a second (mostly hidden in this photograph) and third look toward the front and keep watch. The snipers are thus performing their masculine duty by protecting the women and children of Leningrad. Behind the snipers are civilians constructing defenses, with three men carrying a beam to build a barricade. The first man is a bearded intellectual, while the other two are younger, working-class men. Beyond these three statues are the figures of two firefighters, a man and a woman, holding shovels and watching the sky for German bombers. The memorial, then, shows women playing some role in civil defense, though it gives primacy to men as defenders and highlights masculine strength as the key to protecting the city. The memorial does honor women as workers who produced armaments for the war effort. As many male workers joined the military, the number of women in factories increased during the war, and female workers were vital to wartime production. Two statues depict women metalworkers (see Figure 5.9). It shows

Figure 5.8 Statues of male snipers and barricade builders at the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, St. Petersburg. Source: Photograph by konstantinks (courtesy of Shutterstock).

Representations of gender in war memorials  119

Figure 5.9 Statues of female metalworkers at the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad, St. Petersburg. Source: Photograph by konstantinks (courtesy of Shutterstock).

them pouring molten metal into castings to produce artillery shells. Clothed in protective gear, the women are portrayed as performing labor that is both arduous and important. Nonetheless, representing women as metalworkers did not involve a restructuring of gender roles, given that women had been recruited into metallurgy plants already during the 1930s. The monument, then, did not challenge the prewar gender order in the Soviet Union. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, the largest worker statue is of a male worker, giving the greatest credit for the victory to male workers and soldiers. The stairway that breaks the ring of the Leningrad memorial leads down to the final group of statues (see Figure 5.10). This group is dominated by the figures of women, and it commemorates not the city’s defenders but rather those who perished in the siege. One statue is of a mother holding her dead, emaciated child. A second statue is of another mother with her arms around her fallen daughter. A third pair of statues shows a male soldier supporting an old woman who is collapsing from hunger. Notably, the mother holding her dead child is not depicted as grief-stricken but rather with her head unbowed, persevering despite her immense personal loss.34 Nonetheless, it is striking that all of the statues representing victims and mourners of the siege are women. Men are not shown as weakened or starving, even though hundreds of thousands of men died of starvation during the siege. The lone male figure in this ensemble is the soldier rescuing the old

120  David L. Hoffmann

Figure 5.10  Statues of siege victims at the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of ­Leningrad, St. Petersburg. Source: Photograph by konstantinks (courtesy of Shutterstock).

woman, reinforcing the gender dichotomy of strong male soldiers protecting a female civilian population. Overall, the Monument to the Defenders of Leningrad reflects its creators’ efforts at inclusivity. Civilians as well as soldiers are included in the memorial complex. Women are shown as contributing to the war effort as medics, metalworkers, and firefighters. But there are no statues of female snipers, bomber pilots, or anti-aircraft gunners—all roles that women fulfilled during the war. The soldiers are depicted as men, and they are shown as courageous defenders of the women and children of the city. While inclusive, then, the memorial complex nonetheless reinforced gender stereotypes. Military combatants were represented by male figures, while mourners and victims were represented by statues of women. In her analysis of the Leningrad monument, Lisa Kirschenbaum notes that Second World War memorials in the Soviet Union were far different from those in Western Europe. Whereas Soviet memorials included statues of motherland figures and “steadfast, broad-shouldered soldiers,” Western European monuments tended toward abstraction or, if they contained human figures at all, featured distorted, anguished human forms.35 Soviet memorials had more in common with Western Europe’s First World War monuments, many of which contained classical or religious imagery, eternal flames, and statues of soldiers to honor those who

Representations of gender in war memorials  121 died in the war.36 Jay Winter argues that these traditional symbols, although they did not glorify World War I, allowed people to remember the war and mourn the fallen. World War II, by contrast, undermined the idea that any meaning could be attached to the war and its memory. The massive loss of civilian life, the Holocaust, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—all raised the possibility that there was, in Winter’s words, no way to commemorate the “hideousness and scale of the cruelties of the 1939–1945 war.”37 The Soviet case provides a counter-example to Winter’s conclusions. The Soviet Union sustained civilian casualties that far surpassed those of any other country in Europe, and some one-third of all Holocaust victims were Soviet citizens. Despite these horrors, Soviet war memorials continued to utilize traditional symbols of masculine bravery and heroism to commemorate and find meaning in the war.38 Ideological differences account in part for this striking divergence in World War II remembrance. Whereas the Holocaust dealt a serious blow to liberals’ faith in reason and progress, Soviet leaders had foreseen a deadly clash between socialism and capitalism and viewed their triumph over fascism as evidence of world progress toward communism.39 While acknowledging the war’s terrible casualties, they could mark their victory as a step forward for humankind. Reinforcing Soviet monument designers’ emphasis on heroism and triumph, as well as their reliance on realism over abstraction, was the doctrine of socialist realism. Established as the country’s sole acceptable form of culture from 1934 onward, socialist realism rejected abstract art in favor of a type of realism, one that presented idealistic images of socialist life as it was becoming. Socialist realist sculpture relied heavily on conventions of classicism, and it also favored the depiction of robust workers and soldiers as they built and defended socialism. Soviet sculptors’ rejection of abstraction in favor of traditional forms lent itself to the perpetuation of traditional gender roles in war memorials. While the Second World War blurred the distinctions between soldiers and civilians, and between men and women, war commemoration reasserted those distinctions—portraying only men as combatants and showing them as defenders of a female, civilian population. Masculine figures in Soviet war monuments were strong, resolute, and courageous. Women, on the other hand, were rendered most often in traditional female roles.

Male authority and female fertility The question remains, why did Soviet authorities fail to acknowledge fully women’s wartime roles and fail to represent them as combatants in war memorials? The fact that so many women had fought in the Soviet military offered a prime opportunity to advance women’s equality. Producers of official culture, be they architects of monuments or authors of novels, could have highlighted women’s military service and presented them as comrades of male soldiers. Instead, they sought to re-establish the country’s prewar gender order. There are several reasons for this reassertion of preexisting gender roles. As mentioned earlier, the reversion to traditional gender stereotypes reflected in part the chauvinism of male officials

122  David L. Hoffmann and cultural producers. But this issue demands a broader historical explanation— an explanation based on the role of memorialization in establishing a postwar order. War for any society marks a rift—a disruption of normal life due to the mobilizations and sacrifices of wartime—and the way war is remembered serves to repair that rift and establish postwar norms.40 The Second World War in the Soviet Union marked an enormous cataclysm, with horrendous casualties, destruction, and disruption. The fact that the country lost roughly 27 million people made the wartime rupture there particularly severe. Added to this demographic catastrophe was an acute demographic imbalance, as men accounted for 76 percent of wartime casualties. In other words, 20.5 million of the 27 million war dead were men.41 After the war, women far outnumbered men. In 1946, the Soviet population had 96.2 million women and only 74.4 million men and that included less than twothirds as many men as women in the age cohort between 20 and 44 years old.42 In numerical terms, postwar Soviet society was dominated by women. They made up a large majority of the workforce, and it was mainly their labor that rebuilt the country.43 On top of this demographic threat to male dominance was the issue of war invalidity. Many men who had fought and survived were permanently disabled. According to official statistics, which likely undercounted the total, the country had 2.5 million to 3.5 million war invalids at the conclusion of the war.44 Soviet monument designers did not avoid the subject of injury, as in the Battle of the Dnieper memorial (see Figure 5.4). However, battle scenes in war memorials did not address permanent disabilities that resulted from war injuries. And Soviet official culture more broadly usually ignored the topic, particularly during the postwar Stalin years but even during the Khrushchev and Brezhnev eras. With the exception of Grigorii Chukhrai and his film Ballad of a Soldier (1959), Soviet film directors tended to avoid the theme of war invalidity.45 When Soviet artists and writers portrayed the war wounded, they usually emphasized the restorative power of labor that allowed disabled veterans to rejoin the working collective. Or they presented war wounds as marks of heroism rather than as permanent physical impairments that marred people’s lives.46 To belie the postwar reality of millions of men dead or disabled, Soviet war monuments featured robust, virile male soldiers triumphing in battle. Recalling military heroism was a way to buttress Soviet masculinity at a moment when it was vulnerable. Battlefield victories seemed to prove the strength and determination of Soviet men and followed a long tradition of equating masculinity with military feats.47 Excluding representations of female combatants also served to bolster traditional masculinity and the prewar gender order. The inclusion of female combatants in war monuments might have suggested that the diminished ranks of men could be replaced by women. Instead, Soviet cultural producers strove to secure military combat as the exclusive preserve of men and glorified the accomplishments of male veterans only. This glorification strengthened male authority—in postwar Soviet society, male veterans were often put in charge of collective farms and factories, regardless of whether they were qualified for these

Representations of gender in war memorials  123 positions. Simultaneously, the authority of Soviet political leaders was enhanced by the celebration of their wartime exploits. Despite his unremarkable record as a political commissar during the war, Brezhnev was lauded as a war hero and his official portraits showed him bedecked with medals for military valor.48 The Cold War provided the international context in which Soviet leaders strove to project masculine virulence and military power. Having defeated Nazi Germany, Soviet leaders almost immediately faced a new existential threat in the form of the United States. Khrushchev and Brezhnev commemorated the wartime victory to affirm the country’s martial strength. While war memorials’ primary purpose was to legitimize the Soviet regime, they also fortified the country’s image as a military superpower. In both the Soviet Union and the United States, the war readiness of the male population was a governmental priority throughout the Cold War. Physical fitness and norms of masculine behavior were seen as guarantees of military preparedness.49 War monuments featuring strong male soldiers, alongside similar depictions of masculine strength in other forms of official culture, reinforced these norms. While Soviet official culture highlighted male strength and authority, it simultaneously emphasized female fertility. Catastrophic wartime casualties prompted Soviet policies intended to raise the birth rate and replenish the population. These policies focused on women’s reproductive capacities and emphasized women’s “natural” role as mothers. This essentialist understanding of women as mothers reinforced the prewar Soviet gender order. That order was not entirely traditional in that it defined women as workers as well as mothers (in contrast to the gender orders of countries that assigned women an exclusively domestic role). But while the Soviet government recruited women into industrial employment during the 1930s, it simultaneously stressed motherhood as a social obligation.50 Indeed, the Soviet government had outlawed abortion in 1936.51 Commissar of Health Nikolai Semashko justified the ban on abortion as crucial to “the state task of increasing the population of the Soviet Union.”52 Late in the war and during the postwar period, Soviet leaders made renewed efforts to prevent abortions and promote maternity. A 1944 commission headed by Khrushchev drafted a decree with the goal of “increasing the population in the Soviet Union.” Knowing the demographic imbalance between men and women, the commission sought to encourage out-of-wedlock births through government support for single mothers.53 The resulting 1944 Family Law retained the 1936 ban on abortion and made divorce more difficult and expensive. The new law also ended single mothers’ right to sue fathers for child support and in its place granted them state financial assistance.54 Between 1945 and 1955, 8.7 million children were born to unmarried women, and in 1950, almost 20 percent of all births in the Soviet Union were out-of-wedlock.55 But many women continued to terminate their pregnancies, and in 1945, Soviet officials expressed alarm at the extremely high rate of illegal abortions.56 The Ministry of Health reported that in 1949, 93,597 women had been granted legal abortions for medical reasons, but it estimated that this figure accounted for only 10.4  percent of all abortions—­ meaning that some 800,000 underground abortions had taken place that year.57

124  David L. Hoffmann The Soviet press in the postwar Stalin era had little direct anti-abortion propaganda, but it did continually proclaim that motherhood was the duty of all women and it showcased the state’s commitment to providing support for mothers.58 Even after abortion was legalized under Khrushchev in 1955, Soviet authorities still sought to compel women to have children, through medical interventions and the continuation of pronatalist propaganda.59 It was in this context that war memorials and Soviet official culture more broadly depicted women as mothers. War monuments showing mothers in mourning were in keeping with the government’s message that all women should have children. And as the many female soldiers decorated for combat were largely forgotten, women in the postwar period received the possibility of earning a new state honor instituted by the 1944 Family Law—that of “Mother-Heroine.” Women who had ten or more children were entitled to receive this award, which included a military-style medal, as well as an annual bonus of several thousand rubles.60 Memorialization always involves not only remembering but also forgetting. One thing forgotten in Soviet war monuments was the combat role women had played in the Soviet military. Female snipers, heralded during the war for their kills, were forgotten in official postwar commemorations. The same was true of women who served as bomber pilots and anti-aircraft gunners. These female combatants did not fit with the maternal ideal that Soviet authorities sought to foster in their efforts to raise the birth rate. Instead, war monuments featured women as victims, as in the case of Zoia Kosmodem’ianskaia, or as nurses or mothers in mourning. The opportunity to further the goal of gender equality, by representing women as comrades-in-arms with men, was lost, and instead war memorialization reinforced the prewar gender order that emphasized male authority and female fertility.

Epilogue: memorials and meaning This chapter has focused on representations of gender in Soviet war monuments, as well as on the social and political goals served by these representations— namely, the re-establishment of a prewar gender order badly disrupted by the war. While women’s military service and horrendous male casualties called into question male dominance in postwar society, official memory of the war sought to reassert that dominance, as well as to legitimize the Soviet regime. Apart from this conclusion about the goals of official war memory, it is important to acknowledge the emotional dimensions of memorialization. To stress monuments’ political purposes is not to deny that they held genuine meaning for people. Following a war that claimed 27 million lives, the Soviet populace had a tremendous emotional need to mourn those killed. In all societies, war memorials must engage mourning if they are to help heal wartime losses.61 Soviet war memorials did not overlook the terrible price of war. The Stalingrad memorial included the names of tens of thousands of soldiers who died in the battle. And the words of poet Ol’ga Berggol’ts, “No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten,” were engraved in granite at Leningrad’s Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery where siege victims

Representations of gender in war memorials  125 are buried. Soviet war monuments were not just victory shrines; they were sites of mourning. Memorials’ statues of mothers grieving their fallen sons helped to mediate bereavement and express the grief felt by so many in the Soviet Union after the war.62 While the question of reception is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is noteworthy that Soviet citizens often visited war memorials not only for official ceremonies but also on personal occasions such as wedding days. Contrary to Robert Musil’s famous assertion that “there is nothing in the world as invisible as monuments,” Soviet war memorials received and continue to receive considerable attention.63 That is not to say that the entire population adopted a uniform collective memory of the war based on official narratives and symbols. In her book on the memory of the Siege of Leningrad, Lisa Kirschenbaum argues instead that the personal memories of siege survivors represented a mixture of official myths and real experiences and that people used monuments to find meaning in the personal tragedies they had suffered.64 This discussion raises a broader question about monuments and time. The most fundamental purpose of a monument is to freeze a moment in time, to memorialize a significant event for all eternity. As Mikhail Yampolsky has written, “A monument creates around itself a kind of special temporal expanse. . . , a sort of mystical protective zone that surrounds the monument and is apparently connected with the experience of temporal metamorphosis.”65 While the objective of monument building is to preserve the memory of a past event and to fix its meaning, time nevertheless moves forward and, as generations pass and regimes change, the meaning of memorials changes too. Although the memory of World War II in Russia continues to serve as a symbol of national unity, the wartime generation has largely passed away, and war memorials are no longer primarily places of mourning. Moreover, new symbols have been erected at sites of war commemoration, particularly those of the Russian Orthodox Church, now seen as a pillar of Russian national identity in the post-Communist era. Moscow’s Victory Park at Poklonnaia Hill, partially constructed during the Soviet period but completed in 1995, epitomizes these changes. Critics have described it as a “Russian-Orthodox mass cultural façade laid over the corpse of one of the last great gasps of socialism,” and have drawn attention to its placement of Russian Orthodox symbols in “a genetically Soviet space—signified by its enormous emptiness, lined by marble and granite.”66 Yet even if granite monuments fail to concretize meaning, they nonetheless influence political and social norms. Soviet war memorials depicted a certain version of the past, one that recalled particular features of the war effort and left out others. The Panfilov Guardsmen monuments portrayed Soviet nationalities as united in the fight against fascism, even as they ignored the mass deportations of several smaller nationalities for alleged treason. Statues of male soldiers charging into battle championed men’s heroism, but ignored female soldiers’ heroism, not to mention the panic, blunders, and senseless slaughter experienced by the Red Army early in the war. And statues of mothers mourning their fallen sons ignored not only their fallen daughters but also the grief of men who had lost

126  David L. Hoffmann loved ones and comrades. The perpetuation of gender stereotypes in war memorials helped shape the postwar gender order. And the degree to which Soviet citizens accepted official representations of the war contributed, both consciously and unconsciously, to gender disparities that continued throughout the Soviet period as well as in Russia today.67

Notes 1 Scholars who have discussed both Soviet efforts to achieve gender equality and the limitations of these efforts include Clements, Engel, and Worobec, eds., Russia’s Women; Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society; Northrop, Veiled Empire; Wood, The Baba and the Comrade. 2 Goldman, Women at the Gates; Ilic, Women Workers. 3 Hoffmann, Cultivating the Masses, 156; Shulman, Stalinism on the Frontier, 16–23. 4 Krylova, Soviet Women, 46–47, 77–79. 5 Ibid., 83. 6 Pennington, “’Do Not Speak’,” 120. See also Krylova Soviet Women, 121–23; Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers, 290–91. 7 Krylova, Soviet Women, 145, 169. Including female partisans, Markwick and Cardona arrive at a figure of over one million Soviet women who performed military service during the war; Markwick and Cardona, Soviet Women, 246–47. Reese gives the figures of 300,000 women who volunteered for military service and 490,000 women mobilized into the military through the Komsomol; Reese, Why Stalin’s Soldiers, 283–84. 8 Krylova, Soviet Women, 158. 9 Pennington, “’Do Not Speak’,” 143. 10 Fraser, Military Masculinity, 52–54. On the end of co-education, see also Ewing, Separate Schools. 11 Hoffmann, The Stalinist Era, 136. 12 Harris, “Memorialization,” 77–81. 13 Krylova, “Neither Erased,” 90–91. 14 Fraser, Military Masculinity, 71–72. 15 I thank Stephen M. Norris for bringing this film to my attention. 16 Goscilo, “History and Metahistory,” 224–25, 234. 17 Krylova, “Neither Erased,” 97. 18 Markwick and Cardona, Soviet Women, 245–46. The authors note that only in the ­Gorbachev and post-Soviet periods were more personalized and graphic accounts of women’s combat experiences published. The most famous of these accounts is Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history of Soviet women in the Second World War; see Alexievich, U voiny. See also Budnitskii, “Muzhchiny i zhenshchiny.” 19 On Brezhnev’s memoir as providing the master narrative for all subsequent (male) veterans’ memoirs of the Malaia zemlia battle, see Davis, Mythmaking, 77–78. 20 Pennington, “’Do Not Speak’,” 135; Markwick and Cardona, Soviet Women, 239–40. 21 Palmer, “How Memory,” 394. 22 On the shift in Soviet architecture from the avant-garde to Stalinist neoclassicism, see Papernyi, Kul’tura “dva”. 23 Palmer, “How Memory,” 378–82. 24 Ibid., 395. 25 Ibid., 394. 26 Ibid., 387, 393. 27 Similarly, the Stalingrad Battle Panorama Museum, also in Volgograd, has paintings of battle scenes where only men are shown in combat, and the lone female figure is a nurse; Trubina, “’You See’,” 27.

Representations of gender in war memorials  127 28 In addition to the two monuments discussed here, several smaller monuments to the Panfilov Guardsmen were constructed in other Soviet cities, including in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. 29 When the Russian State Archive published the long-suppressed report on its website in 2015, Russian Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinskii denounced the action and archive head Sergei Mironenko was demoted. See Luxmoore, “Russian Minister.” 30 Brumfield, “Dubosekovo.” 31 “Monuments.” Attractions of Almaty. For further discussion of this monument, see Brunstedt, Soviet Myth, chapter 4. 32 For a full discussion of the design competition, see Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege, 208–17. 33 Mikhail Anikushin, “Bol’ i muzhestvo,” Avrora, 1975, no. 5: 19, as quoted in Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege, 221. 34 For further discussion, see Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege, 224–25. 35 Ibid., 187. 36 See Moriarty, “Private Grief and Public Remembrance”; Sherman, Construction of Memory. 37 Winter, Sites of Memory, 8. 38 Of course, unlike in Western Europe, there had been no widespread monument building in the Soviet Union to commemorate the First World War. See Petrone, Great War. 39 See Weiner, Making Sense of the War. 40 In his article on American Civil War monuments, Kirk Savage explains the puzzling similarity of Northern and Southern war memorials as part of an attempt to repair the rift between North and South and to reassert white male supremacy following emancipation; Savage, “The Politics of Memory.” 41 Fraser, Military Masculinity, 5. 42 Markwick and Cardona, Soviet Women, 232; Zubkova, Russia after the War, 20–21. 43 Bucher, “Impact of World War II,” 7. 44 Fieseler, “Wounds of War,” 277. 45 Ibid., 283. 46 McCallum, Fate of the New Man, 269–77. On the Soviet medical response to invalidity, see Bernstein, “Rehabilitation Staged.” 47 See Petrone, “Masculinity and Heroism.” 48 On the exaggeration and veneration of Brezhnev’s war record, see Davis, Mythmaking. 49 Dumančić, “Hidden in Plain Sight,” 5–6. See also Fraser, Military Masculinity. 50 See, for example, Pravda, May 28, 1936, 1. 51 Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii no. 34 (July 21, 1936), 510–11. Politburo discussion of the decree prior to its promulgation emphasized the importance of achieving the maximum possible birthrate; RGASPI f. 17, op. 3, d. 976, l. 4. 52 N. A. Semashko, “Zamechatel’nyi zakon (o zapreshchenii aborta),” Front nauki i tekhniki 1936 no.7, 38. 53 Nakachi, “Gender,” 105. 54 Goldman, Women, the State, 340. By contrast, the 1936 decree had included measures to enforce paternal obligations and child support. 55 Nakachi, “Gender,” 111. 56 Burton, “Medical Welfare,” 281. 57 Bucher, “Impact of World War II,” 236. Data from the late 1930s showed a similarly high proportion of illegal abortions; GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2753, l. 85; RGAE f. 1562 s.ch., op. 329, d. 407, ll. 22–25. 58 Bucher, “Impact of World War II,” 235. 59 Randall, “Abortion,” 24–25. 60 Bonuses for having many children were first instituted by the 1936 decree that outlawed abortion; Sobranie zakonov i rasporiazhenii no. 34 (July 21, 1936), 511; GARF f. 5446, op. 18a, d. 2753, l. 4.

128  David L. Hoffmann 61 Ashplant, “Politics of War Memory,” 9. 62 On memorials and bereavement, see Winter, Sites of Memory, 115. 63 For Musil’s quotation, see Warner, Monuments and Maidens, 21. 64 Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege, 13. 65 Yampolsky, “In the Shadow of Monuments,” 96. 66 As quoted in Grant, “New Moscow Monuments,” 342. 67 In an interesting contrast to Soviet films of the postwar era, a 2012 Russian television series (The Night Swallows) and a 2015 Russian film (The Battle of Sevastopol) highlight the roles of female combatants in World War II. On the latter, see the chapters by Harris and Norris in this volume.

Bibliography Archives GARF: Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii. RGAE: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki. RGASPI: Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii.

Published works Alexievich, Svetlana. U voiny ne zhenskoe litso. Minsk: Mastatskaia Literatura, 1985. Ashplant, T. G., Graham Dawson, and Michael Roper. “Introduction.” In The Politics of War Memory and Commemoration, edited by T. G. Ashplant et al. New York: Routledge, 2000. Bernstein, Frances. “Rehabilitation Staged: How Soviet Doctors ‘Cured’ Disability in the Second World War.” In Disability Histories, edited by Susan Burch and Michael Rembis. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Brumfield, William. “Dubosekovo: Monument to a Desperate Struggle.” Russia Beyond, November 18, 2016. www.rbth.com/special_projects/discovering_russia/ 2016/11/18/ dubosekovo-monument-to-a-desperate-struggle_649049. Brunstedt, Jonathan. The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Bucher, Greta. “The Impact of World War II on Moscow Women: Gender Consciousness and Relationships in the Immediate Postwar Period, 1945–1953.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1995. Budnitskii, Oleg. “Muzhchiny i zhenshchiny v Krasnoi Armii, 1941–1945.” Cahiers du monde Russe 52, no. 2–3 (2011): 405–22. Burton, Christopher. “Medical Welfare During Late Stalinism: A Study of Doctors and the Soviet Health System, 1945–1953.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2000. Clements, Barbara Evans, Barbara Alpern Engel, and Christine D. Worobec, eds. Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Davis, Vicky. Mythmaking in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev’s Hero City. London: I. B. Tauris, 2018. Dumančić, Marko. “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Histories of Gender and Sexuality During the Cold War.” In Gender, Sexuality, and the Cold War, edited by Philip E. Muehlenbeck. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2017. Ewing, E. Thomas. Separate Schools: Gender, Policy, and Practice in Postwar Soviet Education. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2010.

Representations of gender in war memorials  129 Fieseler, Beate. “The Wounds of War: Experiences of War-Related Disablement in Soviet Feature Films.” In Recalling the Past—(Re)constructing the Past, edited by Withold Bonner and Arja Roseholm. Jyväskylä, Finland: Aleksanteri Institute, 2008. Fraser, Erica L. Military Masculinity and Postwar Recovery in the Soviet Union. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018. Goldman, Wendy. Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ———. Women at the Gates: Gender and Industry in Stalin’s Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Goscilo, Helena. “History and Metahistory in Soviet World War II Posters.” In Recalling the Past—(Re)constructing the Past, edited by Withold Bonner and Arja Roseholm. Jyväskylä, Finland: Aleksanteri Institute, 2008. Grant, Bruce. “New Moscow Monuments, or, States of Innocence.” American Ethnologist 28, no. 2 (May 2001): 332–62. Harris, Adrienne. “Memorialization of a Martyr and Her Mutilated Bodies: Public Monuments to Soviet War Hero Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, 1942 to the Present.” Journal of War and Culture Studies 5, no. 1 (2012): 73–90. Hoffmann, David L. Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914–1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. ———. The Stalinist Era. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Ilic, Melanie. Women Workers in the Soviet Interwar Economy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999. Kirschenbaum, Lisa. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad: Myths, Memories, Monuments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Krylova, Anna. “Neither Erased Nor Remembered: Soviet Women Combatants and Cultural Strategies of Forgetting in Soviet Russia, 1940s–1980s.” In Histories of the Aftermath, edited by Robert G. Moeller and Frank Biesis. New York: Berghahn Books, 2010. ———. Soviet Women in Combat: A History of Violence on the Eastern Front. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Lapidus, Gail. Women in Soviet Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978. Luxmoore, Matthew. “Russian Minister says Authenticity of War Legend Beyond Dispute.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, December 3, 2018. www.rferl.org/a/russian-ministersays-authenticity-of-war-legend-beyond-dispute-amoral-to-dig-further-/29635477.html. Markwick, Roger D., and Euridice Charon Cardona. Soviet Women on the Frontline in the Second World War. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. McCallum, Claire E. The Fate of the New Man: Representing and Reconstructing Masculinity in Soviet Visual Culture, 1945–1965. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018. “Monuments.” Attractions of Almaty. http://dostoprim.almaty.kz/ page.php?page_ id=163&lang=2&article_id=605. Moriarty, Catherine. “Private Grief and Public Remembrance: British First World War Memorials.” In War and Memory in the Twentieth Century, edited by Martin Evans and Ken Lunn. Oxford: Berg, 1997. Nakachi, Mie. “Gender, Marriage, and Reproduction in the Postwar Soviet Union.” In Writing the Stalin Era: Sheila Fitzpatrick and Soviet Historiography, edited by Golfo Alexopoulos, Julie Hessler, and Kiril Tomoff. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Northrop, Douglas. Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.

130  David L. Hoffmann Palmer, Scott W. “How Memory Was Made: The Construction of the Memorial to the Heroes of the Battle of Stalingrad.” The Russian Review 68, no. 3 (July 2009): 373–407. Papernyi, Vladimir. Kul’tura “dva”. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985. Pennington, Reina. “ ‘Do Not Speak of the Services You Rendered’: Women Veterans of Aviation in the Soviet Union.” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 9, no. 1 (March 1996): 120–51. Petrone, Karen. “Masculinity and Heroism in Imperial and Soviet Military Patriotic Cultures.” In Russian Masculinities in History and Culture, edited by Barbara Evans Clements, Rebecca Friedman, and Dan Healey. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. ———. The Great War in Russian Memory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Randall, Amy E. “ ‘Abortion Will Deprive You of Happiness’: Soviet Reproductive Politics in the Post-Stalin Era.” Journal of Women’s History 23, no. 3 (Fall 2011): 13–38. Reese, Roger R. Why Stalin’s Soldiers Fought: The Red Army’s Military Effectiveness in World War II. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2011. Savage, Kirk. “The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civil War Monument.” In Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, edited by John Gillis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Sherman, Daniel J. The Construction of Memory in Interwar France. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000. Shulman, Elena. Stalinism on the Frontier of Empire: Women and State Formation in the Soviet Far East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Trubina, Elena. “ ‘You See Now Just How Small All of You Are’: Rhetorical Spaces of Volgograd.” In Recalling the Past—(Re)constructing the Past, edited by Withold Bonner and Arja Roseholm. Jyväskylä, Finland: Aleksanteri Institute, 2008. Warner, M. Monuments and Maidens: The Allegory of the Female Form. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985. Weiner, Amir. Making Sense of the War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Winter, Jay. Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Wood, Elizabeth. The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Yampolsky, Mikhail. “In the Shadow of Monuments: Notes on Iconoclasm and Time.” In Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia, edited by Nancy Condee. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Zubkova, Elena. Russia After the War: Hopes, Illusions, and Disappointments, 1945–1957. Translated by Hugh Ragsdale. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1998.

Part II

Soviet and post-Soviet war memory

6 Veterans remember the war in Soviet and post-Soviet fiction Angela Brintlinger

In the 1980s, Svetlana Alexievich, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature some 30 years later, realized that living memory about World War II was on the brink of extinction. “War,” she wrote, “was the shared biography of an entire generation of wartime children.”1 In her powerful book Last Witnesses, Alexievich used oral history techniques to capture children’s experiences and record them for posterity. These children, she argued, saw the Second World War through “unchildlike” eyes. But what of the very youngest soldiers, those who were still almost boys when they were called up to fight? Vasil’ Bykau, the prolific Belarusian war novelist known as Bykov in Russian, dubbed his cohort the “slain generation” (“ubitoe pokolenie”), in analogy to Remarque and Hemingway’s “lost generation.” A number of Second World War veterans of Bykau’s era—who were still almost boys when they served—went on to become important war writers whose impact was felt even after the Soviet Union had dissolved, but now this particular generation of writers has passed away, taking with them the perspective of witnesses whose “shared biography was war,” in Svetlana Alexievich’s words. Writing in the year 2000, Bykau quoted Ernest Hemingway to remind his readers: When a man goes to seek the truth in war he may find death instead. But if twelve go and only two come back, the truth they bring will be the truth, and not the garbled hearsay that we pass as history.2 In Bykau’s opinion, survivors of the “slain generation” were especially trustworthy, their rendition of the experience of World War II had added weight, and they had a moral obligation to share it.3 This chapter focuses on three writer-veterans born in 1924, part of that “slain generation” that endured. Across the Soviet Union so many novels, poems, films, and memoirs emerged from World War II that we continue productively exploring the war’s cultural legacy well into the 21st century.4 And that legacy remains complicated. During the Thaw, the era of stagnation, and the period of perestroika, writer-veterans compiled bodies of work under differing social conditions, including regimes of censorship and self-censorship. But the demise of totalitarian Soviet ideology and the final breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 freed authors to insist on a starker

134  Angela Brintlinger version of the war and its effects than they had been able to convey earlier, and their “last words” gain significance for that reason.5 For this generation of fighters, who spent most of their lives contemplating the meaning of the Second World War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was both a blessing and a curse. Released from the pressures of ideological censorship, they tried in new works, and sometimes in new editions of older works, to reconcile the complex legacy of the Soviet era with the post-Soviet present. Though at war’s end they had already felt a moral duty to render the “truth,” in many cases their efforts yielded simplified sentimentalism due to postwar domestic politics and literary censorship. The Thaw-era emphasis on “sincerity” helped, but it did not yet enable them to accurately and fully represent their wartime experiences. Political changes, and the relaxation of censorship norms, in the early 1990s, spurred them to try again. Examining early works as well as final words—interviews, poetry, and fiction—of three of these writer-veterans, Bulat Okudzhava, Viktor Astaf’ev, and Vasil’ Bykau, demonstrates how very long careers across a changing Soviet and post-Soviet historical and literary landscape produced in each author’s body of work contrasts and contradictions as well as continuities. Throughout the postwar era, writer-veterans continued to relive their memories, looking to find the right trajectory for reaching through political rhetoric, censorship, and personal pain to structure their contributions to the legacy of war. Some wrote memoirs, but many wrote fiction, and Bykau might have been speaking for all of them when he said “my biography is in my books.”6 While Okudzhava, Astaf’ev, and Bykau wrote on other themes as well—on village and city life, on changing political situations, and on love and tragedy—they returned, always, to war, which they rewrote throughout their long careers. In order to examine how the war has been represented and understood across the second half of the Russian 20th century, this chapter compares specific texts from the early parts of these authors’ careers with some written during the post-Soviet moment to argue that each of these “boys of ’24” strove late in life to contribute “last words” about the meaning of the war for the Soviet soldier and for the post-Soviet peoples left to contend with that legacy.

Soviet images and collective memory of war Instead of repairing the psychological wreckage left by war, the immediate postwar period involved a re-entrenchment: Stalinist terror tactics resumed, thousands of former prisoners-of-war headed into the Soviet Gulag, and women and orphans struggled to find warmth, shelter, and nourishment in the devastated cities and countryside. At the same time, the young war veterans who returned from the front were publicly celebrated for their “bravery, audacity, charisma” and became the foundation for the value system and moral framework of subsequent generations.7 But bravery only goes so far, and the trauma was deep and widespread. Memories of war, and of those who did not return, loomed large for survivors and began to haunt fictional and cinematic narratives.

Veterans remember the war  135 Maurice Halbwachs’s definition of collective memory suggests that concerns in the present determine what of the past we remember and how we remember it. In his view, collective memory precludes historical understanding because it “simplifies; sees events from a single, committed perspective; is impatient with ambiguities of any kind, [and] reduces events to mythic archetypes.”8 Certainly, the films and narratives produced during wartime had predicted a clear victory for the Soviet army. They tended to culminate, as Bykau wrote in a 1975 essay, in “a quick and mighty counterstrike against the aggressor, minimal losses for the [Soviet] side, general joy and a perfectly happy ending.”9 But such fictional storylines, created as wartime propaganda to motivate the masses, were rendered more complex after the war by veterans themselves, who tried to incorporate their actual experiences into war narratives. Starting in the late 1940s and early 1950s, authors held that happy endings would not suffice: tragic endings, heroes who die before the Victory, and the presence at the front of self-serving soldiers and even traitors had a role to play in war fiction. If critics in the immediate postwar period still expected “a struggle of the good [character] with an [even] better one”—that is, narratives constructed according to the reigning doctrine of socialist realism— writer-veterans pushed against those rules, trying to get more “truth of the war” into their tales.10 From the very first postwar decades, Soviet literature had been charged with doing memory work, and authors strove to help their readers understand the war and its continuing effects on society.11 Novels like Mikhail Sholokhov’s 1957 Fate of a Man served up wartime tragedy with a sentimental twist, offering bromides for what ailed postwar society: broken lives and dreams deferred. These sentimental tropes, seen in fiction and also Thaw-era cinema, were part of the first attempt to embrace authenticity and decry “lacquering” of the past. In this period many war-focused works of literature—and the films made from them—allowed a mass audience of Soviet citizens to relive their own recent history and/or learn to understand the different experiences of the Second World War and its aftermath through characters who resembled themselves and their fellow citizens: young men and women, permanently injured soldiers, and bereaved mothers. Beginning in the late 1950s, writers like Bykau wrote what became known as “lieutenants’ prose” based on their own experiences in the trenches, and the best of them, to quote Bykau’s biographer, “wrote without glorifying war.”12 Thus, Thaw-era works about the war muddled the picture of the war and of postwar society and tended to comment ironically on the “happy ending” narratives produced as wartime propaganda.13 Indeed, Soviet cinema sought to figure out the relationship between the personal and society more broadly.14 Some Thaw-era films—often in the genre of family melodrama—brought the action to the home front, using suffering protagonists, frequently women, not only to demonstrate the need for strength in the face of wartime challenges but also to express empathy with viewers whose lives and families had been torn asunder.15 In such films as Marlen Khutsiev’s I Am Twenty (Mne dvadtsat’ let, 1965), a mother is reminded of her own wartime trials when she finds some old ration cards stuck in a textbook, and she begins to reminisce

136  Angela Brintlinger about her last visits with her husband. His portrait in uniform, behind her in the cinematic shot, marks his absence due to death in battle.16 Through the 1970s and even 1980s veterans continued to people their stories with nuanced characters, giving in as necessary to censorship and literary/cinematic norms without flattening the picture entirely. By the time writer-veterans were nearing the end of their lives, perestroika and the dissolution of the Soviet Union had removed the pressures of censorship, allowing them to highlight the complexities and ambiguities of wartime and to begin to lay real blame at the feet of the state.

“We turned out to be vanquished”: Bulat Okudzhava (1924–1997) In the Soviet Union and across eastern Europe starting in the 1960s, Bulat Okudzhava was a beloved “bard,” the first real “guitar poet” of the Soviet Union, and his literary output also includes moving stories and short novels.17 His fictional themes reflect his autobiography, in particular his experience as a very young soldier during World War II and his anguish at losing his parents to the purges. Although he was a son of “enemies of the people”—his father was shot in 1937, and his mother was sent to the Gulag and only rehabilitated in 1956— Okudzhava was able to publish much of his work in the Soviet era, and despite the fact that some of it was criticized, censored, and even removed from circulation after publication, he never fully disappeared from Soviet literary life. At the same time, his publications appeared abroad, including a volume of previously published and unpublished work in Germany in 1964 and a collection of his songs in the United States in 1980. Along with those tamizdat publications, Okudzhava’s poems and songs circulated underground in samizdat and magnitizdat, in illicit manuscripts and tapes passed from hand to hand.18 The year he died, 1997, a colleague published a book that brought together various fragments from taped interviews spanning 35 years. Using this resource, we can trace how little Okudzhava’s opinions about the war changed over the years. In fiction and song, his representation of war may have been somewhat muted, even in some cases cheerful, but selections from interviews highlight his anger and bitterness.19 Like the other writers in this chapter, Okudzhava was born in 1924 and in the 9th grade when the war broke out. Relatively soon thereafter he succeeded in joining the army. In his longest autobiographical story, the 1961 “Be Well, Schoolboy” (originally published in Tarusskie stranitsy), Okudzhava highlights his protagonist’s extreme youth, his fear, and particularly his awkwardness.20 Throughout the narrative the two essentials of army life return as motifs: the protagonist’s desire to be issued a decent pair of boots to replace his foot wrappings and his lament at having somehow lost his spoon and having to eat his kasha with a kind of wooden slat.21 Such use of specific detail to describe the tragically ill-equipped Soviet army is a hallmark of Okudzhava’s work. This simplicity—not at all simplistic—was perceived as an insult to Soviet mythology. In first writing about his experience at the front, Okudzhava laid out what he believed: that war is terrifying.22 But in his prose as well as his poetry,

Veterans remember the war  137 Okudzhava called on the emblems of wartime to paint a picture that was implicitly ironic and that—within the parameters possible under censorship—questioned the larger meaning of the actions of individuals and indirectly of the Soviet army as a whole. In a poem published not long after “Be well, Schoolboy,” “Ach, war, what have you done” (1962), Okudzhava cursed the war for how it affected his generation.23 Okudzhava grieved that his comrades, male and female, had to give up their youth for “bullets and grenades,” “farewells and smoke,” “boots and epaulettes.” This lament, again featuring vivid details, offset official propaganda-like declarations about heroics and foregrounded instead the suffering of individuals in wartime, as well as the longer-term effect war had on the shape of their lives.24 In its day Okudzhava’s show of vulnerability in “Be Well, Schoolboy” was antithetical to the Soviet mythology of war, and critics immediately attacked him for promoting “pacifism.” Later Okudzhava defended himself, remarking: Pacifism, you understand, is not such a terrible thing in the face of world catastrophe, on the very eve of a world catastrophe. It seems to me that there is nothing wrong with it. I’m not really a pacifist—I just don’t enjoy seeing people kill each other. And I don’t enjoy shooting. But if I need to defend my Fatherland, I will.25 Other comments from this interview, taped on November 7, 1980, shed light on the role war played in Okudzhava’s writing career. Generally speaking, he argued, war is a good place for a “writer, a sociologist, a philosopher, an artist” to get to know people, since “war reveals people’s characters.” His experience in the war not only gave him subject material for his writing but also insights into human psychology. Referring always to autobiographical incidents, Okudzhava repeatedly stressed his extreme youth during the war. In his fiction and in interviews as well, the veteran returned again and again to the trauma he experienced as a boy. Though he was prepared to adopt a dutiful attitude toward his military service, almost as soon as the war was over Okudzhava reassessed that service.26 For example, when volunteering for the army in 1942, at the age of 17, Okudzhava had been motivated by a sense of patriotism, a need to participate in a collective enterprise. In 1969, he recalled just how badly he had failed at his task: The first day I landed at the front, a few of my comrades and I—also, like I, seventeen-year-olds—looked quite cheerful and happy, and we had our automatic rifles hanging on our chests, and we marched forward toward our battery’s position, and each was already envisioning in his imagination that we were about to see action and would fight so marvelously. And then . . . a mine exploded, and we all fell to the ground. Remembering the contrast between his expectations and his experience, Okudzhava explained: “that was the first time I realized I am a coward.” And he went on to emphasize: “The first time.”27 Patriotism played a role too, as we see in a 1995 interview when Okudzhava highlighted the young soldiers’ motivation:

138  Angela Brintlinger “At that time we, [still just] boys, went off to war with a clear goal in mind—not seeking adventure—to protect our country from the fascists who had attacked us.”28 Okudzhava’s first military encounter quickly crushed his own expectations of bravery and adventure, setting him up for the ambiguity of wartime experiences. Okudzhava’s brief 1975 tale “Morning Dawns Rosy” (Utro krasit nezhnym svetom . . .) highlights the complexity of storytelling when the topic is experiences at war. The story describes the war’s onset, so unexpected and sudden that it seemed like a joke. “War!” a neighbor reports to the protagonist and his family, who are getting ready for a trip to the seashore. Uncle Nikolai responds, laughing: “Aaaaah . . . did Tahiti attack Hahiti?”29 But it really is war. The narrator, like Okudzhava underaged at the outbreak of war, goes with his friend Yurka to the military enlistment station in Tbilisi day after day until they are given a job taking draft notices around town and eventually convince the captain to sign them up too. The boys take the train to their division in Kakhetia, where they learn how to march, sing military songs (including one titled “The morning dawns rosy”), and throw hand grenades. Eventually, they’re given uniforms and sent off to “try their strength against the fascist horde.”30 “Morning” had opened with the narrator musing about how solemn the words “history, the past” and so on sound—“triumphant concepts before which one should bare one’s head.” It ends with an assessment about storytelling: “Recently I told this story to my friend . . . an elderly gentleman, serious, who listened and said: ‘You probably did not make that up. . . . But what a time it was— severe, anxious, and your tale is full of jokes, laughter. You should tell the story in some other way.’ ”31 What was Okudzhava trying to do with this tale? In a 1983 interview, Okudzhava identified the official attitude to war as “bravo!”—a false, gung-ho manner of rushing off to death—and “unnatural,” and in his own renditions soldiers do their duty despite, not without, feelings of fear.32 In this story, deliberately undercutting that “bravo!” mythos, he brings us a protagonist who is decidedly young, perhaps frivolous, and certainly unable to understand the import of the struggle between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Though approximately the same events happen to this protagonist as to others in Okudzhava’s autobiographical war fiction (“Well, and then came the front, and my wound, and the hospital. . . . And afterward the victory”), the very short story remains light in tone. Okudzhava here demonstrated that events often do not fit into the state narrative but rather resist becoming “history.” Memory, and storytelling, can remain personal, even somewhat amusing. The protagonist of Okudzhava’s 1985 story “Music Lessons” shares with its author the loneliness of a child of “enemies of the people.” When a fellow soldier asks him “have you gotten letters from home, son?” he responds “I have, I have. Everything’s okay,” but to himself he thinks: “No one writes to me, there isn’t anyone [to write].”33 Here Okudzhava highlights a way in which memories became “collective,” through film narratives: But then, I can’t be certain that I said this sentence at that time: it may very well be that I stole it from a film by Vladimir Motyl’, in which the unforgettable Oleg Dal’ pronounced it with such winning charm.34

Veterans remember the war  139 The Motyl’ film he refers to was Zhenya, Zhenechka and “Katyusha” (1967), itself inspired by Okudzhava’s “Be Well, Schoolboy,” and Okudzhava co-wrote the script. Even without this circular context, though, Okudzhava is making an important point about memory: especially in the heavily saturated postwar era, when representations of war were vividly available in print and on the screen, soldiers’ own memories sometimes came to dovetail with those fictional representations. The Soviet postwar cult of commemoration reinforced the trauma of the war itself. Recognizing the pressures of the official Soviet cult of war and of censorship, we can still see that some characteristics of Okudzhava’s war songs run counter to official memory. To honor his fellow soldiers, Okudzhava used the small details of war in poetry and songs; this also had the effect of undercutting the state narrative. His work was “unheroic, understated, wry, ironic.”35 It is this humility, this focus on the failures and foibles of an individual that stands out in Okudzhava’s prose as well. Thus, as a participant and eyewitness—but a self-identified cowardly one, a non-heroic one—Okudzhava joined in the project of creating the “collective memory” of his generation throughout the postwar period specifically by bringing an authentic voice and humble perspective to the shared experience of his fellow Soviet citizens. His tonality and images—simple, clear, conversational, everyday—broke the generic experience of war and of “victory” down into small images and moments: the soldier’s greatcoat, his boots, his hand-rolled cigarette; the quiet at home when recruits had gone off to war, or in battle after a burst of artillery; and the “ashes and coals” of former streetscapes at the end of the war.36 Life as a soldier consisted of those small elements. As Okudzhava wrote in the opening lines of his “Song of the Cheerful Soldier”: Возьму шинель, и вещмешок, и каску, I’ll take my greatcoat, duffel bag, and helmet, в защитную окрашенные краску. Painted in defensive camouflage. Ударю шаг по улицам горбатым . . .  I’ll stride along the hilly streets. . . Как просто быть солдатом, солдатом. How simple to be a soldier, a soldier.37 These emblems—the greatcoat, duffel bag, helmet, and machine gun—identify the soldier as Soviet.38 But even more characteristic for Okudzhava is the descriptor “simple.” Tens of thousands of such “simple soldiers” abrogated their own feelings and attitudes to follow the demands of the Motherland and fight in the Second World War. And as the subsequent verses of the song proclaim, they tried not to think about the death they witnessed and caused. The very genre of the “aesthetically and culturally marginal” song of the bard poet, or avtorskaia pesnia, functioned as a semi-official “means of social interaction and identity creation” for many of Okudzhava’s generation and enabled him to cultivate authenticity and sincerity in his war recollections, which unlike the heroic collective memories were always marked by ambiguity.39 In another of his most famous songs, Okudzhava described a “paper soldier” who wants to transform the world but who in the end dies a martyr’s death. The frustrations of an

140  Angela Brintlinger individual struggling against forces greater than himself rang true for veterans as they continued to try to understand their place in postwar Soviet history and society. By performing in informal settings and using unofficial means of distribution for his songs, the writer-veteran injected an ironic honesty into the mythology of the Great Patriotic War during the stagnation of the Brezhnev era. Okudzhava’s prose also had a significant effect on war memory, with even semi-censored works such as the 1961 “Be Well, Schoolboy” reentering the nation’s consciousness through its 1967 film remake. At the very beginning of glasnost’ in the 1980s, Okudzhava seized the moment of state-encouraged change to demand a new kind of honesty, declaring: I value people who know how to think independently, in any situation. I value people who don’t build their happiness on someone else’s unhappiness. I value people who respect the individual (lichnost’). Not the collective, but the individual. Because we have long ago learned to respect the collective; it’s time to begin to respect the individual. I especially hate lies . . . especially now, when we are finally allowed to speak the truth.40 A decade later in 1995, this singer of songs about brave and cheerful soldiers spoke out openly against the collective memory of war and even found himself acknowledging that the victory over the Nazis was a pyrrhic one. “The sad part,” commented Okudzhava in some of his last words, “is that though we may have been victorious, we turned out to be vanquished.”41 In his own understated way, here Okudzhava was arguing for a reassessment of the cult of the Great Patriotic War. But he was also conceding that his generation only had a few years left in which to take part in that conversation. In that same year, the year before his death, Okudzhava wrote the following poetic lines: Вымирает мое поколение, собралось у дверей проходной. То ли нету уже вдохновенья, то ли нету надежд. Ни одной.

My generation is dying, We’ve gathered at the hallway doors. Perhaps there’s no inspiration any more, Or perhaps no hope. None at all.42

These “last words” mark a movement from patriotism in the young man who went to war, to humility in the face of his own fear and cowardice, to doubt that the sacrifices of the war or indeed the entire Soviet period had any lasting effect whatsoever.43 If “collective memory,” films, and other myths of brave soldiers generated a framework that supported the official cult of the Great Patriotic War, then Okudzhava’s last words openly acknowledged complexities and contradictions that led to a much murkier and still more hopeless picture. Among Okudzhava’s very last statements was a rejection of the very concept of the “Great” Patriotic War: “There was no GREAT war of any kind,” he wrote in answer to a questionnaire published in the journal Druzhba narodov in 1997: “There was a GREAT battle between two competing totalitarian systems. We can

Veterans remember the war  141 speak of a great victory of the people, about their great suffering, but not about a great war.”44 Thus, nearing the end of his life, Okudzhava reiterated the memory of loss, the feeling that his generation—young men (and women) who had fought a war trumpeted as a victory—had been betrayed. In the bright post-Soviet light, that war was turning out to be even less just than the participants had believed at the time.45 Newly able to clear away the obfuscation of Soviet propaganda, war myths, and collective memory, Okudzhava emphasized truth and reconciliation, but he was doubtful of their success.

“Awakening the humane in the human being”: Viktor Astaf’ev (1924–2001) Like Okudzhava, Viktor Astaf’ev enlisted at the age of 17 and was thrown directly into the maelstrom of war. The experience traumatized him. For some young men from rural areas the war was an opportunity, leading to advancement and the chance to escape the unfortunate experience of Soviet power in the countryside.46 But for Astaf’ev, born in a Siberian village on the Yenisei River some 30 kilometers from Krasnoyarsk and orphaned as a child after his father was arrested and his mother drowned, war left a completely different residue. His first stories were published in the mid-1960s, when the milder publishing climate of the Thaw had already begun to recede, but rather than war heroics, in his early works such as Shepherd and Shepherdess (originally published in 1967) we see portraits of broken men, broken marriages, and crippled futures, all caused by war and its repercussions. One of Astaf’ev’s first publications was an article titled “No, The Road Isn’t Strewn with Diamonds,” published in 1962. In it, the novice writer proclaimed: “we brought home from the front not only the burden of losses and the weight of depressing memories from the trenches, but also the memory of those injustices which above all descended on the heads of soldiers.”47 Here Astaf’ev expresses his horror at his war experience and distributes the blame accordingly: the simple soldiers were victims, of war and of the state. Astaf’ev’s memories of injustice remained strong throughout his life, reinforcing his allegiance to fellow suffering soldiers and leading to powerful portrayals of men and women at war and after war’s end. Most powerful of all were his repeated depictions of physically and emotionally crippled people desperate to find love. Astaf’ev subtitled his Shepherd and Shepherdess “a contemporary pastoral,” but the plot follows a young lieutenant, Boris Kostiaev, through landscapes of war. “All the soldiers—beaten and broken, washed in blood—were like kin to each other,” his narrator proclaims.48 Alongside portrayals of such frontline soldiers—with their mutual understanding, ability to tolerate any conditions, their jokes and conflicts, but also true and deep bonds—the narrative is haunted by the title characters. The first Ukrainian khutor described in the narrative, as Boris and his platoon seek shelter, has been devastated by the German army.

142  Angela Brintlinger “Have you been behind the bathhouse?” his comrade asks Boris, and Boris soon understands why: there lay the old man and old woman, killed. They had rushed from their house to the [potato] cellar where, apparently, they had already found shelter more than once. They had clearly spent long periods of time there, because the old woman had grabbed a bag with food and a ball of brightly colored, thick spun yard. They were caught by artillery fire behind the bathhouse— and that’s where they were killed.49 It emerges that this couple, who lay in death as if to protect each other’s bodies, had moved to Ukraine from the Volga region during the “hungry year”—probably the famine of 1921. They worked at the kolkhoz with the animals, “a shepherd and shepherdess,” the local informant tells Boris. With vivid narrative details like these, Astaf’ev’s tale embroiders a landscape around his protagonist Boris, whose fear of death is palpable and illustrated with specific scenes. For example, when his own boots are destroyed and he harvests some from a corpse, Boris soon flings them away. “His feet began to freeze in those boots,” the narrator tells us, and afterward Boris never lost the sensation of having donned a dead man’s footwear.50 But the story includes love as well as death; when Boris finds succor with a young woman in this khutor and shares a night of love and intimacy, he tells her stories from his childhood, including one when he visited Moscow and went to the ballet. The shepherd and shepherdess he remembered from the Moscow theater performance help Liusia get to know this Siberian lieutenant who has entered her life. And as Boris tells the tale, he can hear the music again: A green meadow. White sheep. The shepherd and shepherdess in their sheepskins. They loved each other, were not ashamed of their love, did not fear for it. Their trusting nature made them innocent. The innocent are protected against evil, I used to think.51 Although Boris and Liusia, in their one night together, come to believe they were born to be together, the war will pull them apart. The motif of the title, shepherd and shepherdess, implies a happy ending, and Astaf’ev deliberately lulls his reader into hoping for a positive resolution. Instead, we learn that the promise of pastoral happiness cannot be fulfilled. By the next spring, the few remaining farm animals in the khutor—cows, goats, and sheep— had to be driven to their pastures by shepherdesses alone: school-age girls or elderly women. No shepherds remained; they had all gone off to fight.52 If Boris had imagined returning in the springtime to find Liusia, the narrator asserts: “None of this happened, nor could it have.” Boris moves on to Western Ukraine, where his platoon mates disappear one after the other: one loses his legs after stepping on a mine; another is caught in the chest by a sniper; a third—so angry after what he has experienced at war that he has lost his desire to live or to see his wife and

Veterans remember the war  143 child again—throws himself under a German tank as a suicide bomber. Boris too, walking through the forest, briefly loses focus and happens upon a mine. From that point on—as he joins the medical battalion and is loaded onto an evacuation train—his fate is clear. He dies on the train and is buried near the tracks, “alone in the middle of Russia,” far from settlements and cemeteries. Shepherd and Shepherdess is a tragic tale, but it is framed by a quest. In the opening and closing sections, an unknown woman tramps along railroad tracks in search of a lonely grave. Liusia had dreamed of meeting her beloved Boris while wearing a white dress and carrying white roses, as he returns from war by train. That dream—practically a quote from newsreels of the war’s end—finds its tragic reverberation in a meeting by the train tracks when she finally reaches his grave. Those echoes, of pastoral partnerships, whether on the stage, in the fields, or behind the bathhouse, hang over the narrative, highlighting the dreadful outcomes of personal lives in wartime. Rape, tears, and revenge. Death and dismemberment. And ill-fated, tragic love. Known for his participation in the Village Prose movement of the Stagnation era, Astaf’ev—along with other writers from Siberia, Altai, and the margins of the Soviet empire—began in the mid-1980s to offer more urgent depictions of contemporary rural life. In their narratives, aimless young people drank, cursed, and behaved like hooligans while their elders continued to limp along, mourning a rural landscape and the values of Russian peasants, damaged by collectivization, by alcoholism, by Soviet life, and by the continued effects of World War II. For example, in Astaf’ev’s masterful “Liudochka” (1987), a young girl seeks her fortune in a nearby railroad town, her home village being a deserted place where “the women, widowed by war and by the people’s victories on all fronts in the battle for sоcialism, had all died out.” Narratorial anger is felt throughout the story as the waste engendered by the ills of modern Soviet life is contrasted with the natural rural landscape.53 In the words of writer Vera Panova, Astaf’ev succeeds in doing what fiction is supposed to do: “awakening the humane in the human being” (probuzhdat’ v cheloveke chelovecheskoe).54 His fiction spares no detail of the conditions endured by hopeless rural Russians, but his war tales, in particular, highlight how his compatriots struggled against fascism within the constraints of a Soviet system later indicted for wreaking torture and death upon its own citizens. Astaf’ev’s last novel, The Accursed and the Slain (1992–1994), dwells on the experiences of a particular class of young Soviet soldier, those self-same “boys of ’24.” This book—which he saw as his main work (“a novel about the war, that war, in the trenches, my war”)—was for him an almost holy obligation, one with which he planned to leave his mark on Russian and Soviet history: “Shalamov wielded the brand of the camps,” he mused. “I will wield the brand of the front.”55 In a letter to Vasil’ Bykau, in whom he saw a fellow boy of ’24 and “fellow trench sufferer,” Astaf’ev raged: “I rarely read what our writers say about the war. They lie, the bastards. They invented some commissar’s war and asserted some ‘truth’ that fit someone’s needs.”56 But not his. Instead, he strove to imbue The Accursed and the Slain, his tell-all epic denunciation of the Soviet war effort, with

144  Angela Brintlinger his own truth.57 But Astaf’ev’s fellow veterans received The Accursed and the Slain in the early to mid-90s as a betrayal; in his descriptions of the “hell hole” of World War II training camps and the physically debilitating, underprepared, and under-supported campaign to cross the river Dnieper, Astaf’ev stripped away any remembered glory and plunged veterans back into the extreme conditions of that “great patriotic war.”58 His narrative negated the simplicity of Soviet collective memory and instead bore witness to a complicated panorama of filth, disease, and suffering. If during much of his career Astaf’ev had tried to bury or self-censor his bitterness and specific wartime memories of injustice, for his final works, injustice is the rule. In the painful and relentless Accursed and the Slain, the author layers on details of grim deprivation and pointless loss. In 1999, when Astaf’ev’s late novella The Cheerful Soldier was nominated for a prize, a critic commented that his literary work was becoming more and more raw.59 The word “cheerful” in the novella’s title serves as an ironic commentary on the true experience of World War II soldiers. And in his final published work, the lyrical Bird of Passage (2001), a young veteran meets a woman at a train station, and though they marry and try to make a life together, they fail miserably. Orphaned by the events of the Soviet 1930s and damaged by the war, they are doomed and end their days in tragedy. Astaf’ev’s increasing rawness was caused by the sensation that the end of his life was approaching and a consequent need to reiterate again and again the truth about the war that he felt had been obscured by Soviet propaganda and censorship, in the hopes that someone might hear it. His autobiographical remembrances in the fictionalized Cheerful Soldier begin and end with the most important fact of all: “On the fourteenth of September, 1944, I killed a man. In Poland. In a potato field.” Astaf’ev was marked for life by this event. Looking back on his troubles and successes, his comrades and his fellow soldiers, his dominant memory was the act of taking another’s life, and because of it, Astaf’ev lived his last days in despair. In this story, the war reeks, the war is offensive, and the soldiers themselves are infested with lice, but a little disinfectant and some brave posturing supported by the regime, Soviet censorship, and the official publishing industry creates the Soviet myth of the heroic soldier, the “cheerful soldier”: “that is who I am, a victorious Soviet warrior, for whom human weaknesses and shortcomings are foreign.”60 For the disappointed and disillusioned Astaf’ev, the myth is hollow.

“From poverty to bankruptcy”: Vasil’ Bykau (1924–2003) For many Soviet citizens, the postwar world seemed somehow defective. And for Vasil’ Bykau, the Belarusian author of dozens of World War II narratives, the dissolution of the Soviet Union further underscored this conclusion: At the end of the twentieth century [he wrote], we have become impoverished even as regards the most necessary things: food, housing, ethics, morality, spirituality. Everything has become bankrupt.61

Veterans remember the war  145 Bykau, who died in 2003, spoke his own last words in two virtually posthumous publications: his memoirs, Dolgaia doroga domoi [The Long Way Home], published in May 2003, and his novella Chas shakalov [The Hour of the Jackals], written in 1998 but first published as Afganets [The Afghan] also in 2003.62 As a result of valuable interviews conducted over the course of almost a decade before his death, his biographer Zina Gimpelevich perceptively determined that “as a chronicler of the infantry during World War II,” Bykau “was in reality the spokesman for the millions of villagers who had been taken from their native fields and forcibly transformed into field soldiers.”63 The experiences of collectivization and war are intertwined in his work. Bykau wrote all his original prose in his native Belarusian language, usually translating his works into Russian himself.64 It can seem difficult to find the “true Bykau.” His stories of Soviet life included, of course, Belarusian characters, but those characters were familiar to Russian readers because in translation they seemed to “speak” Russian and thus to fit into Soviet categories. Even now Russian-language readers consider Bykau to be one of “their” authors, an author who experienced and wrote about the same Second World War that affected them all. But the Russian version of Bykau’s published texts was often filled with “the pathos-filled romantic wordiness of Soviet propaganda style” and differs from “the laconic and precise Belarusian version.”65 Much of the Sovietization of Bykau’s original texts, scholars argue, had to do specifically with Soviet views of Belarus, in particular, of an idealized Belarusian countryside. In point of fact, however, that space, and its people, were destroyed during collectivization in the 1930s. Bykau’s own family suffered significantly, and he saw the devastation of the villages firsthand. In his fiction, he tried to portray that Belarus rather than an idealized one. But in many cases, at one or another stage—publication in Belarusian and/or translation and publication in Russian—those details were removed. Accordingly, any project tracing change across time in Bykau’s literary texts is doubly complicated, by translation and by censorship. Since Bykau spent his last years abroad in a kind of forced exile from Lukashenko’s Belarus, turning to his last works makes particular sense. Certainly, The Long Road Home and The Hour of the Jackals offer a more explicit view into his Belarus. But his earlier works also feature Belarusian soldiers, partisans, and villagers, along with military figures from other national groups, in more complex ways than has generally been acknowledged. Using three works, The Dead Don’t Feel Pain (Mertvym ne bol’no, 1964), In the Fog (V tumane, 1986), and The Hour of the Jackals (1998/2003), we can trace Bykau’s feelings about war. Born practically on the then-border with Poland in a village near Grodno, Bykau was educated at Vitebsk Art College, where Marc Chagall once worked, as well as at a vocational school. The outbreak of war found him in Ukraine where he had gone to live with an uncle. Too young to enlist in 1940, Bykau enrolled in a military college in Saratov, in Russia, and a year later headed to the front. He served in Ukraine, Moldavia [sic], and Romania and was wounded several times. After the war, he remained in Bulgaria and Ukraine, returning to Belarus in 1947,

146  Angela Brintlinger where he worked briefly at a newspaper in Grodno, before being forced to reenlist in the army, serving much of the time in the Far East, until 1955. One of his earliest works, the 1965 novel The Dead Don’t Feel Pain, is structured to allow Bykau to comment on the war and contemporary life simultaneously. Setting the action on May 9, the anniversary of the Soviet victory in World War II, he profiles a veteran still suffering from severe wounds. Most visible is Vasilévich’s limp, caused by a wounded foot, but the reader learns that it was injuries to his torso at the front that almost finished him off.66 Turned away at a hotel, Vasilévich spends the night on the square with other celebrants, watching the “salute” (fireworks) in honor of victory. Over the course of the story, he drinks in a restaurant with another veteran, named Gorbatyuk, and lands at a police station when Gorbatyuk accuses young revelers and Vasilévich himself of being disrespectful. He ends up dozing on a bench at the train station along with others who had no place to stay. Wartime chapters are interspersed with events that take place on this long and exhausting Victory day and night, as the encounter with Gorbatyuk stirs up memories of a fellow soldier from the war who had betrayed Vasilévich and his mates. Interacting with Gorbatyuk, he keeps remembering the way Captain Sakhno’s actions led to the deaths of Katya, a capable medic who was helping to evacuate Vasilévich and other injured soldiers, as well as his close friend Yurka Strelkov. Though Gorbatyuk is not Sakhno, they are of the same type: both enemies who reveal themselves as such in the heat of combat with the foreign enemy. As the night wanes, Vasilévich muses on where such enemies come from. Nature, he thinks, evolves over millennia, and chooses the best, the most fit. But in just three decades since the rise of Stalin, “these” people have managed to adapt. Now the Stalinist cult of personality is blamed for everything. It’s true, the cult gave birth to them. It used their dynamism for its own unseemly business. But they were not disinterested either. They also, wherever possible, tried to grab bigger and sweeter pieces from the common pie. The cult, with its system of suppression, became their element. It developed their talents for grasping.67 In a way Vasilévich forgives himself for his own past mistakes; after all, he thinks, people “get smarter with the years, but we were forced to go to war as youngsters.” But he remains angry and offended that in the postwar period “the Gorbatyuks remain underfoot while the Strelkovs lie in the ground.”68 It may be that Yurka, and Katya, and countless others, no longer feel pain, but Vasilévich himself continues to suffer. Some 20 years later, Bykau opened a new narrative with seeming clarity: “on a cold, slushy day in late autumn, in the second year of the war, the partisan scout Burov was heading to Mostishche station to shoot a traitor—a local village peasant named Sushchenia.”69 This is the only clarity, though, in the 1988 story, the name of which says it all: “In the Fog.” War is complicated and not only by wartime events. “In the Fog” is about the doubt and mistrust seeded during

Veterans remember the war  147 collectivization and about betrayal. In the story, Sushchenia has emerged compromised from a week-long interrogation by Nazi German occupiers. For the partisan Burov, who has himself spent a short time in captivity, Sushchenia’s guilt is obvious. No one, he believes, could withstand Nazi pressure. But when both partisans sent to assassinate Sushchenia perish at the hands of Nazi snipers, the protagonist understands that to clear a future path for his beloved wife and son, he has to shoot himself.70 This moving story gives a good glimpse into Bykau’s concerns about Belarusian life: set in the village, it highlights the complexity of both post-collectivization and Nazi occupation. Soviet collectivization policy destroyed the Belarusian community, the Nazis brought more conflict, and the suspicious and disoriented Belarusians, finding themselves at each other’s throats, ultimately self-destructed. In the late 1990s, life under dictator Alexander Lukashenko became intolerable, and Bykau left Belarus for Europe though without a real plan to emigrate. Like Italian patriot Giuseppe Mazzini from Genoa, he was to return home to Belarus to die. But first Bykau weighed in on the Soviet war in Afghanistan, not only a major cause of the breakup of the Soviet empire but also the source of the veterans whose status was complicated by that breakup, veterans who, unrecognized, became victims. In his last novel, The Hour of the Jackals, identifying the Afghan war as the source of many problems for contemporary post-Soviet Russia, Belarus, and other post-Soviet states, Bykau wrote: This war gave birth to a whole plethora of various problems: military, economic, moral. There are some problems which have yet to emerge; we will only sense them in time. At the very least the moral health of the young generation will feel the influence of Afghanistan for years to come.71 As a once young veteran of a damaging war, Bykau knew whereof he spoke. By shifting his focus in his last novel from the war in which he had participated, World War II, to a significantly later war, Bykau was able to make important generalizations about the fate of veterans of all kinds, particularly Soviet veterans in the post-Soviet era, and about the reassessment any war undergoes in the years and decades following its final salvos. His overt political statements about Lukashenko—widely seen in the 21st century as “Europe’s Last Dictator”—reflect a deep regret that Belarus was not on a path to healing and growth.72 “Historical identity and memory” in post-1991 Belarus, one scholar argues, “are largely determined from above.”73 Possibly even more so than was true across Bykau’s career as a writer in the Soviet Union. The Hour of the Jackals features a protagonist named Stupak, a veteran whose postwar life has consisted of negations: the post-Soviet economic crisis has closed the factory where he had once worked assembling space and military-related rockets, and he is now unemployed; his wife and daughter have lost respect for him and requested that he move out of their apartment; and reduced now to living in his garage, Stupak has even had to sell his car. As opposed to the famed “zinky boys” who came back from Afghanistan in zinc coffins, Stupak was wounded,

148  Angela Brintlinger decorated, and returned alive, and yet he still finds himself alone in a metal box with nothing but his memories and his resentment.74 That resentment forms the emotional backdrop and the motivation for Stupak’s peacetime quest, one that will ultimately remain unfulfilled. As the novella begins, this veteran is able to resist the myths that contemporary Belarus is creating on the model of the powerful mythologies of the postwar Stalinist Soviet Union. Living now in a country headed by a dictator itching with what Stupak identifies as the same desire to command (komandirskii zud) that drove political officers in the army and in Afghanistan during his service, the protagonist describes his own people as “beaten down.” And where, he thinks, would any national pride or personal dignity come from among these people, made up half of Communists and half of KGB informers?75 The son of a World War II partisan who was decorated with a Red Star, Stupak had followed in his father’s footsteps, glad to fight and be seen as a hero, to receive his medal and commendations, and to inhabit the persona of the “veteran.” But as Bykau makes clear, official framing of the war in Afghanistan was trying to duplicate the codes of World War II, and thus play the same role in Soviet and post-Soviet culture, despite the differing motivations for the Afghan war. The distinction between a defensive war and an aggressive, expansionist war is important to Bykau and to the Belarusian nation. That difference gets deliberately elided in the novel. One older drunken neighbor sums up the Stupak family thus: “Real heroes! In one family—the pop and the son!” and continues “Why not, dammit! If another war comes, we’ll go again. Against the Fascist-German, the Chechen, the ’Merican aggressors! Now NATO is pushing eastward.”76 Such cold war rhetoric sustains the older generation, but that heroism, Stupak realizes, has translated into very little; as another of his neighbors argues, “it’s always the young who perish. Why should they be driven into the grave?”77 Stupak agrees: blood has been spilled, and although the government promised to compensate veterans with specific “privileges,” the advantages are not worth the price paid. Even outward and visible signs of glory, the decorations of World War II, have lost their power. Another of Stupak’s neighbors, a partisan in the war, has two grandsons, one a kind, thoughtful intellectual who eventually escapes Belarus to avoid being imprisoned for democratic activism, and the other a drug user who sells his grandpa’s medals to feed his habit.78 And so it goes: some World War II veterans remember their glory days and get drunk together, holding onto what remains of their collective past, while others are buried without fanfare or decorations, victimized by their own dissolute progeny. Having barely escaped immolation in a tank in Afghanistan, Stupak finds a certain irony in his current metal box of a garage, and in the death of a fellow veteran who “burned up before his time from vodka.”79 Yearning for revenge against the state that does not value him, Stupak pulls himself out of a suicidal depression to reimagine himself as a killer—an assassin who will rid Belarus of the dictator. The use of the English-influenced neologism “killer” parallels the term “privileges,” which Stupak gives an ironic inflection until he gets a taste of the latter. Invited

Veterans remember the war  149 to serve in the elite presidential guard, Stupak sees his chance to demonstrate his true patriotism by assassinating the dictator. However, his new job gives him real privileges (a roof over his head, clean uniforms, an unbelievable salary, and three square meals a day), and he abandons his plan entirely. This turn of events suggests that Stupak, like many of his fellow citizens, could not sustain his righteous anger. He, like the medals of World War II veterans, could be bought and sold. As “last words,” Bykau’s The Hour of the Jackals indicts much of 20th-century history: the popular cult of the World War II veteran, the pointless Soviet colonialism that found expression in the Afghan War, the corrupt post-Soviet state of Belarus, and the future, where nothing is sacred—not even the medals of a grandfather. Bykau’s last words give the lie to Bulat Okudzhava’s “brave paper soldier,” who was ready to stride into the fire and “perish for you twice over.” That bravery was a myth during World War II and remained one in the post-Soviet period.

Conclusion By the 1990s and early 2000s, the boys of ’24 were making sure the myth of the heroic soldier—the collective memory of war that Hemingway called the “garbled hearsay that we pass as history”—was good and dead. The trauma of the war had been intensified for veterans by the central, official Soviet lie and by the censorship that caused a delay in processing and publicly airing their wartime experiences. These writers aimed to rectify that situation. An entire generation of Soviet citizens lived the lie of the war and the lie of the victory. But in the end, each individual had to come to terms with his place in that lie and his own responsibility toward those who had not returned from the war. The legacy of these three writers comprises decades’ worth of descriptions—stories and poems, some of which support the myths of the brave and cheerful soldier, all of which highlight the youthful nature of the soldiers during World War II—and concludes with increasingly urgent last words that brim over with rancor, hopelessness, and accusations of moral bankruptcy. The Soviet and even post-Soviet refusal to come to terms with the real history of the war and the significance of the mass participation—whether willing or not—in the Soviet project embittered these very last surviving veterans to the end of their days. The boys of ’24 remained trapped, unable to distance themselves from the unresolved events of their youth in wartime.80 Reviewing the full picture of the Second World War, we find that if it was fatal for those who did not return, it was also dangerous for those who did. These writer-veterans experienced the war as young men and participated in creating their generation’s memory of it across complicated decades of Soviet history. Their portrayals teemed with authentic details but, in many cases, were censored or self-censored, resulting in a rosier picture than what they had experienced. Returning to the idea of war as they stood at the threshold of their own graves, these writers felt “liberated” finally to express even more fully the bitterness, cynicism, and hopelessness that they had only been able to hint at before. We, their readers, can pull the details from their tapestries of narration and come to

150  Angela Brintlinger our own conclusions about the weight and value of these “last words.” If it is indeed necessary to mourn loss to move forward, current post-Soviet states still have significant work to do.81 With the passing of the “slain generation” of writerveterans, a new set of voices will need to emerge to continue the struggle for truth and reconciliation. Nonetheless, keeping in mind the full literary legacy of this generation will help to make sense of Soviet history and the ultimate meaning of the Second World War.

Notes

1 Aleksievich, Poslednie svideteli, 5. 2 Hemingway, 1937. 3 See Bykau’s comments in the forum “Literatura i voina,” Znamia 2000 (5). 4 On World War II veterans as an important “social force,” see Edele, Soviet Veterans. See also Youngblood, Russian War Films and Brintlinger, Chapaev and his Comrades, esp. ch. 7. 5 Here I am repurposing Susan Rubin Suleiman’s concept of derniers mots. See Crises of Memory. 6 Gimpelevich, Vasil’ Bykau, 46. 7 See Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, 139, 5. Fürst discusses World War II as a “second founding myth” for the Soviet Union (137), exploring the first generation born after the war. 8 Nowak, Holocaust in American Life, 2–3. 9 Bykov, “Pravda voiny,” 245. 10 Bykov, “Pravda voiny,” 246. 11 Jones argues that this period saw a general desire for redemptive myths about the war. Myth, Memory, Trauma, 175. 12 Gimpelevich, Vasil’ Bykau, 47–48. 13 In Astaf’ev’s Shepherd and Shepherdess soldiers find these films entertaining; they assume the films are about some other war entirely, not the disorganized and poorly supplied disastrous one in which they are actually taking part. 14 Lovell, The Shadow of War, 149. See also Prokhorov, “Soviet Family Melodrama.” 15 Prokhorov, “Soviet Family Melodrama,” 208, 214. 16 Khutsiev’s film was released in a censored version in 1965. Its original 1961 title was Zastava Ilicha. 17 Gerald Stanton Smith writes about Okudzhava’s songs in his Songs to Seven Strings, 111–44. 18 For more on magnitizdat, see Smith, Songs, 95–99. 19 Smith argues that only “about eight [of Okudzhava’s songs are] specifically devoted” to war (Songs, 126). 20 N. Tarasova comments that Tarusskie stranitsy was quickly removed from circulation, with the result that “the story is mostly unknown not only to the Russian reader abroad, but even in Russia itself.” Bud’ zdorov, ix. 21 As the protagonist and his friend Sashka dream about getting new boots issued, the schoolboy exclaims: “Boots! Now they will arrive. Real boots. Only now can things really begin, for real. Boots.” With his automatic rifle and his foot wrappings, he has felt like an imposter. “But now we’ll really start to fight!” he thinks. Most importantly, “you can stick your spoon in the shaft” of your boot. “Bud’ zdorov,” Devushka, 86–87. Okudzhava tells a similar story about “dreaming during the entire war of having boots and never getting them” in an interview from 1980 (Ia nikomu, 11).

Veterans remember the war  151 22 See Gizatulin, “’Gordykh gimnov.” Dmitrii Bykov writes: “Reviewers blamed him that in his depiction the war was simply war and death was simply death; when really the war was ours, special, and death was Soviet, heroic.” Bykov, Bulat Okudzhava, 392. 23 This poem was printed in the Soviet press in 1962 and reprinted in the 1964 Possev volume abroad (Bud’ zdorov, 143). For an analysis, see Chaikovskii, “’Bud’te vysokimi!’ (Opyt interpretatsii stikhotvoreniia-pesni Bulata Okudzhavy ‘Do svidaniia, mal’chiki’),” reprinted in Milosti Bulata Okudzhavy, 8–13. 24 Lovell, Shadow, 147. 25 Okudzhava, Ia nikomu, 11. 26 The 1973 civil war film White Sun of the Desert revisited this thought in a more humorous vein with its oft-quoted line “Za derzhavu obidno.” 27 Interview, 1969, Ia nikomu, 10. 28 Interview, 26 February 1995, Ia nikomu, 15. 29 “Utro krasit nezhnym svetom. . .,” Devushka, 3. 30 “Utro,” Devushka, 11. 31 “Utro,” Devushka, 3, 12. 32 In response to a line from “Pesnia o pekhote” (“ne ver’te pekhote, kogda oni bravye pesni poiut”—don’t believe the infantry when they sing brave songs), a journalist in 1983 insisted “Believe them! Believe them!” But Okudzhava countered: “The author didn’t quite understand the poetic lines. Because only an abnormal person can march to his death bravely. People go and they die, and they commit heroic deeds. But bravo?! That’s unnatural.” Interview, 12 December 1983, Ia nikomu, 12. 33 “Uroki,” Devushka, 27. 34 “Uroki,” 19. 35 Smith, Songs, 125–26. Smith argues: “Okudzhava’s status as a veteran gives him a unique personal authority as a writer of songs about war, but that does not obliterate the heavy weight of the massive official hymnology on the subject and give him a free hand.” 36 See Chaikovskii, “’Dushi moei zabota’,” reprinted in Milosti Bulata Okudzhavy, 4–18. On material objects in war see the volume Objects of War. 37 Okudzhava, “Pesen’ka veselogo soldata,” Chaepitie na Arbate, 106. 38 See Schechter, The Stuff of Soldiers, esp. ch. 6. 39 Platonov, “Bad Singing,” 92. 40 Interview, 14 September, 1986. Ia nikomu, 51. 41 Interview, 4 April, 1995. Ia nikomu, 16. 42 Quoted in Dm. Bykov, Bulat Okudzhava 24. 43 The fact that the “son of an enemy of the people,” whose father was executed and mother sent to the Gulag when he was 12 years old, felt any patriotism before the war, is in itself remarkable. 44 Okudzhava, “XX vek: Vekhi istorii, vekhi sud’by,” Druzhba narodov 4 (1997) 190. 45 Aleksei German, Jr. chose the text and title “Paper Soldier” for his exploration of Gagarin and the Soviet space program in his 2008 film of that name, suggesting that it is worth reevaluating the space race and the cold war as well in the light of sacrifices made and dreams deferred in the name of imperial glory. Walzer’s ideas in Just and Unjust Wars are quite relevant to both these cases. 46 Lovell, Shadow of War, 141. 47 Gladyshev, “My za tsenoi ne postoim?” 48 Astaf’ev, Gde-to, 397. 49 Astaf’ev, Gde-to, 397. 50 Astaf’ev, Gde-to, 400. 51 Astaf’ev, Gde-to, 459. 52 Astaf’ev, Gde-to, 486.

152  Angela Brintlinger 53 On Astaf’ev and anti-semitism, see Shreyer, Antisemitizm i upadok russkoi derevenskoi prozy. 54 Quoted in Trifonov, “Rubtsy voiny.” 55 Trifonov, “Rubtsy voiny.” 56 26 March  1978, V. Astaf’ev to V. Bykau. In V. A. Rostovtsev, Stranitsy, 414. V. A. signed off “your contemporary (odnogodok) and fellow trench sufferer and fighter” in a letter to V. B. dated 18 April 1995. Stranitsy, 421. 57 Valentin Kurbatov wrote that “it is not only the case that returning from the war a hero is impossible, as Astaf’ev was wont to say, but in fact it is not possible to return from war at all.” In his view, Astaf’ev remained immersed in that war to the end. “Soldaty Sudnogo dnia.” 58 Ermolin, “Mestorozhdenie sovesti.” 59 http://magazines.russ.ru/reviews/kost/review41.html 60 Veselyi Soldat part 2. 61 Quoted in Tychina, “Sumerki svobody,” 17. 62 Bykov, Chas shakalov. 63 Gimpelevich, 17. Here she builds on Adamovič, Vasil Bykau. 64 Volkov reports that Tvardovskii, editor of Novyi mir in the 1960s, insisted Bykau translate his own work. For comparisons of the original Belarusian and the Soviet/Russian texts, see Volkov, “Na granitse dvukh iazykov” and Gimpelevich, Vasil’ Bykov: Knigi i sud’ba. 65 Volkov, “Na granitse dvukh iazykov,” 220–21. Thomas E. Bird has also argued that translators “homogenized his writing, by removing specifically Belarusan [sic] elements and softening the harshness of his realism.” Bird, “Introductory Word,” 2. 66 Bykov, Mertvym, 103. 67 Ibid., 301. 68 Ibid., 303–4. 69 Bykov, “V tumane,” 5. 70 Sergei Loznitsa’s haunting film version of “In the Fog” (2013) emphasizes reality in the tragic forest scenes. Loznitsa, trained as a documentarian, presents a World War IIera Belarus that does not distance the viewer in any way from the painful depiction of village tragedy. No background music swells to remind us that this is cinema; instead, the audience hears heavy breathing, boots slipping on wet leaves, the crack of Sushchenia’s suicide shot. For an analysis of Loznitsa’s film see “A Murky Business.” 71 Quoted in Tychina, “Sumerki svobody,” 18. 72 Marples, “Belarus: the last European dictatorship?” See also Marples, “History, Memory, and the Second World War in Belarus.” 73 Marples, “History, Memory, and the Second World War,” 437. 74 For more on Alexievich see Canadian Slavonic Papers 59, 3–4, esp. articles by Jones and Myers. 75 Bykov, Chas shakalov, 32, 34. 76 Ibid., 40. 77 Ibid., 37. 78 Ibid., 60. 79 Ibid., 30. 80 LaCapra’s concept of “traumatic memory” is useful here. See “Trauma, Absence, Loss,” 716–17. 81 LaCapra, “Trauma, Absence, Loss,” 697.

Bibliography Adamovič, Ales. Vasil’ Bykau. Minsk: Belarus, 1986. Aleksievich, Svetlana. Poslednie svideteli: kniga nedetskikh rasskazov. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 1985.

Veterans remember the war  153 ———. Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from a Forgotten War. Translated by Julia and Robin Whitby, with an introduction by Larry Heinemann. New York: W.W. Norton and Co, 1992. Astaf’ev, V. P. “Pastukh i pastushka (sovremennaia pastoral’).” In Gde-to gremit voina: povesti i rasskazy. Moscow: Sovremennik, 1975. ———. “Veselyi soldat.” Novyi mir 5–6 (1998). ———. Izbrannoe: Prokliaty i ubity. Moscow: Terra, 1999. ———. “Proletnyi gus’.” Novyi mir 1 (2001). Auslander, Leora, and Tara Zahra, eds. Objects of War: The Material Culture of Conflict and Displacement. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018. Bird, Thomas E. “Introductory Word.” Zapisy 22 (1996): 2–3. Brintlinger, Angela. Chapaev and His Comrades: War and the Russian Literary Hero Across the Twentieth Century. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2012. ———. “A Murky Business: The Post-Soviet Enemy.” In The Enemy in Contemporary Film, edited by Martin Löschnigg and Marzena Sokołowska-Paryż. Boston, MA: De Gruyter, 2018. Bykov, Dmitrii. Bulat Okudzhava. Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2009. Bykov, Vasil. “Pravda voiny.” Novyi mir 51 (April 1975): 245–48. ———. “Mertvym ne bol’no. Povest’.” In V tumane: Povesti. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1989. ———. “V tumane.” In V tumane: Povesti, 3–98. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1989. ———. “Literatura i voina (Forum).” Znamia 5 (2000). ———. Chas shakalov: Povest’. Moscow: Vremia, 2005. Chaikovskii, Roman. Milosti Bulata Okudzhavy: Raboty raznykh let. Magadan: Kordis, 1999. Edele, Mark. Soviet Veterans of the Second World War: A Popular Movement in an Authoritarian Society 1941–1991. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Ermolin, Evgenii. “Mestorozhdenie sovesti.” Kontinent 100 (1999). Fürst, Juliane. Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Gimpelevich, Zinaida. Vasil’ Bykau: His Life and Works. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005. ———. Vasil’ Bykov: Knigi i sud’ba. Moscow: NLO, 2011. Gizatulin, Marat. “ ‘Gordykh gimnov, vidit bog, ia ne pel okopnoi kashe.’ Iz istorii ‘Shkoliara’.” In Golos nadezhdy: Novoe o Bulate Okudzhave, vol. 2. Moscow: Bulat, 2005. Gladyshev, V. F. “My za tsenoi ne postoim? (Dve pravdy o voine).” Ural 5 (2004). Hemingway, Ernest. “From a Speech to the American Writers’ Congress.” New York, June 4, 1937. https://www.google.co.in/books/edition/ Conversations_with_Ernest_ Hemingway/AYQdKWlNE28C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Hemingway,+Ernest.+From+a+s peech+to+the+American+Writers%E2%80%99+Congress,+New+York,+June+4,+193 7&pg=PA193&printsec=frontcover. Jones, Jeffrey W. “Mothers, Prostitutes, and the Collapse of the USSR: The Representation of Women in Svetlana Aleksievich’s Zinky Boys.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 59, no. 3–4 (Autumn 2017): 234–58. Kurbatov, Valentin. “Soldaty Sudnogo dnia.” Druzhba narodov 2 (2010). LaCapra, Dominick. “Trauma, Absence, Loss.” Critical Inquiry 25, no. 4 (1999): 696–727. Lovell, Stephen. The Shadow of War: Russia and the USSR 1941 to the Present. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

154  Angela Brintlinger Marples, David. “Belarus: The Last European Dictatorship?” In The EU & Belarus: Between Moscow & Brussels, edited by Ann Lewis. London: Federal Trust for Education and Research: Distributed by Kogan Page, 2002. ———. “History, Memory, and the Second World War in Belarus.” Australian Journal of Politics & History 58, no. 3 (2012): 437–48. Myers, Holly. “Svetlana Aleksievich’s Changing Narrative of the Soviet-Afghan War in Zinky Boys.” Canadian Slavonic Papers 59, no. 3–4 (Autumn 2017): 330–54. Nowak, Peter. The Holocaust in American Life. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Okudzhava, Bulat. Bud’ zdorov, shkoliar. Stikhi (opublikovannye i neopublikovannye). Frankfurt Main: Possev-Verlag, 1964. ———. V Barabannom pereulke. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1964. ———. Proza i stikhi. Frankfurt Main: Possev, 1968. ———. “Utro krasit nezhnym svetom . . . Rasskaz.” In Devushka moei mechty: Avtobiograficheskie povestvovaniia. Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1988. ———. Chaepitie na Arbate: stikhi raznykh let. Moscow: PAN, 1996. ———. Ia nikomu nichego ne naviazyval. . . Edited by Aleksandr Petrakov. Moscow: Biblioteka zhurnala ‘Vagant-Moskva’, 1997. ———. “XX vek: Vekhi istorii, vekhi sud’by.” Druzhba narodov 4 (1997): xxx. Platonov, Rachel. “Bad Singing: ‘Avtorskaia Pesnia’ and the Aesthetics of Metacommunication.” Ulbandus Review 9 (2005–2006): 87–113. Prokhorov, Alexander. “Soviet Family Melodrama of the 1940s and 1950s: From Wait for Me to The Cranes Are Flying.” In Imitations of Life: Two Centuries of Melodrama in Russia, edited by Louise McReynolds and Joan Neuberger. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002. Rostovtsev, V. A. Stranitsy iz zhizni Viktora Astaf’eva. Moscow: Entsiklopediia sel i dereven’, 2007. Schechter, Brandon M. The Stuff of Soldiers: A History of the Red Army in World War II Through Objects. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. Shreyer, Maksim D. Antisemitizm i upadok russkoi derevenskoi prozy: Astaf’ev, Belov, Rasputin. St. Petersburg: Academic Studies Press, 2020. Smith, Gerald Stanton. Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet “Mass Song”. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Suleiman, Susan Rubin. Crises of Memory and the Second World War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Tarasova, N. “Bulat Okudzhava—sovremennyi boian.” In Proza i stikhi. Frankfurt Main: Possev, 1968. Trifonov, Gennadii. “Rubtsy voiny (pamiati V.P. Astaf’eva).” Kontinent 214 (2002). Tychina, Mikhas’. “Sumerki svobody.” In Chas shakalov, edited by Vasil’ Bykov. Moscow: Vremia, 2005. Volkov, Aleksei. “Na granitse dvukh iazykov.” Voprosy literatury 2 (2017): 211–28. Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York: Basic Books, 2006. Youngblood, Denise. Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2007.

7 Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory Olga Kucherenko

As other contributions to this volume show, victory in the “Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union” forms an important part of Russian national identity. Though contemporary Russia has little claim to the Soviet triumph, the War has become a political and cultural project for the ruling elites, who are wholeheartedly supported by the general public.1 As the nation strives for cohesion and self-­ affirmation, it looks to the glorious past to boost its sense of collective pride and superiority at a time of uncertainty and national ignominy. The hard-won victory in the war provides that feeling of uniqueness and exceptionality. So, it has to be otechestvennaia (native/patriotic) rather than mirovaia (global)—nasha (our) rather than obshchaia (common).2 In this self-centered national narrative, there is little place for other heroes. And yet, the USSR did not win the war alone, though there has always been a tendency to discount the allied military action as not having any momentous impact on the main, Soviet-German, theater until the opening of the Second Front in France in 1944. Lend-Lease and humanitarian relief was the one area where allied assistance was directly felt by the Soviet armed forces and civilian population but even that became a delicate issue over time. Having discussed the Soviet/Russian outlook on the Second Front elsewhere, I will now focus on the construction and evolution of the memory of the allied economic cooperation, as well as the current debate about its relative role in Soviet victory.3 The first section of this chapter traces the exclusivist narrative through the Soviet, early post-Soviet, and Putin periods. It reveals that allied assistance has always been acknowledged, though its scale and objectives were treated differently, depending on the political and social atmosphere of the day. Today, with the world looking on and Russian citizens looking out, the Putin administration and loyal opinion-makers are forced to reinvent the wartime Soviet strategy of publicly recognizing the allied contribution as useful but not indispensable. They celebrate the allied participation in sustaining the USSR but render it insignificant by stressing the exceptionality of the Soviet war effort. The modern official narrative, however, lacks a consistent ideological approach to the memory of the Alliance. Consequently, it is ambiguous, volatile, and susceptible to challenges, not least from the primary creators and transmitters of national memory—historians. The second section, therefore, investigates the current debates within the historical community. The continuity between Soviet and post-Soviet assessment of

156  Olga Kucherenko allied aid amid continuous reevaluation of the war has arguably been the most enduring element in Russian historiography. By and large, the professional opinion differs only slightly from the popular belief: both agree that it was too slow and inadequate; the latter, often goaded by conspirologists, also deems it inconsequential and very costly. Yet there is a minority of authors who refuse to replicate the Soviet metanarrative. A motley group of Soviet-trained historians as well as younger scholars and faculty members, they are called “revisionist” here though it is not necessarily how they identify themselves. Their contributions shine a different light on allied aid, complicating the exclusivist narrative and, with it, memory of the Grand Alliance.

Constructing the exceptionalist narrative The day Axis forces crossed the Soviet borders, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced his firm commitment to assist the USSR in her hour of need. Shortly thereafter, President Franklin D. Roosevelt followed suit, believing that the Allies had a better chance of overcoming Germany if the Red Army stayed in action. True to their word, already in August 1941, the British sent the first convoy with ammunition and airplanes. Those were followed by two air squadrons and further deliveries paid for in gold and other minerals. At the end of September, an allied delegation arrived in Moscow to hammer out an agreement which extended Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union (on a credit-free basis from February 1942). The official start of extensive allied deliveries was the signing on October 1 of a trilateral First Moscow Protocol which would last until June 1942. Throughout the war, the allies, including Canada, ratified three more protocols: Second (July 1, 1942–June 30, 1943), Third (July 1, 1943–June 30, 1944), and Fourth, which officially ceased on May 12, 1945, but, following a Soviet appeal, carried on until September 2, 1945, the last day of World War II. Under these protocols, the Western Allies provided munitions, military hardware, naval vessels, trucks and other vehicles, radio and communication equipment, industrial machinery, railway stock, fuel, raw materials, foodstuffs, medical supplies, and clothing, as well as several oil refineries, a tire plant, and several power stations. American deliveries amounted to $11 billion and were not subject to repayment in case of loss or damage in the course of the hostilities, though the equipment retained for peacetime use had to be compensated in part or fully with the help of interest-free long-term loans made available by the US. Aid from Britain came free of charge. In reverse Lend-Lease, the Soviets offered $2 million worth of raw materials and services. The “official” Lend-Lease was also supplemented by an “unofficial” one in the form of private donations and gifts. The latter, consisting of hand-made clothing, sweets, and other comforts traveled together with protocol supplies or were sneaked inside lend-lease tanks and aircraft. Reportedly, Soviet recipients sometimes found bottles of liquor which tender-hearted allies had stuffed in cannon barrels of armored vehicles.4 Supplies arrived along four major routes: not only the shortest but also the most dangerous one lay across the Arctic; the longest Persian Corridor snaked its

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  157 way across the Atlantic or the Pacific into the Persian Gulf, through the Iranian mountains and the Caspian into Soviet territory; the Pacific Route saw the passage of the majority of non-military goods brought from across the ocean by Soviet merchantmen; and the Northern Trace, also known as the Alaska-Siberian air road, handled the delivery of lend-lease aircraft. The import of vast volumes of military hardware and other goods was a matter of great necessity for the USSR struggling for survival. Yet it also complicated the domestic ideological climate, especially once the Red Army had tasted the enemy’s blood at the gates of Moscow, and the regime sensed a potential to recover its legitimacy. Around this time, an enduring narrative of Soviet military exceptionalism began to form and acquire a moral component, which grew stronger the longer the Red Army was left to fight alone in Europe. The Kremlin could not afford to stand accused of having failed to prepare for the war everyone had been expecting; neither could it expose the country’s vulnerability to Germany. So, the main tactic was to diminish outside help as much as possible and openly blame the allies for the absence of a “real” second front when setbacks had to be explained.5 However, while the allied efforts in other military theaters were easier to downplay in dry, uninformative press communiques, their material assistance was harder to hide. After all, Soviet citizens regularly encountered it at the front, on the factory floor, and, occasionally, in stores. Some of them even felt apprehensive about the Soviet Union’s ability to repay it.6 There was an additional nuisance in the form of foreign films and popular Russian-language bulletins Britanskii Soiuznik and Amerika published by the allied embassies in an attempt to acquaint the Soviet public with their countries’ war effort.7 While the allied periodicals and cinematic productions were kept in check by small print runs and restricted distribution, the national press satisfied public interest about the allies by a carefully measured amount of positive and critical information. The high-profile coverage afforded to their economic support and military presence on Soviet soil in the early desperate months of the war, gradually gave way to loud praise of Soviet servicemen operating foreign equipment or domestically produced armaments. As the flow of deliveries increased in 1942–1943, the volume of reportage fell, and the real sense of their contribution to the Soviet war effort became lost in the mass of other detail.8 Such skirting around the topic of allied material aid had a profound effect on popular opinion—there was almost no discussion of it in public. Partly influenced by the tight-lipped press, which instead refocused attention to the elusive second front, partly relying on their own limited interaction with imported goods (whose origin had reportedly been obscured in some regions), Soviet citizens, especially in the rear, spoke little and probably knew even less about the flow of goods from overseas. Their ignorance, in turn, aroused anxiety and indignation that the allies were growing rich at the Soviets’ expense.9 A nearly total isolation of ordinary people from foreigners, suspected by the authorities of espionage and malevolent intentions to corrupt their hosts, prevented the latter from forming a fuller picture about allied assistance and did little to improve perceptions.10 German propaganda work in the occupied territories and within the Red Army also

158  Olga Kucherenko contributed to reinforcing the Soviets in the opinion that the Western Allies acted in bad faith.11 Allied representatives registered these attitudes with bitterness; some of them became “convinced the average Russian was not aware of their sacrifice.”12 Such conflation of the myth of allied military inactivity with their material aid nearly caused an international scandal when a rookie agitator giving a lecture at the International Club in Murmansk mixed up the audiences and announced to a group of 50 British seamen that their country was sitting idly and doing nothing to help the Soviet Union fight the common enemy. The reaction from the listeners who had recently lost their comrades to German U-boats and bombers was predictable.13 Resentment at the Soviets’ ingratitude also reverberated among the allied populations and coalesced in an irritated speech by the American Ambassador William H. Standley in March 1943.14 When pressured by the allies to make a more public acknowledgment of their aid, Pravda published a detailed list of lend-lease deliveries, which became a revelation to some of its readers. “Turns out, it was not for nothing that our lot have been keeping silent about this aid,” recorded a Soviet writer in his diary, “I must admit, it is formidable.”15 Nevertheless, the information on the size of lend-lease deliveries was classified a year later and has only recently become available.16 It is only logical that the role of allied aid in the Soviet war effort would be played down even more in the postwar atmosphere of confrontation with the erstwhile allies and the re-emergence of Stalin’s cult, as discussed in Yan Mann’s chapter in this volume. As the West began disremembering the Soviet contribution to victory, the Stalinist regime was consolidating its grip on the memory of the war that became its greatest achievement to date. The Kremlin’s objective was to show the superiority of socialist economy over the capitalist alternative. Acknowledging the allies’ considerable role in propping up the Soviet war machine during World War II would have been damaging to the country’s international image and the regime’s domestic reputation. The radical change in relations between former allies gave rise to heated political debates on the issue of mutual payments, which, in turn, led to equally sharp discussions over Lend-Lease and its role in the final victory. The Soviet side was quick to emphasize the discrepancy between the declared aid and its real scale. The tone was set by Chairman of the State Planning Committee Nikolai Voznesensky in his book The Soviet Military Economy in the Great Patriotic War, published in 1948—same year as Stalin’s programmatic Falsificators of History—and bearing traces of the dictator’s editorial input. Having made no reference to Lend-Lease in his own opus, Stalin excised the passage where Voznesensky, albeit grudgingly, gave the allies their “indisputable” due in contributing to the Soviet war economy, even if the final victory over Nazi Germany was still “achieved mainly by Soviet-produced weapons and hardware.” What remained, became the blueprint for Soviet-era literature: without mentioning Lend-Lease directly, Voznesensky attributed the wartime “increase in imports” to allied supplies, but asserted that foreign deliveries accounted for only 4% of the Soviet wartime industrial output.17

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  159 Nevertheless, the Stalinist tendency to deemphasize, even belittle, the importance of Lend-Lease was not necessarily reflected in recollections of millions of beneficiaries of this help. After Stalin’s demise, a popular undercurrent questioning some of the war’s “myths” found an outlet during its limited reevaluation under Khrushchev. The policy of peaceful coexistence with the former allies encouraged a popular push to return them to the official history of the war.18 Khrushchevian changes to the narrative were far from revolutionary: compared to the general increase in locally produced armament, the allies’ overall assistance was still deemed “insignificant” though no longer “inconsequential.” Moreover, they were partially reversed under Brezhnev, whose court historians argued that “this assistance was in no way significant and could not have had a decisive influence on the course of the Great Patriotic War.”19 As Olga Konkka shows in her contribution to this volume, the official line was reflected in history textbooks. Still, the mid-century popular drive lay the foundation for an overhaul of ideological orthodoxy at the twilight of the Soviet era. The critical reassessment did not happen overnight and was long in coming. But the end of the political and ideological confrontation with the US in the late 1980s, even a certain idealization of the former enemy, had created opportunities for adjusting the established outlook. New interpretations of the allies’ contribution to the common victory began to emerge. For several years in the early 1990s, especially after the August coup, Americans (and British) again became the valiant allies20 (see Figure 7.1). Yet economic hardship of the reform era caused bitter popular disappointment in democracy and the idealistic image of the US, the biggest supporter of these reforms. Older Russians began to draw parallels with the wartime and recall how instead of opening the Second Front, the Americans allegedly only sent canned food; now, instead of helping, they were sending chicken legs.21 In the era of national humiliation, nostalgia for the Soviet great-power status began to inspire a nationalist concept of history. The intensive reevaluation (and at times

Figure 7.1  A three-ruble coin celebrating the Arctic Convoys, 1992. Source: Courtesy of the Bank of Russia (www.cbr.ru/).

160  Olga Kucherenko re-mythologization) of the war in the early-1990s provoked a pushback and the re-emergence of conservative views: the Cold War language was back in the media and history textbooks. By the end of the decade, the new Putin regime began to present itself as a defender of national dignity and demand recognition from the West.22 The new state doctrine aimed to convince Russians that they lived in a great country with a great past.23 Envisaging the West as a traitor, the ruling elites proposed not to look westwards for positive identity reinforcements but into the country’s past when she was a formidable world power. It was the Victory in the Great Patriotic War that had made her so. Consequently, the war had to become a starting point in the search for national self-esteem and international respect. In what is often called the “counterreformation in history teaching,” conservative opinion leaders promptly suggested their version of the events, building on the ideological work done since 1945.24 The longer the Russians looked, the more they became convinced of their exceptionality. Victory of the Soviet people in the War was quickly turning into pre-eminently a Russian achievement.25 Conservative observers now called it “the embodiment of courage and resilience of the Russian character, Russian mentality, the greatness of Russia.” After all, they argued, in 1945, Stalin himself had “singled out the Russian people as the most outstanding nation in the country, deserving universal recognition as the leading force in the war, among all the other Soviet peoples.”26 Years later, the disregard of non-­Russians received an official seal of approval from President Putin: in 2010—and again in his 2021 Victory Parade speech—the Russian leader dispensed with other participants in the war, stating arrogantly that since the Russian Federative Republic bore the brunt of the losses, it was Russia that had won the war—and would have won without any help, because “We are the country of victors.”27 Winning the war alone enhances the victor’s triumph, even if the modern-day nation has a dubious claim to something that happened several generations ago. According to recent opinion polls, the majority of Russians share their President’s sentiment and appropriate Soviet Victory as “our,” Russian, triumph. Neither are they prepared to give full credit to anyone else, least of all their former partners in the Grand Alliance and current adversaries.28 The overwhelming majority of respondents see the Soviet Union as the major contributor to the war, though in the last decade this certitude has dwindled somewhat. As for the role of the Western Allies, fewer and fewer respondents are willing to acknowledge its significance, which might be a reflection of the current period of tension with the West. Instead, the majority firmly believe that the USSR would have won anyway, though it would have taken longer and cost more29 (see Table 7.1). This claim is not new and has been used as a counter-argument to Western demands for recognition since 1944. Neither then, nor now do the proponents of this idea seem to be willing to answer the uncomfortable question: what would the exact human toll be had the Western allies not sent their aid and military assistance? In his recent essay, President Putin insinuated that victory in the War affords Russia, the heir of the Soviet Union, a moral right to greatness in the global arena.30

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  161 Table 7.1 Russian Public Opinion on the Allies’ Contribution to the Victory in World War II. In your opinion, how important was the contribution of the following countries to the Second World War? (close-ended question one answer, % of total respondents) 

Main  Very important  Rather important  Not quite important  Almost no contribution  Don’t know 

Year of measurement 

USSR 

USA 

Great Britain 

France 

China 

2009 2016  2019  2009  2016  2019  2009  2016  2019  2009  2016  2019  2009  2016  2019  2009  2016  2019 

86 81  69  5  11  15  2  3  10  1  0  1  1  0  1  5  5  4 

4 3  1  14  7  8  30  22  29  30  41  33  8  14  19  14  13  9 

2 1  2  10  3  4  26  22  25  36  40  38  9  17  17  17  17  14 

2 1  1  9  4  2  22  21  19  34  40  40  14  16  25  19  18  13 

1 1  2  4  3  2  8  11  12  18  26  26  47  35  39  22  24  20

Source: WCIOM, Russian Public Opinion Research Center (https://wciom.com/index.php?id=61& uid=1701).

Since the 1950s, Soviet and then Russian leaders have been keen to remind the world that, to quote Stalin’s security chief Lavrentii Beria, “mankind and its civilization owe their lease on life to the tremendous sacrifice and supreme exertion of the Soviet people who saved them from Nazi barbarity.”31 The helping hand offered by the Western Allies to Russia as she was fulfilling the messianic mission, supposedly detracts from her achievements and might compromise her claim to superpower status paid for so dearly by the Soviet soldier. It is this unmatched sacrifice, according to Putin—and Stalin, back in the day— that warrants greatness and gives (Soviet) Russia her “special rights” for geopolitical primacy in Europe. Putin, in fact, acknowledged the Anglo-American role in the war on several occasions, but continuously reminded his audiences that the relative contribution should be measured on the basis of who had fielded more divisions and paid the most in blood.32 As is also common (though not universal) in Russian historiography, not only is there no consideration of the reasons for so many losses, but military contribution clearly is also valued far above any material assistance. Additionally, the fact that the Russians have vanquished an enemy who had previously known no defeat even at the hands of the most developed and wealthy

162  Olga Kucherenko nations, turns the war from a tragedy into a symbol of national superiority.33 The Russians have historically measured themselves against the West and have always felt, or were made to feel, a certain sense of inferiority. After a painful period of national humiliation, they seek self-affirmation by comparing themselves favorably to their Western allies. Judging by the information appearing in the latest history textbooks and other media, there is a purposeful selection of facts that show the allies from a neutral or unattractive angle. This has not always been the case, with early post-Soviet textbooks—now out of print—usually affording much more credit to the Western Allies and placing the Soviet war in a global context. In the last decade and a half, however, there has been a noticeable retreat to Cold War representations.34 Such negative mobilization against the West inspires confidence that “we” are the victors, and “they” were mere allies; “we” are courageous, selfless, formidable, while “they” were (and still are) cowardly, ungrateful, and treacherous. At the same time, there is a certain ambivalence in the official Russian treatment of the Western Allies. While downplaying the role of their military and material assistance, Russian authorities continue to commission monuments and memorial plaques to allied cooperation and humanitarian aid, as well as commemorate allied sailors and pilots who brought supplies to the Soviet Union35 (see Figure 7.2). The Allies are sometimes mentioned in feature films as either

Figure 7.2  A monument to the members of the Grand Alliance, Moscow. Source: Photograph by Ekaterina Crivov.

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  163 being very helpful (Peregon, 2006) or good for nothing (Istrebiteli, 2013). The only museum dedicated to Lend-Lease is now apparently closed following the death of its director, though it maintains its online presence.36 A 2012 exhibition in St. Petersburg called “The Front Brotherhood: the US and USSR in World War II” was followed in 2015 by one in Moscow with a didactic title: “Remember. . . . The World was Saved by the Soviet Soldier!” Organized by the Russian MilitaryHistorical Society (RMHS) which is tightly connected to the Ministry of Culture, the exhibition traveled around the country and was reportedly attended by nearly a quarter of a million viewers. The Western Allies’ contribution to saving the world did receive a fleeting mention but was neutralized by the magnitude of Soviet sacrifices.37 Similarly, the two officially endorsed books focusing on junior allies, though praiseworthy for their effort to acknowledge other members of the coalition, to some extent dilute the role of the “major” allies, who were, in turn, helped by others.38 This lack of consistency is mirrored by a rising number of conflicting interpretations offered by alternative sources of information, which might contribute to a widespread confusion about the history of the war, especially among young Russians. Over the last two decades, sociologists have been registering the downward turn in knowledge and, indeed, interest in the events that happened nearly a century ago.39 As a result of state efforts, young people still consider the War the most important event in their country’s past but are becoming weary of the war-related pageantry.40 Instead, a growing (albeit still small) number of respondents believe that victory was a common achievement of the Grand Alliance.41 The young people’s budding autonomy of judgment worry politicians and conservative scholars alike. Careful not to impose their vision of history, the former opt for controlling what is happening in the field of memory. So, while Putin sends “signals” to history teachers urging them to revive a sense of exclusivity regarding the Soviet/Russian role in the war, the Ministry of Culture, working in tandem with RMHS, censors cultural productions by rationing state funding and popularizing the “correct” cinematic outputs through the state-controlled TV channels. There have also been recent attempts to silence alternative historical narratives of the war either by applying pressure on scholars or monitoring the Internet under the guise of fighting extremism.42 For it is foreign agents and domestic “liberal, pro-Western” media who are blamed for their corrupting influence by the political leadership and conformist scholarship. Both urge a more thorough approach to teaching “real” history of the war—only, their version of “demythologized” history is usually steeped in Soviet myths.43

Exceptionalism in flux Since the reform era of the late 1980s–early 1990s, the Russian historical community has been engaged in heated debates about the real volume of lend-lease supplies, their net value compared to Soviet production, the program’s contribution to the Soviet military economy, and, crucially, its relative impact on final victory: would the Soviet Union have won without this help? In the majority of

164  Olga Kucherenko cases, Russian historians’ outlook on Lend-Lease has undergone only incremental changes over the past two decades, despite much greater availability of sources. Conservative authors are willing to update the textbook from 4 percent to 7 percent. Still, they criticize the “revisionist” claim that allied aid played a significant role in Soviet victory, because, they assert, it was untimely, initially insignificant, of poor quality and self-seeking. To argue otherwise, would be to belittle the heroism of the Soviet people, devalue their unmatched sacrifices and deny the Soviet Union the main role in winning the war.44 Meanwhile, the assertion that the Soviet victory was achieved primarily due to Lend-Lease is very rare both in foreign and domestic literature. There is no doubt that the Red Army destroyed three-quarters of German equipment, killed many more enemy soldiers than all the allies put together and paid a far greater price for doing so.45 Serious historians are careful so as not to compare the allies’ material contribution with Soviet human losses, despite the unfounded accusations leveled against them in many Russian publications. Instead, the main premise of the “revisionist” argument is that giving the Western allies credit is long overdue. In response, the critics insist that to obtain an accurate picture, one should analyze foreign aid in accordance with the years it was received, because—the claim goes—at first, the allies were tight-fisted about offering real aid. As a result, lend-lease deliveries were late, incomplete, and therefore could not make much difference during the most decisive two years of the war, arriving in earnest only after the Soviets had achieved strategic advantage and overhauled their industrial production.46 The oft-mentioned delays in negotiations, interruptions of deliveries, and the small scale of initial shipments are indeed beyond doubt. However, there is little consideration of the reasons for these occurrences on both sides. Thus, the critics ignore a delicate political situation the Western leaders found themselves in when they pledged assistance to the USSR. They had to navigate the political forces hostile to the country recently allied with Hitler and whose socio-political order was alien to Western liberal values. The Soviet Union’s recent aggression against her neighbors, and especially Finland, had cost her the support base in America and Great Britain.47 Given the strength of anti-Soviet feeling, mixed with racist prejudice toward the “Asiatic Other,” not everyone in the Anglo-American establishment, and among the general population, was eager to help. The senior military were especially of low opinion of Soviet martial capabilities, expecting a rapid collapse; the public was only marginally more optimistic. Fearing their supplies going to waste or, worse, falling into German hands, the Anglo-American leadership promised aid but was not in a hurry to deliver.48 The fact that the Soviet side was not prepared to receive the requested aid in vast quantities and had a shortage of specialists fluent in English at their trade missions, did not inspire much optimism either. Port facilities in the Far East and Far North, receiving aerodromes in Siberia and the railway network leading from the reception hubs had to be hastily reconstructed, deepened, extended, or built anew (often with foreign equipment and materials).49

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  165 Moreover, when mainstream historians criticize the Western Allies for partially defaulting on their obligations under the first two protocols, they forget that American industrial production had not yet achieved its full capacity at the time of the invasion. Still recovering from the Great Depression, it was firmly placed on war footing only by February 1942. By that time, the US was already at war with Japan, which led to the aggravation of the already existing shortage of tonnage, shipment delays, and diversion of armaments to domestic needs.50 In any case, two pioneers of the “revisionist” view, Mikhail Suprun and Natalia Butenina, note that undelivered and lost-in-transit cargo was largely compensated for.51 When it comes to delayed deliveries and suspension of supply convoys—a major stumbling block in allied relations during the war and a bone of contention among Russian historians today—there is a clear difference of perception on both sides of the human and material cost of going through with the deliveries despite the obvious risks. While the Soviets, understandably, viewed with suspicion the British excuses that allied convoys were vulnerable in summertime, the other side complained, also reasonably, that the Soviets did not do enough to protect the convoys in their sector. Still, Moscow’s insistence on uninterrupted delivery shows that it deemed allied aid very important at the time, something that Soviet and post-Soviet historians tend to overlook. Instead, they contend that slow help is no help. Both generations of scholars adhere to the main “too little too late” idea, with one important difference: whereas Soviet historians extended the formula to the entire course of the war, often without differentiating among types of supplies, modern specialists apply it specifically to 1941–1942.52 At the time, the British Ministry of Information believed that allied material assistance to the Red Army during the initial period of the war was inconsequential compared to the Soviet effort. Oft-cited historian Lydia Pozdeeva seized on this assessment to argue that allied aid played almost no part in the victory at Moscow and Stalingrad.53 The fundamental work on the Great Patriotic War published by the Defense Ministry in 2014 asserted that, during this time, the Soviet Union only got 7 percent of the total aid from the US.54 In the words of Mikhail Frolov, a veteran and the late vice-president of the Academy of Military-Historical Studies, “during these critical months, Russians, and only Russians, resisted the German aggressor on their own land and by their own means, without receiving any noticeable help from the Western democracies.”55 Former head of the Soviet government Nikolai Ryzhkov went further to argue that since allied deliveries arrived after 1942 and constituted only a small percentage of similar domestically manufactured military hardware, “we can confidently assert that they did not play a decisive role in the Great Victory.”56 Nevertheless, even for the initial period of the war, more specialized research offers greater nuance. First, it should be noted that Soviet statistical data cannot be trusted because of the deliberate overestimation of production volumes during the war, in addition to a tendency to add up and not differentiate certain types of weapons and military equipment.57 Economist Grigorii Popov also found serious discrepancies between figures reported by different agencies (in this case,

166  Olga Kucherenko regarding army boots), which might have been a single occurrence or could indicate a more general trend.58 Second, while accepting the fact that during the first protocol period the USSR received relatively small quantities of arms, the “revisionist” argument goes that even these “seemingly insignificant volumes” turned out to be of great importance during the time of heavy combat losses of hardware and a sharp decline in Soviet arms manufacture, caused by enemy action and evacuation. According to an estimate based on Soviet production figures for the first six months of the war, allied weapons systems accounted for almost 96 percent of the tanks, 34 percent of aircraft, and 93 percent of submachine guns produced in the USSR during this critical period. At the time of the Battle of Moscow, foreign aircraft constituted approximately 45 percent of the Soviet air force. And during the Soviet winter offensive, imported tanks made up for the losses of Soviet-produced hardware.59 In this respect, the “revisionist” view concurs with a Western assessment that lend-lease aid provided during this time “certainly had a far more significant impact on the Soviet war effort and indeed on front-line capability both during and after the Battle of Moscow than the Soviet and indeed Western historiography would suggest.”60 Arguably, an even more momentous contribution to the wartime (and postwar) economy was the supply of machine tools and factory equipment as well as various metals and other raw materials. They allowed Soviet industry to release manpower for the armed forces as well as organize and increase domestic production of armaments, which then played the decisive role in Soviet victories in 1941–1943 and later on.61 It is also difficult to overestimate the importance of high-grade aviation fuel for Soviet capabilities to wage an air war, as well as the supply of railway stock, both of which exceeded the total Soviet production manifold. Thanks to imported locomotives, freight cars, fasteners, wheels, and rails, it was not only possible to deliver troops and hardware to the battlefield but also saved half a million tons of steel used for the production of tank armor.62 Especially crucial at the time of Stalingrad and Kursk was radio and communication equipment for the field army and the navy. “Revisionist” historians have argued that imported communication devices gave the Soviet armed forces “sight” and “hearing” and had a critical impact on the development of similar domestic technologies. Similarly, the receipt of advanced models of naval radar and sonar sys­ tems, as well as anti-aircraft guns not only boosted Soviet combat effectiveness (including the 1941–1943 naval battles) but also considerably reduced the gap in many areas of military production.63 This long-term aspect of Lend-Lease is usually absent in mainstream accounts. Whatever the reason behind the persistent de-emphasizing of the role of LendLease during the early period of the war, it is illuminating that contemporaries involved in supplying and leading the Red Army viewed it in a much more positive light. In 1963, Marshal Georgy Zhukov was overheard saying that though it had become customary to claim that the Allies “never helped” the Soviet Union, “one can’t deny the fact that the Americans supplied us with so much material, without which we could not have formed our reserves, waged war [and] set up

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  167 production of tanks.”64 Anastas Mikoyan, the man in charge of organizing the transportation of food and supplies during the war, later noted in his memoir: “In the autumn of 1941 we lost everything, and if not for Lend-Lease, the weapons, provisions, warm clothing for the armed forces and other supplies, who knows how things would have panned out.”65 Food supply was another very important item on the lend-lease request list that is rarely awarded a separate study, even though it constituted one-quarter of all deliveries.66 This lack of consideration might not only be due to the greater focus on armaments but also because of the well-established belief in Soviet self-­ sufficiency that supposedly secured Soviet victory. Authors, including Ryzhkov and Georgy Kumanev, a research fellow at the Institute of Russian History, asserted that imported food made up only a small percentage of domestic supply and, therefore, did not improve considerably the Soviet soldier’s dietary intake. And if this is the case, states a supporter of this view, if the Soviet side received only a “minimal amount of food from abroad” during the crucial first two years, than “the only conclusion would be that the USSR alone, practically without lendlease supplies, achieved a final turning point” in the war against the Axis; what’s more, it could have won the war without any food relief.67 At the same time, there is no acknowledgment of the fact that it was the Soviet side that placed orders and, therefore, must have considered the provision of food less important during the stated period. As with other goods, imported foodstuffs made up for severe shortages of domestic supplies and, being processed, canned, and rich in calories, were better suited for army needs. This, in turn, increased their relative value.68 There is also a tendency to forget the endemic malnutrition, and in some cases outright starvation within the armed forces and on the home front. With production stimulated only in the war industry, the food sector shrunk. From mid-1943, just as the Soviet forces had gone over to a sustained offensive, the food crisis struck.69 So, under the second protocol, food took top priority in Soviet requests and by the third protocol had overtaken certain metals and weapons systems. The situation improved after the reacquisition of the lost territories, but food and seed imports continued to be essential until the end of the war and long afterward.70 Both Mikoyan and Nikita Khrushchev later admitted that without American provisions the Red Army would have starved, and things would have looked even worse for the civilian population.71 Evidently, the Soviet leadership gave more credit to lend-lease foodstuffs at the time, unlike the later generations of experts. Despite the derisive remarks afforded to American spam and egg powder, known as “second front” and “Roosevelt’s yaitsa” (a pun for testicles), respectively, it was these products that are still remembered with gratitude by veterans and the home-front population. “As a war child,” recalls one respondent, “I had never seen a real egg and thought that all those motley pullets lay golden eggs only in fairy-tales, but real chickens lay egg powder—the one the Americans sent us.”72 Even during the war, some servicemen noted the significance of food deliveries: “If not for the allies, we would have long been starving. . . . We live at the expense of the allies,” they muttered. “If not for America, we

168  Olga Kucherenko would have been long dead.” Such views were considered subversive by the authorities.73 Besides, contemporaries, including one official involved in arranging supplies with the American side, emphasize that debates about the size of lend-lease aid obfuscate the moral significance of the program. In the words of one, “it was the realization that we were not alone facing the ruthless enemy.”74 And it was not just foodstuffs. Despite continuous grumbling about the absence of a “real” second front in Europe, the presence of foreign military personnel fighting side by side with the Soviets must have also had a strong psychological effect. The feeling clearly came out in the letters written by Soviet civilians and servicemen to their allied pen pals.75 In the immediate post-Soviet period, Russian historiography acknowledged the moral component of Lend-Lease, but in the following years a certain shift of emphasis took place: lately, scholars have been focusing on the benefits the program had for the supplying side, insisting that the deliveries were not completely unselfish.76 Curiously, the idea had been voiced by none other than Goebbels during the war and reincarnated by Voznesensky in 1948.77 Russian historians often misunderstand the expression “a good war” (meaning that America got involved for good reasons) as being “a profitable” one. It is undisputable that the war revitalized the American economy and improved standards of living, just as it is fair to argue that by providing material assistance to the Soviet Union, Anglo-American leaders sought to save lives of their own troops.78 However, the excessive focus on self-interest and profits—traditional in Soviet historiography and prevalent among specialists today—oversimplifies the matter, diminishes the value of the assistance, and, thereby, denies the Western Allies any moral claim to victory. It has become particularly popular among modern-day conspirologists to indict the Western Allies for profiteering at Soviet expense. They do not stop at (rightfully) accusing American large businesses of helping Hitler to power in the 1920s–1930s, but through a combination of empty speculation and omissions, create an illusion that the US government, via private corporations, actively supplied and financed both sides throughout the hostilities. Naturally, they fail to distinguish between prewar collaboration and what transpired once the US entered the war.79 Also, no mention is made of the fact that those same industrialists and bankers had been involved in propping up the Soviet economy in the interwar period and that the contemporaneous Soviet contribution to the Nazi war machine might have been just as significant. Occasionally, professional historians uncritically repeat the “two-front Lend-Lease” argument.80 Others point to a connection between the dynamic of deliveries (niggardly in 1941–1943; abundant in 1944–1945) and the opening of the “real” Second Front in the summer of 1944, extrapolating that Anglo-American leaders deliberately allowed the Red Army to bleed white.81 At the same time, these authors dismiss the fact that supplies for the Soviet Union were often diverted from the allies’ own needs.82 This was especially true of Britain, who was the first to offer aid, despite her own poor economic prospects, especially in 1941. The Americans are often blamed for favoring Britain when it came to lend-lease allocations, though

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  169 the Soviet ally bore the brunt of the war on land. Thus, during a presentation of Ryzhkov’s book on Lend-Lease, its publishing editor begrudged Britain receiving far more US aid than the Soviets, despite the fact that there was no military action on her territory, except for “a few insignificant bombings (bombardirovochki nekotorye), and that’s all!” Tellingly, the author did not refute this statement.83 Neither did he mention that though Britain did receive the lion’s share of LendLease, the terms of agreement were much more stringent and demanding of the British than the Soviets, who remained unencumbered by the requirement to justify the use of deliveries, even when it became known that some of the lend-lease supplies were misused, sold in closed shops or ended up in foreign territories. Moreover, after the 1943 reorganization of Lend-Lease administration, the US decreased deliveries to her allies, including Britain, but not the USSR.84 During the presentation (and in his publications) Ryzhkov also disparaged the quality of some imported equipment, especially tanks and airplanes. This is a common complaint among Russian historians and laymen. Indeed, some of the aircraft arrived damaged or incomplete, missing propellers, armament, spares, and technical documentation, which Stalin was quick to criticize in his correspondence with the allied leaders.85 These claims were later inflated by Soviet propaganda and are taken at face value until this day. What rarely comes up in more conservative discussions is that though Soviet representatives in the US had genuine concerns about bureaucratic red tape, incompetence, and even suspected sabotage,86 the Soviet side was partially at fault, too. The lack of experienced specialists at trade missions responsible for checking the outgoing consignment (and making sure the accompanying instructions were included) proved easier to eliminate than deficiencies and mismanagement at the receiving end. Dilapidated watercraft, ongoing reconstruction of port facilities, inexperience with loading and discharging large-dimension cargo, shortage of qualified consignees, who had to travel long distances between ports, scarcity of cranes and restricted waters on top of exceptionally harsh working and living conditions of longshoremen resulted in mishandling, damage, and theft of valuable goods. They were unloaded and dumped haphazardly on piers where they stayed out in the open, creating blockages and interfering with subsequent unloading. All this took place in front of allied officials and seamen who had risked their lives to bring supplies to the struggling ally and were understandably exasperated.87 To play down the role of Lend-Lease in the Soviet ability to wage war, Russian historiography often accuses the Western Allies of being hesitant to supply more advanced models of aircraft and instead of sending obsolete or substandard types of machines, which, moreover, had numerous faults.88 These assertions are far from groundless! Yet experts insist that an objective assessment should consider the general situation in Soviet aviation. Certain models of lend-lease aircraft were indeed inferior to the latest German and Soviet marks, but the latter were in the majority of cases at prototype (not production) stage and, at least initially, constituted only a small part of the Soviet arsenal. And while imported planes did contain defects, their Soviet counterparts revealed no fewer, and at times an even greater, number of deficiencies. Besides, it must be borne in mind, as Nikolai

170  Olga Kucherenko Danilov has put it, that an aircraft’s combat effectiveness depends not only on the design features but also familiarity with the new, foreign equipment as well as combat environment. Simply put, imported airplanes were not created for the harsh conditions of the Eastern Front, and the task of conversion was sometimes hindered by a lack of technical documentation in Russian as well as standardized tools. As for the coveted high-altitude Spitfire fighters, the lower altitude air battles on the Soviet-German front meant that they got only limited use anyway.89 Similarly, combat qualities of imported tanks were indeed inferior to their German and Soviet counterparts, but specialized research again urges a more nuanced approach.90 The simplistic understanding of allied aid extends to the matter of its compensation, so much so that a scholar called it “one of the main myths of LendLease.”91 Though professional historians by and large appreciate its mechanism, there are still those who are either astonishingly ignorant or willfully deceptive when using media platforms to educate the public on the matter. They claim that while other allies had their debt written off, Russia, as an heir to the USSR, is still saddled with its full repayment, although both countries have paid out seven percent of the total $11 billion, while the majority of the debt has also been cancelled.92 To illustrate, in a televized lecture, the former director of the Russian History Institute at the Academy of Sciences, Andrei Sakharov, proclaimed that the Americans demanded immediate repayment in gold already during the war. He continued: “The Americans knew how to count money and in this sense were completely shameless and cynical. Everything they requested was repaid, including in gold. Such were our allies!”93 Though the Soviets did use gold to pay for pre- and outside-lend-lease orders and services or as part of reverse Lend-Lease, politicians and public figures seize on the “gold for Lend-Lease” argument to promote their anti-Western views or political agendas, as do some popular writers.94 Old grudges are still firmly etched in Russians’ imagination, while opinionmakers render them less likely to fade away.

Conclusion There has always been a tendency in Soviet and now Russian popular and political discourse to emphasize the exceptional nature of the Soviet war effort, where the Western Allies play only a secondary role. The exclusivist narrative began to form already during the war under Stalin’s tutelage and was accepted at face value by the general public, who, though grateful for the allied material assistance, deemed military action more effective. Over the next half a century, the official tone might have altered depending on relations among the former allies, but the premise remained the same. Except when the reforming leadership was no longer interested in manipulating the collective memory of the Alliance. Amid the current stand-off between Russia and the West, the old ideas found new purpose, however. Clinging to the glory of the Soviet past to prop up its own reputation, the Putin administration makes sure that the nation, with only a vicarious experience of the war, sees it as a central part of its identity and a matter of considerable, if

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  171 unmerited, pride. As before, other claimants to Victory detract attention from the uniqueness of the Soviet (and now, evidently, Russian) war effort. Still, the allied contribution is much harder to sweep under the rug in the age of unprecedented access to information. Though the Putin administration’s overall ethos attempts to influence the historical debate, there emerges a promising trend to place the Soviet war experience within a global context to consider allied aid and eventual victory in the war from the perspective of the Alliance and its combined effort. This signifies a move away from the self-contained rhetoric of the Great Patriotic War toward seeing it as a major battleground in a larger, global conflict, involving many parties, each of whom, in their own way, helped deliver victory. The absence of a clearly defined state approach to portraying Lend-Lease allows for further erosion of the monolithic legacy of the war in Russia. That said, the state leaders’ increasing involvement in the historical debate, and the repressive methods they are willing to apply to uphold their version of the events, now codified in the Constitution, threaten to stifle the budding debate and put the country on a slippery slope toward the Stalinist approach to memory politics.

Notes

1 Edele, “Fighting,” 107. 2 Dubin, “Krovavaia.” 3 Kucherenko, “Their Overdue Landing.” 4 “Soiuzniki i Lend-Liz” Museum. Further see Knight, “Mrs. Churchill.” 5 Mann, “Contested Memory,” 68–71. 6 RGASPI f.17, op.125, d.23, l.72; Golubev and Porshneva, Obraz soiuznika, 329–30; “Pochemu,” Rodina, no. 4 (2005): 77–78. 7 Pechatnov, “The Rise”; Foglesong, The American Mission, 96, 99, 102–3, 111. 8 Johnston, Being Soviet, 92–93, 102; Mann, “Contested Memory,” 84–85, 309–10; Koldomasov, “Formirovanie,” 76–77, 79. 9 Johnston, Being Soviet, 95; Golubev, “Amerika,” 33–34; Koldomasov, “Sovetskaia,” 207. 10 Magadeev, “Sovetskaia,” 48; Johnston, Being Soviet, 105. 11 Golubev, “Amerika,” 35; Kucherenko, “Their Overdue Landing,” 227. 12 Tye, The Real Cold War, 102; Munting, “Lend-Lease,” 504. 13 RGASPI f.17, op.125, d.131, ll.132–36. 14 TNA INF 1/292, Home Intelligence Weekly Reports: 105, 126, 127, 129 (Appendix), 130–33, 139 (Appendix), 151, 152, 154, 158; Standley, Admiral, 341. 15 Golubev, “Amerika,” 43; Munting, “Lend-Lease,” 504. 16 Yakushevskii, “Zapadnaia,” 39. 17 Monin, “Vtoraia morovaia,” 149–50; Voznesenskii, Voennaia, 74. 18 Magnusdottir, “Bud’te”; Gilburd, “The Revival,” 374–75. 19 Istoriia, 48; Velikaia, 508. 20 Zubok and Shiraev, Anti-Americanism, 33. 21 Ibid., 45–61, 66, 71. 22 Koposov, Pamiat’, 140. 23 “Stenograficheskii otchet.” 24 Koposov, Pamiat’, 135. 25 Reese, “The Legacy,” 197. 26 Afanas’eva and Merkushin, “Velikaia,” 21; Drobzhev, “Falsifikatory,” 84. 27 “Razgovor.”

172  Olga Kucherenko 28 Gudkov, “Tsena.” 29 “Pomoshch’ soiuznikov”; “Russians about World War II”; Gudkov, “Pamiat’ ”; Opletina and Tripolsky “Velikaia.” 30 Putin, “The Real Lessons.” 31 Beria quoted in Weiner, “In the Long Shadow,” 448; Khrushchev quoted in Kucherenko, “Their Overdue Landing,” 237. For a contemporary claim, see “Viacheslav Volodin.” 32 “Stenograficheskii otchet”; “Vstrecha.” 33 Gudkov, “Pamiat’; Idem, “Tsena.” 34 See also Konkka, “Memory”; Idem, “Russian internal narrative,” 70. 35 “V Rostove otkryli”; “Prezident Rossii”; Johnston, Being Soviet, 110. 36 “Soiuzniki and Lend-Liz” Museum. 37 “Frontovoe bratstvo”; “Vystavka ‘Pomni. . .’.” 38 Chichkin, Neizvestnye; Brilev, Zabytye. 39 Opletina and Tripolsky, “Velikaia,” 124; Afanas’eva and Merkushin, “Velikaia”; Repina, “Opyt”; Chernova, “Istoricheskaia”; Volovatov, “Dve voiny.” 40 Krawatzek, “World War II,” 7, 19–20; Reese, “The Legacy.” 41 “Monitoring”; Merkushin, “Velikaia.” 42 Edele, “Fighting,” 98; Uskova, “Ministerstvo”; “Iskazhenie istorii.” 43 Afanas’eva and Merkushin, “Velikaia,” 16; Volovatov, “Dve voiny”; Chernova, “Istoricheskaia”; Seniavskaia, “Obraz voiny,” 326–28. 44 Drobzhev, “Fal’sifikatory”; Seniavskaia and Litvinenko, “Rol’ ”; Krasnozhenova, “Transiranskii,” 28. 45 Edele, “Who Won,” 12. 46 Pozdeeva, “Lend-Liz”; Ryzhkov, “Faktor,” 36–37, 40. 47 Bystrova, Lend-Liz, 19–20; Popov, “Voenno-ekonomicheskoe,” 39. 48 Danilov, “Znachenie,” 245; Magadeev, “Sovetsko-germanskii”; McLaine, Ministry of Morale, 196; Lytton, “In the House”; Kahn, “From Assured Defeat”; Foglesong, The American Mission, 96. 49 Bystrova, Lend-Liz, chs. 2, 5. On the refurbishment of the receiving facilities, see Krasavtsev, “Problemy”; Monin, “Dorogami”; Krasnozhenova, “Transiranskii,” 32; Amusin and Sopin, “Sovetskie”; Dobrynin, “Alaska-Sibir’.” 50 Danilov, “Znachenie”; Popov, “Voenno-ekonomicheskoe,” 41; Bystrova, Lend-Liz, 20–21, 28, ch2. 51 Suprun, “Znachenie,” 13; Butenina, Lend-Liz, 119–20. 52 Pozdeeva, “Lend-Liz,” 276; Pechatnov, “Istoriografiia,” 18. 53 Pozdeeva, “The Soviet Union,” 161. Also see, Krasnozhenova, “Transiranskii,” 27; Kumanev, Rassekrechennye, 293. 54 Velikaia Otechestvennaia, 2014, 601. 55 Frolov, Velikaia, 79–80. 56 Ryzhkov, “Faktor,” 40. 57 Bariatinskii, Tanki, 79–84; Sokolov, Pravda; Popov, “Voenno-ekonomicheskoe,” 45. 58 Popov, “Voenno-ekonomicheskoe,” 40. 59 Suprun, “Znachenie,” 13–14; Danilov, “Aviatsionnye,” 7; Butenina, Lend-Liz, 121–22. 60 Hill, The Great Patriotic War, 187. 61 Komarkov, “Lend-Liz”; Sokolov, Pravda; Bariatinskii, Tanki; Suprun, “Znachenie,” 12; Butenina, Lend-Liz, 185–86. 62 Sokolov, Pravda; Bariatinskii, Tanki; Popov, “Voenno-ekonomicheskoe,” 48; Butenina, Lend-Liz, 151–54. 63 Suprun, “Znachenie,” 16; Komarkov, “Tekhnologii,” 220–21. 64 “Iz doklada,” 233–34. 65 Quoted in Butenina, Lend-Liz, 124.

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  173 66 Munting, “Lend-Lease,” 502–3. A major exception is the work of the Russian historian Mikhail Suprun. 67 Zhevalov, “Miasopostavki,” 293 (quotation); Shchagin, “Prodovol’stvie,” 522–23; Kumanev, Rassekrechennye, 293; Ryzhkov, “Faktor,” 42–43. 68 Popov, “Voenno-ekonomicheskoe,” 47. 69 Kucherenko, Little Soldiers, 158–59; Filtzer, ‘Smertnost’,” 196. 70 Suprun, “Prodovol’stvennye”; Gurina, “Prodovol’stvennyi”; Munting, “Lend-Lease,” 501–2. 71 Mikoyan quoted in Kumanev, Govoriat, 70; Khrushchev, Khrushchev, 248. 72 Interview, Irina Emelianova, September 1, 2020; Golubev and Porshneva, Obraz, 326– 28; Golubev, “Amerika,” 42; Joli, Pobeda, 84. 73 Seniavskaia, Protivniki, 205. 74 Makarov, “Zavetnyi”; Pozdeeva, “Lend-Liz,” 276. 75 Danilov, “Znachenie”; Idem, “Aviatsionnye,” 7; Golubev, “Amerika,” 41–2; Kucherenko, “A Fleeting Friendship.” 76 Pechatnov, “Istoriografiia,” 18. 77 Sherwood, Roosevelt, 408; Voznesenskii, Voennaia, 189–90. 78 Wilson, “The United States”; Alexander, “The United States.” 79 Nishimuta, “Nazi Economy.” 80 Starikov, “Lend-Liz naoborot”; Nersesov, Kak pereviraiut, ch.11; Medvedev, “Velikaia neizvestania”; Bezymenskii, Tainyi front; Falin, Vtoroi front; Seniavskaia and Litvinenko, “Rol’,” 57. 81 Murav’iova, “Lend-Liz,” 70; Ryzhkov, “Faktor,” 38. 82 Munting, “Lend-Lease,” 499–500; Butenina, Lend-Liz, 104. 83 “Velikaia Otechestvennaia, Lend-Lease.” 84 Munting, “Lend-Lease,” 498, 506; Butenina, Lend-Liz, 128, 139; Bystrova, Lend-Liz, 420, 423. 85 Hill, The Great Patriotic War, 171; Butenina, Lend-Liz, 180. 86 Bystrova, Lend-Liz, 45–7, 65–66, 74–78, 83–84, 105–6, 420, 426. 87 GARF f. 9401, op. 2, d. 64, ll. 2–5, 54–55; Krasavtsev, “Problemy”; Komarkov, “Lend-Liz,” 76; “Voenno-morskoi,” 45–6; Tye, Real Cold War, 165; Bystrova, LendLiz, 172–73, 418. 88 Ryzhkov, “Faktor,” 41; Shabel’nik, “Rol’,” 198. 89 Danilov, “Znachenie,” 248–50; “Aviatsionnye,” 8–9; Butenina, Lend-Liz, 122–23. 90 Bariatinskii, Tanki; Suprun, Lend-Liz, 52–53, 123; Hill, “British Lend-Lease,” 785–91, 797. 91 Monin, “Vtoraia mirovaia,” 155. 92 Biriukova, “Tsiklichnost’; Nersesov, Lend-Liz. Russia repaid its remaining lend-lease debt in 2006. For a detailed analysis of repayment negotiations see Butenina, LendLiz, 164–78. 93 Sakharov, “Diplomatiia.” 94 “Tiumenskii istorik; “Otvet”; Boyashov, Bansu.

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178  Olga Kucherenko Ryzhkov, N. “Faktor Lend-liza.” Kontury Global’nykh Transformatsii: Politika, Ekonomika, Pravo 8, no. 3 (2015): 34–47. Sakharov, A. “Diplomatia 1939–1945 gg.” Lecture 1, Rossiia Kul’tura, September 1, 2010. https://tvkultura.ru/video/show/brand_id/20898/ episode_id/156622/video_id/156622/ viewtype/. Seniavskaia, E. Protivniki Rossii v voinakh XX veka. Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2006. ———. “ ‘Obraz voiny’ v massovom soznanii i istoricheskoi pamiati: voprosy teorii i metodologii.” Opyt mirovoi voiny v istorii Rossii, edited by I. Tsarskyi. Chelyabinsk: Kamennyi Poyas, 2007. Seniavskaia, E. and V. Litvinenko. “Rol’ Lend-liza i vtorogo fronta vo Vtoroi mirovoi voine: Mify i real’nost’ v istoriografii i politicheskom diskurse.” Bylye Gody, no. 2 (2010): 49–58. Shabel’nik, N. “Rol’ Lend-liza v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Sovremennye otsenki.” Gramota 1, no. 63 (2016): 196–99. Shchagin, E. “Prodovol’stvie Podedy: ob’emy gosudarstvennykh zagotovok, zakupok i soiuznicheskogo lend-liza.” In Ocherki istorii Rossii, ee istoriografii i istochnikovedeniia (konets XIX—seredina XX vv.), edited by E. Shchagin. Moscow: VLADOS, 2008. Sherwood, R. Ruzvel’t i Gopkins glazami ochevidtsa. Moscow: Inostrannaia Literatura, 1958. Shiraev, E. and V. Zubok. Anti-Americanism in Russia: From Stalin to Putin. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. “Soiuzniki i Lend-Liz.” Museum. Accessed June 5, 2020. www.lend-lease.ru/index. php?option=com_content&task=view&id=13&Itemid=9. Sokolov, B. Pravda o Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine (Sbornik statei). St. Petersburg: Aleteia, 1989. http://militera.lib.ru/research/sokolov1/index.html. Standley, W. H. Admiral Ambassador to Russia. Chicago: H. Regnery Co., 1955. Starikov, N. “Lend-Liz naoborot ili kak Zapad pomogal Gitleru.” Personal Blog, May 8, 2019. https://nstarikov.ru/sovsem-drugoj-lend-liz-sovest-protiv-deneg-103513. “Stenograficheskii otchet o vstreche s delegatami Vserossiiskoi konferentsii prepodavatelei gumanitarnykh i obshchestvennykh nauk.” Prezident Rossii, June 21, 2007. http:// kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24359/audios. Suprun, M. “Prodovol’stvennye postavki v SSSR po lend-lizu v gody Vtoroi mirovoi voiny.” Otechestvennaia istoriia, no. 3 (1996): 46–54. ———. “Znachenie severnykh konvoev v organizatsii voenno-ekonomicheskogo sotrudnichestva SSSR i soiuznikov v 1941–1945.” Upravlencheskoe konsul’tirovanie, no. 2 (2005): 10–20. “Tiumenskii istorik posovetoval Shevchenko proiti cherez Kolymu 30-kh godov.” Nash gorod, May 6, 2019. https://nashgorod.ru/news/politics/06-05-2019/tyumenskiy-istorikposovetoval-shevchenko-proyti-cherez-kolymu-30-h-godov. Tye, C. B. The Real Cold War. Gillingham: Tye, 1995. Uskova, T. “ ‘Ministerstvo pamiati’: kak s pomoshchiu ‘obshchestvennoi organizatsii’ Vladimir Medinskii zavladel proshlym.” MBK Media, January 27, 2020. https://mbknews.appspot.com/suzhet/ministerstvo-pamyati/. “V Rostove otkryli memorial’nuiu dosku Klementine Spenser-Cherchill’.” DW, April 22, 2016. www.donnews.ru/V-Rostove-otkryli-memorialnuyu-dosku-Klementine-SpenserCherchill_24475. Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945, vol. 9. Moscow: Voenizdat, 2014. “Velikaia Otechestvennaia, Lend-Lease.” YouTube, June 22, 2019. www.youtube.com/ watch?v=KbQm_mjXHsY.

Lend-Lease in war and Russian memory  179 Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina Sovetskogo Soiuza 1941–1945: Kratkaia Istoriia. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1984. Volovatov, V. “Dve voiny: Rossiiane putaiut daty Vtoroi mirovoi i Velikoi Otechestvennoi.” Izvestiia, August 29, 2019. https://iz.ru/915299/vitalii-volovatov/dve-voiny-rossiianeputaiut-daty-vtoroi-mirovoi-i-velikoi-otechestvennoi. Voznesenskii, N. Voennaia ekonomika SSSR v period Otechestvennoi voiny. Moscow: ­Gospolitizdat, 1948. “Vstrecha s molodymi uchenymi i prepodavateliami istorii.” Prezident Rossii, November 5, 2014. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/46951. “Viacheslav Volodin: Praviteliam, kotorye zateiali peresmotr istorii, nikto ne podast ruku.” Gosudarstvennaia Duma, November 21, 2019. http://duma.gov.ru/news/47049/. “Vystavka ‘Pomni. . .’.” Rossiskoe Voenno-Istoricheskoe Obshchestvo, February 5, 2015. https://rvio.histrf.ru/activities/muzei_vystavki/item-1465. Weiner, A. “In the Long Shadow of War: The Second World War and the Soviet and PostSoviet World.” Diplomatic History 25, no. 3 (2001): 443–56. Wilson, T.A. “The United States: Leviathan.” In Allies at War: The Soviet, American, and British Experience, 1939–1945, edited by D. Reynolds et al. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994. Yakushevskii, A. “Zapadnaia istoriografiia Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza: Etapy i osnovnye kontseptsii.” In Summary of Doctor Habilitat Diss. Vienna: Institut Voennoi Istorii, 1997. Zhevalov, S. “Myasopostavki v SSSR v gody Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny 1941–1945.” Prepodavatel’ XXI vek, no. 2 (2017): 287–97.

8 Politicizing war memorialization in Soviet and post-Soviet Sevastopol Karl D. Qualls

The chief thing is the happy conviction that you carry away with you—the conviction that Sevastopol cannot be taken, and not only that it cannot be taken, but that it is impossible to shake the spirit of the Russian people anywhere—and you have seen this impossibility not in the numerous traverses of breastworks, and winding trenches, mines, and guns piled one upon the other without rhyme or reason, as it seemed to you, but in the eyes, the speech, the mannerisms, and in what is termed the spirit of the defenders of Sevastopol.1 Lev Tolstoy 2014 is in many ways special for Sevastopol, since 230 years ago the city acquired its name by the order of Empress Catherine, in addition, September will mark the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. There is also a round date associated with the Great Patriotic War: exactly 70 years ago, the city was liberated from the Nazi invaders. I am sure that 2014 will also be included in his chronicle, in the chronicle of our entire country, as the year when the people living here firmly determined to be together with Russia. Thus, they confirmed their loyalty to the historical truth and the memory of our ancestors. There is still a lot of work ahead, but all difficulties can be overcome together.2 Vladimir Putin

Separated by over 150 years, young soldier-journalist Lev Tolstoy and Russian President Vladimir Putin both discussed in the epigraphs above a trait that made Sevastopol’s residents special: a spirit that binds them to the city and their tireless defense of, or desire to unite with, Russia. This persistent image of stalwart defense of Russia and Russians has remained resilient since the Crimea War. It formed a central justification of Putin’s illegal—but mostly welcomed—­occupation of the city. Observers should not be stunned, however, by Putin’s connection between the Crimean War and World War II; the trope of the “two great defenses,” manufactured in the early days of the Nazi invasion, has been central to Sevastopol’s urban biography for decades with surprisingly little variation despite political vicissitudes. Putin timed his speech (quoted above) in Sevastopol on Victory Day (9 May) 2014, just over two months after the invasion, to coincide with his revival of

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  181 Russian nationalism. This thrust Sevastopol’s history of military feats in service of Russia into the spotlight and redefined Sevastopol—or “City of Glory” in Greek—as a Russian hero city now “liberated” from Ukraine thanks to the demands of local residents. He has continued to link past and present and to draw the connection between Sevastopol and Moscow. In 2019, he laid flowers at the monument to a Crimean War admiral in Sevastopol after the reopening of a memorial complex to both defenses.3 The next year, following the COVID-19 pandemic delayed Victory Day celebration, he dismissed accusations of occupying the peninsula and asserted that the “people of Crimea have decided to reunite with Russia.”4 Putin has continued Tolstoy’s recognition of the distant past, the need for individual sacrifices, and the link between Russia and Sevastopol. When we study shifting narratives of war memorialization in Sevastopol and elsewhere, we find that commemoration and memorialization of past events teach us more about the time of commemoration than the events to which they refer. The path from Tolstoy to Putin is not a straight one and reflects the pragmatic and political choices of the people promoting war memorialization. After the destruction of 97 percent of the city during World War II, local urban planners rejected Moscow’s desire to create a museum city honoring the recent war and instead embedded the city’s longer naval heritage into the monuments and place names of the city. As Leonid Brezhnev and the World War II generation rose to power in the late 1960s, so too did the importance of that war in the city’s travel guidebooks, which taught visitors and locals alike a revised narrative of the urban biography while still recognizing the centrality of 19th-century heroism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, guidebooks in this Ukrainian city embraced capitalism and promoted heritage tourism together with beaches and eco-tourism to promote economic development. With Russian occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and the revival of Russian nationalism came yet another shift, returning to the centrality of defense of the Russian homeland without the participation of Ukrainian forces, as had been the tradition for decades. Throughout these repeated re-scriptings, World War II memorialization has not been able to break away from its 19th-century roots and thus grounds the urban biography in Russian— not Ukrainian or Soviet—history.

Examples for posterity In equating the defense of Sevastopol with a battle for Russia, Tolstoy emphasized everyday heroes who could become examples to future generations. For Tolstoy, heroic examples could be effective in catalyzing similar behavior in others. He continued the legacy of the city’s first monument, erected in 1839 to honor Captain A. I. Kazarskii’s miraculous defeat of the Turkish fleet ten years earlier, which states simply that his feats were “An Example for Posterity.” Later, earlySoviet mythmakers recast tales of Russian Orthodox saints that educated readers about proper behavior and the ability to overcome obstacles by developing their own pantheon from norm-busting workers, children who denounced their parents,

182  Karl D. Qualls pilots, Arctic explorers, and more. Many of these “symbolic heroes” were everyday people who were low- or semi-skilled and not highly political, and their stories were deployed to create a “society of the extraordinary.”5 Mythmakers during World War II thus drew on a long tradition of writing exalted stories of individuals. Most of the elements of Soviet hagiographies continued in Sevastopol’s war stories; however, the role of the Party no longer dominated each and every transformation to heroism as it had in the 1930s. Sevastopol lionized its own heroes who then joined the well-known Soviet examples of the Panfilov Guardsmen and Zoia Kosmodem’ianskaia who martyred themselves in defiance of the Nazi invasion.6 Most importantly, wartime reportage blended Russian pre-Revolutionary heroism, which was nearly always martial, with 1930s symbolic heroes who were conquering labor, enemies of the people, flight, and the vast stretches of the Arctic. Everyone had the potential to be a hero in wartime. After the lightning-quick and highly destructive Nazi offensive against Sevastopol in November and December 1941, mythmakers in the Soviet press began to link defense against the Nazis to that of the Crimean War.7 The connection between the two defenses heralded a particular urban biography, which often usurped the prominence of the Bolshevik Revolution and the establishing of Soviet power. Heroism in Sevastopol was about people and their feats, not political leaders. Connections between the “second defense” (World War II) and the first (Crimean War) emerged from the pens of journalists, writers, and military political officers in the early days of the siege. As Vice-Admiral F. S. Oktiabrskii, commander in charge of Sevastopol’s defense, reminded his readers in 1942, “To the glorious deeds of heroism performed by our fathers in the battles of Chesma, Sinope and Ochakov during the first defense of Sevastopol we have added the feats of the champions of this heroic epoch, which we call the Second defense of Sevastopol. . . . [I]n good time will these deeds of the numberless heroes of the Second defense of Sevastopol be woven into a brilliant fabric of legend, poem, verse and song by the Soviet people and its poets.”8 In order to encourage further sacrifice, Oktiabrskii, like Tolstoy earlier, realized that generations to come would erect great myths of the war to create a sense of place, belonging, and identification. Military men like Oktiabrskii initiated the mythmaking and cited both military valor and extraordinary feats by civilians, thus blending pre-Revolutionary and Soviet conceptions of heroism without lauding tsars or commissars over individual soldiers, sailors, and residents. Heroism, resistance, and self-sacrifice became synonymous with Sevastopol. Political officers and war correspondents related stories about suicide bombers, snipers, and civilians who refused to abandon their posts. Sevastopol’s newspapers also reminded their readers repeatedly, both during and after the war, of the city’s heroic history and tradition. On the day before liberation in May 1944, Krasnyi Chernomorets, the newspaper of the Black Sea Fleet, ran an article titled simply “Sevastopol.” It not only detailed the fierce fighting in and around the city but also retold the city’s ancient Greek and Turkic origins.9 In the days following liberation, as the first sailors and residents made their way back to the rubble of the city, the fleet’s newspaper described Sevastopol as the “glory of the Russian soul.”

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  183 It fused stories of Crimean War heroes, including admirals P. S. Nakhimov and V. A. Kornilov, the valiant sailor Petr Koshka, and nurse Dasha Sevastopolskaia— the Russian counterpart to Florence Nightingale—with the new heroes of the ­second defense.10 New heroes included the “Five Black Sea Men,” private Devitiarov, and Ivan Bogatyr and his crew in Pillbox No. 11 who refused to surrender when overwhelmed and gave their lives to kill more fascists. Ivan Golubets risked his life to throw bombs overboard from his ship engulfed in flames before they exploded in the fire and wreaked havoc on the ships docked nearby. Maria Baida transformed herself from nurse to soldier after she saw the suffering of the men to whom she tended. The tale of the “Russian” hero Bogdan Khmelnitsky inspired the sniper Liudmila Pavlichenko’s great feats.11 A woman who refused to abandon the city and instead carried flowers to her husband’s grave each day amidst the bombardment became a “symbol of the faithfulness of [soldiers’] wives, of the friendship of their sisters, of the solicitude of their mothers.”12 A store manager who tried to save her burning store, caught on fire, and then exclaimed, “Are you crazy! What are you doing?! That water is for emergencies only!” when bystanders doused her with a barrel of water.13 Readers were told that duty to fellow citizens, soldiers, and the city—not party-mindedness—motivated this new generation of wartime heroes. Newsreels moved heroes and martyrs from paper to celluloid; city planners later immortalized them in stone. Narrating the film Battle for Sevastopol (1944), radio personality Iurii Levitan described Sevastopol as a “City of ancient glory; Sevastopol, the legendary city; A city of Russian glory; A hero city.” He repeated the same phrases throughout the 35-minute chronicle, interspersed with exhortations of: “Our Sevastopol.”14 Thus, like Oktiabrskii and later Putin, he equated “our” Sevastopol with Russia, heroism, and a long tradition of sacrifice. Near the end of the film, the audience saw Soviet fighters firing their guns in celebration atop the neoclassical gates of Count’s Wharf and its inscription “1846,” the date of the wharf’s construction. Scenes atop Count’s Warf and the Crimean War Panorama linked the heroes of Sevastopol’s past, the “ancient glory” of the “legendary city” mentioned by Levitan, and the great defenders of Sevastopol’s present, thereby creating an unbroken chain of heroism. As late as 1948, the local newspaper still reminded its readers of the city’s history and its heroes in articles titled “The Glorious Revolutionary Tradition of Sevastopoltsy and Black Sea Sailors” and “City of Russian Glory,” both of which linked the present with pre-1917 heroes.15 Just as writers and filmmakers took their cue from Tolstoy, Sevastopol’s sculptors, architects, and city planners had Kazarskii’s “Example for Posterity” and Crimean War memorials to provide guidance. Sevastopol had long been a city of memorials and monuments, and maintaining that tradition became paramount in the postwar period to create visible connections between past and present.16 Future generations could learn visually about their city’s heritage from the countless monuments and memorials throughout the city. An extraordinary number of modest statues, plaques, and obelisks appeared in the months after liberation from

184  Karl D. Qualls the Nazis. Fifteen years later, after urban reconstruction neared completion and more abundant resources allowed larger memorials and monuments to be built, Sevastopol opened a new diorama and museum at Sapun Gora to make the collective feats of World War II as visible as the Panorama of the Great Defense of 1854–1855. The Eternal Flame lit at the diorama’s opening came from that at the Crimean War site of Malakhov Kurgan, thereby “symbolizing the continuity of glorious combat traditions.”17 Military and local officials took the lead in crafting a myth of Soviet Sevastopol and its citizens as an extension of the great Russian defenders of the Motherland who sacrificed everything for a greater good. Tolstoy had already offered up Russia as the Motherland for which Sevastopol fought. Propaganda in the 1930s stretched heroism to include nearly any civilian sacrifice that led to greater progress as defined by the Party. Sevastopol’s wartime mythmakers blended these and lauded military and civilian sacrifices that served the greater good and promoted the strength and interests of the Motherland. Building on a pre-­Revolutionary tradition of memorializing military events in the city, writers, newsreel producers, and sculptors focused on individual and collective acts of heroism that became examples for the postwar construction workers who had to sacrifice their health and welfare while living in the ruins. It was now up to local planners and architects to rebuild.

Postwar rebuilding Because of its status as the base of the Black Sea Fleet, Sevastopol’s resurrection was of the utmost importance. In 1943, Sovnarkom created the Committee on Architectural Affairs to supervise the reconstruction of important military, industrial, and population centers. For Sevastopol, this meant a competition between two of Moscow’s most prominent architects—Moisei Ginzburg and Grigorii Barkhin. Ginzburg, who represented the Academy of Architecture, created an outdoor museum to war and revolutionary heroes. Barkhin advocated sycophantic monumentalism honoring Stalin and powerful institutions such as the navy. He won the competition, but local leaders and even the navy (for which Barkhin worked) fought back. Frustrated with both men’s lack of attention to local needs for housing and tradition, municipal leaders challenged centrally constructed narratives and instead promoted a city that resembled its 19th-century neo-Greek aesthetic. Naval officials attacked Barkhin’s design for a new naval complex on the central hill that would have destroyed a church crypt with the remains of four prominent pre-Revolutionary admirals. Professional review boards, informed by local officials, eventually realized that Barkhin and Ginzburg lacked the specialized knowledge that only local officials could bring.18 States may make things legible, but locals make them intelligible by providing the local knowledge necessary for effective planning.19 The war created fluid populations and ravaged many markers of local space; architects, therefore, began to focus on crafting a “local” form rather than something that was inherently “national.” If new residents could gain a stronger tie to

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  185 a “hometown” (rodnoi gorod), they could develop an emotional attachment to the city and might be willing to work harder (and sacrifice more) to see it rebuilt. Sevastopol’s leaders, particularly successive postwar chief architects Georgii Lomagin and Iurii Trautman, used examples from posterity to their advantage. During a planning review in Moscow in late 1945, Trautman openly opposed many key elements of Barkhin’s plan and instead provided a local alternative that highlighted the city’s history and unique qualities.20 Trautman decried Barkhin’s ignorance of “local conditions and traditions.”21 Barkhin’s tabula rasa approach, argued Trautman, destroyed the “traditional places of rest for the citizens of Sevastopol and sailors” and was proof that Barkhin cared little for the traditions of the hero-city Sevastopol that had defended the Motherland for more than a century.22 The local architect argued for reconstruction rather than Barkhin’s project that destroyed the city’s history in favor of erecting new, grandiose Party and government buildings. Barkhin’s project, Trautman asserted, would be both an aesthetic mistake and a waste of precious resources in a war-ravaged country. Trautman skillfully used the language of a November 1945 Sovnarkom decree that demanded rapid reconstruction of city centers, housing, and even valuable architecture.23 Trautman condemned Barkhin’s “abstract academism” and suggested that planners should start by understanding Sevastopol, its traditions, history, and the remaining built environment.24 Review panels in Moscow soon agreed with Trautman and followed his lead in denouncing Barkhin in much the same language. Architect A. Velikanov condemned Barkhin’s plan and lamented the destruction of Sevastopol’s tradition, history and the “distinctive, customary and most memorable places of Sevastopol. . . . These places entered literature, all the history of the city is connected with these places, even the city’s heroic defenses are connected with them. To change the city’s appearance means to fully destroy it, to make a new city, a different city, a city not having a continuous connection with the old Sevastopol.”25 Velikanov noted the importance, as did wartime writers, of keeping the city connected with its past and developing a sense of place and identification. To “change the city’s appearance” would mean that the historic Sevastopol and its sacrifice for the Motherland so important to Russian history would cease to exist. V. V. Baburov, head of the Main Directorate for Planning and Constructing Cities, noted that Barkhin’s work was “connected with neither the traditions nor the scale and character of Sevastopol’s ensemble.”26 Speaking in the name of the population, Trautman convinced Moscow’s architectural elite who had previously supported Barkhin that honoring local history was the proper way forward.27 Trautman soon turned into a reality Vice-Admiral Oktiabrskii’s recommendation for “the naming of squares and main streets of Sevastopol [to] take into account the historical events and names of the organizers and heroes of the two defenses of Sevastopol.”28 During the reconstruction of the postwar decade, local officials successfully challenged Moscow’s plans for a Stalinist city and instead crafted a renewal of the city’s 19th-century Russian past. Casting Sevastopol as more than merely a World War II hero city allowed it to endure the vicissitudes of the coming decades.

186  Karl D. Qualls Like monuments, the naming and renaming of streets, squares, and parks were an integral part of the postwar program of urban agitation and identification and reflected political shifts.29 The Soviet obsession with making the revolution omnipresent led to the three streets of the central ring road taking the names of Lenin, Marx, and Frunze. Trautman changed the latter two to Bol’shaia Morskaia Street and Nakhimov Prospect. This transformation heralded a new emphasis on local identification, historical depth, and national pride. Frunze was essential to Sevastopol’s “liberation” from the Germans and Whites after the revolution, but he was not considered a “local” hero. Marx, of course, had no direct link to the city, only its ruling ideology. Admiral Nakhimov, on the other hand, stood atop the pantheon of heroes from the Crimean War. Bol’shaia Morskaia, much more than Marx, carried the city’s image as a naval port. Everywhere the military and naval traditions of the city took precedent, as the “territorialization of memory” proceeded in one of the USSR’s “sacred places.”30 Trautman similarly promoted the city’s 19th-century heritage when he renamed central squares. Nakhimov Square replaced the Square of the Third International, which Barkhin had tentatively called Parade Square. Neither an institution of world socialism nor the martial and functional nature of the square was acceptable; only the name of the city’s greatest admiral could adorn the square closest to the sea. Commune Square (the pre-Revolutionary Novoselskaia) reverted to the name of another naval hero, Admiral Ushakov. Even the Great October Revolution fell victim to the desire to make Sevastopol’s naval history ever-present. After World War II, Revolutionary Square took the name of M. P. Lazarev, the commander of the Black Sea Fleet at the end of the 18th century. Although reverting to pre-Revolutionary names could be viewed as abandoning socialist goals, Trautman realized that the city needed stability and rapid reconstruction. Resurrecting a unique, local character to which residents could attach their ideals and aspirations became one strategy of identification. Trautman’s building aesthetic followed from the city’s founding as the Greek city-state of Chersonesus (Khersones) 2500 years earlier.31 He could not have known that his changes would create a resilient urban biography that would endure numerous political shifts over the next 75 years. An emphasis on local history did not necessarily undermine a relational identification with the Soviet Union, which had become more identified with Russia since the late 1930s, because fighting for the Motherland included Soviet ideals of sacrifice, duty, and patriotism.32 Because World War II destruction and dislocation—physical, psychological, and ideological—were of the highest magnitude in cities such as Sevastopol and Stalingrad, it was imperative in the postwar decade to rebuild not only structures but also ties that bound state and society. The regime’s legitimacy and power had been questioned during the war, and it was imperative that new identifications be (re)constructed to restore allegiance. Much like one’s nationality could blend with identification as “Soviet,” the “individuality” of a given city and its history supported and complemented the greater Soviet supra-identification and helped to re-establish authority and traditional culture. While some cities, like Magnitogorsk, had primarily an economic identification, others, like Novgorod, based

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  187 their myth primarily on their heritage.33 Whether as a center of mining and metallurgy or of ancient Russian culture, each city served as a component of the larger Soviet whole. Thus, city residents could celebrate the unique and special role of their locale while still supporting central Soviet ideals of labor and culture. Over the next several decades, many writers re-scripted the symbolic architecture of monuments, buildings, and place names.

Transmitting the new urban biography in travel guidebooks As early as November 1944, realizing that symbolic references to the past needed clarification, A. N. Ivanov of the Crimean Administration for Architectural Affairs instructed all municipal architects to give lectures, reports, excursions, and radio and newspaper interviews on the significance of monuments and memorials.34 Local newspapers were filled with articles by chief architect Trautman, stories on the city’s history, and coverage of lectures by city officials. Moreover, school-age children took trips to sites as part of the regular curriculum. Veterans, local historians, and educators in Pioneer camps enlightened them further.35 Sevastopol’s streets, most of which are named for people and events in the city’s history, demonstrate that Oktiabrskii’s prediction that the “numberless heroes of the Second defense of Sevastopol [would] be woven into a brilliant fabric of legend” came true.36 Soviet guidebooks became a key vehicle for promoting knowledge-based travel. Local history, in a truncated and politically selective form, dominated. When authors addressed leisure they typically focused on cultural pursuits, and rarely did readers find much discussion of restaurants and shops, a feature that clearly separates Soviet guidebooks from their post-Soviet and contemporaneous capitalist counterparts.37 In Sevastopol’s guidebooks, entertainment was almost completely absent. Local history made the entire city into a museum of valor, sacrifice, and heroism. The blood of fallen soldiers and sailors had sanctified the soil for two centuries, thereby making Sevastopol a city of reverence, not revelry, for visitors. Much as in Western Europe, travel guides directed visitors to “what ought to be seen” on pilgrimages to quasi-sacred sites.38 Modern mass production and consumption (travel included) have led to “mass deception” of populations searching for authentic experiences in democratic, capitalist societies, yet the instructive nature of Soviet travel in general and the didactic motives of its guidebooks also created a mythologized world into which the readers/travelers could write themselves.39 Guidebooks generally balance past and present, but Soviet guidebooks devoted more attention to orienting visitors to the usable past. Guidebooks helped readers to navigate their way through cities, but the same books also helped readers navigate the past by educating, commemorating, and mythologizing the city and its symbolic image. In Sevastopol’s guidebooks, the “hero-city” formed the foundation for all other reporting on the city and its history. Sevastopol’s naval exploits in defending Russia and the Soviet Union during the Turkish Wars, the Crimean War, and World War II dominated. This selective presentation of the past that omitted peaceful

188  Karl D. Qualls times projected continuity and causality; focus on Sevastopol’s exploits during times of national emergency suggested a preordained fate to stand at the ready and sacrifice to protect the Russian/Soviet Motherland. Most of the guidebooks concluded with a suggested set of excursions that reinforced themes and allowed one to understand the city’s heritage and identity even if one read them without visiting. The turn-by-turn directions circumscribed the “reading” of the city, and although excursions varied among guidebooks, they all showed a conscious attempt to relate the sites of one period to another, especially the “two defenses.” In doing so, guidebooks reinforced the idea of continuity in the hero city and aided remembering and forgetting as politics changed. The “two defenses” were always remembered, while political leaders and regimes were quickly forgotten. The frequency with which Zakhar Chebaniuk published guidebooks in the 1950s and 1960s made him the primary voice on travel in Sevastopol in these decades. Similarly, Emiliia Doronina and her various co-authors dominated the travel literature of the wartime generation in power from the late 1970s until the end of the Soviet period. Although other authors published in these decades, the nature of Soviet publication led to a standard model illustrated most often by Chebaniuk and Doronina. The early post-Soviet era’s free press led to a multiplicity of voices far more varied than the mostly monolithic Soviet texts. The following examples thus address the presentation of Sevastopol in three eras roughly bounded by the reigns of Nikita Khrushchev and the interregnum (Chebaniuk), Leonid Brezhnev (Doronina), and independent Ukraine. The multiple editions of Zakhar Chebaniuk’s Sevastopol’: istoricheskie mesta i pamiatniki (1955, 1957, 1962, 1966) offer the best example of “forgetting.” In the chapter “Hero-City Sevastopol” of the 1955 edition, Chebaniuk noted Stalin’s approval of the “selfless struggle of the Sevastopoltsy [who] serve as an example of heroism for all the Red Army and Soviet people.”40 The following year, Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech,” in which he denounced Stalin’s cult of personality and numerous crimes against the Party, necessitated the omission of any direct reference to Stalin in the 1957 and subsequent editions, despite Stalin’s praise of Sevastopol’s heroism.41 We may never know if censors demanded the change, but Chebaniuk likely exercised internal censorship rather than risk running afoul of authorities. In 1955, the head of the Party (Khrushchev) and state (Kliment Voroshilov) and others attended Sevastopol’s centennial celebration of the Crimean War’s conclusion. Voroshilov celebrated the “city of glorious warriors and revolutionary traditions” that “personifies the greatness and glory of our people.” Khrushchev praised the military feats of the “glorious sons of our great Motherland” and also the “glorious activity of laborers in the struggle for the restoration of the city . . . and further strengthening of the military forces of the Black Sea Fleet.”42 Both men used “our” to connect Sevastopol with the Motherland, and Khrushchev linked a century of military feats with the equally daunting reconstruction tasks of the postwar decade and the ongoing need for military strength during the Cold War.

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  189 Voroshilov, having suffered several humiliating demotions since 1960, disappeared from the 1962 edition and only Khrushchev remained. This edition enumerated the numerous economic and industrial changes in the city, which reminded the reader that Khrushchev’s economic decentralization would make Sevastopol even more prosperous in the near future and “transform hometown Sevastopol into a city of communist labor, of exemplary order and high culture.”43 Readers found that the new political elite was mindful of Sevastopol’s importance to the larger Soviet Union and recognized the city’s special mission and traditions of sacrifice, hard work, and high culture. Chebaniuk’s 1966 edition, following Khrushchev’s ouster two years earlier, eliminated references to Khrushchev, Voroshilov, and Stalin and refrained from taking sides in the struggle for power eventually won by Leonid Brezhnev. Although no one likely read these editions side by side, the reader of any given volume except the 1966 edition found the leader du jour lauding Sevastopol’s heroic past and its century-long history of selflessly serving the Motherland. Statements praising Sevastopol’s past served to legitimize the city’s importance to resident and nonresident readers alike and to provide a context for the newly arrived workers and sailors. How readers understood and interpreted the signals is impossible to tell. Descriptions of the historical sites and their meanings remained intact in Chebaniuk’s multiple editions even as political changes necessitated reprinting to legitimize the new leader and discredit his predecessor. Sevastopol’s role and place in history remained consistent while the leaders who praised it fell from favor. When we see that key historical themes persist, despite political changes over time, it reinforces the central importance of memorializing everpresent sacrifice and heroism. Guidebooks also actively created a selective “remembering” of the past based on the needs of the present. In addressing the Turkish Wars and the Crimean War, authors across the decades could remain consistent in the types of sites they highlighted and the language they used to describe the themes of heroism and sacrifice. Coverage of the revolutionary period and World War II, however, varied dramatically among guidebooks as the World War II generation moved into and out of power. For example, post-World War II guidebooks emphasized sacrifice, teamwork, unity, and symbolic defiance against great odds in describing Sevastopol’s earliest monument.44 In May 1829, Alexander Kazarskii decided to blow up his ship’s magazine rather than surrender to two Turkish battleships. Chebaniuk reminded his readers that “in an uneven fight an eighteen-gun Russian brig won a victory over an enemy that had more than a tenfold superiority in artillery.”45 Similarly, Emiliia Doronina, writing in the late 1970s and 1980s, called Kazarskii’s feat an “example of fortitude to the warriors of the two defenses,” which the Soviet Black Sea Fleet was continuing.46 Doronina not only consciously connected her readers to the past but also showed the continuity of behavior from Kazarskii to the present. A 2001 guidebook noted that the inscription “An example for posterity” on the pedestal of Kazarskii’s 1839 monument came from Tsar Nicholas I, an admission unthinkable in Soviet times.47 Moreover, Kazarskii now

190  Karl D. Qualls represented a democratic choice because the city’s first monument was “dedicated not to an emperor or an admiral, but to a captain-lieutenant!”48 Veneration of the Crimean War became the first full-scale memorialization project in Sevastopol with three sites of memory dominating guidebooks: the Monument to Scuttled Ships (1905), Malakhov Kurgan (1855), and the Panorama and Museum of the Great Defense (1905). The monument to ships scuttled to prevent the British and French navies from entering Sevastopol Bay, although not the first monument, is undoubtedly the most beloved in Sevastopol. It is the “emblem of the city of Russia glory-Sevastopol” offshore near the mouth of South Bay and “reminds everybody of the sorrowful but important event.”49 It continued the legacy of “the sailors [who] served as examples for all participants in the defense” and has become “the emblem of Sevastopol, its visiting card.”50 Whether on book covers, postcards, websites, or the many canvases of artists, this picturesque monument has remained the symbol of the city for over a century. Malakhov Kurgan is the site of the September 1855 battle that led to the fall of Sevastopol in the Crimean War. Initially a mass burial site, it soon became a site of Crimean War memorials and now contains an Eternal Flame commemorating the World War II siege of Sevastopol and several monuments to the second defense. The Museum of the Great Defense in the city center commemorates the Crimean War siege and contains one of the world’s largest panoramas of a battle scene. Like Kazarskii’s heroism, the scuttling of the fleet and other Crimean War tales served explicitly as “examples” of fortitude and sacrifice against a superior force. Unlike the Crimean War, the city’s revolutionary heritage played a remarkably minor role in guidebooks despite the centrality of many local events to the Soviet revolutionary mythology. The mythic unity of Lenin and the Revolution found less resonance after the war.51 The 1905 Revolution and the “Battleship Potemkin” are an important part of the city’s biography and the residents’ heritage, but coverage varied greatly among Soviet guidebooks and rarely amounted to more than a few pages. In post-Soviet Ukraine, authors further marginalized the revolutionary tradition. In 2001, Alexander Dobry lamented that children knew little about the revolutionary movement but by devoting only three pages to it Dobry contributed further to its marginalization. Other post-Soviet authors rejected the revolutionary past entirely, noting how it ushered in “one of the most excruciating periods” of Russian history.52 Another author went further and called the 1917 Revolution and Civil War “a microscopic, laughable segment of time in the scale of history. . . . Horrible! . . . Bloody! . . . Destructive!”53 Forty-six of the monuments, plaques, and memorial places dedicated to the events and people of these uprisings were erected only after World War II, which suggests that memorialization of the events had been an afterthought and not a deeply felt part of the city’s character.54 Erected during a time in which the Party was trying to recapture its dominance and recentralize authority, monuments to revolutionary heroes seemed both hollow and suspect.55 As other scholars have noted, World War II became the defining event for a new generation of Soviet citizens, and guidebooks bear this out.56 Two-thirds of Sevastopol’s World War II monuments were erected in the 1960s and 1970s

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  191 as the war generation moved into power and began to shift the use of the war myth.57 Whereas Khrushchev had promoted a populist understanding of the war as the work of millions of heroic individuals to counter Stalin’s “cult of personality,” Brezhnev mobilized a “cult of the Great Patriotic War” to counteract youth culture, the Prague Spring, and other events that threatened to destabilize the regime. We see this most clearly in Novorossiisk where the myth of Brezhnev’s World War II exploits in the city co-opted other commemorations and recast war memory in the city.58 While one could pass this off as the Soviet norm of refashioning history, a more balanced interpretation could see it as part of a typical process of inventing tradition and history common in capitalist democracies too.59 Prior to Brezhnev’s era, Chebaniuk focused primarily on individual heroes and thereby personalized the war for his audience. He highlighted five members of the naval infantry martyred in an “unparalleled duel” as they destroyed 16 tanks by themselves and thus “fulfilled their debt” as they fought to their death.60 Writing during the rise of the World War II generation to power, Doronina also recounted the feats of these “five daring Black Sea sailors” and their ability twice to repel the German advance against all odds.61 The fighters in Pillbox No. 11 similarly staged a valiant defense against all odds. Both Chebaniuk and Doronina highlighted their feats and included their oath. Chebaniuk reported the full oath, but Doronina distilled it to its three main points: “Under no condition surrender to captivity. Fight the enemy the Black Sea way (po-chernomorskii), to the last drop of blood. Be brave, masculine to the end.” Writing after the Secret Speech, she omitted point one of the oath that repeated Stalin’s infamous directive to take “not one step back.” The younger generations reading these texts were to be told that all were brave and all were heroes and that when the time came, Sevastopol and its defenders would fight po-chernomorskii and emulate those feats and fulfill their debt to future generations like a dying soldier named Kaliuzhnyi who wrote “My Motherland! Russian land! . . . I kept my oath.”62 Not surprisingly for a city already near the center of Russian national identity for two great defenses, Kaliuzhnyi’s sacrifice was for his “Russian land.” Early post-Soviet guidebooks omitted all monuments to individual World War II heroes; however, the individual still mattered because 19th-century naval heroes were discussed at length. Twenty-first-century guides accommodated the time-sensitive tourist by including mostly the centrally located monuments. The Memorial to the Heroes of the Defense in World War II lists various heroes of the Soviet Union but with its Eternal Flame lit from the Malakhov Kurgan flame it honors all who fought and died for Sevastopol in the Crimean War too. Because it is sited on Nakhimov Square, it draws a connection between the two defenses. The Hero-City Obelisk and Monument to Victory also honor the city and all who fought for it. The Sapun Gora complex is the only World War II site outside the city center to merit inclusion in most of the post-Soviet guidebooks. However, the chief novelty of post-Soviet guidebooks is the embrace of capitalism by drawing readers’ attention to hotels, resorts, beaches, eco-tourism, restaurants, and other leisure and entertainment not connected to heritage.

192  Karl D. Qualls

Persistence of memory and the return of Russia Over a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the images created during the Soviet period and the guidebooks it produced should have faded as the generation that survived the war and supported the Soviet Union diminished in number. Just as the memory of the Crimean War persisted into the Soviet period, so too the images of the Soviet Union and World War II persisted in independent Ukraine. The giant statue of Lenin still towered over the city from the high central hill, and his name still graced one of the streets that make up the central ring road and administrative region. Heroes from the Crimean War, the revolutionary period, and World War II continued to be honored with streets in their names as Sevastopol shunned the iconoclasm so common in eastern Europe in the 1990s.63 The persistence and perpetuation of memory reached a crescendo in 2003– 2004. As Sevastopol turned 220 years old, it celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Crimean War and the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Sevastopol (May) and Ukraine (October). Tourists, including Prince Philip of Great Britain, flocked to the city to commemorate various events. Newspapers from the communist Sevastopol’skaia pravda to the more mainstream Slava Sevastopolia and Sevastopol’skaia gazeta carried historical articles about the two mid-century defenses and remembrances from veterans of the latter one. Television channels aired reports on the various celebrations as well as brief documentaries. Posters lined store windows, and publications on the Crimean War and World War II filled bookstore shelves. The interested buyer could even buy multilingual postcards celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Crimean War. The fold-out cards had historical images adjacent to the same scene from the present.64 Thus, the education of the traveler about Sevastopol’s past continued. Interest in local history was still prominent, but the depth of remembrance seemed to be giving way. In 2004, 42 teams of students from the city matched wits in “intellectual games” about ancient and medieval Khersones, the Crimean War, and the region’s nature.65 Over seven hundred young students from Donets Oblast “visited historical and memorial places, [and] placed flowers at the Memorial of Hero Defenders of Sevastopol in 1941–1942.”66 The naval news program “Reflection” also reported on the visit of a school group from St. Petersburg studying the city as a Russian naval outpost and the birthplace of Orthodox Christianity for the East Slavs.67 Despite these events, teenagers interviewed at various sites of memory around the city in 2004 generally recognized the names of some of the prominent events and people in the city’s history like those discussed earlier, but few could elaborate on why they had been honored with monuments. Conversely, most of the residents in their mid-thirties and older provided detailed (if not always completely accurate) synopses of the events in question.68 Because Sevastopol’s history is so intimately tied to Russian history, this waning of local knowledge, particularly among youth, threatened the connection between heroism of the Black Sea Fleet and Russia’s present and future. Putin’s heightened attention to nationalist and patriotic education in both schools and the media after he returned to the presidency in 2012 served as a justification for not only

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  193 the conquest of Ukrainian Crimea but also the renewed interest in Victory Day celebrations, which had waned at the end of the previous century. When Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, he justified the action, after first denying Russian involvement, as national self-determination and a unification of Ukrainian Russians with Mother Russia, the homeland. Whereas this led to war in eastern Ukraine, in Crimea the takeover was relatively easy and in Sevastopol it was warmly welcomed. We can explain this in part by the deep commitment to memorializing Russian and Soviet war heroes and the relatively sparse Ukrainization of the memorial landscape in Sevastopol after 1991. At the beginning of the new millennium, Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma and Putin appeared at the reopening of St. Vladimir Cathedral, and the city placed a statue to the Ukrainian literary hero Taras Shevchenko in front of the Gagarin regional administration building. The cathedral, largely restored with money from Moscow, was handed to the Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, not the Ukrainian church. When interviewed in 2004, local residents were happy that the cathedral was Russian Orthodox but less so about a monument to someone with no connection to the city. This was not Russophilia, they insisted, because they fully accepted monuments to Ukrainians, Armenians, Georgians, and others who fought and died defending the city. What they resented was a revered Ukrainian writer standing figuratively alongside military heroes simply because he was a symbol of the Ukrainian nation. Even faced with the momentous collapse of the Soviet Union, the city’s identity changed little because a standard set of images over five decades had created an indelible mark on public remembrance that was Russian or Soviet, but never Ukrainian. Whereas schools and local newspapers reinforced the central images, nonresidents had to rely on guidebooks as one of their main sources for understanding Sevastopol and its role in Russian and Soviet history. Much like in the guidebooks themselves, politics was a mere veneer over the more deeply felt affinities, so monuments like the one to Shevchenko neither connected to the urban biography nor fit within the dominant memorialization— wartime sacrifice—in the post-Soviet Ukrainian city. A decade later, in 2014, Sevastopol became not only a city with a Russian heritage but also one now administered as a Russian city. Putin followed the takeover of Crimea with a visit to its most important city and base of the Black Sea Fleet to celebrate Victory Day with Sevastopol’s residents. Flanked by aged and bemedaled World War II veterans, Putin took pride of place in front of an audience of 380,000 people, including 100,000 visitors to the city. According to one newspaper, “a crowd like this in the center of the hero city has not been seen for a long time” and “judging by the abundance of tricolors, our fellow [Russian] countrymen were especially inspired by the fact that Sevastopol celebrated the 70th anniversary of its liberation as part of the Russian Federation.”69 It also ended the tradition of unified marching of Russian and Ukrainian sailors from the two fleets in Sevastopol’s bays. The parade started with the arrival of the Victory Banner and the flag of the Russian Federation, thus equating one with the other. After speeches from military commanders, the procession of military materiel began, followed by veterans and then the Immortal Regiment. Putin arrived in the

194  Karl D. Qualls afternoon with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and made the speech that began this chapter. Putin retained the long-standing tradition of creating a thread of heroism from the Crimean War through World War II to the present while also suggesting that the city began at the behest of a Russian empress, rather than more than 2000 years earlier as a Greek city-state. He also invoked the loyalty of Sevastopol’s residents in understanding and honoring this “truth.” He concluded by calling again on the city’s residents to sacrifice “together” for the greater good of Russia and “our ancestors,” thus drawing together Sevastopol, Russia, and its past and future under Putin’s rule. “All difficulties,” he insisted, “can be overcome together.”70 Three months later, thousands of bikers, led by the Russian nationalist Night Wolves motorcycle club, descended on Sevastopol for “The Return” bike show; the next year they staged a World War II re-enactment.71 Aggressive nationalism now became the norm. This all stands in sharp contrast to 2013, the last celebration under Ukrainian authority. Only about 50,000 people participated in the parade, both the Russian and Ukrainian fleets marched, and two hooligans vandalized the Crimean War memorial at Malakhov Kurgan so they could get more “likes” on social media. Worst of all, according to the police, the teenagers did not know the city’s history and that Malakhov Kurgan was the site of a major Crimean War battle.72 Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych arrived the day before the parade to open a bridge that the press lamented had been planned for the 1990s, thus not so subtly critiquing Ukrainian leadership.73 Moreover, municipal officials had not contacted veterans about participating in the parade.74 The Malakhov Kurgan memorial complex had fallen into disrepair during the period of Ukrainian sovereignty and even the Eternal Flame had been removed. The city staged a thorough refurbishment of this site of Russian valor after the takeover, and in March 2019 Putin visited the refurbished museum complex at Malakhov Kurgan and laid flowers at the foot of the monument to Crimean War Vice-Admiral Vladimir Kornilov (d. 1854).75 At the same time the Russian Federation was rehabilitating this memorial complex, only 50,000 people participated in the 2018 Victory Day parade, thus returning to 2013 levels.76 The excitement about Russian sovereignty in 2014 and the nationalization of memorialization seemed to have worn off quickly. The following year, the traditional laying of wreaths and flowers at the Eternal Flame at the Memorial of the Heroic Defense of Sevastopol 1941–1942 preceded a military parade. Yet even on this 75th anniversary of Sevastopol’s liberation, the Immortal Regiment grew by only 5000 more participants than the year prior.77 The 75th anniversary of the war’s end in 2020 was supposed to be a massive occasion. However, the COVID-19 pandemic first caused a delay and then a scaled-back event. Rather than a grand parade in May, in Sevastopol “Victory parades . . . came to the courtyards of frontline soldiers” and the Immortal Regiment “ ‘walked’ by windows, loggias and balconies” of veterans.78 When postponed national celebrations resumed six weeks later, “neither the annoying summer rain, nor the hated threat of a pandemic” could threaten the “tremendous unity of souls and hearts” in Sevastopol “Indestructible! Eternal!”79 Sevastopol

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  195 participated in the “Honor and Dignity” project, which was initiated in St. Petersburg and takes place in “hero cities and cities of military glory. . . [that are] united by the greatness of the feat [and] pay tribute to the contribution of each region of our country to the victory over fascism.” The Eternal Flame at the Memorial Wall in honor of the heroic defense of Sevastopol 1941–1942 was sent to St. Petersburg’s Piskarevskoe cemetery. Torch lightings from the same Eternal Flame processed to the memorial complexes of the two great defenses of Malakhov Kurgan, at Nakhimov Square, Sapun Gora, and the Soldier and Sailor monument at Cape Khrustal’nyi.80 Connections across time and space were clear. As always, World War II and the Crimean War sacrifices were united, and Sevastopol was joined with Russia and the other hero cities that stood at the front of World War II defense. *** Throughout decades of political and juridical change, war memorialization in Sevastopol has remained relatively consistent. The city celebrates two centuries of defenses against aggressors with the “two great defenses” of the Crimean War and World War II taking pride of place. Despite Sevastopol’s role in the revolutionary movement and civil war, their memorialization has always come second to the greater wars. In the pre-Revolutionary, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods, local feats of valor have consistently been tied to protection of the Russian homeland. While many may see Putin’s shift from honoring individual heroes to mass participation on Victory Day—as with the Immortal ­Regiment— as a new co-optation of remembrance and memorialization for his own national agenda, in Sevastopol, it is part of a decades-long shift embedded in the city’s topography and transmitted through guidebooks. Not coincidentally, the delayed Victory Day celebration was one day before the start of voting on constitutional changes that included provisions to allow President Vladimir Putin to reign until 2036 and to mandate “patriotic education” in schools. However, the nexus among education, political power, and remembrance of the Second World War were not novel, particularly in “hero cities” like Sevastopol where it had started decades before. During World War II and its immediate aftermath, honoring individual acts of heroism was most common. Under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, memorialization moved toward honoring larger and larger groups to meet the two leaders’ political needs. Whereas nationally there was a decline in remembrance of the Great Patriotic War under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin (except the 50th anniversary in 1995), in Sevastopol, the second great defense remained important because it underpinned the port city’s history. So, when in 2014 Russia seized the city and Putin praised its long history of defense of Russia, it merely validated the 70-year-old urban biography created by postwar local leaders such as Iurii Trautman and Admiral Oktiabrskii who built upon Tolstoy and Kazarskii’s “example for posterity.” When Putin was interviewed about the film Russia. Kremlin. Putin. (2020), he asserted “Firstly, Crimea has always been ours, even from a legal point of view. . . . The people

196  Karl D. Qualls living in Crimea have decided to reunite with Russia,” repeating once again the connection and togetherness of Sevastopol as “ours.”81 By occupation and urban biography, Sevastopol has maintained its identification as a city of ­Russian ­military glory.

Notes 1 Cornell University Press has granted permission to reprint some ideas that first appeared in Karl D. Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction: Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol after World War II. Tolstoy, Sevastopol Tales, 34. 2 Buzenko, “Na zemle.” 3 “Trip to Crimea.” 4 “Putin ob”iasnil.” 5 Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism, especially chapter 6; Kelly, Comrade Pavlik. Quote from Clark, The Soviet Novel, 120–21. Emphasis in original. 6 Sartorti, “On the Making of Heroes,” 176–93. 7 The most accessible source of press material in the West on the battles for Sevastopol remains the collection of articles translated for foreign consumption. See The Heroic Defence of Sevastopol; Sevastopol: November, 1941-July, 1942. Most of the articles are translations from Soviet newspapers like Pravda and Krasnaia Zvezda. 8 The Heroic Defence of Sevastopol, 12, 14. On military writing during the war see Gallagher, The Soviet History of World War II, 74–78, 179. On the wartime press more generally, see also Brooks, “Pravda Goes to War,” 9–27. 9 “Sevastopol’,” Krasnyi Chernomorets, 1. 10 Sazhin and Pozhenian, “Solntse nad Sevastopolem,” 1. 11 The Heroic Defence of Sevastopol,  89–93. Central officials in Moscow wanted to brand Khmelnitsky as the uniter of Russia and Ukraine. But viewers of the opera about Khmelnitsky often saw him as a Ukrainian national figure. Yekelchyk, “Diktat and Dialogue.” 12 The Heroic Defence of Sevastopol, 105–7. 13 Ibid., 108. 14 Russian News (1944, No. 3A); Motion Picture 208-RN-59; Records of the Office of War Information, Record Group 208; National Archives, Washington, DC. 15 “Agitator, provedi besedu na etu temu: Slavnye,” 1–2; “Agitator, provedi besedu na etu temu: gorod,” 1. 16 George Mosse also pointed to the importance of past traditions of memorialization before World War I. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, chapters 2–3. 17 Doronina and Iakovleva, Pamiatniki Sevastopolia, 123. 18 For a more complete explication of the competition amongst design teams, see Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction, chapter 2. 19 James Scott defined “legibility” as the state’s destruction and regulation of the complexities in society. Scott, Seeing Like a State, chapter 6. 20 RGAE f. 9432, op. 1, d. 243a, ll. 52–58; GAGS f. R-308, op. 1, d. 21, ll. 9–14. 21 RGAE f. 9432, op. 1, d. 243a, l. 52. 22 Ibid., l. 55. 23 GARF f. A-150, op. 2, d. 20, l. 1. 24 RGAE f. 9432, op. 1, d. 243a, l. 57, 52 (emphasis added). 25 Ibid., ll. 5–8; GAGS, f. R-308, op. 1, d. 21, ll. 28–31. Quotes from RGAE, f. 9432, op. 1, d. 243a, ll. 8, 7. Note his use of the plural “defenses” to link World War II with the Crimean War. 26 RGAE f. 9432, op. 1, d. 243, ll. 106–10; GAGS, f. R-308, op. 1, d. 21, ll. 55–59; RGAE, f. 9432, op. 1, d. 154, ll. 159–63.

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  197 27 Barkhin’s daughter continued to argue into the 1980s that her father was the true architect of Sevastopol. Barkhina, G. B. Barkhin, 115–18, 164. 28 GARF f. A-259, op. 5, d. 279, ll. 16–18. 29 Study of meanings embedded in built space is not new nor limited to Sevastopol or the USSR. Richard Wortman has shown the importance of symbolic uses of space and names in the imperial period, and John Murray has documented a similar phenomenon at the end of the Soviet period. Wortman, Scenarios of Power, 10–15; Murray, Politics and Place-Names. Czaplicka, Gelazis, and Ruble, Cities after the Fall of Communism presents case studies in post-communist Eastern European cities in which changes in toponyms were often central. 30 Plokhy, “The City of Glory.” For example, Plokhy notes that Nakhimov, one of the most venerated figures in the city’s history, was really a secondary figure. The public, however, created its own understanding. 31 Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction, 147–56. 32 Brubaker and Cooper convincingly argued for the more accurate and multidimensional term “identifications” instead of “identity.” Identifications can be derived from the relation to other things or people as well as the numerous categories of which it is a part. Brubaker and Cooper, “Beyond ‘Identity’.” 33 The best book on Magnitogorsk remains Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain. On Novgorod, see Donovan, Chronicles in Stone; and Zhurzhenko’s contribution to this volume. 34 GAGS f. R-308, op. 1, d. 3, ll. 3–3ob. 35 GAGS f. R-79, op. 2, d. 25, l. 51; GAGS f. R-79, op. 2, d. 63, ll. 64–65ob. 36 The Heroic Defence of Sevastopol, 14. 37 On socialist travel, see Gorsuch and Koenker, eds., Turizm. Koshar, German Travel Cultures argues against Urry, The Tourist Gaze and the supposition that tourists only seek novelty and pleasure. 38 Khapaev and Zolotarev, Legendarnyi Sevastopol’, 37. On battlefields as sacred spaces in the USSR, see Merridale, Night of Stone. 39 Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 121. For more on Soviet travel, see Gorsuch, “’There’s No Place Like Home’,” and Koenker, “Travel to Work.” 40 Chebaniuk, Sevastopol’ (1955), 27. 41 Chebaniuk, Sevastopol’ (1957), 26–27. 42 Ibid., 30–31. 43 Chebaniuk, Sevastopol’ (1962), 32. 44 For more, see Garmash, Gorod-geroi Sevastopol’; Olshevskii, Sevastopol’ (1977), Sevastopol’ (1981); Orlov and Gassko, Gorod-geroi Sevastopol’; Rosseikin, Sevastopol’; Rosseikin and Semin, Sevastopol’; Rosseikin, Semin, and Chebaniuk, Sevastopol’ (1955) and Venikeev, Arkhitektura Sevastopol’ia. 45 Chebaniuk, Sevastopol’ (1957), 34. 46 Doronina and Iakovleva, Pamiatniki Sevastopolia, 22–24. 47 Dobry and Borisova, Welcome to Sevastopol, 74. The Russian-language edition is Dobry, Dobro pozhalovat’ v Sevastopol’. 48 Khapaev and Zolotarev, Legendarnyi Sevastopol’, 102. 49 Chebaniuk, Sevastopol’ (1957), 61. 50 Doronina and Iakovleva, Pamiatniki Sevastopolia, 45; Dobry and Borisova, Welcome to Sevastopol, 54. 51 Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead, especially chapters 4 and 7. 52 Khapaev and Zolotarev, Legendarnyi Sevastopol’, 42. 53 Sevastopol’: putevoditel’ (2004), 22. 54 In 1978 Doronina counted 739 monuments to all eras and events, and in 1999 there were 2,015 monuments registered with the city. See Doronina and Iakovleva, Pamiatniki Sevastopolia, 3; and Dobry and Borisova, Welcome to Sevastopol, 46. 55 Doronina and Iakovleva, Pamiatniki Sevastopolia, 64.

198  Karl D. Qualls 56 Weiner, “The Making of a Dominant Myth.” 57 Dobry and Borisova, Welcome to Sevastopol, 64. 58 Davis, Myth Making. 59 Lowenthal, The Past. As one example, Michelin guides declared their “authenticity” in presenting World War I  battlefields in opposition to the alleged lies of the German guidebooks like Baedeker. However, Michelin “offered readers a very specific, politically loaded interpretation of the recent past.” Harp, Marketing Michelin, 115. On Baedeker, see Koshar, German Travel Cultures. 60 Chebaniuk, Sevastopol’ (1957), 113–14. 61 Doronina and Iakovleva, Pamiatniki Sevastopolia, 103–4. 62 Ibid., 104–5. 63 Recreating national and local narratives is a key them of the contributors in Czaplicka, Gelazis, and Ruble, eds., Cities after the Fall of Communism. 64 “Sevastopol’: 150-letiiu.” 65 “Nachinaiutsia turniry.” 66 “Spetspoezd s donetskimi det’mi.” 67 “Otrazhenie.” 68 The author conducted informal interviews with teenagers at memorial sites, as well as some formal interviews with adults, including Mikhail Mironov (Sevastopol, Ukraine, 2004); Vladimir Semenov (Sevastopol, Ukraine, 2004); and Lilia Korchinskaia (Sevastopol, Ukraine, 2004). 69 Buzenko, “Na zemle.” 70 Ibid. 71 Savchenko, “V Sevastopole proshlo;” “Baikery gotoviat grandioznoe shou v Sevastopole.” 72 “I vse-taki my pobedili!”; Trukhachev, “V Sevastopole;” Antonova, “Shkol’niki razvorotili pamiatnik.” 73 “Proezzhaite!” 74 Antonova, “Veteranov otvezut na parad.” 75 “Trip to Crimea and Russia.” 76 “’Bessmertnyi polk’ v Sevastopole.” 77 Nestorenko, “A esli vrag.” 78 Iaroshevskaia, “Takoi eto den.” 79 Iaroshevskaia, “Parad nashei Pobedy.” 80 Ibid. 81 “Putin ob”iasnil, chei Krym.”

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200  Karl D. Qualls ———. “Parad nashei Pobedy: Pust’pomnit mir spacennyi . . .” Slava Sevstopolia, June 26, 2020. https://slavasev.ru/2020/06/26/parad-nashey-pobedyi-pust-pomnit-mir-spasennyiy. “I vse-taki my pobedili!” Slava Sevastopolia, May 14, 2013. https://slavasev. ru/2013/05/14/i-vse-taki-my-pobedili. Kelly, Catriona. Comrade Pavlik: The Rise and Fall of a Soviet Boy Hero. London: Granta, 2005. Kenez, Peter. Cinema and Soviet Society, 1917–1953. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Khapaev, V., and M. Zolotarev. Legendarnyi Sevastopol’: uvlekatel’nyi putevoditel’. Sevastopol: Fuji-Krym, 2002. Koenker, Diane P. “Travel to Work, Travel to Play: On Russian Tourism, Travel, and Leisure.” Slavic Review 62, no. 4 (2003): 657–65. Kotkin, Stephen. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. Koshar, Rudy. German Travel Cultures. New York: Berg, 2000. Lowenthal, David. The Past Is a Foreign Country. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Merridale, Catherine. Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth Century Russia. New York: Viking, 2001. Mosse, George. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Murray, John. Politics and Place-Names: Changing Names in the Late Soviet Period. Birmingham: Birmingham Slavonic Monographs, 2000. “Nachinaiutsia turniry znatokov-kraevedov.” Slava Sevastopol’ia, October 23, 2004. Nestorenko, I. “. . . A esli vrag reshit proverit’ nashu silu, ego my navsegda otuchim proveriat!” Slava Sevastopolia, May 14, 2019. https://slavasev.ru/2019/05/14/a-esli-vragreshit-proverit-nashu-silu-ego-myi-navsegda-otuchim-proveryat. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations, no. 26 (1989): 7–25. Olshevskii, Vitalii. Sevastopol’: Spravochnik. Simferopol: Tavriia, 1977. ———. Sevastopol’: Spravochnik. Simferopol: Tavriia, 1981. Orlov, Nikolai, and Igor Gassko. Gorod-geroi Sevastopol’: Fotoal’bom. Simferopol: Tavriia, 1985. “Otrazhenie.” NTS (Independent Television of Sevastopol), October 22, 2004. Plokhy, Serhii. “The City of Glory: Sevastopol in Russian Historical Mythology.” Journal of Contemporary History 35 (2000): 369–83. “Proezzhaite!” Slava Sevastopolia, May 14, 2013. https://slavasev.ru/2013/05/14/ proezzhayte. “Putin ob”iasnil, chei Krym.” Slava Sevastopolia, June 23, 2020. https://slavasev. ru/2020/06/23/vladimir-putin-nasha-otvetstvennost-pered-proshlyim-i-budushhimsdelat-vsyo-chtobyi-ne-dopustit-povtoreniya-strashnyih-tragediy. Qualls, Karl D. From Ruins to Reconstruction: Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol After World War II. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009. Rosseikin, Boris. Sevastopol’: al’bom. Simferopol; Krymizdat, 1960. Rosseikin, Boris, and Georgii Semin. Sevastopol’: Putevoditel’-spravochnik. Simferopol: Krymizdat, 1961. Rosseikin, Boris, Georgii Semin, and Zakhar Chebaniuk. Sevastopol’: putevoditel’-sprav ochnik. Simferopol: Krymizdat, 1959.

Politicizing war memories in Sevastopol  201 Russian News (1944, No. 3A); Motion Picture 208-RN-59; Records of the Office of War Information, Record Group 208; National Archives, Washington, DC. Sartorti, Rosalinde. “On the Making of Heroes, Heroines, and Saints.” In Culture and Entertainment in Wartime Russia, edited by Richard Stites, 176–93. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Savchenko, Nikolai. “V Sevastopole proshlo baik-shou ‘Vozvrashchenie’.” Rossiiskaia gazeta, August 9, 2014. https://rg.ru/2014/08/09/reg-kfo/baikery.html. Sazhin, Petr, and G. Pozhenian, “Solntse nad Sevastopolem.” Krasnyi Chernomorets, May 12, 1944, 1. Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. “Sevastopol’.” Krasnyi Chernomorets, May 8, 1944, 1. “Sevastopol’: 150-letiiu Krymskoi (Vostochnoi) voiny.” n.d. Siegelbaum, Lewis. Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, 1935– 1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Soviet Union. Sevastopol: November, 1941–July, 1942: Articles, Stories and Eye-Witness Accounts by Soviet War Correspondents. London, Hutchinson, 1943. “Spetspoezd s donetskimi det’mi.” Sevastopol’skaia gazeta, October 28, 2004. Tolstoy, Lev. Sevastopol Tales. Moscow: Progress, 1982. “Trip to Crimea and Russia.” March 18, 2019. en.kremlin.ru/events/president/trips/60098. Trukhachev, Vyacheslav. “V Sevastopole proshel unikal’nyi parad Podedy.” Sevastopol’skaia gazeta, May 10, 2013. Tumarkin, Nina. The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage, 1990. Venikeev, E. V. Arkhitektura Sevastopol’ia: putevoditel’. Simferopol: Tavriia, 1983. Weiner, Amir. “The Making of a Dominant Myth: The Second World War and the Construction of Political Identities within the Soviet Polity.” Russian Review 55, no. 4 (1996): 638–60. Wortman, Richard. Scenarios of Power: Myth and Ceremony in Russian Monarchy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Yekelchyk, Serhy. “Diktat and Dialogue in Stalinist Culture: Staging Patriotic Historical Opera in Soviet Ukraine, 1936–1954.” Slavic Review 59, no. 3 (Fall 2000): 597–624.

9 World War II memories and local media in the Russian North Velikii Novgorod and Murmansk Tatiana Zhurzhenko Research on national discourses and official commemorative politics of World War II in post-Soviet Russia tends to underestimate the importance of local war memory, which is often more emotional and tangible, and at the same time blended into everyday routines. A war history section in a local museum, a nearby war memorial visited by newlywed couples to lay flowers, a monument to a local hero in the city park animated by playing children—most of the time these remain unremarkable and unnoticed elements of the urban landscape and yet contribute to the feeling of belonging to a local community (“being from here”) (see Figure 9.1). It is usually twice a year—on Victory Day and on the local “day of liberation from the Nazi occupation”—that these “sites of memory” are incorporated into formal rituals and commemorative ceremonies and thus reinvested with their initial meaning. This mnemonic landscape representing the local dimension of World War II is largely inherited from the Soviet era. At the same time, during the last decades, new actors—such as local ethnic ­communities, professional associations, and the Russian Orthodox Church—­ initiated new war memorials which do not challenge the existing narrative of the Great Patriotic War but add to it. Similarly, some Soviet-era clichés in the form of undisputed “historical facts” (e.g., “Belgorod is the city of the first military salute,” “apart from Stalingrad, Murmansk was the city most heavily bombed by the Germans”) are routinely reproduced in local historical narratives and serve as markers of local identity for the new generations of city dwellers who did not experience World War II. These narratives inherited from the Soviet era have undergone significant transformations in the last decades, and yet there is a remarkable continuity with the Soviet myth of the “Great Patriotic War.” My hypothesis is that this continuity, especially its discursive dimension, to a large extent has been provided by the local media. But the same media are also mediators and agents of cultural innovation and social change. In this chapter, I am going to reflect on the role of the local media in reproducing and re-negotiating collective memories of World War II and in re-shaping respective commemorative cultures in two northern Russian cities (regions): Murmansk and Velikii Novgorod. This chapter is based on my research conducted in these two cities in 2012– 2013 under the auspices of the project Russian Identity in the Media and Identity Politics in Eastern Europe based at the Aleksanteri Institute in Helsinki. During

World War II memories in the Russian North  203

Figure 9.1 A wedding party in front of the monument to the Hero of the Soviet Union Anatolii Bredov in Murmansk (erected 1958). Source: Photograph by the author.

my research stays, I visited various memorial sites and museums devoted to the history and memory of World War II, participated in local commemorative events and conducted around 20 interviews with local journalists, historians, state officials, and civil activists. During these interviews, I asked questions dealing with representations of local myths, symbols, and heroes as well as memorial projects, commemorative initiatives, and mnemonic conflicts in the local media and tried to understand the relations between media, regional elites, and local civil society. In addition, the Integrum database provided materials for a content analysis of the regional and local newspapers for the period 2002–2012. This chapter is a snapshot of the situation in the Russian provinces one year before the annexation of Crimea and the “Russian spring” which accelerated the politicization of World War II memory and its transformation into a quasi-state ideology.

Media and memory In the introduction to the volume On Media Memory, the editors stress the distinctive role of the media in constructing/selecting collective memories: the media, on the one hand, “present themselves and are perceived by society as a platform

204  Tatiana Zhurzhenko for socio-cultural struggles. On the other hand, they are also players in the same competition and perceive themselves as authoritative social storytellers of the past.”1 The media is thus not just a “mirror” of local commemorative politics and a public venue for debates on the past: “specific media outlets as well as individual media professionals act as salient memory agents who aspire to provide their own readings of the collective past.”2 The role of the media is different from academia and school education: neither can the media replace expert knowledge and professional historical research, nor has it an authority to shape the historical consciousness of the young generation. Instead, members of the media mediate the communication of professional historians with society and address people of all ages and social groups. The media not only promote factual knowledge and understanding of the past events but also reshape imagination and empathy.3 Moreover, in outstanding times the media can contribute to breaking ideological taboos, give voice to victims and silenced memories, and raise issues of historical justice and responsibility—as happened in the USSR during perestroika.4 Taking into account the important role of the media in late Soviet and early post-Soviet debates about the recent past, it is quite surprising that media studies and memory studies have hardly been interested in each other in the post-Soviet context. Studies on the Russian media have mostly focused on market liberalization and privatization of state media, the attempts of the semi-authoritarian regime to re-gain control and re-establish censorship, and on the changing role of the media in Russian society.5 Little of this research addresses the role of media (mostly national television) in re-shaping collective memories.6 The new digital media as a platform for alternative representations of history and mnemonic conflicts is relatively better studied.7 Traditional print media, let alone local and regional newspapers, usually do not to get on the radar of memory scholars, and their role in reproducing and transforming World War II narratives and collective memories is often underestimated. And yet, as it will be shown in this chapter, they perform this role in multiple ways: providing coverage of the official commemorations, running special stories and features related to historical events, and giving voice to veterans, survivors, and witnesses. They also investigate to establish historical truth and initiate debates about the “proper” way to remember the past, often criticizing the commercialization of remembrance and the profanation of war memory in official rituals. In this chapter, two sets of questions will be addressed. First, how is the memory of World War II preserved, re-narrated, and re-negotiated in the Russian provinces, and how is it used by the local elites in the reconstruction of national, regional, and local identities? Who are other political actors and social groups that are involved in these processes? What are the problematic, alternative, and/ or conflicting narratives on World War II in the regions, and how do they coexist with the official narrative on the war? Second, what is the role of the regional and local media in memory politics? How do different types of media (printed newspapers, television, and internet sites) address the issues of the past—what discourses, narratives, stereotypes, and images do they reproduce, and how do they reflect changes in collective memory

World War II memories in the Russian North  205 and mass consciousness? What are the advantages, the special role, and the niches of the local and regional media as compared to national media? To what extent do local media provide space for open discussions and public concerns? Who sets the agenda and who controls the discourse about the past? How do local media participate in public debates on new memorials and commemorative initiatives, and how do they approach important historical dates, anniversaries, and other events crucial for the identity of the region/city?

Uses of World War II memory in the Russian regions Since the mid-2000s, Putin’s regime has been increasingly using the memory of World War II in domestic and international politics.8 The Soviet myth of the “Great Patriotic War” has been integrated into a triumphalist narrative of Russian history and blended with the revived Orthodox religion into a new ideology of statist patriotism. The basic consensus underlying this new approach can be found also in the Russian regions; commemorative politics focusing on the “Great Patriotic War” constitute an important pillar of the local regimes.9 First, regional and local elites use the war memory for displaying their loyalty to Moscow, legitimizing their rule, and strengthening their dominant position. Drawing on the myth of the Great Patriotic War, which has deep roots in mass consciousness, local authorities usually seek to present themselves as heirs and guards of the “Great Victory” caring about historical memory as well as about social needs of the older generation. Targeted first of all at war veterans and the newly constructed generational category “children of war,”10 this rhetoric refers to traditionalist values, nationalism, and the ideology of a “great state” which are at the heart of Russian authoritarian populism. Second, war memory is used for cultivating local patriotism that is seen by the regional authorities as a precondition of social and political stability. Remnants of the late Soviet institutional system (such as military-patriotic clubs, the poisk movement,11 Soviet war veterans organizations) as well as some new initiatives (such as historical re-enactment groups) have been integrated into local educational and commemorative politics (see Figure 9.2). They are supported or even encouraged by the authorities and constitute a loyal and easily controlled part of the local civil society. Third, memory politics is often seen as an instrument of region branding. The authorities believe that the effective use of the past as a symbolic resource can improve the region’s image and raise its competitiveness. Although the tragic events of World War II seem to be ill-suited for region branding, with the passing of time, the memory of the last war becomes part of the “national heritage.” For example, the Prokhorovka tank battle (1943) can be easily treated in the same way as the Borodino or Kulikovo battles. Promoting the “Prokhorovka” brand, Belgorod authorities have developed a so-called “battlefield tourism” which is popular in many countries.12 An element of competition in this respect was introduced by the “City of Military Glory” governmental program initiated in 2006 by President Putin. From 2007 to 2015, 45 cities were awarded with the honorary

206  Tatiana Zhurzhenko

Figure 9.2 Representatives of local youth organizations march through the city on the “Day of Liberation of Velikii Novgorod from the German Fascist Invaders,” January 20, 2013. One can see Russian flags and the Banner of Victory. Source: Photograph by the author.

title of the “City of Military Glory” (including Feodosia in the annexed Crimea). For local authorities, this program became an incentive for mobilizing historians, journalists, archivists, and museum workers to collect materials and create narratives that acknowledge the contribution of the local community to the victory over Nazi Germany and connect the World War II events with the local traditions of military glory.13 At the same time, it is especially in the regions that the memory of World War II seems rather pluralistic and less politicized than on the national level. Unlike in Ukraine where different ideological visions of World War II history have become markers of conflicting political camps, in Russia, war memory is not used as a symbolic resource in local elections and rarely instrumentalized in political conflicts. A broad consensus on the meaning of the “Great Patriotic War” in Russian society coexists with a significant public pluralism on the local level. As mentioned earlier, various groups make their identity claims based on collective memories of World War II—Soviet veterans, former prisoners of Nazi camps, “children of war,” to name only a few. New museums and memorial sites often emerge as communal, private, or even commercial initiatives; the fate of the old Soviet

World War II memories in the Russian North  207 monuments becomes a subject of open discussion in the process of urban development. Local officials and politicians, NGOs, religious organizations, professional associations (especially of historians, archaeologists, architects, and journalists), and ethnic and religious minorities take an active part in these debates. Regional and local media, despite political and financial constraints, provide an important space for such debates and actively shape public opinion. The pluralism of memory differs in the Russian regions: it depends on the level of political pluralism and political competitiveness, the strength of the civil society and the freedom of local media, the interest of the local authorities in history, and their openness to public dialogue.14 The economic and demographic situation and the geopolitical location (e.g., Murmansk oblast’ as a border region), the presence of a military or a naval base, and the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church can also be relevant for a local “memory regime.” Last, but not least, Russian regions and towns experienced World War II in different ways and, therefore, have a different symbolic capital at their disposal. While Belgorod, for example, has capitalized on the Prokhorovka tank battle, Briansk has made the “partisan glory” to its brand, and Novorossiisk, which until 2014 had to replace Sevastopol as Russia’s main military base on the Black Sea, claims a glorious marine history. Integrating less glorious pages of World War II in the new local narratives of “military glory” can be especially challenging (as will be demonstrated by the story of the Second Shock Army associated with General Vlasov). A lot depends on the repertoire of historical narratives and symbolic resources available for constructing a “usable past.” Velikii Novgorod, with its ancient history, is less dependent on the memories of the Soviet era, while in Murmansk, which recently celebrated the centennial of its foundation, the World War II memories, along with the Soviet myth of the Arctic exploration, are central for its identity.

Local memory cultures transformed: Velikii Novgorod and Murmansk In the 1990s, the case of Velikii Novgorod (until 1999—Novgorod) was exemplary for the role of symbolic politics in consolidating a local democratic regime. Compared to its neighbors, the Novgorod region displayed relatively high levels of economic performance, trust in the local government, and civic activity; some observers even spoke about the “Novgorod model.” The high level of social capital in the region was explained by the local government’s efforts to promote the historical image of Novgorod as a vibrant mercantile democracy and a city open to the West.15 With the strengthening of the “power vertical” and especially after the appointment of the new governor in 2007,16 not much was left from the “Novgorod model.” In the Putin era, the accent in symbolic politics was shifted from the “historical Hansa city” and the “window to Europe” to the “cradle of Russian statehood.” In 2012, Novgorod became one of the places of the official celebration of the 1150th anniversary of the Russian statehood. As Russia’s mythscape had to be adjusted to its post-Soviet borders, Novgorod came to be seen as a

208  Tatiana Zhurzhenko substitute for Kyiv (now the capital of independent Ukraine) as a symbolic place associated with the origins of the Russian state.17 One of the oldest cities and most important sites of ancient Orthodox architecture, Novgorod always hosted archaeologists and historians who have been rather vocal in issues of urban planning, construction of monuments, and re-naming of streets. The uniqueness of Novgorod and its cultural heritage plays an important role in the local narratives of World War II, such as the theme of the postwar reconstruction of the city’s ancient architecture or the story of the “Millennium of Russia” monument (1862), which was cut into pieces by the Nazis but miraculously escaped total destruction and was restored after the war. Similarly famous is the story of the unique cross from the ancient St. Sofia Cathedral which had been taken to Spain by volunteers of the Blue Division (a Spanish military unit that was fighting on the Eastern Front as part of the Wehrmacht) and was returned to Novgorod in 2004.18 Having abundant historical and cultural resources at their disposal, local political and cultural elites until recently did not pay much attention to World War II memory (the former director of the historical museum even removed the war section and transferred most of the objects to the local museum in Staraia Russa).19

Figure 9.3 Wreath-laying ceremony in front of the Column of Military Glory on the “Day of Liberation of Velikii Novgorod from the German Fascist Invaders,” January 20, 2013. One can see the flags of the “United Russia” party. Source: Photograph by the author.

World War II memories in the Russian North  209 Once Novgorod had become a City of Military Glory in 2008, however, the heroic narrative of the Great Patriotic War was reintroduced into the local public space. The Column of Military Glory with the two-headed eagle at the top, a symbol of Russian statehood, was erected on one of the central squares (see Figure 9.3). The column is surrounded by 16 reliefs presenting episodes from four historical epochs of Russian (and local Novgorod) history: ancient Rus, Muscovite Tsardom, the war with Napoleon, and the Great Patriotic War. The choice of 16 episodes was a subject of intense public debate involving local historians and archaeologists and was reflected in the local media. This new official narrative, which builds the Great Patriotic War into the centuries-long history of the Russian empire and its military glory, is also reflected in the exposition of the Hall of Military Glory, a new museum hastily created on the same occasion. It is mainly used for “patriotic education” (such as guided tours for schoolchildren or the ceremony of “the solemn presentation of passports to young residents of Novgorod”). However, this official representation of the Great Patriotic War and its instrumentalization in symbolic politics is seen with suspicion by some local actors— for example, by some representatives of the poisk movement. The history of Novgorod and the region during World War II is related to the Siege of Leningrad and has many tragic pages; some of them were silenced for decades. The attempt of Stalin to breach the Leningrad Siege near Miasnoi Bor in early 1942 led to a disaster for the Soviet troops. The Second Shock Army perished in the local woods and marshes after the Germans had managed to encircle it.20 Moreover, these events are connected to the name of General Vlasov, the infamous Second Shock Army commander, who surrendered and defected to Hitler’s side. With the Nazis’ blessing, he later created the Russian Liberation Army to fight Stalin’s regime. Vlasov’s name was damned and tabooed in official Soviet historiography, and in contemporary Russia he is still considered the archetypical traitor. The tragic fate of the Second Shock Army, which had not surrendered but later became associated with Vlasov’s name, was silenced, too. Remains of tens of thousands of Soviet soldiers were left unburied for decades in the woods near Miasnoi Bor (which became referred to as Dolina Smerti, the Valley of Death). In the 1960s and 1970s, an informal grassroots poisk movement emerged in Novgorod oblast’; in the late 1980s, it was institutionalized as the “Dolina” poisk expedition under the auspices of the local Komsomol. The activities of the poisk groups led to the public rehabilitation of the Second Shock Army. From the early 1990s the memorial cemetery in Miasnoi Bor, where the remains of Soviet soldiers have been re-buried, has become an official site of memory (see Figure 9.4). It is quite interesting that the activities of the poisk movement were popularized by the local media already in the 1970s and 1980s, and during the perestroika years a special supplement to the regional youth newspaper Novgorodskii Komsomolets was published under the title “The Unfinished War.” Today poisk groups, some of them affiliated with the local administration and others oriented to the arms collectors’ market, continue to play an important role in local memory politics. One of the recent commemorative initiatives in Miasnoi Bor, an open-air

210  Tatiana Zhurzhenko

Figure 9.4  Memorial cemetery Miasnoi Bor near Velikii Novgorod. Source: Photograph by the author.

museum with a conference center, comes from a private investor and collector of military equipment.21 Murmansk is in many ways different from Novgorod. Founded in 1915 as the last Russian imperial town, it was built and developed as a Soviet city. The largest city above the Arctic circle, Murmansk is connected with the heroic history of Arctic explorations, while the region, rich in mineral resources, was subject to extensive Soviet industrialization before the war. During World War II, Murmansk not only was an important marine base but also functioned as a link to the Western Allies. Large quantities of arms and other goods were brought to the city by Arctic convoys. British and the US marines rested in the city, were treated in local hospitals and even visited a local bar, of course not without NKVD supervision. In this way, unlike any other Russian region, Murmansk is inscribed in the history of World War II and not just the Great Patriotic War. It was one of the few places where Soviet people could see allied marines and officers and even get into contact with them. As a frontline city and an important strategic harbor, Murmansk was repeatedly bombed by the Nazis and eventually totally destroyed; the long polar day made it especially vulnerable to the German air force. The civilian

World War II memories in the Russian North  211 population, which partly stayed in the city because workers were badly needed in the port, suffered immensely from the German airstrikes; after the war, the city had to be completely rebuilt (see Figure 9.5). In the wake of perestroika, Murmansk was rewarded with the Soviet title of “Hero City,” and in 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev personally came to present the honorary award to the local authorities. This visit had, however, a more important geopolitical dimension as Gorbachev used it to announce his famous “Murmansk Initiatives” aimed at the demilitarization of the Barents region.22 An important Soviet strategic stronghold during the Cold War, Murmansk was integrated in the first post-Soviet decades into the Nordic regional security system and in international economic cooperation projects, especially in the framework of the Barents Region. Local journalists in Murmansk also profited from cross-border and regional cooperation: unlike their colleagues in other Russian regions, they could frequently communicate with Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish journalists through the Barentspress media agency.23 In the post-Soviet decades, not much has changed in the heroic narrative of “frontline Murmansk” (see Figure 9.6). As in Novgorod, a strong grassroots poisk movement has developed in the region. The heroic story of the Northern Fleet is

Figure 9.5 Memorial to the Murmansk harbor workers killed by Nazi airstrikes (erected 1967). Source: Photograph by the author.

212  Tatiana Zhurzhenko

Figure 9.6 Murmansk monument to the Defenders of the Soviet Arctic during the Great Patriotic War, also known as Alyosha (erected 1974). Source: Photograph by the author.

inscribed in the urban landscape of Severomorsk, which remains Russia’s main naval base in the region. At the same time, with the liberalization and opening to the West, some previously marginal or silenced themes have entered the public space. Most important of them is, of course, the theme of the Arctic convoys. Not that they were unmentioned in the Soviet narrative, but their role in the Soviet military triumph was seen as secondary (see Figure 9.7). In the early 1990s, the first groups of the British and the US marine veterans started to visit Murmansk regularly and were warmly welcomed by the city administration. As an initiative from below, in one of the Murmansk schools, an amateur museum of Arctic convoys was created and became one of the obligatory sites visited by the veterans of the convoy operations. Another new narrative that appeared in the local media concerned the role of local ethnic Norwegians who were trained by the NKVD as secret agents, radio operators, and guides for the Soviet troops and served as a link to the Norwegian resistance.24 It should be mentioned that in the neighboring Norwegian town Kirkines, the frequent visitors from Murmansk can see the monument to the Soviet liberation of Northern Norway in 1944.25 Another new narrative of war history is presented in the Murmansk media by the local Saami people, who seek to consolidate their ethnic identity and strive for recognition of their special role

World War II memories in the Russian North  213

Figure 9.7 Murmansk monument “In Commemoration of the Common Fight of the Countries of the Anti-Hitler Coalition against Fascism in the Second World War” (erected 1975). Source: Photograph by the author.

in World War II. During the war, deer transport divisions consisting of Saami provided Soviet troops in the Far North with food and ammunition, brought mail, and evacuated the wounded and sick.26 Although Russia did not give up its geopolitical ambitions in the Arctic completely, in the absence of a systematic state policy and sufficient resources, the Murmansk population has been shrinking during the last decades. Many military and naval bases in the region were closed, and a special state program helps its former residents to resettle to other regions. Neither the development of the urban environment nor cultural and symbolic politics has been among the priorities of the Murmansk authorities until recently. But in the wake of the 100th anniversary of the city in 2015, some new projects have emerged, such as a new Orthodox cathedral, a monument to the founders of the city,27 and monuments to other famous persons (such as to Valentin Pikul’, the Russian author of historical novels, including those devoted to the convoy operations). At the time of my visit to the city in autumn 2012, the local historical museum, which had re-arranged its exposition for the last time in the perestroika years, was preparing to close for renovation, and local historians were working on the first tourist city guide. The

214  Tatiana Zhurzhenko popularity of the young local journalist Dmitrii Korzhov, who writes historical novels about Murmansk, confirms this new quest for a local identity.28

Regional media landscapes and the local memory of World War II The freedom of regional media and its relations with the authorities and local business groups differ among the Russian regions. But there are also some common patterns in the media landscape that basically have been inherited from the Soviet era. As for the print media, there is usually one “official” regional newspaper and one “official” city newspaper, and sometimes there are also newspapers published in smaller towns and in districts. Such “official” regional newspapers (such as Murmanskii vestnik, Novgorodskie vedomosti) are usually founded by the regional duma and administration and subsidized from the regional budget. Formally independent, they in fact reflect the official line. Official city newspapers (such as Novgorod or Vechernii Murmansk) founded by the city council are also fully or partly subsidized but as a rule have a smaller budget. Both the Murmansk and the Novgorod city newspapers are thinner than the regional ones. They contain a lot of practical information on communal issues, plans for urban development, news from the city management, local cultural events, health issues, and entertainment. Unlike regional official newspapers, city newspapers usually do not have much space for articles on cultural and historical issues or for extensive interviews and memoirs. But they are often more interactive than the regional ones, involving readers in a dialogue and inviting them to write on particular topics. Vechernii Murmansk, for example, initiated an essay competition among its readers under the title “A Letter to the Victors” (Pis’mo pobediteliam) on the occasion of the Victory Day. Unlike city newspapers, regional newspapers cover the whole region and have more space for historical articles, often addressing issues of commemoration. District or local municipal newspapers sometimes can also be active in covering the war theme, as, for example, the local newspaper Pechenga published in the Pechenga district (Murmansk region), where the Kola Mining and Metallurgical Company (Kola MMC), a subsidiary of the Norilsk Nickel Company, sponsors both local media and poisk groups. Another part of the regional media landscape is represented by local editions of Moscow-based or national network publications. In Murmansk and Novgorod, local editions of Komsomol’skaia pravda and Argumenty i fakty include regional content and regularly address themes related to the history and memory of World War II.29 Finally, independent newspapers should be mentioned, which are more flexible in their editorial policy and open to investigative journalism, controversial opinions, and critical voices.30 One good example is Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta (NNG), an independent newspaper that has existed since the mid-1990s; it fits Greene’s definition of a “paternalistic newspaper” which “sees itself as part of the cultural and intellectual life, endowed with a clear, bird’s-eye view of the community and charged with a civilizing mission.”31 NNG provides an important

World War II memories in the Russian North  215 venue for local debates on commemorative politics, local history, and the memory of World War II in the region. This theme appears routinely in both the official and independent media twice a year: on the occasions of Victory Day and the Day of Liberation of Novgorod (in Murmansk, the Day of Liberation of the Soviet Arctic). Such publications are called “datskie” by local journalists (meaning “on the occasion of a particular date”). However, sometimes newspapers publish materials about World War II on other occasions (such as a review or a discussion of a new film or a television documentary, especially if it touches on local history), or without any pretext. As argued by Neiger, Meyers, and Zandberg, “in contrast to memory agents such as academia or historical museums which are, by and large, committed to a common ethos of depicting the past according to agreed-upon, publicly known conventions, the divergence among media genres is tremendous.”32 In the local and regional media, various genres deal with war memory, from official announcements of public events, reports on commemorations and other public activities, interviews with veterans, historians and public officials, book and film reviews, to memoirs, historical and literary essays, and investigative articles. Some local journalists specialize in the war theme and write regular columns. Often local historians or poisk activists cooperate with regional and local newspapers on a regular basis. For example, Mikhail Oresheta, one of the leaders of the poisk movement in Murmansk, regularly writes for Murmanskii vestnik on search expeditions in the region, new findings, and reburials of Soviet soldiers. Oresheta, who served in the Northern fleet in the past, has his personal nostalgic project: he documents the history of Soviet military settlements and marine bases in the Arctic, abandoned and depopulated in the 1990s.33 In Novgorod, the most interesting articles about the local history of World War II have been written by Aleksandr Orlov, a journalist and one of the former leaders of the poisk movement in the region, and by the local historian and professor at Novgorod university, Boris Kovalev, an expert on Nazi occupation, local collaboration, and on General Vlasov.34 In Murmansk, the local journalists’ association, together with regional authorities, organizes an annual competition, Na Murmanskom rubezhe (At the Murmansk Frontier) that honors the authors of the best publications with a special diploma. A special segment of the regional media landscape is represented by the corporate media which are also rather active in presenting, selecting, and constructing memories of World War II. An interesting case in this respect is the newspaper published by the Murmansk Shipping Company (MSC). Now a corporation ­controlled by private capital, MSC is proud of its glorious past as a Soviet enterprise, especially of its contribution to the Arctic convoy operations during World War II. Heroic stories and portraits of legendary captains are presented in the MSC museum in Murmansk, and the museum director regularly writes historical essays for the corporate newspaper. It goes without saying that the newspaper of the Northern Fleet Na strazhe Zapoliar’ia, published in Severomorsk, also regularly refers to the heroic pages of the Great Patriotic War.

216  Tatiana Zhurzhenko Local television and radio deserve special attention. As with print media, local television also reports on public commemorative ceremonies, new projects, and initiatives and pays symbolic tribute to war veterans. Most of such information appears in the regional news or in special reports on the occasion of the Victory Day. However, there are also other genres: Novgorod Oblast’ television hosts the monthly program Patriot, which conveys a positive image of the Russian Army, invites veterans of the Afghanistan and Chechen wars and of course refers to the local heroic myths of the Great Patriotic War. Young journalists from the private television channel Television-21, owned by Kola MMC, produced several documentaries devoted to Murmansk war and postwar history as well as a documentary Metal for the Victory about the contribution of Norilsk Nickel to Soviet military industry.

Pluralism, conservatism, and the absence of ideological polarization Opinions differ on the freedom of regional media in Russia. While famous Russian writer and journalist Zakhar Prilepin claimed that the local media are less censored than the central ones because Kremlin leaders would never read a local newspaper,35 others point to the omnipresent control of regional authorities and owners, that is, local business groups, to limited circulation which makes newspapers dependent on a few local sponsors, and to the lack of professional training for local journalists.36 In practice, the freedom of regional media often depends on the governor, who sets the style of communication with journalists, and on the professional level and personal position of the chief editor. The general political climate and the level of political competitiveness differ across the Russian regions; the re-introduction of direct governor elections in 2012 opened the way to political manipulations and conflicts in the regional media.37 However, the issue of media freedom is relevant first of all for publications that criticize the Kremlin and United Russia, are sympathetic to the political opposition, or touch political and business interests of the governor and the regional elites. It seems that the history and memory of World War II are topics in which local authorities and private sponsors rarely interfere and where the coverage depends mainly on the editorial policy, the personal taste, the interests, and the professional background of the newspaper editors and journalists. That does not mean that the theme of World War II is politically irrelevant—just the opposite. But here journalists, officials, and the local public usually share some kind of general consensus on the role of the Great Patriotic War in Russian history, on its dominant meaning as a “people’s war,” a mass sacrifice where the heroic and the tragic is blended together. Of course, local authorities and various civil society actors emphasize different aspects of this narrative on different occasions, but the latter almost never go beyond the limits of this consensus. The pluralism of historical narratives, various representations of war memory, philosophical and moral deliberations on war experience, even discussions and public debates (which do

World War II memories in the Russian North  217 exist in the regional media as will be shown in the next section) take place within this general consensus.38 What makes this consensus possible is the clear “division of labor” between the regional and central media (tsentral’naia pressa): the former are not very interested in oppositional manifestations in Moscow, in the Pussy Riot case, or in the political moves of the Kremlin unless it has direct consequences for the region. The same is true about memory and symbolic politics: the local public hears only some echo of the ideological conflicts and the “memory wars” fought in central media. Such news as, for example, Putin’s speech on Russian history textbooks39 is rarely discussed in the local media and this is not only due to a lack of resources and limited interest of the general public. What matters more is some kind of “ethos” of the regional media, the focus on local and regional events being part of it. The focus on local politics and local history makes it easier to maintain the general consensus on World War II and exclude politicized, ideologically charged representations, and narratives. This unspoken “ethos” assumes that the local media should leave such issues as the overall judgments about Stalin’s regime, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, or the Katyn massacre to Moscow journalists, politicians, and historians. What does matter for local journalists and the public is how “we,” the residents of Murmansk, survived German airstrikes and unloaded allied transports under Nazi bombs; how “we,” the residents of Novgorod, re-built the de-populated and destroyed city after the war. This does not mean that only the heroic and triumphalist narrative of the war is present in the local media. In memoirs and interviews with ordinary participants and witnesses of the war, the accent has shifted to everyday war experiences, work on the home front (rabota v tylu), hunger, loss of family members, survival under occupation, wartime childhood. The editor of Novgorodskie vedomosti told me in an interview that many local residents send or bring their memoirs, personal documents, and family archives to his newspaper (another habit from the Soviet era?), and that he feels the moral duty to publish them.40 In this way, a newspaper becomes some kind of bank of personal memories and assumes the function of a public archive. It is this contribution of the regional and local media to community building and strengthening intergenerational solidarity that explains their particular focus on war memory. Local and regional newspapers (some of them more often than others) also publish materials about Stalinist repressions. Such publications, too, have a local focus and deal with local historical personalities and events; they try to avoid generalizations and ideological statements. In the local media, one will hardly find publications that politicize the memory of World War II and the Soviet era in general, as these would polarize public opinion. The best example is Joseph Stalin, probably the most polarizing symbol in the Russian public sphere. He is rarely mentioned in local newspapers (the party press of the Russian Communists being the only exception). If Stalin appears in the local media, it is usually in the context of historical curiosities and unknown facts—as for example, an article in Komsomol’skaia pravda (Murmansk) on Stalin’s trip to Potsdam and his

218  Tatiana Zhurzhenko conversation with the locomotive driver or a report of a Novgorod journalist about her journey to Gori, Georgia. Local journalists who write about World War II see their role as enlightening the public and informing people about previously forgotten, silenced, or even tabooed themes of local history. In Novgorod, these are the Miasnoi Bor tragedy, the fate of the Second Shock Army and General Vlasov, the Nazi occupation regime in Novgorod and local collaboration, the role of the Spanish volunteer division which stayed in Novgorod during the war, and the contacts between the Spanish and the local population. Local media bring attention to forgotten sites, graves, cemeteries, and abandoned monuments. It is not so much the history of the war and its controversial interpretations, but the moral dilemmas of commemoration and local memorial practices that become a subject of local public debate. One such vivid debate, where interests of different local actors clash and result in considerable pluralism, focuses on the moral principles of the poisk movement and the dilemmas of the reburial of Soviet soldiers. While for regional authorities and some “professional” poisk groups the number of discovered and re-buried Soviet soldiers has become a fetish, some “dissidents” from the poisk movement criticize such a bureaucratic approach.41 In the Murmansk region, with the closure of the military and naval bases and the depopulation of vast territories, the question of what to do with abandoned sites of World War II memory and with the graves of Soviet soldiers caused a rather heated discussion in the local media. Despite this pluralism within the tacit consensus on World War II in the regional and local media, the dominant attitude to war memory can be called conservative. It can be partly explained by the policies of the regional authorities which use the Great Patriotic War narrative for patriotic education and the restoration of “traditional values,” including Russian statehood and Orthodox faith. The lobby of Soviet veterans (which during the Cold War incorporated the younger generation of KGB veterans and veterans of Soviet combat operations) supports this conservative consensus and plays the role of “moral watchdogs” as far as the memory of World War II is concerned. The poisk movement, one of the strongest players in this field, usually allies with the authorities in support of the ideology of state patriotism. This conservative potential of the regional media has not gone unnoticed by the Russian ruling elite. During the regional media forum “New Media Russia,” which took place in Volgograd on October 5–7, 2012—not by chance in the wake of the 70th anniversary of the Stalingrad battle—the role of regional media in patriotic education was one of the main topics. For example, according to Dmitrii Orlov, the director of the Agency of Political and Economic Communications and a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, after the wave of oppositional protests in 2011–2012 had died down a new demand for conservative ideology, traditional moral values, and a traditional way of life emerged in Russian society. Federal media are not able to satisfy this request, as they are often occupied with political scandals and cheap sensations; it can be done, however, by the regional media that are “closer to the people,” to the mass readership and to the “traditional audience.” Regional and local media, according to Orlov,

World War II memories in the Russian North  219 ought to be concerned not only with local and corporate interests but also with national ones.42

Regional media, war memory, and local community building Benedict Anderson famously argued that the printing press and “print language” played an essential role in shaping modern nations as “imagined communities.” We can assume that regional and local media play a similar role and contribute significantly to local community building by re-narrating local history and reimagining local identity. By doing this, they provide continuity with local Soviet symbols, narratives, and sites of memory, but they also question and deconstruct old myths left from the Soviet era. This ambivalent role of the media is crucial in reproducing moral bonds between a local community and its symbolic landscape. I will illustrate this with two examples from Novgorod and Murmansk. The story of three Soviet heroes, Gerasimenko, Krasilov, and Cheremnov, who fell near Novgorod on January 29, 1942, has been known to every local pupil. The three soldiers, so the official legend went, threw themselves onto German pillboxes, blocking machine guns with their own chests to allow their unit to survive and retreat. For their self-sacrifice in battle, they were posthumously awarded the distinction Hero of the Soviet Union. Soviet propaganda widely publicized this heroic deed. However, during the war, Soviet army journalists were interested in the propagandistic potential of the story and not in historical details. As the wellknown example of the 28 Panfilov Guardsmen shows, such myths and legends were routinely produced by Soviet propaganda during the war with more or less plausibility.43 Much better known than our three heroes was of course Aleksandr Matrosov, who sacrificed his life in a similar way to disable a German machine gun. So strong were the clichés created by official propaganda, that in Soviet times the Novgorod press routinely wrote that “Gerasimenko, Krasilov and Cheremnov repeated the heroic feat of Matrosov,” although the latter committed his act of sacrifice one year later. After the war, at a meeting of veterans of the 225th division, where the three heroes had served, the decision was taken to erect a memorial at the spot of their deaths, on the bank of the Volkhov river on the outskirts of Novgorod. Another symbolic memorial was erected in the historical center of the city, in the middle of the Yaroslav Court (see Figure 9.8). During the postwar decades, the cult of the three heroes was established in Novgorod, local streets were given their names and local state enterprises competed for the right to symbolically include the heroes in the lists of their workers. Both memorials became sites of official commemorative ceremonies. The Novgorod authorities invited the family members of one of the heroes, Cheremnov, to move to Novgorod and provided them with work and accommodation. The daughter of Cheremnov, now a pensioner, still lives in Novgorod; in January 2013, she gave an interview to the local television program Patriot, mentioned earlier. In December 2010, NNG published an investigative article by a local journalist and veteran of the poisk movement, Aleksandr Orlov. The article was based on

220  Tatiana Zhurzhenko archival research and claimed that the commonly known story of the three heroes is false at least in one particular aspect: the real place of their death was not the Volkhov bank near the unfinished bridge where the monument was erected but the nearby village Koptsy, about 30 kilometers from Novgorod. Moreover, as Russian military archives confirm, the real graves of all three heroes are unknown— their bodies were “left on the battlefield”—the fate of millions of Soviet soldiers. Although Orlov mentioned that he found no documents proving their heroic feat, he did not question the core of the myth but pointed to the bitter truth behind official triumphalist propaganda—the inability of the Soviet state and its army to care about their dead in a decent way.44 This article provoked a heated debate, as some opponents of Orlov (in particular, Soviet war veterans) denied his version of the story and incited a discussion as to whether the monument should be moved to the “right place.” Sergei Vitushkin in his polemical article, titled “Do not move. Just remember,” argued against historical revisionism in local war history.45 Aleksandr Orlov, in his answer “Remembering is good. But to know is better,” admitted that myths and legends have been created by the propaganda machines of all armies, but he argued that those who died in the war deserve the truth. And if the bitter truth is that the three soldiers, who were transformed into iconic figures by official

Figure 9.8 Memorial to the Heroes of the Soviet Union Gerasimenko, Krasilov, and Cheremnov at the historical center of Velikii Novgorod (erected 1957). Source: Photograph by the author.

World War II memories in the Russian North  221 propaganda, had been left unburied, this truth should become part of the common memory.46 Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta returned to this topic in the subsequent years. In July 2016, Aleksandr Orlov published another article based on some newly discovered archival materials. While the exact circumstances of the deaths of Gerasimenko, Krasilov, and Cheremnov remained unclear, Orlov could prove that there were actually four soldiers who heroically fell in this fight, but the fourth one—corporal Dubina—was left without any award. Orlov proposed to correct this injustice at least partly and add his name to both memorials.47 On February 8, 2017, the newspaper came out with a cover story addressing the same topic and criticizing the re-enactment of the famous episode at the occasion of its 75th anniversary.48 The newspaper doubted the official narrative based on the legend which had been created by Soviet authorities and argued that there are moral limits to war re-enactments, especially against the background of military conflicts in Ukraine and Syria. The article referred to the organizer of the reenactment, the Russian Military Historical Society, headed by the conservative minister of culture Vladimir Medinskii, and connected the local Novgorod case with the long-running dispute between Medinskii and some Russian historians on the authenticity of the famous myth about the 28 Panfilov Guardsmen.49 The same issue of the newspaper included a column by the editor-in-chief, Sergei Brutman, who criticized the attempt of the Russian Orthodox Church to seize control over the Immortal Regiment, a new mass movement aimed at commemoration of Soviet soldiers fallen in World War II.50 These publications, among many others on the commemoration and memory of World War II, demonstrate that NNG for years has been a critical voice and an important platform for re-negotiating myths and historical truth about the war. Another example that deals with the role of the media in local community building comes from Murmansk. This one, however, is not about breaking local taboos but about protecting identity, historical truth, and moral values of the local community against “outsiders.” In 2001, Aleksei Uchitel’, a successful and wellknown Russian filmmaker, announced a new project: to make a movie about wartime Murmansk. The screenplay, published under the title “The House, or All Souls Day,” was written by Aleksandr Rogozhkin and allegedly based on witnesses’ testimonies. It tells the story of the Murmansk Interclub organized during World War II for the US and British marines from the allied Arctic convoy ships. In the screenplay, the Interclub was presented as an NKVD-run brothel, and the girls, so the story goes, were forced into prostitution to spy on foreigners. At the end of the screenplay, all of them were put on a barge and drowned in the sea by torpedoing it from a submarine. Only one 15-year-old girl survived by chance and told the story. The interview with Aleksei Uchitel’ and the film screenplay published later in the Iskusstvo kino magazine caused an outrage in Murmansk. In February 2002, the Murmansk regional newspaper Murmanskii vestnik published an article by a local historian and professor at Murmansk University, Aleksei Kiselev, who rejected the story as completely invented and having nothing to do with

222  Tatiana Zhurzhenko historical truth. The author, who is also a war veteran and one of the founders of the Murmansk historical school as well as a local expert on war history, claimed that, although the Interclub (including a bar and a dance club) indeed existed in wartime Murmansk, there is no evidence of forced prostitution or the secret execution of local women as presented in the screenplay. Kiselev criticized the plan to produce a movie based on a false representation of war history and deplored the profit-seeking priorities of modern Russian cinema. “We want to protect not only the honor of Murmansk, but also the brotherhood and cooperation of the peoples of Russia, USA, Great Britain and Canada in their common fight against Hitler. Therefore, we don’t like when foreign marines are presented as ‘hungs’ preoccupied with sex, and our girls as immoral prostitutes.”51 What the local historian (frequently writing for Murmansk media) defended was not only the honor of war veterans and shared values of the local community (“us,” residents of wartime and today’s Murmansk) and local women as bearers of these moral values; he also protected the new positive myth of the Arctic convoys, of the military brotherhood of the anti-Hitler coalition which in the last two decades has become an integral part of Murmansk local identity. As passions escalated, Soviet war veterans wrote an open letter to the Murmansk governor asking him to ban the shooting of the controversial film in Murmansk given that it falsifies history and discredits the Soviet people. Meanwhile, the local state archive and the Murmansk historical museum denied the existence of any documents that could prove the controversial story. In response to an official query of the Murmansk authorities, the FSB announced that (what a surprise!) no evidence of such a brothel could be found in the KGB archives. A number of publications and local television programs were devoted to this hot topic. Murmansk journalists mobilized British convoy veterans and British colleagues— journalists who also confirmed that they never had heard about such a house. Best informed and competent in this discussion was probably the Arkhangel’sk journalist Olga Golubtsova, who for many years had studied the personal contacts between foreign marines and local Murmansk women and wrote a documentary book.52 The fate of women accused of having an affair with a US or British marine was hard enough—they were expelled from Murmansk and often landed in the Gulag. According to Golubtsova, three Interclubs—in Arkhangelsk, Molotovsk (now Severodvinsk), and Murmansk existed during World War II; however, she also failed to find any evidence of a NKVD-run brothel as she reported to the Archangel’sk newspaper Severnyi rabochii.53 While Aleksei Uchitel’ rejected criticism and insisted on his right to interpret historical facts, the film project was eventually abandoned. In my second example, the Murmansk media (first of all Murmanskii vestnik and local television) became a site of moral mobilization for the local community, and an active actor involved in a campaign perceived from the local perspective as a defense of historical truth and collective values against “an outsider’s” interpretation of local history. To be fair, the criticism by the local media was targeted not so much at the famous filmmaker who in 2005 released the successful film Dreaming of Space (Predchuvstvie kosmosa) also shot in Murmansk.

World War II memories in the Russian North  223 Understandably, Murmansk residents were happy to see their city on the screen. The criticism was rather aimed at the contemporary “post-modern” way of dealing with history as a resource for imagination, ignoring the feelings and emotions of the local community which has the “right” to control its own history.

Conclusion The annual Victory Day parade in Moscow is usually seen as the quintessence of Russian commemorative politics centered around the official cult of “Victory over German fascism.” The triumphalist narrative of the “Great Patriotic War” integrated into the tradition of the “thousand-year-old” Russian statehood and its history of military glory has been used by the Kremlin to cement the new Russian state patriotism. These politics echo in the regions where the program “City of Military Glory” was implemented by the government, 2007–2015. The honorary title was seen by the local elites as a chance for re-branding the city (and region) and encouraged them to mobilize available symbolic resources and to revise local myths and symbols remaining from Soviet era and re-narrate local war history as part of the new official neo-imperial narrative. Cultivating the myth of the “Great Patriotic War” and connecting it to conservative and traditionalist values, local authorities turn the Soviet nostalgia widespread among the older and middle-aged generations into loyalty to the post-Soviet Russian state. Local media, especially official newspapers controlled by the authorities, have been instrumental in providing discursive and moral continuity with the Soviet era and the “Great Patriotic War” narrative. At the same time, local commemorative cultures of World War II in the Russian regions are far from monolithic and homogeneous. New mnemonic actors and “communities of memory” have contributed to the pluralization and democratization of local war memory. Soviet taboos—on such topics as mistakes and failures of the Soviet military command and their tragic consequences, Stalinist repressions in the army, collaboration, everyday life and survival under Nazi occupation— were broken, often by efforts of local historians and journalists. In Velikii Novgorod, the fate of the Second Shock Army came to the fore and Miasnoi Bor turned into an important site of memory. With the end of the Cold War, the story of the Arctic convoys became one of the central pillars of post-Soviet Murmansk identity being supported by a number of grassroots commemorative initiatives, some of them transnational. While there is a broad consensus on the meaning of the “Great Patriotic War” in Russian society, it coexists with a significant public pluralism on the local level. Associations of Soviet war veterans, “children of war,” poisk groups, and ethnic minorities (such as the Saami in Murmansk oblast) underline different aspects of the local war experience. In this context, local media serve as a venue for different voices and a platform for discussions and negotiations between civil society activists and local authorities. Moreover, some media actively (and recurrently) raise sensitive issues on the proper forms of commemoration, protest against the commercialization and “banalization” of war memory and seek to deconstruct old myths left from the Soviet era. Some local journalists

224  Tatiana Zhurzhenko writing on such topics combine their jobs with an active involvement in local commemoration projects and the poisk movement, as well as research work as amateur historians. The local media are thus an indispensable part of commemorative politics in the regions. They mediate between the official discourse and the local narratives, between local civil society and the authorities, and between different mnemonic actors. They also provide both continuity with the Soviet era and the transformation of the local memoryscapes. As stated in the beginning, this chapter reflects the situation in Murmansk and Velikii Novgorod one year before the annexation of Crimea and the subsequent mass patriotic mobilization in Russia. Myths and symbols of the “Great Patriotic War” played an important role in this mobilization known as the “Russian spring.” The events of 2014 accelerated the politicization of World War II memory in Russia and its evolution into a quasi-state ideology; the confrontation with the West imbued it with the additional meaning of “Russian exclusiveness” and “alternative civilizational values.” Meanwhile, the Immortal Regiment march on Victory Day—initially a grassroots initiative soon appropriated by the state—transformed and unified local commemorative rituals. New research is needed to answer the question of how the post-Crimean developments affected the role of the media in local memory politics. We can only assume that ideological pressure and the increasing polarization of public opinion make it challenging for the local media to exercise this role.

Notes

1 Neiger, Meyers, and Zandberg, On Media Memory, 7. 2 Ibid., 10. 3 Kulyk, “The Media, History and Identity,” 289. 4 Cf. Ukrainian historian Georgii Kasianov (Kasianov, “Razrytaia mogila”) who argues that journalists and not professional historians were the first to bring the previously silenced issue of the Great Famine 1932–33 into the public discourse. 5 See Becker, “Lessons from Russia;” White, Media, Culture and Society;” Beumers, Hutchings, and Rulyova, eds., The Post-Soviet Russian Media; Rosenholm, Nordenstreng and Trubina, eds., Russian Mass Media. 6 See, for example, Hutchings and Rulyova, “Commemorating the Past.” 7 See Rutten, Fedor and Zvereva, eds., Memory, Conflict and New Media. See also Digital Icons, especially nos. 4, 6, 12, and 18. 8 Malinova, “Political Uses of the Great Patriotic War.” 9 Vladimir Gel’man and Sergei Ryzhenkov define the local regime as “a complex of political institutions, actors, and the resources and strategies available to them, which determine the conduct of local politics, local policy and local governance.” Gel’man and Ryzhenkov, “Local Regimes,” 449. 10 Zhurzhenko, “Generational Memory.” 11 Poiskovoe dvizhenie (poisk movement) is a civil movement of volunteers aimed at finding the remains of fallen soldiers left on the battlefields of World War II, as well as identifying and reburying these remains. For more information, see Dahlin, “ ‘No One Is Forgotten,’ ” 1070–89. 12 See Zhurzhenko, “Shared Memory Culture?” 13 See Song, “Symbolic Politics,” on the response of the Smolensk authorities and local residents to the “City of Military Glory” award.

World War II memories in the Russian North  225 14 Zhurzhenko, “Shared Memory Culture?,” 173. 15 Petro, Crafting Democracy. 16 The first governor of Novgorod oblast’, Mikhail Prusak, of Yeltsin’s cohort, led the region from 1991 to 2007 and was considered one of the authors of the “Novgorod model.” See Ibid. 17 According to the Primary Chronicle, the Varangians led by Rurik took control of the area and built Novgorod in 862. This event is taken as a starting point of the history of Russian statehood. 18 “Ispantsy vernuli.” 19 Staraia Russa, a small town in Novgorod oblast’, was a site of heavy fighting 1942– 1944 and has been a “City of Military Glory” since 2015. 20 For a detailed account, see Gavrilov, V Miasnom Boru. 21 Author’s interview with Aleksandr Ivanovich Orlov, journalist and photographer, one of the founders of the poisk movement in the Novgorod oblast’ (Novgorod, January 17, 2013). 22 Åtland, “Mikhail Gorbachev.” 23 Author’s interview with Elena Ishchenko, journalist of the state television and radio company “Murman” (Murmansk, September 22, 2012). 24 Two books of the Norwegian historian Morten Jentoft, Ostavshiesia bez rodiny and Liudi prigranich’ia, on the dramatic fate of ethnic Norwegians in the Russian North during the Soviet era, were translated into Russian and published in Murmansk; the second book in particular deals with the contribution of ethnic Norwegians to Soviet secret operations against Nazi Germany. 25 For further discussion, see Aas, “Norwegian and Soviet/Russian.” 26 In 2012, a monument to deer transport divisions was inaugurated in Nar’ian-Mar, the administrative center of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, which became the first region to introduce the Day of Memory of the participants of deer transport divisions (on November 20). Inspired by this example, the Kola Sámi Association has been lobbying for a similar monument in Murmansk for ten years; the inauguration is planned for 2020. 27 A debate in the local Murmansk media emerged on the question who should be considered the founder of Murmansk: the last Russian tsar Nicholas II, the minister of finance Sergei Witte (the main promoter of the idea), or the transport minister Sergei Rukhlov, whose calculations were eventually implemented. See Fedorov, “Sergei Vitte;” Belousov, “Zdes’ budet Murmansk.” 28 Dmitrii Korzhov, Murmansk journalist and writer, is the author of several historical novels about Murmansk during the Civil war, World War II and Khrushchev’s Thaw: “Murmantsy” (2008), “Murmantsy 1942” (2011) and “Gorod mezhdu morem i nebom” (2015). 29 Such publications in Russia are called federal’no-regional’nye gazety; Zolotukhin. 30 See Greene’s 2009 analysis of independent regional media; Greene, “Shifting Media.” 31 Ibid., 62. 32 Neiger, Meyers and Zandberg, On Media Memory, 7. 33 Author’s interview with Mikhail Oresheta, writer, amateur historian, one of the leaders of the poisk movement, head of the Center for civic and patriotic youth education in Murmansk (Murmansk, October 2, 2012). 34 See, for example, Kovalev, Povsednevnaia zhizn’. 35 Prilepin, “Rossiia na sviazi.” 36 See, for example, Loginov, “Unwritten Loyalties.” 37 “Regional’naia pressa Rossii.” 38 In this respect, the relative consensus on World War II in the Russian media is interesting to compare with the Ukrainian media, where “the past in general, and World War Two in particular, has been a subject of an incessant but largely inconspicuous

226  Tatiana Zhurzhenko contestation between the Soviet and nationalist narratives.” Kulyk, “The Media, History and Identity,” 301. 39 In February 2013, Vladimir Putin urged scholars to develop a unified textbook on Russian history which would “be based on a single concept, drawing on the same logic of a continuous Russian history, on the interconnection between all its stages, and the respect for all its milestones.” Cited in Kuvaldin, “New History Textbooks.” 40 Author’s interview with Gennadii Evgen’evich Riavkin, editor-in-chief of Novgorodskie vedomosti (Velikii Novgorod January 28, 2013). 41 Author’s interview with A. I. Orlov (see endnote 22). 42 Barkhatov, “Regional’naia pressa.” 43 Statiev, “La Garde.” 44 Orlov, “Na pustom meste.” 45 Vitushkin, “Perenosit’ ne nuzhno.” 46 Orlov, “Trebuetsia pomnit’.” 47 Orlov, “’Ne ta’ familiia.” 48 Khlebnikov, “Igry vokrug ambrazury.” 49 Filipov, “Russia’s Culture Minister.” 50 Brutman, “Kto i kak razgromit ‘Bessmertnyi polk’.” 51 Kiselev, “Liubov’ po lend-lizu.” 52 Golubtsova, Liubov’ po lend-lizu. 53 Golubtsova, “Interklub;” “Liubov’ po lend-lizu.”

Bibliography Aas, Steinar. “Norwegian and Soviet/Russian World War II Memory Policy During the Cold War and the Post-Soviet Years.” Acta Borealia: A Nordic Journal of Circumpolar Societies 29, no. 2 (2012). Åtland, Kristian. “Mikhail Gorbachev, the Murmansk Initiative, and the Desecuritization of Interstate Relations in the Arctic.” Cooperation and Conflict 43, no. 3 (2008). Barkhatov, Leonid. “Regional’naia pressa obretaet novyi smysl.” Nevskoe vremia, October 18, 2012. https://nvspb.ru/2012/10/18/regionalnaya-pressa-obretaet-novyy-smysl-49601. Becker, Jonathan. “Lessons from Russia. A Neo-Authoritarian Media System.” European Journal of Communication 19, no. 2 (2004). Belousov, Vasilii. “Zdes’ budet Murmansk zalozhen . . . Kto zasluzhil v blagodarnost’ ot nas pamiatnik?” Murmanskii vestnik, April 21, 2012. Beumers, B., S. Hutchings, and N. Rulyova, eds. The Post-Soviet Russian Media: Conflicting Signals. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. Brutman, Sergei. “Kto i kak razgromit ‘Bessmertnyi polk’.” Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta, February 8, 2017. Dahlin, Johanna. “ ‘No One Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Forgotten’: Duty, Patriotism, and the Russian Search Movement.” Europe-Asia Studies, 69, no. 7 (2017). “Digital Icons: Studies in Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media.” www. digitalicons.org/. Fedorov, Pavel. “Sergei Vitte ili imperator Nikolai II?” Murmanskii vestnik, March 14, 2012. Filipov, Boris. “Russia’s Culture Minister Says Anyone Who Questions This Tale of Soviet Bravery Is ‘Filthy Scum’.” Washington Post, November 28, 2016. www.washington post.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/28/one-surefire-way-to-be-called-scum-inrussia-expose-a-heroic-world-war-ii-story-as-a-myth/. Gavrilov, Boris. V Miasnom Boru, v Doline Smerti. Podvig i tragediia voinov 2-i Udarnoi Armii. Moscow: Kodeks, 2010.

World War II memories in the Russian North  227 Gel’man, Vladimir, and Sergei Ryzhenkov. “Local Regimes, Sub-National Governance and the ‘Power Vertical’ in Contemporary Russia.” Europe-Asia Studies 63, no. 3 (2011). Golubtsova, Olga. “Interklub. No ne ‘bodel Cherchillia’: Fakty protiv kontseptsii metrov rossiiskogo kino.” Severnyi rabochii, April 10, 2002. ———. “Liubov’ po lend-lizu: po sledam nesniatogo filma.” Severnyi rabochii, July 5, 2003. ———. Liubov’ po lend-lizu: dokumental’naia povest’ o sud’bakh zhenshchin, druzhivshikh s inostrantsami, 2nd ed. Arkhangel’sk: Lotsiia, 2016. Greene, Samuel. “Shifting Media and the Failure of Political Communication in Russia.” In The Post-Soviet Russian Media: Conflicting Signals, edited by B. Beumers, S. Hutchings, and N. Rulyova. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. Hutchings, Stephen, and Natalia Rulyova. “Commemorating the Past / Performing the Present: Television Coverage of the Second World War Victory Celebrations and the (De-) Construction of the Russian Nationhood.” In The Post-Soviet Russian Media: Conflicting Signals, edited by B. Beumers, S. Hutchings, and N. Rulyova. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. “Ispantsy vernuli nam krest.” Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta, December 15, 2004. Jentoft, Morten. Ostavshiesia bez rodiny: Istoriia kol’skikh norvezhtsev. Translated by E. S. Goncharova. Murmansk: Reklamnaia poligraphiia, 2002. Jentoft, Morten. Liudi prigranich’ia. Tainaia voina na Severe. Translated by E. S. Goncharova. Murmansk: Reklamnaia poligraphiia, 2007. Kasianov, Georgiy. “Razrytaia mogila: golod 1932–1933 godov v ukrainskoi istoriografii, politike i massovom soznanii.” Ab Imperio 3 (2004): 237–69. Khlebnikov, Sergei. “Igry vokrug ambrazury.” Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta, February 8, 2017. Kiselev, Aleksei. “Liubov’ po lend-lizu.” Murmanskii vestnik, January 26, 2002. Kovalev, Boris. Povsednevnaia zhizn’ naselenia Rossii v period natsistskoi okkupatsii. Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia, 2011. Kulyk, Volodymyr. “The Media, History and Identity: Competing Narratives of the Past in the Ukrainian Popular Press.” National Identities 13, no. 3 (2011): 287–303. Kuvaldin, Stanislav. “New History Textbooks May Promote Conservative Values in Russia.” Russia Beyond, March 23, 2013. www.rbth.com/society/2013/03/22/new_history_ textbooks_may_ promote_conservative_values_in_russia_24163.html. Loginov, Mikhail. “Unwritten Loyalties: Journalism in the Russian Regions.” Open Democracy, July 12, 2011. www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/unwritten-loyalties-journalismin-russian-regions/. Malinova, Olga. “Political Uses of the Great Patriotic War in Post-Soviet Russia from Yeltsin to Putin.” In War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, edited by Julie Fedor, Markku Kangaspuro, Jussi Lassila, and Tatiana Zhurzhenko. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Neiger, Motti, Oren Meyers, and Eyal Zandberg, eds. On Media Memory: Collective Memory in a New Media Age. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Orlov, Aleksandr. “Na pustom meste. Kto i zachem perenes podvig trekh geroev.” Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta, December 8, 2010. ———. “Trebuetsia pomnit’. No khorosho by eshcho i znat’.” Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta, June 6, 2011. ———. “ ‘Ne ta’ familiia.” Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta, July 27, 2016. Petro, Nicolai N. Crafting Democracy: How Novgorod Has Coped with Rapid Social Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.

228  Tatiana Zhurzhenko Prilepin, Zakhar. “Rossiia na sviazi, priem!” Ogonek 25 (June 28, 2010): 22. “Regional’naia Pressa Rossii pod gnetom vertikali vlasti. Brat’ia nashi men’shie?” Rasprostranenie pechatnoi produktsii. Aktual’naia informatsiia, opyt, problemy i perspektivy, February 24, 2012. http://distpress.ru/2009-01-28-14-46-10/263053-regional naya-pressa-rossii-pod-gnjotom-vertikali-vlasti-bratya-nashi-menshie.html. Rosenholm, Arja, Kaarle Nordenstreng, and Elena Trubina, eds. Russian Mass Media and Changing Values. Abingdon: Routledge, 2010. Rutten Ellen, Julie Fedor, and Vera Zvereva, eds. Memory, Conflict and New Media: Web Wars in Post-Socialist States. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013. Song, Joonseo. “Symbolic Politics and Wartime Front Regional Identity: ‘The City of Military Glory’ Project in the Smolensk Region.” Europe-Asia Studies 70, no. 2 (2018). Statiev, Alexander. “ ‘La Garde meurt mais ne se rend pas!’: Once Again on the 28 Panfilov Heroes.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 13, no. 4 (2012). Vitushkin, Sergei. “Perenosit’ ne nuzhno. Trebuetsia pomnit’.” Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta, June 6, 2011. White, Stephen, ed. Media, Culture and Society in Putin’s Russia. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. Zhurzhenko, Tatiana. “Shared Memory Culture? Nationalizing the ‘Great Patriotic War’ in the Ukrainian-Russian borderlands.” In Memory and Change in Europe: Eastern Perspectives, edited by Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak. Oxford: Berghahn, 2016. ———. “Generational Memory and the Post-Soviet Welfare State: Institutionalizing the ‘Children of War’ in Post-Soviet Russia.” In War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, edited by Julie Fedor, Markku Kangaspuro, Jussi Lassila, and Tatiana Zhurzhenko. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Zolotukhin, Andrei. “Federal’no-regional’nye gazety v Rossii.” REGLA 11 (2006).

10 Parades in Russian memory culture Yvonne Pörzgen

In his 2019 novel The Parade, David Eggers points out the twofold nature of military parades. The novel’s main character is in charge of paving a road that is to link the capital of an African country just emerging out of civil war with the southern part of the land: “The procession would leave the capital and travel south, symbolizing an end to decades of war.”1 But the parade never takes place. At the end of the novel, the president uses the newly finished road to let his army march against the people who walk on the road to get to the city to make use of its infrastructure. The event announced as a symbolic parade of peaceful soldiers turns into bloodshed. The risk of this happening had not been anticipated by the novel’s central character. He had accepted a military parade as an apt form of celebration due to the apparently civilized form of the potential destructiveness. Under the disguise of an event that is marked by planned and ritualized behavior, the rulers had prepared for unambiguous aggression. The surprise attack is successful because the expectations that are linked to the institution of a parade prevented others from becoming suspicious about the rulers’ real intentions. Countries use military parades to demonstrate their strength, the discipline of the army, and the degree of development of their weapons and machinery. Parades are meant to have a foreign as well as a domestic effect. Military parades warn possible enemies, while they instill the country’s own population with a sense of security and pride. In Russia, parades are essential in national memory and national commemoration alike. This chapter outlines the importance of parades in Soviet/Russian history, concentrating on the May 9 parades held in commemoration of the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany. It has been argued that while the 1917 Revolution toppled the Tsarist system and established the Soviet Union, it was the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) culminating in victory that forged the Soviet people together. The Victory Parade of 1945 on Red Square was followed by parades commemorating round jubilees. These occasions were also marked by accompanying publications.2 In post-Soviet times, the parades have become an annual event and the central element of the victory celebrations. This chapter shows the development of the Moscow May 9th Victory Parade as the central element of state commemorative activities. It also outlines how the symbolism of the parades has changed over the years and now converges with Putin’s new view of world

230  Yvonne Pörzgen history and Russia’s role in it. Thus, the parades both refer to the past and point to the future.

Parades as an object of research Scholars in the field of cultural studies, with their focus on performance and dynamics, have discovered parades as a fitting medium for the analysis of spacetime interrelations. Parades are a specific kind of procession. Processions are events of collective movement, determined by space, time, occasion, and participants. Processions can take the form of religious journeys, pilgrimages, festive parades, marches, or demonstrations. They are often organized for religious or political purposes. Processions promote the conformity of collective groups who wish to demonstrate their difference from others, expressing a belief in their own superiority. They are events of communication, both as its instrument and as its result. In relation to history, processions are a tool to establish hegemony. Processions react to history and write history. The space where the procession is held is loaded with symbolic meaning.3 As a form of ritual, processions are related to power, they are organized and normative, have a limited duration, follow a pattern and can thus be repeated. As is the case with rituals in general, processions are related to the constitutive processes of identity. From ancient times up until our day, each era has found specific forms of public perambulation. Organized movement outlasts forms of government, revolutions, and political changes. Every social order develops and institutionalizes events with collective movement as a common denominator. Visual, acoustic, and kinetic components work together to form a spectacle. The internal and external motivations are contradictory. Processions simultaneously promote both the participation of the individual and the distancing of the participants from “others.”4 The “spatial turn” of cultural studies has turned the attention of researchers to parades. The spatial phenomena of processions, demonstrations, and parades can be seen as a “cultural pattern.”5 For a certain time, the city space is transformed into a scene. Doing culture can be observed here. The medium of parades as a cultural form is busy not only with the production of space but also with the rapid removal of its traces. Parades are used to draw lines of traditional continuity to create collective identity. In the case of historical parades (which can be military as well) which show off colorful costumes and/or historical uniforms, the differences between the eras are blurred in favor of identification with the beauty and the deeds of the generations who came before. While parades are transient, attempts at their fixation are a common phenomenon. Media that attempt to capture parades include print media, television or other video productions, picture albums, expositions, or even whole museums.6 In the field of ethnology and especially in migration studies, parades such as the Berlin “Carnival of Cultures” and London’s “Notting Hill Carnival” are analyzed as intended platforms of heterogeneity. Research links these events with the cultural history of (re-)presenting cultures and defines them as conventionalized events typical for industrial societies.7 As parades, in addition to the aspect of

Parades in Russian memory culture  231 collective movement and their rituality, create a special relation between space and time, their analysis in respect to Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of “chronotope” applies as well. Bakhtin coined the term to express the interrelation of time and space as a form of cognition and as a mode of depiction of human relations. The chronotope “parade” shows the fight for participation or dominance of public space as a space of representation and power.8 The history of military parades can be traced back to the times of the Roman legions, drilled and led by their Centurions. Today’s forms emerged in the late middle ages when the dominant role of aristocratic riding knights was replaced by armies of infantry mercenaries. They were drilled to synchronize their movements and to use their weapons simultaneously. From the 17th century onward, military parades on the one hand served to check the troops’ readiness to fight and on the other hand fulfilled symbolic purposes. These parades stem from the time when war was seen as theater and parades, especially triumphal parades, were parts of the staged performance. The Napoleonic wars added the element of national euphoria.9 The national aspect was subsequently taken over by other countries: “On the parading fields of Longchamps, Tempelhof or Aldershot marched not only the units of the French, Prussian or British forces, there marched the Nation, in front of cheering and clapping onlookers, who were sent into a patriotic frenzy by the colorful spectacle.”10 After the end of the First World War and especially after the Versailles Treaty, the victorious countries held triumphant victory parades. Military historian Gerhard Bauer states that for a couple of hours, the people were able to forget the suffering of the four war years. The parades marking the anniversaries of the ceasefire of November 11, however, changed in nature in the following years. The marches in London and Paris acquired a character of commemorative ceremonies to honor the memory of the dead.11 Meanwhile, in Germany, veterans formed organizations to uphold the rituals and ceremonies of the army and acted in stark defiance of the young Weimar Republic. The National Socialists built on these forces and masterfully used military mass events to create a feeling of collective identity in combination with self-denial. After the Second World War, military ceremonies were reduced to a minimum in West Germany, while the East German army modeled itself on the Soviet Red Army and its elaborate parades and ceremonies. The most important military ceremony in unified Germany’s Bundeswehr is the “Grosser Zapfenstreich,” a night-time parade illuminated by torches and accompanied by music. It is held to mark the retirement of high-ranking officers, the president, the chancellor, or the minister of defense. The ritual was first inspired in the 19th century by the Russian army. In 1813, Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III visited Russian Tsar Alexander I in a Russian army camp and was impressed when the troops sang a choral for the Grand Tattoo. The Russian influence is still recognizable today. The music to Gerhard Tersteegen’s hymn “Ich bete an die Macht der Liebe,” composed by Dmitrii Bortnianskii (1751–1825), is a regular part of the Grand Tattoo.12 Military parades took place in Russian history on the most likely and unlikely times and occasions. The 1913 celebrations of the 300th Romanov jubilee

232  Yvonne Pörzgen combined different kinds of festivities, military parades among them.13 The authors of the Soviet publication on “Military Parades on Red Square” (2nd edition 1980) refer back to May 1, 1918, “when on the initiative of V. I. Lenin the first military parade was held in Moscow.”14 Malte Rolf interprets the parade on November 7, 1918, in the context of the range of celebrations marking the first anniversary of the revolution. The parade was typical for the new content of public festive events that “were now choreographed around the person of Lenin: masses of demonstrators now marched toward and past him.”15 The parades in Moscow were the model for similar events in other Soviet cities and rural regions. Rolf recounts an episode in 1937 when polar explorers held their own November 7th parade at the same time as the Moscow parade took place as they then reported via radio.16 The parade that has left the biggest mark is arguably the Moscow Victory Parade of 1945. A parade hardly even ever mentioned is the joint Wehrmacht and Red Army military parade in Brest in 1940.17 The victory parade in Berlin on September 7, 1945, was initiated by the Soviet Union.

Moscow’s parades Parades are a site of memory in Pierre Nora’s system of lieux de mémoire that considers geographical places as well as memorials, persons, rituals, and social practices. Parades are rituals. Grushevoi and his co-authors took pride in the observation that the over 100 Soviet Red Square parades they counted up until 1980 were held “with a precise order and observing the holy ritual.”18 The Moscow parades fulfill the formal characteristics of ritual actions in that they are stylized, repetitive, stereotypical, and decorative, are held in a special place at special times that are dictated by the clock, the calendar, or specific circumstances. Roy A. Rappaport sees a distinction between rituals and theater performances. In a ritual—and thus in the Red Square parades—the audience is transformed into participants: To watch is to take part. In Rappaport’s system of rituals, the parades belong to the indexical group as they transmit information on the current physical, psychological, and social state of the participants.19 Other systems categorize according to function. In that respect, parades can be seen as rituals not only of collective memory but also of power.20 The historian Karl Schlögel identifies Soviet parades as rituals, just as waiting in line or the ZAGS marriage ceremonies, and interprets them as “Choreographies of Power.”21 While Schlögel refers to Soviet times, many of his observations are still valid in post-Soviet Russia and apply to recent parades as well. The choreography was—and is—highly scripted. To ensure that they run smoothly, the parades every year were—and are—rehearsed. In fact, when talking about a Moscow Red Square parade, it is rather several parades that should be considered. The assembly of the troops close to Red Square by marching or driving through the city is accompanied and cheered on by watchers. The parade on Red Square in front of invited guests is the second part. In Soviet times, a military parade was the smaller part of the march. The military attaché at the German Embassy, General Koestring, marked this difference

Parades in Russian memory culture  233 with his statement that after the November parade the usual march of the workers followed with 1.75 million participants.22 The next part is the troops—and ­workers—leaving Red Square and again parading through the city. At this point, the parade turns into a public festivity. Usually, these parades are accompanied and completed by air parades. The end of the festive day is marked by a salute with fireworks. This highly orchestrated sequence of movements needs careful preparation and rehearsal. Parades being one of the Soviet government’s favored mass stagings, the rehearsing of parades can be seen all through Soviet history. Already in 1927, the rehearsals for the May 1st parade took several months.23 Participation was always meant as an honor and a privilege. The structure of the parades has remained quite similar over the decades which is partly due to a continuity of leadership. For many years, the parades were choreographed by Georgii and Vladimir Stenberg, starting in 1932 and reaching—from Georgii’s death onward organized by Vladimir alone—right up into the 1960s. Karl Schlögel goes so far as to state that the parades have marked Red Square so that the “genius loci” is not defined by the place but rather by what has happened there. He goes on to claim that the Lenin Mausoleum has turned Red Square into a quasi-religious space. During the parades, the Mausoleum becomes a place of consolidation: we see “a historical site, the center of the realm, the center of the capital, the Necropolis of the Revolution, the built sphere of power, a granite cube that dominates the whole square and holds it together. The reign of the dead over the living?”24 This reign can be reinterpreted with respect to the victory parades of 1945 and 2020. The example of the 1945 parade marchers, who have now mostly passed, is emulated by today’s participants. The aim is to infuse them with enthusiasm and a feeling of superiority. In 1945, the opposition superior–inferior was clear: superior Soviet Union, inferior Nazi Germany. In 2020, the relation has shifted to superior Russia versus inferior everybody else.

Soviet-era parades In Soviet times, the parades on May 1 and November 7 were by far the most prominent ones. The Red Square parades were a form of mass political celebration.25 They took place every year in all the cities of the Soviet Union. In Moscow, there was always a parade on Red Square. Media, including not only newspapers but also television, reported widely on these parades, both inside and outside the Soviet Union. The journalist Paul Scheffer wrote in his description of the May 1st parade in 1927 that the number of participants exceeded one million. He stated that the parade took place for the ninth time and thus was held “by old custom.”26 The architecture around Red Square hampered the processions. This was the reason why the Voznesenskii gates, dating back to the 16th century, and the Iberian chapel next to the Historical Museum were demolished in 1931 and 1929, respectively. During the Cold War, the parades in Moscow were used to show off the military strength of the Soviet Union. Larger and larger missiles were developed and could be presented on vehicles on Red Square. The Voznesenskii

234  Yvonne Pörzgen gates were reconstructed in 1995, at the same time that the Cathedral of Christ the Savior was being rebuilt as well. The Tsarist architecture returned and set an end to the displaying of weapons exceeding certain dimensions. The May 1st and November 7th parades predate the May 9th Victory Parade, which is so dominant in post-Soviet Russia. They were organized throughout the 1920s and 1930s. The Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) is connected with several parades, fulfilling different functions. In 1941, after Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union, a general mobilization took place. The city of Moscow was soon under attack. Still, the 24th anniversary of the October Revolution was celebrated, and the parade was meant to demonstrate “resilience and resistance.”27 The participants of the November 7th military parade in Moscow were sent from the parade directly to the front. In later years, the November 7, 1941, parade was depicted as the first part of the inevitable victory marked by the June 24, 1945, parade. Thus, on page 6 of the photo almanac Parad Pobedy published in 1985 on occasion of the 40th anniversary of the victory parade, there is a picture of the troops parading in the snow on Red Square, accompanied on the opposite page by the picture from April 30, 1945, of soldiers raising the Soviet flag on the Reichstag in Berlin. The 1941 parade symbolizes the beginning of the armed conflict, the Soviet flag on the Reichstag its end. Both events are meant to be seen as inevitably following one after the other. The culmination point in this argumentation is the 1945 Victory parade. On November 7, 2015, a re-enactment of the 1945 parade took place on the historical site of Red Square. This since has become a new tradition and one more way to reintroduce Soviet rituals into modern Russian life. The November holiday had lost its meaning once the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. In 2015, it was replaced by the Day of National Unity on November 3, commemorating the expulsion of the Polish occupants from Moscow in 1612. The artificiality of this substitute holiday meant that it never took hold. The return of November 7th parades on Red Square via the backdoor of re-enactments seems almost natural. Re-enactments are a mass spectacle. They are seen as part of the Living History movement that has some aspects in common with infotainment such as medieval markets and Live Action Role Plays (LARP) with the difference that Living History expressively is meant to teach while histotainment has a mostly commercial purpose. The concept of Living History stresses the fact that re-enactments are constructions.28 Re-enactors more and more replace veterans in commemorative events and gain in respect.29 Re-enactments aspire to be authentic in two respects. For one, they are supposed to show what things were like in the past. In addition to “what things looked like,” they also transmit the experience of “what things felt like.” Authenticity relates to objects and subjects equally. Re-enactments are part of the phenomenon of the emotionalization of memory culture. It is mostly battles that are re-enacted. The organized replay of historical events originated in Great Britain (1984 re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings, 1066) and in the USA (especially in connection with the Civil War, such as the 1995 re-enactment of the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg)30 and came via Europe to Russia, where it is gaining in popularity. Most of the re-enactments are related to the Great Patriotic

Parades in Russian memory culture  235 War. To re-enact the 1945 storming of the Reichstag, to give another example, a model of the ruined structure was built in the military park “Patriot” close to Moscow in 2017. The 1941 parade aimed at presenting well-organized troops and heavy machinery to the public to create trust and the belief in the victory to come. From 1944 on, the Soviet government had to demonstrate that the Wehrmacht was in retreat, being defeated. In addition to the display of the captured enemy weaponry, prisoners of war were marched through the cities. The “March through Moscow” took place on July 17, 1944. The march consisted of 60,000 former German soldiers and took about five hours. In this case, the march was used as a typical ritual of victory and humiliation.31

The victory parade The first big parade marking the victory over Nazi Germany on Moscow’s Red Square—there had been smaller parades in 1944 to mark the liberation of Soviet territory—was held on June 24, 1945. This parade became the blueprint for all later parades commemorating the victory. There were about 31,000 military participants plus 1,300 musicians and students of military and musical institutions. The march lasted for two hours. The parade’s culmination was the end of the infantry parade when soldiers threw 200 German banners and flags contemptuously onto the steps of the Mausoleum. The planned march of the workers afterward was cancelled due to heavy rainfall. In the evening, Red Square was filled with celebrators who watched the fireworks at 11:00. Although the occasion was a first, the parade itself profited from being only seven weeks after the 1945 May 1st parade. The orchestra consisted mostly of the same groups. The repertoire was partly changed. Semen Aleksandrovich Chernetskii decided that Glinka’s choir “Slava Rodine” (from the opera “Ivan Susanin”) was to be played, a piece of music that had been banned in 1919 from public events as it was deemed to represent prerevolutionary Tsarist Russia. Glinka’s music replaced Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” that was usually played during parades. Other changes to the repertoire were made at the last minute. But still, the overall procedure was familiar.32 Red Army General Konstantin Stepanovich Grushevoi referred back to the 1941 image of participants in the November 7th parade marching from Red Square to the front and stated that now the delegates from all fronts returned, having destroyed the fascists.33 As is the rule for parades, the traces of the victory parade of 1945 were removed quickly. This was notably the case with the fountain that had been erected only for this day on the Lobnoe Mesto in front of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. It was taken apart right after the celebrations and remained a onetime occurrence. Plans to erect a symbolic fountain of light for the parade in 2020 were not realized. While parades are by nature performative, the June 24th parade was given a material presence as well. The Soviet Union and later Russia and Belarus issued commemorative postal stamps. Another typical medium of commemoration is a collector’s coin issued by Russia in 1995. The most prominent materialization

236  Yvonne Pörzgen is the statue of Marshall Zhukov, depicting him as a rider. Zhukov reviewed the 1945 parade on horseback. This riding performance itself was a replication of the large 1930 parade on May 1 when Kliment Voroshilov started the parade by riding out of Spassky Tower onto the Square. The statue of Zhukov by Viacheslav Klykov and Iurii Grigiev was erected in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the victory. The city had planned to place it on Red Square itself but abandoned this plan after the UNESCO Cultural Heritage Commission criticized it. Red Square had been accepted into the list of World Cultural Heritage in 1990. The statue was thus erected just outside Red Square in front of the National History Museum which has the prestigious address of Red Square, 1. The statue is four meters high and stands on a two-meter-high granite pedestal. The statue has been criticized for a lack of realism. The horse’s dimensions are distorted, and the rider’s face is hardly recognizable as Zhukov’s. The composition is not a depiction of a real moment but rather a condensation of the parade as a chronotope. The horse is shown riding over Nazi flags and banners. In the historical event, Zhukov rode onto Red Square, rounded it, rode on to Manezhnaia Square and back on Red Square where he dismounted in front of the Mausoleum, which he climbed to give his speech. When the soldiers dropped the banners in front of the Mausoleum—a moment that was emphasized by the orchestra going quiet, only the drums rolling—Zhukov was standing on top of it, watching. So, the depiction is symbolic rather than realistic. With its clear reference to the parade, the monument becomes a visual sign of the chronotopic parade. The 1945 parade thus is a fixed point in space and monumental culture. However, it has not become a literary topos;34 the parade does not figure as the main event in fiction. Nonetheless, it is sometimes referred to in memoirs. Valentin Varennikov, in his later career one of the leaders of the Soviet-Afghan War and one of the instigators of the 1991 coup d’état attempt, remembers in the first volume of his life memories Nepovtorimoe (Not to be Repeated), that he was called from Berlin to Moscow for the parade. He was told by one of his superiors that prerequisites for participation were a body height of 1.80 meters or more and “a chest full of medals.”35 Varennikov puts into words what the parade was meant to convey: “It will remain in the memory of our people for ages as a symbol of the power and grandeur of our Motherland.”36 His relation to the parade is marked by emotion and pathos. He states that during the parade, it seemed as if they all did not breathe, only the beating of their hearts was audible.37 This idealization of the moment is in keeping with what is missing in this and every other account of the parade, including recent television programs: mention of Stalin’s annihilation of the army elite during the purges of 1937; the fact that the political elite watching the parade from the top of the Mausoleum would undergo distinct changes in the following years, such as Beria’s execution soon after Stalin’s death in 1953; or the facts that Stalin degraded Zhukov in 1946 and that in 1957, Zhukov was accused of attempts to split the Red Army and lost all his positions and functions. Varennikov writes that during the parade, his whole division marched like a monolith, “all eyes fixed on Stalin.”38 Varennikov finishes his account with blatant

Parades in Russian memory culture  237 exaggerations, claiming “Not only Moscow marked this grandiose celebration of the Victory—the whole country, the whole planet rejoiced.”39 This statement is all the more irritating when one takes into consideration that in June 1945, the war was still raging in the Pacific, the dropping of the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was still to come about six weeks later. With regard to parades, it was “back to the routine” after 1945: May 1 and November 7 were the regular dates again. For 20 years, the victory parade was not repeated. Only from 1965 onward, Victory Day was observed as an official holiday. Parades were held to commemorate round jubilees in 1985 and finally in 1990. For Soviet parades from 1960 onward, Schlögel claims that they became everyday routines, which he sees as “ritualization.” This interpretation of ritual lacks the element of commitment and religious zeal or need that is inherent in the term “ritual.” Rituality in this sense is what is aimed for by the May 9th festivities and parades in the post-Soviet decades.40 The celebrations gained in importance after the end of the Soviet Union following a period of uncertainty. The 1990s were a time without military parades. November 7 was not celebrated with pomp any more given that the Soviet state had disintegrated, and May 1 became more civilian. The 1990s left Russia in search of its identity. The ideological focus was found in the victory of 1945. In all of the eight opinion polls by the Levada center between 1999 and 2018, the vast majority of people asked which event in Russian history filled them with pride answered, “The victory in the Great Patriotic War” (rates vary between 82 and 89 percent).41 The first post-Soviet May  9th Victory Parade was held in 2005. The Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) watched it in his home in Kraków on German television and found it alarming, ludicrous, and sad all at the same time, as he commented in his column “The World According to Lem” in the weekly newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny. He wrote, “Woe be it to the politicians who—like Putin—attempt to dazzle several dozen heads of states by showing them a parade of their last praetorians.”42 Lem criticized Putin for holding a bombastic event to draw attention away from Russia’s shoddy health system, sinking birth rates, and increasing mortality. For Lem, it was “the exchange of rational rule for a kind of circus show.”43 Some weeks later, he returned to the topic of the parade and found something positive to say about it, namely, that there were no rockets and tanks but only well-trained foot soldiers. He contrasted this fact with his memory of a visit to Moscow many years earlier when he could not sleep at night because in preparation for the November 7th parade, Soviet soldiers exercised on the street where Lem was staying and kept him awake. Stanisław Lem was born in the Polish city of Lwów and experienced its invasion first by the Soviet Army in 1939, then by the German Wehrmacht in 1941, as well as the annexation to Ukrainian-Soviet territory after the final takeover by the Red Army in 1944. His family left Lwów—then Lviv/Lvov—and emigrated to Kraków. He never accepted the transformation of his hometown from a Polish to a Ukrainian city and always remained skeptical toward Germany and even more toward the Soviet Union and Russia. The 2005 renewal of the Soviet Union’s

238  Yvonne Pörzgen victory parade tradition consequently left him dubious or rather alarmed about Putin’s aspirations to “make Russia great again.” Lem’s view is that of “the other” as created by the parade. The message conveyed to those included in the collective identity of “victors” is quite different. Conflict researcher Neil Jarman worked on parades in Northern Ireland but made observations on the duality of symbolism and the immediate effects of the parade performance that are true for the post-Soviet victory parades in Moscow, too: “The victory is confirmed for another year. . . . For the performance to be disrupted or cancelled would be to transform history, to rupture the simultaneity of past and present and make the future uncertain. The act of performative commemoration completes a circle between the past and the present, and thus makes the future certain.”44 In 2005, the parade’s audience was more international than ever before or since. To mark the 60th jubilee of the end of the Great Patriotic War, the heads of state of France, Italy, and Germany watched the parade. The guest of honor, sitting next to Putin, was the US President George W. Bush. If we see the May 9th parades as the “natural successor” to the annual Soviet May 1st and November 7th parades, with their display of destructive power addressed to the USA and NATO, this looks like a complete turnaround and is an indicator of Russia’s attitude of Western orientation and a reduction of tensions. Such international participation can also be read as a reminiscence of the Allied Forces parade in Berlin on September 7, 1945. Recent additions to the parade were made by the incorporation of the Immortal Regiment movement. This movement started as a grassroots initiative aimed at a more personal commemoration. While official activities focus on heroic deeds, the idea was to give people the space to show what their grandparents and other relatives lived through during the war, be it on the frontline, at home, or in evacuation. The grassroots ideal was destroyed when politicians—first and foremost Vladimir Putin himself—participated in the marches. In the end, the Immortal Regiment was incorporated into the May 9th parades as another way to underline the idea that all the deeds of the whole country were heroic. The individual approach was swallowed up; the movement is now instrumentalized. The most visible changes to the Victory Parade, which from 2005 onward became an annual event, were that the state went to ever bigger ends to organize it. In recent years, the huge expenditures on the parades provoked negative comments. There were complaints that the money should be spent instead on the underfunded health system or to increase the low pensions (rather than increasing the pension age as happened in 2018). Still, the parade is held with ever more glory every year. There is not only the regular parade on May 9 but also the practice runs in the days before. Each time, surface and underground traffic lines are blocked and traffic is detoured. The air show is practiced as well. In St. Petersburg, there is also a ship parade.

Putin’s instrumentalization of the victory With all the additions and changes, the overall character of the Moscow Victory Parade—troops marching to military music past a hand-picked audience on Red

Parades in Russian memory culture  239 Square—has remained unchanged, which cannot be said of the underlying messages. In 2020, historians in Germany were sent a paper by the Russian embassy in which Vladimir Putin lays out his interpretation of 20th-century Russian history. Historians were encouraged to use this article in their research and teaching. Historians criticized this action and characterized it as an attempt to wield political influence on independent academic work. The paper—and the rather unusual way of circulating it—sheds clear light on the official view of Russian history as of 2020.45 “The Soviet Union,” readers are told, “saved the entire world.” Putin mentions the “new traditions” of commemorating the war like the marches of the Immortal Regiment, created “to pass on to future generations the memory of the fact that the Nazis were defeated first and foremost by the entire Soviet people.” So here again, the Soviet people as a whole is invoked, without recognition of nationalities’ aspirations for independence. Putin states that “it is crucial to rely exclusively on archival documents and contemporary evidence while avoiding any ideological or politicized speculations.” A politician’s claim that he writes without “politicized speculations” appears to be a contradiction in terms. Later in the article, Putin speculates about the existence of “secret ‘protocols’ or codicils to agreements of a number of countries with the Nazis. The only thing that is left to do is to take their word for it. In particular, materials pertaining to the secret Anglo-German talks still have not been declassified. Therefore, we urge all states to step up the process of making their archives public and publishing previously unknown documents of the war and pre-war periods—the way Russia has been doing it in recent years.” The article underlines that “unlike many other European leaders of that time, Stalin did not disgrace himself by meeting with Hitler who was known among the Western nations as quite a reputable politician and was a welcome guest in the European capitals.” Again, while the statement itself is true, it chooses to gloss over the Soviet Union’s pact with Hitler/Germany. Instead of admitting to the invasion and annexation of Eastern Poland, Putin rebukes Poland for having been “engaged in the partition of Czechoslovakia along with Germany.” The facts are turned upside down. Poland is disgraced as an ally of Germany, and Britain and France as “double-dealing,” unreliable partners in crime. Only the Soviet Union, Putin claims, “did its utmost to use every chance to create an Anti-Hitler coalition.” Putin scolds Poland for not wanting “any obligations to the Soviet side.” No mention is made at this point of the nature of the Soviet regime which, at the time concerned here, killed and imprisoned in the Gulag hundreds of thousands of people. This is the state Poland is accused of denying allegiance to. The scapegoating of Poland serves to justify the belatedly mentioned SovietGerman Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 (still omitting any reference to the additional protocol that regulated the partition of Poland). Instead, Putin scolds Polish military and political leaders for fleeing to Romania after their defeat by Nazi Germany, “betraying [their] people, who continued to fight against the invaders.” Once again, an accusation is made and crucial facts are left unmentioned, this time

240  Yvonne Pörzgen the mass killing of Polish officers by Soviet NKVD units in and around Katyn in 1940. Putin sums up his justification of the Soviet Union’s attack on Poland with the comment: “Obviously, there was no alternative.” He claims that the incorporation of the Baltic States into Soviet territory “was implemented on a contractual basis, with the consent of the elected authorities.” Putin describes his own role in the debate about history as that of an intermediary: “For my part, I have always encouraged my colleagues to build a calm, open and trust-based dialogue, to look at the common past in a self-critical and unbiased manner.” The claim made in the paper’s third sentence and quoted earlier that the Soviet Union “saved the entire world” can hardly be described as self-critical and unbiased. Again, the paper contradicts itself. Putin rejects the European Parliament’s resolution, “On the Importance of European Remembrance for the Future of Europe,” from September 9, 2019, and denounces it as “ ‘paperwork’—for I cannot call this resolution a document.” He interprets the resolution as “a threat to the fundamental principles of the world order.” Meanwhile Russia, in Putin’s view of ongoing events, defends the order as it comes out “against neo-Nazis and Bandera’s successors.” Without using the word “Ukraine” he thus claims that Russia defends a lawful order and is undeservedly “killed and burned” for doing so. With respect to the Second World War, Putin says: “Finally, we know the true course of events.” The “we” seems not to include “the West,” since Putin finds it necessary to warn: “Historical revisionism, the manifestations of which we now observe in the West, primarily with regard to the subject of the Second World War and its outcome, is dangerous because it grossly and cynically distorts the understanding of the principles of peaceful development.” Putin’s paper on the Soviet role in World War II thus serves to promote Russia’s place in the world and denigrate its enemies. The justification of Soviet politics is combined with a warning against new enemies. Poland, the EU, and “the West” are presented as opposed to Russia’s interests. The celebration of the Victory is combined with a call to defend the idea of the Soviet Union as glorious savior. This message is expressed by the parades in recent years and the 75th anniversary in 2020.

Parades in the time of Corona Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there have been several states apart from Russia that celebrate the Soviet victory. The celebrations differ by date as well as by whether parades are organized. Until 2014, Ukraine celebrated only Victory Day on May 9. In 2015, it introduced the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation on May 8, though only May 9 is a public holiday. Kazakhstan switched its celebration to May 8. The Baltic States mark neither of the two days, just like Turkmenistan. Azerbaijan stuck to May 9, as did Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, the Republic of Moldova, and Tajikistan. Armenia celebrates Victory and Peace Day on May 9. Uzbekistan has re-dedicated May 9 as Memorial Day or Day of Memory in honor of the protectors of the country in general.

Parades in Russian memory culture  241 Belarus usually celebrates Victory Day on May 9 in the same way Russia does. As President Alexander Lukashenko for a long time denied the danger of COVID19 and dismissed the international warnings about the pandemic as a psychosis, the celebrations of the 75th victory anniversary were held as planned. On May 9, the usual military parade in Minsk was held with 4,000 soldiers, military vehicles, and planes. Lukashenko had rejected the World Health Organization’s appeal to find alternative solutions for the celebrations as “unacceptable.”46 The parade attracted less people than in other years, but still thousands stood along the streets and watched without wearing masks, pressed closely together. Belarus was the only post-Soviet country that did not take heed of the pandemic and held parades on the usual date. The invited heads of state declined to come to Minsk, as did the representative of the European Union in Minsk. The ambassadors of Russia, China, Vietnam, and several other states were seen among the spectators. Russia first took measures against the pandemic at the beginning of March 2020. One month later, it was announced that the spread of the virus was affecting the plans for Victory Day as well. There was speculation that the parade on Red Square would be held without viewers. This option was soon dismissed. The last parade rehearsal was held on April 16. On this day, Putin announced that the parade would be postponed. Though no date had been announced yet on April 20, the Defense Ministry published a statement that all participants in the rehearsals for the parade would be quarantined. Four days before, it was confirmed that cadets who had purportedly been rehearsing for the parade had tested positive for the Coronavirus.47 The investigative website Proekt reported almost 400 infected cadets.48 On May 9, Moscow held “Ghost Celebrations.”49 While Moscow was under curfew, Russia’s Air Force staged air shows over Moscow and other cities. In Moscow, the show involved 75 jets and helicopters flying in formation over Red Square. The flyover lasted only five minutes, but the more important part was that it was broadcast online and on television. The Immortal Regiment held an online “march.” Participants were called upon to take the pictures of their relatives who went through the war out on their balconies and to sing the song “Den Pobedy” (Victory Day) at 7:00 pm local time. The traditional fireworks were scheduled as usual for 10:00 pm. Moscow authorities organized an online portal with materials about the war and the victory. The Moscow Methodological Center, an institution that provides materials for educational purposes, contributed a site about the 1945 Victory Parade.50 The site is “interactive.” The readers are, for example, asked to “read the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR’s order from November 8, 1943, ‘On the investiture of the military medal “Victory” ’ and define the materials it was made from.” Stalin’s order to organize the parade is given as a text with blanks where you have to select the correct word for each blank from a drop-down menu. In a drag-and-drop assignment, you are asked to put the nine elements of the parade in the correct order. The exercises are meant for children, as the participant is addressed as “ty,” not as the formal “Vy.” Having worked through the provided material and having mastered the tasks, the children have learned

242  Yvonne Pörzgen that Stalin organized a wonderful parade. What Stalin did before and after is not touched upon, and critical questions are excluded. In addition, online lectures and films and virtual tours via special mobile apps were available to the public to celebrate while being confined to their homes. In a televised ceremony, Putin laid flowers at the Eternal Flame just outside the Kremlin wall and addressed the public with a speech. On May 27, 2020, the announcement was made that the regular Moscow Victory Parade would be held on June 24. The parade started at 10:00 am and lasted for one and a half hours. International participation consisted of military delegations from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Mongolia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, China, and India. The memory of the 1945 parade was invoked when at the beginning of the parade, the same march—the Voennyi Vstrechnyi Marsh—was played as 75 years before. Veterans attending the parade on Red Square were not required to wear masks. Putin linked the postponed date of the parade to his own political purposes. June 25, the day after the parade, was the start of the one week voting period, ending on July 1, for the referendum making changes to the Russian Constitution. One of the changes was the extension of presidential terms so that Putin can now legally stay in office until 2036.

Conclusion The Moscow Victory Parade, as every form of procession, distributes roles and functions. Soldiers and veterans march, vehicles are driven. The public watches, waves, shouts hooray, and waves flags that are sold in the streets. The parades are a spectacle consisting of rituals, many of which are related to the Soviet tradition of parades on May  1 and November  7. Others cite the 1945 Victory Parade of June 24. All these parades held on several dates add new layers to the historical identity of the space where they took place, Red Square. The parades are not only held to commemorate historical events. Especially, the parades of November 7, 1941, and of June 24, 1945, have themselves become historical events that are remembered and re-enacted. Red Square and its immediate surroundings function as a palimpsest. This is where Ivan the Terrible had Saint Basil’s Cathedral built to mark the Russian victory over the Khanate of Kazan in 1552; this is where Peter the Great had his enemies executed; this is where Lenin’s body lies embalmed in the Mausoleum; and this is where the Victory Parade was held. Building a church to commemorate a certain event was a tradition that has distinctively changed Moscow. A prominent example is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, dedicated to the victory over Napoleon in 1812. Its construction took several decades; the church was consecrated in 1883 only to be demolished by Soviet leaders in 1931. The outdoor swimming pool that was built where the cathedral had stood closed in 1994. The church was rebuilt and consecrated again in 2000. 2020 saw the consecration of the new Main Church of the Armed Forces in the

Parades in Russian memory culture  243 military park “Patriot,” the Church of the Resurrection of Christ, dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. While the churches are impressive, building new ones is not as regular an event as the organization of parades. One of Red Square’s other architectural landmarks, the Mausoleum, is changing in meaning as well. In Soviet times, the Mausoleum turned Red Square into a holy place of veneration. Its top served as the tribune for the state leaders to watch the parades held underneath. In recent years, the necessity to preserve Lenin’s mummy has been questioned. The honor guard has been withdrawn from the doors. Opening hours of the Mausoleum have been restricted. It is very well possible that Lenin’s body will be removed and buried. Already now, the Mausoleum is being hidden during the parades behind a temporary construction as high as the Kremlin walls with, respectively, “May 9” (2019) and “75 / Victory / 1945–2020” (2020) written upon it.51 The symbolism of the Victory Parade on Red Square has changed. Always present was the political dimension of Red Square as the parade’s venue, given its immediate proximity to Russia’s center of political power, the Kremlin. The 2005 parade to a certain degree payed tribute to the victory over Nazi Germany as a joint feat of the allied forces. In 2020, the parade could not be held on May 9 because of restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was held on June 24, the other historical victory date since this was the day of Moscow’s first victory parade in 1945. The message of the 2020 parade was one of defiance. Nothing can stop Russian troops from marching, not even a worldwide health crisis. Commemorating the 1945 parade rather than the death of front fighters and the suffering of the civil population, the tone of commemoration has shifted from somber to heroic and uplifting. The center of Moscow was never invaded by Nazi Germany, hence the city is no authentic place to re-enact actual battles. It is, however, the site of the historical parades. Commemorating the 1945 Victory Parade rather than the war turns today’s parades into events of second-degree commemoration. The concentration on the moment of jubilant joy makes it possible to dismiss critical events that preceded or followed the event. The final message is that “we” were and will be victorious over “our enemies.” The “we” and “the enemies” have changed and may well be reinterpreted in the future. The only constant element is the Victory.

Notes 1 Eggers, The Parade, 14. 2 See, for example, Drozdov/Rjabko, Parad pobedy, explicitly marking the 40th anniversary not of the Victory, but of the 1945 Victory parade. 3 Gengnagel, Horstmann, and Schwedler, “Introduction,” 3–13. 4 Kimpel and Werckmeister, “Bewegliche Feste,” 7. 5 Windmüller, “(Ver)laufende Räume,” 33. 6 Ibid., 33–37. 7 Welz, “Inszenierungen der Multikulturalität,” 221–28. 8 Windmüller, “(Ver)laufende Räume,” 38. 9 Bauer, “Militärparaden,” 146–53.

244  Yvonne Pörzgen 10 Ibid., 153. 11 Ibid., 155. 12 Ibid., 157. 13 Rolf, Soviet Mass Festivals, 19. 14 Grushevoi et al., Voennye parady, 4. 15 Rolf, Soviet Mass Festivals, 33. 16 Ibid., 70. 17 Schlögel, “Choreographien der Macht,” in Das sowjetische Jahrhundert. Archäologie einer untergegangenen Welt, 526. 18 Grushevoi et al., Voennye parady, 5. 19 Rappaport, “Ritual und performative Sprache,” 191–93. 20 Stollberg-Rilinger, Rituale, 72–77, 85–133. Other categories are everyday interaction, life cycle, sacrifice, overcoming of conflicts, law and punishment and rebellion. 21 Schlögel, “Choreographien,” 517–33. 22 Ibid., 524. 23 Ibid., 525. 24 Ibid., 520. 25 Rolf, Soviet Mass Festivals, 2. 26 Schlögel, “Choreographien,” 522. 27 Rolf, Soviet Mass Festivals, 181. 28 Kotte, “Reenactment,” 120–21. 29 Samida, “Vom Ereignis zum Erlebnis,” 123–24. 30 Kotte, “Reenactment,” 123. 31 Dücker, “Politische Rituale,” 372–74. 32 Tshertok, Muzykanty Parada Pobedy, 8–23. 33 Grushevoi et al., Voennye parady, 137. 34 There are some poems dedicated to the event, for example by Anatolii Sofronov, reproduced in the 1985 photo almanac by Drozdov/Rjabko (p. 43). The poem is an accumulation of unspecific catch phrases, in some cases rather contradictory to historical fact. The poem refers to the “Golden sunrise over the capital,” even though June 24 was a very rainy day in Moscow. The images of flags, flowers and the marching orchestra try to invoke the actual day of the event, thus it is not logical to defend the “golden sunrise” as standing symbolically for the dawn of socialism / a better world. 35 Varennikov, Nepovtorimoe, vol. 1, 489. 36 Ibid., 498. 37 Ibid., 500. 38 Ibid., 501. 39 Ibid., 502. 40 Schlögel also understands re-enactment as a rather passive affair. He interprets the 1967 parade marking the 50th anniversary of the Revolution as a re-enactment of the revolutionary events, implying that they had lost their immediateness. 41 “Infografik: Nationalstolz und Identität.” Dekoder. 42 Lem, “Rosja Putina,” 149. 43 Ibid., 150. 44 Jarman, Material Conflicts, 107. 45 An English version of the paper was published on June 19, 2020, on the Kremlin’s website. 46 FAZ.net, “Trotz der Corona-Pandemie,” May 9, 2020. 47 Sharifulin / TASS, “Russia Readies for Ghost Celebrations.” 48 Oganesian and Luk’ianova: “Pobeda liuboi tsenoi.” 49 Sharyfulin/TASS, “Russia Readies for Ghost Celebrations.” 50 “Parad Pobedy. Interaktivnyj urok.”

Parades in Russian memory culture  245 51 See, for example, the footage of the 2019 and 2020 Victory Parades in Moscow on YouTube.

Bibliography Bauer, Gerhard. “Triumphe der Macht. Militärparaden in Krieg und Frieden.” In Triumphzüge: Paraden durch Raum und Zeit, edited by Harald Kimpel and Johanna Werckmeister. Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 2001. Drozdov, G., and E. Rjabko. Parad pobedy: Fotoal’bom. Moscow: Planeta, 1985. Dücker, Burckhard. “Politische Rituale als Bewegungen im öffentlichen Raum.” In Prozessionen, Wallfahrten, Aufmärsche: Bewegung zwischen Religion und Politik in Europa und Asien seit dem Mittelalter, edited by Jörg Gengnagel, Monika Horstmann, and Gerald Schwedler. Köln: Böhlau, 2008. Eggers, Dave. The Parade. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019. Gengnagel, Jörg, Horstmann, Monika, and Schwedler, Gerald. “Introduction.” In Prozessionen, Wallfahrten, Aufmärsche: Bewegung zwischen Religion und Politik in Europa und Asien seit dem Mittelalter, edited by Jörg Gengnagel, Monika Horstmann, and Gerald Schwedler. Köln: Böhlau, 2008. Grushevoi, Konstantin et al. Voennye parady na Krasnoi Ploshade. Moscow: Voenizdat, 1980. “Infografik: Nationalstolz und Identität.” Dekóder. Accessed October 6, 2020. www. dekoder.org/de/article/nationale-identitaet-stolz-lewada-umfrage. Jarman, Neil. Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland. Oxford: Berg, 1997. Kimpel, Harald, and Johanna Werckmeister. “Bewegliche Feste.” In Triumphzüge: Paraden durch Raum und Zeit, edited by Harald Kimpel and Johanna Werckmeister. Marburg: Jonas Verlag, 2001. Kotte, Eugen. “Reenactment—Grenzen und Möglichkeiten ‘gefühlter’ Geschichte.” In Zugänge zur Public History: Formate—Orte—Inszenierungsformen, edited by Frauke Geyken and Michael Sauer. Frankfurt am Main: Wochenschau Verlag, 2019. Lem, Stanisław. “Rosja Putina.” In Rasa drapieżców. Kraków: Wydawnictwo literackie, 2006. Oganesian, Ani, and Iuliia Luk’ianova. “Pobeda liuboi tsenoi: Reportazh o tom, kak sotni voennykh zaboleli, repetiruia parad na Krasnoi ploshadi.” Proekt, May 11, 2020. www. proekt.media/report/koronavirus-voennye/. “Parad Pobedy. Interaktivnyi urok.” Gorodskoi Metodicheskii Tsentr. Accessed October 6, 2020. http://pobeda.mosmetod.ru/parad. Putin, Vladimir. “75th Anniversary of the Great Victory: Shared Responsibility to History and our Future.” Kremlin, June 19, 2020. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/ news/63527. Rappaport, Roy A. “Ritual und Performative Sprache.” In Ritualtheorien: Ein einführendes Handbuch, edited by Andréa Belliger and David J. Krieger, vol. 4, 191–210. Auflage Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2008. Rolf, Malte. Soviet Mass Festivals, 1917–1991. Translated by Cynthia Klohr. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013. Samida, Stefanie. “Vom Ereignis zum Erlebnis. Reenactment und Schlachtfeldtourismus.” In Authentizität als Kapital historischer Orte? Die Sehnsucht nach dem unmittelbaren

246  Yvonne Pörzgen Erleben von Geschichte, edited by Axel Drecoll, Thomas Schaarschmidt, and Irmgard Zündorf. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2019. Schlögel, Karl. Das sowjetische Jahrhundert: Archäologie einer untergegangenen Welt. München: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2017. Sharifulin, Valery/TASS. “Russia Readies for Ghost Celebrations for 75th V-Day Amid Coronavirus.” The Moscow Times, May 8, 2020. www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/08/ russia-readies-for-ghost-celebrations-for-75th-v-day-amid-coronavirus-a70210. Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara. Rituale, 2nd revised ed. Frankfurt Main and New York: Campus Verlag, 2019. Tshertok, Mikhail. Muzykanty Parada Pobedy. Moscow: Kanon, 2015. “Trotz der Corona-Pandemie: Belarus gedenkt mit großer Militärparade des Kriegsendes.” FAZ.net, May 9, 2020. www.faz.net/-gq5-9z9he. Varennikov, Valentin. Nepovtorimoe, vol. 1. Moscow: Sovetskii pisatel’, 2001. Welz, Gisela. “Inszenierungen der Multikulturalität. Paraden und Festivals als Forschungsgegenstände.” In Ethnizität und Migration: Einführung in Wissenschaft und Arbeitsfelder, edited by Brigitta Schmidt-Lauber. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2007. Windmüller, Sonja. “(Ver)laufende Räume. Paraden als Gegenstand der Kulturforschung.” Schweizerisches Archiv für Volkskunde: Halbjahresschrift 109 (2013): H. 1, 32–46.

Part III

Representations of the war in the Putin era

11 Performing memory and its limits Vladimir Putin and the celebration of World War II in Russia Elizabeth A. Wood From his first inauguration on May 7, 2000, and his first Victory Day speech on May 9, 2000, Vladimir Putin has repeatedly personified himself as the defender, even the savior of the Motherland. In this set of performances, he has made World War II his signature founding event for the nation as a whole and a central part of his claim to charismatic leadership. He has marked virtually every anniversary of every major event or battle in the war, from the invasion of the USSR through the Siege of Leningrad, the battles of Kursk and Stalingrad, to the culminating victory celebrated on May 9. Over time Putin has added more biographical details to show his personal connection to the war; he has added more battles and commemorations. Consistently, his public relations (PR) team has shown him at every possible ceremony to demonstrate this leading myth of Russian glory and his personification of the ways in which the nation’s peoples came to be united through this great and terrible time of war and redemption. In this chapter, I demonstrate how Putin and his handlers have identified his public, official persona with the ongoing commemoration of World War II, the suffering and glory of the nation. In the coda to this chapter, I consider the limits of the hero cult, both for Putin himself and for the nation as a whole. I argue that his larger-than-life commemoration of the war and personal identification with it may have reached an upper limit when the Defense Ministry and the Russian Orthodox Church teamed up to create a Cathedral of the Armed Forces that was planned to have mosaic representations of Putin and Sergei Shoigu (Defense Minister) under a fresco of the Virgin Mary offering protection. A second limit has come in the quarrels with Poland and other countries over the origins of World War II. As Putin has continued to assert Russia’s liberatory role and to denigrate the contributions of neighboring countries, he has inflamed the latter’s nationalist sentiments, creating more tensions over the war. On the face of it, the identification of Vladimir Putin with World War II would seem unlikely. Vladimir Vladimirovich was born October 7, 1952, seven years after the conclusion of the war. He served in the KGB and FSB, not in the Soviet or post-Soviet military. His principal foreign language is German; his KGB service was in Dresden in East Germany. Yet Victory Day and World War II are symbols that have served many purposes for the Russian President.

250  Elizabeth A. Wood The reasons for the popularity of this war and this holiday with the Putin, and later Putin-Medvedev, administrations have been well shown by a number of scholars. The Great Patriotic War and its attendant May 9 holiday (Day of Victory) serve as a morality tale of suffering and redemption and a foundation myth.1 They encapsulate a victory myth that appears to shore up Russian identity.2 They identify current Russian events with the longer sweep of tsarist and Soviet history and remind Russians of the ostensible unity and determination of the whole Soviet population (with a blind eye turned to the repressions of the peoples deported during the war). World War II and May 9 also serve as the favorite myth of the power ministries (the armed forces and secret services), strengthening their legitimacy as decision-making bodies, while undermining the power of liberalism more broadly.3 And finally, May 9 is the last significant holiday that commands national respect, November 7 and May 1 having been both discredited generally and commandeered by the Communists to the exclusion of other groups. In this chapter, I take a different approach, considering the invocation of World War II and May 9 as rituals that have multiple functions and then considering Vladimir Putin’s personal place in and identification with those rituals. My argument is that by making World War II the central historical event of the 20th century, Putin and his handlers have chosen an event of mythic proportions that underlines the unity and coherence of the nation, gives it legitimacy and status as a world power. It functions precisely as a myth is supposed to function, creating a moment that is simultaneously timeless and rooted in time, that involves suffering and redemption, trauma and recovery from the trauma, creation of community, and a narrative way to understand Russia’s ongoing challenges.4 As one of Serguei Oushakine’s respondent’s comments in his Patriotism of Despair, World War II serves as the “only remaining sacrality.” The suffering of the war can have an effect on each individual person, drawing them into a collective sense of belonging and redemption. Oushakine describes the Russian suffering in wartime (both World War II and Chechnya) as “a performative rather than a descriptive device,” as “a tool with which to ‘stir the memory of our feelings.’ ”5 Ultimately, references to World War II in Russia today, especially those that are acted out and not just spoken, appeal to the iconicity of this event, both as a paradigm of suffering and as one of victory. It is an icon because it is perceived visually and through affect rather than through reason. Putin’s Kremlin planners do not have to create a new ideology because “everyone knows” that the nation is sacred in its suffering and rebirth, in its role as savior of Europe from the evils of the barbaric Nazis. Vladimir Putin as national leader then becomes associated with marking that mythic history and keeping it alive. His PR team has gone to great pains to show this head of state, Mr. Putin, whether as President or Prime Minister, as personally identified with the Great Patriotic War in five principal contexts: (1) through his meetings with veterans; (2) through telling the story of his own family’s sufferings in the Leningrad blockade; (3) through visits to war memorials in churches; (4) through his participation in parades and the creation of new uniforms; and

Performing memory and its limits  251 finally (5) through his creation of a girls’ school that continues the military tradition. In each of these settings, there is familial and especially a masculine connection to the war. The forms of the masculinity vary, including different presentations as dutiful son, solicitous father, and leader of men. In the first context—meetings with ­veterans—Vladimir Putin is the dutiful son who listens to his elders (as Yeltsin did not), sympathizes with their losses, and promises to keep the memories alive. He is also the young tsar who listens to the people’s petitions and promises to help them solve their problems. In the second setting, in telling his family history, he is also the son who remembers the war on a personal level even though he was born after it, thus giving him legitimacy as one of those who (even though indirectly) went through the trial and redemption of the war while also having simultaneously a legitimate Russian and larger-than-Russian pedigree. In the churches (the third setting), he takes on the air of sanctity associated with this war and its nationalist meaning for Russia; he works with the fathers of the church to bring Russia back into the fold of religion (here he takes up the mantle of the tsars as co-rulers with the church fathers). In overseeing the parades and the designing of new uniforms, he is the masculine avatar, elegant in a modern way.6 Finally, in the school setting, he adopts a more secular and paternal tone, taking care of girls who have lost their fathers or whose fathers are far, creating an institution that puts him in league with the great tsars of Russia who created educational institutions (Peter the Great and Catherine the Great especially). This identification of the person with the holiday and the victory creates an iconic character for Mr. Putin’s rule (whether as president or prime minister). The nation is great because of its role in World War II, and Putin is great because of his association with the war. The war has been “a severe trial for our statehood.”7 It not only creates the solidarity of peoples joined together in the nation in an hour of difficulty. But it also creates solidarity among generations, as Mr. Putin has constantly reiterated, in the memory of the war. Ultimately, Victory Day for Mr. Putin is “a lesson and a warning.”8 Putin as the son and Putin as the father both lead the nation back to remembering its past and reinforcing its internal unity. The identification of holiday and leader works because they are each immediately recognizable and because, as they are publicly presented, they are coded in such a way as to be linked to each other. They operate in such a way that they can be grasped in a pre-reflective manner, that is, through values and conventions that do not have to be consciously examined. A certain consensus can be gained through reliance on preexisting norms without communication and debate.9 They do not require a formal declaration of ideology.10 The values of remembering the war are embedded in the actions of remembering it. Hard questions about the war (the country’s preparation or lack thereof, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the role of Stalin, the repression and exile of whole nationalities) do not have to be answered because the war is a mythic event more than a historically specific one. These are useful images for the top leadership to deploy because their mythic qualities tend to foster cohesion, a quality that is crucial in a society that has been tremendously fragmented since the 1990s. The weakness of these values,

252  Elizabeth A. Wood however, is that they fail to take into consider the social, political, and cultural changes that have occurred in the Russian polity.11 Like many Soviet rituals, Putin’s invocation of World War II and May 9 also serves a pedagogical function, which has not been studied. Putin has chosen to renew the practice of the so-called Memory Lesson [urok pamiati] which was common in Soviet times as a moment when students met with veterans of World War II to remember and grieve collectively. In 2008, it was announced, for example, that these “lessons” would be held in all Moscow schools on May 7.12 In 2010, the Ministers of Education in Ukraine and Russia announced that the two countries would share joint lessons in memory.13 These lessons have the function of asking teachers and students to engage in ritual emotional commitment to looking at the war as a moment of moral victory.14 As a “teachable moment” (to use our modern American term) “Memory Lessons” teach not only pride in one’s country but also respect toward one’s elders, empathy for the suffering of others, subordination of individual needs and interests to the greater good, fear before anarchy and disunity. These latter lessons have been taught in one form or another since Tsarist times (they are embedded, for example, in the Primary Chronicles and the Tale of Igor’s Campaign). Yet they have not always had the salience that they have attained under the Putin and Putin-Medvedev regimes. Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin these lessons in memory declined and even May 9 was not celebrated in a serious way until 1995.15 Finally, Putin’s celebration of the war has been associated with the nation coming to victory under one man, Joseph Stalin. For Putin, this creates the serious problem of what to do about the dictator’s repressions and terror. On the one hand, identifying himself with Stalin allows Putin to take on something of a father role.16 Like Stalin before him, Putin can adopt the mantle of “father of the fatherland” (though in a much reduced fashion). Still, this not only creates a problem for Putin which he resolves principally by criticizing Stalin in foreign contexts and praising him in domestic ones.17 But it also creates an excellent opportunity. Stalin was man of exceptional stature, and Putin, in invoking his war, gains something of his stature.

The early war presidency and campaigning without campaigning Initially, in his first months as Prime Minister, it was not World War II that was iconic for Putin, but rather the war in Chechnya. From August 1999, when Yeltsin named Putin as Prime Minister, Putin and his handlers took great pains to craft this as a “war presidency.”18 Not only did Putin make his famous comments about beating the Chechen terrorists “in the shithouse.” In an interview during the campaign period between January 1 and March 26 (when he insisted he was not campaigning), he told faithful Kremlin followers Natalia Gevorkian and Andrei Kolesnikov in an article they chose to call “Iron Putin” that he alone was in charge of prosecuting that war, basically on his own initiative with only minimal approval from Yeltsin, as it was necessary to “shoot up those bandits.”19 He also

Performing memory and its limits  253 made a point of appearing several times in military planes to mark in visual terms his machismo. In 2000 when Putin began campaigning for President (while still denying that he was campaigning), one of his key campaign stops was Volgograd (or Stalingrad, as it was known during World War II). In stopping there, Putin was following in Boris Yeltsin’s footsteps. Although Yeltsin had mostly eschewed references to World War II in the first half of his presidency, during his reelection campaign in 1996 he staged a virulent campaign against Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov by appealing to the latter’s traditional constituency among the elderly, many of whom were veterans. On May 9, 1996, Yeltsin visited Volgograd and on June 22 he attended ceremonies on the 55th anniversary of the Nazi invasion held in Brest in Belarus. He appeared in advertisements with veterans trying to convey the message that he would protect their interests better than the Communists would.20 Despite his best efforts, however, Yeltsin’s efforts failed to stem the contentious nature of his relationship with veterans. They criticized him for the state of the economy and the loss of their pensions.21 They voted with the Communists. On May 9 in 1996 and in 1998, the Communists and others held counter-demonstrations to the official demonstrations organized by the government.22 Putin’s stop in Volgograd in the middle of his election non-campaign fell on February 22, 2000, the eve of the holiday known as Defender of the Fatherland Day, which he described as “a red-letter day” (i.e. the equivalent of a saint’s day in the Russian calendar). While visiting the war memorial Mamaev Kurgan, he met with World War II veterans, followed by visits to veterans from more recent conflicts in military hospitals. He made a point of calling any comments that the Russian army was disintegrating “a barefaced lie.”23 “Patriotism and the well-being of citizens,” he said, were the core components of the Russian “national idea.”24 On March 9, 2000, Putin announced in a widely reported Cabinet meeting that he would “protect all soldiers” who took part in World War II “no matter where they live,” and strive to raise their standard of living.25 Putin here seems to have been attempting to create what one author has recently called a “paternal populism,” where without campaigning (at least not officially) and without appearing too demagogic, he nonetheless promised benefits to the veterans, thus marking himself as the new tsar or at least the new paternal authority who was taking care of his people.26 Invoking his dedication to the veterans in this period allowed him to act in a political fashion (wooing older voters from the Communists) without appearing “political” or self-serving.27 At the same time, Putin was consciously attempting to raise the prestige of the military in general by returning to an apparently “manly” ideal. On the Day of the Defender of the Fatherland [Den’ Zashchitnikov Otechestva], February 23, 2000, Putin gave a speech to veterans and military leaders: “Since time immemorial Russia has respected military labors [ratnyi trud]: With his mother’s milk every boy imbibes pride in the victories of Suvorov and Kutuzov. . . . From birth every boy is already a future defender of the

254  Elizabeth A. Wood Motherland [Rodina] and knows that it is a man’s affair [muzhskoe delo] to defend the Motherland, his family and his loved ones. Therefore, we recognize February 23 as the holiday of all Russian men.28 Although these comments do not relate to the memory of World War II, they do demonstrate the degree to which Putin was attempting specifically appeal to Russian men (with women as their supporters) in support of a renewed military ethic. The Central Election Commission (with advice from the Kremlin, I am certain) established Putin’s inauguration so that it fell on May 7, 2000, two days before Victory Day (May 9), which then became his first official working day.29 In his inaugural speech (on May 7), in addition to his opening comment about Yeltsin’s commandment that he takes care of Russia, he also declared: “I consider it my sacred duty to unite the people of Russia . . . and to remember . . . that we are one nation and one people.”30 The whole event was drenched in history. The guards wore uniforms from 1812; the Patriarch gave a speech afterward on the steps of Great Kremlin Hall; and the menu for the banquet was chosen by the staff of the Historical Museum.31 May 9 was then more elaborately celebrated than it had been in years. Several army units in the Red Square parade wore World War II uniforms. Veterans marched in columns arranged by their old battlefronts. Putin himself described the war as “a test of our statehood and national spirit” and “a genuine achievement of great power status [derzhavnost’].”32 He made an effort to reach out to every possible constituency, greeting the crowd as “Comrades soldiers and seamen, sergeants and sergeant-majors; Comrades officers, generals and admirals; Respected war veterans and citizens of Russia.”33 In so doing, he quoted word for word one of Stalin’s most famous opening lines, adding only the address to the veterans and citizens.34 In succeeding years (2001–2007), he used the very same opening language every year on May 9. President Dmitry Medvedev used the same opening phrase in 2008–2011. In this opening period of spring 2000, Putin as the newly elected president signed a decree giving veterans a lump sum special remuneration. But he also made a number of moves showing his emulation of Stalin: he authorized Russia’s Central Bank to issue 500 special silver coins bearing Stalin’s portrait; unveiled a plaque honoring Stalin for his “heroic” leadership in the war; approved the installation of a bust of Stalin at the famous war memorial Poklonnaia Gora; and on May 8 opened a new war memorial in Kursk, the scene of the famous World War II tank battle.35 Initially, it seemed he was heading toward rehabilitating ­Stalin while trying to please the veterans.36

Personalizing Putin’s connection to World War II Putin’s early references to World War II and Victory Day, while astoundingly frequent, were nonetheless fairly clichéd affairs that did not relate to him personally. Every event that could possibly be connected with the 60th anniversary of the war was celebrated (from the anniversary of the invasion of Russia in 1941,

Performing memory and its limits  255 to the battles of Kursk and Stalingrad, to the lifting of the blockade in Leningrad, to final victory in 1945). As each 60th anniversary came up, Putin made a public speech, spoke of the unity of the nation, the victory over the barbarian enemy, and “the sacred duty to respect the memory of our fathers.”37 He congratulated the veterans, promised them money and housing (especially if it was an election year), honored the memory of the fallen, and called for unity in the country. If there was a personal touch in these general meetings, it was his careful attention to the issues that veterans brought to the table and his promise to look into most of their complaints. Often he asked rather coyly, “Is it okay if I get back to you on this?” These were matters, he claimed, that Parliament should decide, not the president. Once he was reelected (in 2004), he again acted modestly, saying that hearing their input would make it “easier for me to orient myself in conversation with the big bosses.”38 In 2004, however, Putin and his handlers began personalizing the holiday, bringing Putin’s own family’s experiences into the mix. In the first such moment, on January 27, 2004, Putin visited the spot in Petersburg known as Nevsky Piatachok (known sometimes in English as the Neva Nickel or the Neva Bridgehead) where Soviet troops were finally able to break through to begin the liberation of the city in 1943. In a classic ceremony, Putin placed dark roses on the memorial there. Right next to the memorial, he spoke of his own father’s injuries during the blockade and his selfless donation of much of his hospital rations to his starving wife (Putin’s mother). The newspapers immediately began copying whole paragraphs from Putin’s autobiography First Person on the sufferings of his father and mother and their young son (Putin’s older brother whom he never saw because he died during the blockade).39 Journalists were shown the list of those receiving medals where it was noted that “Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin was wounded with shrapnel in the left shin and sole of the foot.”40 After the visit to Nevsky Piatachok, Putin met with veterans and then attended a meeting of Presidium of the St. Petersburg City Soviet which inter alia discussed housing subsidies and health care for veterans. The government once again promised to index the pension rate but made no concrete promises.41 This was all done five weeks before the next presidential elections when, of course, once again Mr. Putin was not officially campaigning. That very month (January 2004) Leningrad television showed a film by Kirill Nabutov, Blokada Leningrada [The Blockade of Leningrad] prominently featuring Vladimir Putin the elder.42 A year and a half later on May 8, 2005, NTV showed a film called Rozhdenie Pobedy [The Birth of Victory]. Putin now repeated the story of his father’s wounding, his giving his rations to his mother, the death of his older brother, then a toddler. This time he added a new detail—how his father returned from the hospital, allegedly to find his mother in a pile with the bodies of the dead. Realizing she was not in fact dead, he took her into the house and cared for her. He added that half of his extended family had died in the war.43 On May 10, 2010, Putin again recalled the meaning of the war for his family on Russian TV. His conclusion was that the war had to be understood in terms of the dedication of ordinary citizens even when no one was watching out for them.

256  Elizabeth A. Wood His own family’s contribution to the war was now in line with that of the nation. He was also using the story as a teaching moment, reminding young people in particular of the importance of heroism and valor: “I [have] had occasions to make sure that our young people, when they find themselves in an extreme situation, behave in keeping with the circumstances, in which they have been placed by life, and display . . . heroism, and courage, and patriotism.”44 In April 2011, Putin gave his personal reading list on the war to the American journal, World War II, commenting on the fact that every Russian family had lost members in that war. Any falsification or distortion in the portrayal of the war was, therefore, looked on as “a personal insult, a sacrilege.”45 Although this is not the place to consider the Russian Commission to Counteract Attempts to Harm Russia’s Interests by Falsifying History (2009), it is noteworthy that Putin announced his own reading list, consisting primarily of novels, ignoring the work of historians and the novels of Vasily Grossman and Viktor Nekrasov.46

Sanctifying Putin’s connection to World War II Appearances in churches have often given Putin an opportunity to sanctify the World War II war dead and to present himself as a dutiful son of the church.47 On the eve of his inauguration in 2000, on May 3, president-elect Putin traveled to the town of Prokhorovka to inaugurate a new Chapel of Unity on the site of the most important tank engagement of World War II, the famous Battle of Kursk in 1943. At the invitation of Patriarch Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin joined the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus to jointly ring a giant bell known as the Bell of Unity. In his speech, Putin emphasized the fraternal nature of relations between the three states: “We are one family. We vanquished [them] when we stood together.”48 “Brotherly peoples can have no obstacles toward uniting our efforts,” he said at another point, “to make life happier.”49 On April 7, 2010, Putin joined Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in consecrating a new Orthodox Church at the site of the Katyn massacre in 1940.50 Putin spoke of Katyn as a place of tragedy, yet now a sacred place because of the building of the church: It is a symbolic act that we begin to build the church on Easter days of the year in which the Orthodox and the Catholics celebrate Easter on the same day. With the blessing of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, Orthodox icons will be brought here, which are venerated by the Orthodox and the Catholics, especially in Poland. This will be another symbol uniting our nations.51 On May 29, 2010, Putin again visited Nevsky Piatachok, once again placing red roses on the memorial stone there, but this time also visiting the Church of Our Lady, known as The Seeking of the Lost [Vzyskanie padshikh]. Standing before the television cameras, he publicly examined a book listing the names of all soldiers who defended the Nevsky Piatachok and found his father’s name. Putin

Performing memory and its limits  257 and the church rector chanted the Memory Eternal prayer, after which Putin presented the church with a 19th-century icon.52 By memorializing the dead, Putin paid respect to the soldiers who defended Nevsky Piatachok and showed his own father’s place in that roster. The Russian television footage zoomed in on the book listing those who had died so that viewers could see his father’s name.53 Affirming Vladimir Putin’s father’s wartime service confirmed the son’s legitimacy as Russian and patriotic.

Putin, parades and military uniforms, 2005–2008 From the very start of his administration newly elected President Putin established parades and military uniforms as a high priority. In the summer of 2000, he created a special Victory Committee that was tasked with planning the events that would be associated with the 60th anniversary of May 9, 1945, in 2005.54 The 2005 parade was intended as a key one, not only because it was a proverbial round number but also because of the terrible humiliation of the 50th anniversary D-day celebrations in Normandy in June 1994, when President Boris Yeltsin and the Russians were not even invited to participate. The next year (1995) Yeltsin had made a special effort to invite the US President Bill Clinton and French President Francois Mitterand to the May 9th parade, but Yeltsin had conceded to Clinton’s request that the parade have no military hardware because of the Americans’ sensitivity to the question of appearing to approve the Chechen war.55 The Putin administration now invited all the foreign leaders of World War II countries, including Angela Merkel from Germany. The troop convoys in the parade stretched for miles, having practiced their entrance into Red Square on alternate days for weeks before the actual parade. Over it all President Putin presided as the symbol of Russia’s resurgence.56 In his oratory, he spoke of May 9 as “forever a sacred day.” He spoke as well about the emotional dimension of the holiday as one that “fills our hearts with the most complex feelings, both joy and sorrow, both compassion and nobility”: It calls for the most noble actions, presents us with another opportunity to bow our heads in honour of those who gave us freedom, the freedom to live, to work, to be happy, to be creative and to understand each other. Victory Day is the dearest, the most emotional and the most inclusive holiday in our country. For the people of the former Soviet Union, it will forever remain a day of the people’s great heroic deed, and for the countries of Europe and the entire planet—the day on which the world was saved.57 For Victory Day 2008, Putin and his administration planned the most massive demonstration of military hardware since the breakup of the Soviet Union and was also the costliest parade in the history of post-Soviet Russia. With everything from T-90 tanks to rocket and missile systems and Topol ICBMs, the parade showed a resurgent Russia flexing its muscles.58 On May 5, Putin, now about to become the Prime Minister (since Dmitry Medvedev had been elected President),

258  Elizabeth A. Wood denied this, but made a point of stating that Russia was now in a strong position to defend itself, thus distancing himself once again from the Yeltsin administration and emphasizing Russia’s return to great power status.59 The 2008 parade showcased not only missiles but also the new uniforms that the soldiers in Red Square were wearing, some of which were inspired by the first Victory Parade of 1945, while others were a completely new design. Putin’s handpicked general Anatoly Serdyukov had set in motion the process of creating the new uniforms in May 2007.60 This was no small endeavor: one hundred million rubles (almost 4 million $US) were allocated for the samples of the new uniforms.61 Then on January 28, 2008, President Putin personally reviewed the designs created for the military by Russia’s leading fashion designer Valentin Yudashkin at a fashion parade in the Ministry of Defense.62 The background on this is instructive, showing how Putin’s team had considered fashion design to be important from the outset of his administration. In November 2001, Putin had nominated Yudashkin to his new Presidential “Council on Culture and Art.”63 At the time commentators could not understand why Yudashkin, a clothing designer, was on the council. After all, he was not, sensu strictu, an artist or a representative of high culture.64 Soon, however, it became clear that Yudashkin was becoming an integral part of what might be called the Russian makeover.65 Never mind that the military forces in the country were decaying; hazing, often fatal, was endemic; disgruntled soldiers in Chechnya were selling off their weapons and even their greatcoats to the highest bidders; and the whole military was plagued by inadequate housing. Now instead of addressing those problems, the newly appointed Minister of Defense Serdyukov (named in February 2007) was announcing (already in May of that year) that what the armed forces needed most of all were new uniforms.66 Not too surprisingly critics immediately charged that new military uniforms were an example of the “military’s new clothes.”67 Uniforms, they insisted, should be designed not by someone from a fashion house but rather by someone within the military who knew the military’s needs.68 Putin reviewing the new uniforms now evoked a different masculinity, this time one of GQ. Yudashkin praised Putin (the outgoing president but still the commander in chief): “We made this big presentation, very exact and clear. Our president is a very elegant man, and he understood everything. Thank God the army now understands that image is just as important as technical issues.”69

A boarding school for girls and Putin as father figure In a completely different moment, on May 8, 2009, Putin visited a boarding school for daughters of the military, an institution that was created just in the previous year (it opened its doors on September 1, 2008). TV footage shows Putin visiting the school and helping one of the girl students who had forgotten part of a song she was supposed to sing for him by singing it with her. The song was a popular one from the war, Zemlianka (“The Dugout”). When Putin joined her in singing, the French journalist covering this made much of his “surprisingly soft and

Performing memory and its limits  259 melodious voice,” a comment spread by other news wires entranced by the idea of Putin letting go of his “tough guy” image.70 In the elaborate tea he then had with the schoolgirls and the veterans from the war (at a table covered with rich and varied dishes), Putin referred to the importance of the holiday of May 9, “for every Russian citizen and for me as well because it gives us an opportunity to remember our own parents, to remember the pages of our patriotic history.”71 Alluding to the fact that many of the young girls at the boarding school had lost their fathers in military service while the fathers of others were serving in far regions, Putin thus linked his own loss of his parents with the girls’ losses and with the national losses. In singing patriotic songs at the girls’ military boarding school in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, now the Prime Minister, was also giving lessons to the students. His apparently impromptu singing lesson took place during a so-called “Memory Lesson.” The other lessons Prime Minister Putin visited are in themselves instructive: a lesson in housekeeping [domovodstvo] where the students were learning to serve at table and to prepare food, and a sewing class where the students were learning to sew with computerized sewing machines, as well as lessons in journalism, television reporting, and foreign languages (English, French, and German). In addition to these subjects, the girls also study ballroom dancing, ice skating, horseback riding, fencing, and flute. In his speech to the girls, Putin referred openly to the last educational institution created for girls in Russia, the famous Smolny Institute for Noble Girls created by Catherine the Great in the 18th century.72 Putin described the creation of the school as “something significant, good and kind” [eto iavlenie znakovoe, khoroshee i dobroe]. It was all these things “not only because here will be educated the future mothers of children but also because women are occupying an ever more worthwhile and noticeable place in the life of our government in all areas, including in such an important area as defense of the Motherland.”73 On July 28, 2008, Putin had signed the order founding the school under the title Moskovskii kadetskii korpus Pansion vospitannits Ministerstva oborony Rossiiskoi Federatsii [The Moscow Cadet Corpus, the Boarding School for the Female Wards of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation].74 This is the first military boarding school created since the fall of the USSR, joining several leading male cadet schools from that era (Suvorovskii, Nakhimovskii, and others). And it is the first one specifically for girls. From the beginning, Yudashkin was delegated to create elaborate uniforms for the young ladies. In their dress uniform (visible on “Vesti,” the state TV program) a white, frilly high collar comes down over a navy blue blazer etched in pink. Under the navy blue skirt, one can see white stockings and black high heels. In the words of one TV correspondent, the schoolgirls were to be made into “educated and nice young ladies [vospitannye i priatnye baryshni].”75 Digging a bit deeper, one finds that there were supposed to be five separate uniforms designed for the girls: dress, everyday, school, special, and sports. In the television coverage only two are visible: presumably the dress and school uniforms. In designing these uniforms, Yudashkin reported directly to Defense

260  Elizabeth A. Wood Minister Serdyukov. Yudashkin was the one who had designed the fashionable clothes of the elite who attended Putin’s inauguration.76 And it was Yudashkin who has been overseeing elaborate efforts to make modern uniforms for the military.77 In December 2009, the director of the girls’ school, Tamara Fral’tsova, was awarded “Person of the Year 2009” “for the creation of a boarding school for officers’ daughters.”78 Theoretically, daughters of both enlisted men and officers can attend the school. Nonetheless, it is significant that the director received an award for the creation of a school for officers’ daughters. The 18th century seems very much in vogue here: Putin’s own reference to Catherine the Great’s Smolny Institute for Noble Girls; the high collars on the girls’ dress uniforms; and the teaching of ballroom dancing and music so the girls will be accomplished young ladies. No expense was spared—the young ladies’ clothes were all sewn in Italy. In creating this school, Putin went beyond personalizing the holiday. He also demonstrated his role in supporting the officer class in the military. In paternal fashion, he took on the role of educating their daughters. By creating the girls’ school, Putin may have hoped to at least alleviate two of his most serious problems simultaneously: the demoralization in the military and the falling birth rate in the country. If these young ladies learn housekeeping and flute, perhaps they would marry Putin’s male officers and produce the next generation of the military.

Limits of the performance Can there be too much of a good thing in Putin’s celebration of World War II? That’s the question historian Sean Guillory asked in a 2010 blog post.79 In his second decade in office, the Russian President continued to dole out his personal World War II biography in small doses. In 2012 in the midst of a contentious season of protests, Putin again used his war biography to campaign without campaigning. On January 27, 2012, the anniversary of Leningrad’s liberation from its 900-day blockade and a month before the potentially contentious election of March  4, Putin revealed that his two-year-old brother Viktor had died in an orphanage and local amateur historians discovered that he was probably buried in an unmarked grave in Piskaryovskoye Cemetery.80 Exactly two years later, on the same holiday, Putin visited that cemetery again and, as he was leaving, laid a wreath at an unmarked victims’ grave in his brother’s honor.81 In the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the heroic World War II myth served as almost a Mosfilm backdrop for “the polite people” who reunited the peninsula with the homeland. As Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy have shown, in this 21st-century Crimean War, Putin and his political strategists had to upend the core Slavophile and Soviet notions of Ukrainian and Russian brotherhood. Now the world had to be warned of alleged Ukrainian perfidy in World War II, made visible in their mistaken rehabilitation of Stepan Bandera (a complicated figure who briefly sided with Hitler). The Ukrainians in general and the Euromaidan Revolution of Dignity had to be re-branded (in the corporate and PR sense) from “brothers” to “fascists.”82 From 2013 when the latter revolution took off in Kiev, official Russian media began to roll a drumbeat condemning the “fascization” of

Performing memory and its limits  261 Ukraine and the creeping “orange plague,” a double- and even triple-entendre that plays on the Russian words for the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and the Soviet-era term for brown shirts, known as the “brown plague.” As Matthew Luxmoore has shown, the myth of the Great Patriotic War has been constructed around both positive attention to the great victory of the USSR over the Third Reich and negative fears of the ongoing “threat” of fascism to the body politic. In this climate of heightened alert about a possible descent into chaos in Kiev, Russian nationalists in Crimea found it easy to unite pro-Russian groups such as the Night Wolves and Cossacks to form World War II-style “self-defense” groups (druzhiny) to ward off any possible attack.83 The defense of Sevastopol (famous from both the 19th-century Crimean War and World War II) was to be rerun once again. In the meantime, Russian state television was running a barrage of historical films that celebrated the war, including Stalingrad (2013) and others from the long list of Soviet and post-Soviet World War II films.84 In theory, it would seem that Putin should be able to continue to draw on the World War II story for many years to come. It works better, in fact, than the elegant Putin imagery that the protesters so violently rejected in 2011–2012, especially as it conforms to Putin’s conservative turn in his third term in office.85 Even though the original veterans are passing on, popular reminiscences and movies have helped to keep the war (in its pristine form) very much alive. Even better, the Immortal Regiments, which began as a grassroots movement in Tomsk, have given an opportunity for mass memory performances that have an almost hierotopic quality, that is, they draw in participants into a sacred space through sights, sounds, and the kinesthetic experience of marching with others.86 Nonetheless, the hagiography of this supreme leader may have reached its limit in spring 2020 when architects of the Russian Orthodox Church were putting the finishing touches on a new Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces dedicated to the memory of May 9, 1945. This was to be the largest, newest church in Russia— whole books will be written about the complexity of this church that is really an enormous propaganda statement in itself. President Putin was to be included standing shoulder to shoulder with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (the leading force behind the creation of the church) in a mosaic titled “The Bloodless Reunification of Crimea.” The Church justified the inclusion of Putin and Shoigu (together with Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko and others) on the grounds that they had been the architects of the victory in Crimea, with the help, of course, of the people of Crimea and Russia. Nonetheless, on social media, religious believers and liberal critics of the regime reacted with astonishment. How, asked the believers, could the Church which prized piety and submission [smirenie] have glorified a secular, political leader? Liberal critics expressed concern that the cult of personality was attaining new heights if the Russian President could be shown on a mosaic in the church. Initially, the Russian Orthodox Church responded to the news of the mosaic (leaked by regime critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s website) by saying that it was absolutely “appropriate” that the Russian leader (and also Stalin) be shown in mosaics in the new Church (TASS).87 Yet in the end the mosaics had to come down. Putin himself responded casually that, of

262  Elizabeth A. Wood course, it was too early to assess his contributions. Nonetheless, numerous articles and social media sites continued to show the giant Mother of God image with the shroud of protection over the now half-demolished mosaic with victorious Russian flags in the victory over Crimea.88 A banner reading “Crimea is ours” and the images of Putin and Shoigu were replaced with a liturgical procession in honor of the “reunification of Crimea.”89 While the President might be shown in various positions of power, he could not be inscribed on the walls of a cathedral for the armed forces. That was going too far. The cult of Putin and World War II may also be reaching a different limit as the national myth of Soviet and especially Russian superiority in the war collides with the stories of neighboring nations. In June 2020, President Putin published an extended essay in the conservative American magazine, The National Interest (republished in Russian in the official government newspaper Rossiiskaia gazeta) taking Poland to task for allegedly hindering the creation of collective security in Europe against the rising menace of Nazism and for profiting from the Munich Agreement to annex parts of Czechoslovakia as it was being dismembered (when the Sudetenland was being transferred to German control).90 Putin did not criticize Poland in just an academic manner. Six months earlier (December 24, 2019) at the Defense Ministry he had called then Polish Ambassador to Berlin Józef Lipski a “bastard” and an “anti-Semitic pig.”91 In event after event he attacked Polish complicity in the war. Many observers at the time concluded that the Russian President was miffed that he (and Russia) had not been invited to Polish commemorations of the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II and/or that he was seeking to improve relations with Israel.92 However, close analysis of the trajectory of Putin’s comments and the degree to which he has stoked an anti-Polish message suggests that he has found the performance of outrage useful for three very significant reasons. First, attacking the Munich agreement in August 1938 whitewashes the Molotov–Ribbentrop Act in August 1939, creating an earlier and hence more foundational fall from grace. Munich and Polish complicity become the original sin instead of the Soviet-Nazi pact so often lambasted by critics. Although Putin himself had long held that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was “immoral,” now Russia could be liberated from guilt because Poland (and the rest of Europe) were just as bad.93 In a meeting with representatives of the Commonwealth of Independent States (December 20, 2019), Putin went out of his way to list all the non-aggression pacts signed by European powers from the Pilsudski-Hitler Pact in 1934 through the Anglo-German maritime agreement of 1935 to the Munich Agreement in 1938 and even several smaller agreements after that.94 In the end, Putin argued in the December 24 meeting, the USSR was “the last country in Europe to sign the Treaty of Non-aggression with Germany. The last. All the other leading European countries did this before the Soviet Union.”95 If all the other countries had signed on to cooperation with Hitler and had failed to create a collective security agreement for Europe, then the USSR could not be culpable, either for the Nazi-Soviet Pact or for the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939. Rather, the Soviet invasion could be seen as an effort to save Poland after Hitler had invaded

Performing memory and its limits  263 from the West, thus completely whitewashing and excising from history the secret protocols of the Nazi-Soviet Pact which divided Eastern Europe between the two superpowers. Putin’s particular outrage against Poland serves a second set of performed theatrical ends. Attacking Poland allows Russia to dispute the recent Polish removal of Soviet-era “monuments of gratitude” which had been erected to show the generosity and heroism of the USSR in “liberating” Poland from the Nazi onslaught.96 In the Manichean, zero-sum rhetorical warfare of good versus evil, Putin’s attack on Polish complicity and antisemitism makes a weak, bigoted, and potentially even evil Poland a foil to a strong, pure, savior Russia. Blaming Poland allows the Russians to whitewash not only their participation in the war but also the next 50 years of Soviet domination through Comecon, show trials, extrajudicial executions, and terror. Third, using the medium of history and historical research as a bludgeon to beat Polish opposition to the idea of Soviet “liberation” in World War II can serve domestic purposes. It fuels the current “memory” and “information wars” in which Russians both inside Russia and in the diaspora are being recruited to train for and to join.97 As one commentator noted, remembering the terrible years of World War II serves “to gird ourselves in the invisible information war that is currently under way.”98 Scholars of Putin’s performances often refer to them as legitimation tools.99 Yet they are also much more. Wielding World War II serves as an invitation to participation and performance for the whole nation. Russian citizens and Russians abroad can have many attitudes toward this, whether they participate in a heartfelt way (they can bring in their own ancestors) or in a pro forma way (showing up because they are expected to).100 But in being caught up in it, their collective participation mirrors that of the President. He performs for them, and they perform for him. They enact their bond with their leader through re-enactments of World War II battles, through building World War II monuments (including the new Church of the Armed Forces) and through parading the streets of Moscow, New York, and Paris with photographs of their ancestors. All of these show the dangers of this ongoing hagiography of World War II stoked by President Putin’s personal performances. Such idealization of the war and Manicheanism foster a dualistic thinking about us (the savior nation) versus them (the fascists, the anti-Christs). The militarization of the Church and the theologization of the military foster a blind patriotism looking back to an imagined past that is simultaneously sacred and militant. And such recourse to heightened emotions and pathos elevates the leader, making him the embodiment of the national spirit, the helmsman who sets the direction. Yet it also reaches limits as to how far a secular leader can be canonized and potentially how much tension will be created internationally if the Russian leader continues to try to gain domestic “unity” by attacking neighboring nations. With Putin leading, he can rally his people, calling on them to redouble their efforts at patriotic education, following him in these information wars. Still, it must never be forgotten that a memory war may appear bloodless until it is not, as the taking of Crimea should remind us.

264  Elizabeth A. Wood

Notes 1 Sperling, “Making the Public Patriotic”; Sperling, “Last Refuge”; Sherlock, Historical Narratives, 161–85; Kurilla, “Symbolic Politics”; Mijnssen, “Old Myth”; Forest and Johnson, “Unraveling the Threads.” On morality and story-telling more generally: Oushakine, “’We’re Nostalgic’ ”; Corney, Telling October; Schmid, “Constitution and Narrative.” 2 Mijnssen, “Victory Myth and Russia’s Identity.” 3 Sherlock, Historical Narratives, 162–63. 4 On the sacredness of World War II to Russian identity, see, inter alia, Merridale, “Redesigning History”; Tumarkin, The Living and the Dead; Tumarkin, “Story of a War Memorial.” 5 Oushakine, Patriotism, 6, 36, 62–63, 84–85, and passim. 6 For more on different aspects of Putin’s masculinity, see Wood, “Hypermasculinity.” 7 Putin, “Speech at the Military Parade,” May 9, 2000. 8 Putin, “Den’ Pobedy uchit”; Putin, “Speech at the Military Parade,” May 9, 2002. 9 For “normatively secured consensus” versus consensus secured through communication, see Fraser, Unruly Practices, 113–43. 10 In his address to the Federal Assembly in July 2000, Putin dismissed the need to search for a “national idea,” calling instead for a resurrection of patriotism and historical memory as a means to reinforce national unity: “Poslanie Prezidenta.” 11 For the argument that nostalgia for the Soviet past and especially for Stalin may serve as an impediment to democratization, see Mendelson and Gerber, “Soviet Nostalgia”; Smith, “Whither Anti-Stalinism?” and Balzer, “An Acceptable Past.” For a discussion of the origins of the Putin-Medvedev tandem and the use of 1612 as a guiding metaphor, see Wood, “Who Leads Russia?” 12 “Urok pamiati o voine.” 13 “Edinyi urok pamiati.” 14 See Corney, Telling October, for a discussion of the role of vechera vospominanii in shaping the Soviet understanding of the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. See Wood, Performing Justice, for a discussion of teaching in a ritualized fashion. 15 “Victory Day in Russia.” For analysis see Sperling, “Last Refuge” and SiecaKozlowski, “Russian Military Patriotic Education.” On December 31, 1999 the Kremlin decreed that all schoolboys from age 15 should receive military training, Staar, “KGB & Other Buddies.” 16 As Floriana Fossato has noted (“Vladimir Putin and the Russian Television ‘Family’ ”), Putin explicitly referred to the “family” of those involved in television journalism on the 75th anniversary of that media, implicitly pointing to his own role as father of that family. 17 Shlapentokh and Bondartsova, “Stalin in Russian Ideology”; Figes, “Putin vs. the Truth.” 18 Eichler, Militarizing Men. On Putin’s use of the war in Chechnya as a legitimation for his prime ministership and then for the presidency, see, inter alia, Kovalev, “Putin’s War.” As Kovalev notes, the “patriotic” war effort in the Caucasus has allowed the Putin administration to brand the human rights community and other alternative movements as “unpatriotic.” 19 Gevorkian and Kolesnikov, “Zheleznyi Putin.” On Putin’s pretense that he was not campaigning, Boxer and Hale, “Putin’s Anti-Campaign Campaign.” 20 Boudreaux, “Stumping Yeltsin”; Kurilla, “Symbolic Politics,” 259–60; Womack, “Buoyant Yeltsin”; McFaul, Russia’s 1996 Presidential Election, 30. 21 Dahlburg, “Yeltsin Denounced”; Kent, “Victory Day rallies become forum.” 22 Korchagin, “Veterans Come Out for Their Victory Day.” 23 Bantin and Trofimov, “Putin calls talk.” 24 Grigor’eva and Serenko, “Patriotizm i blagopoluchie grazhdan.” 25 Tracy and Belton, “Luzhkov, Putin Turn to Veterans.”

Performing memory and its limits  265 26 Arutunyan, “Cinderella and the Tsar.” On the elevation of World War II veterans above all others during the years since Putin came to power: Danilova, “Development of an Exclusive Veterans’ Policy,” 909. 27 The notion of being “above politics” has a long pedigree in Russian history. It was the fondest dream of Tsar Nicholas II to be loved by his people without engaging in crass politics. The Kadets in 1917 also strove to adopt a position above politics. 28 “My obiazatel’no vosstanovim”; “Iz Kremlia. Vstrecha s veteranami.” 29 The Central Election Commission announced the results of the March 26 election of Putin on April 7, which automatically meant that the inauguration was held on May 7, just two days before the May 9 celebrations. 30 “Putin’s Inaugural Address”; www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uz-wLPEz6I. The handpicked audience appears to have been almost entirely male with only a single woman photographer or two. Planning for Putin’s inauguration was also clearly designed to distinguish it from Yeltsin’s: “Inauguratsia Putina.” On the tsarist precedents consciously demonstrated in Putin’s two inaugurations in 2000 and 2004, as well as in Medvedev’s in 2008, see “Inauguratsiia ili koronatsiia?” 31 Andreev, “Khlopoty pervoi stepeni.” 32 Putin, “Vystuplenie na parade.” 33 “Vladimir Putin vystupil pered uchastnikami.” 34 Stalin, “Prikaz Vooruzhennykh sil Soiuza SSSR.” In September 2004 in the aftermath of the Beslan tragedy, Putin again used text from Stalin, this time an entire passage on the dangers to Russia if the country should prove itself weak (“We have shown weakness; the weak get beaten”). 35 Karush, “Putin’s Inauguration Heralds Start”; Forest and Johnson, “Unraveling the Threads,” 41; Bantin, “Two million WW vets”; and Gurin, “Russian Historians Denounce Re-Stalinization.” 36 On the contradictory views of Putin and Medvedev toward the Stalinist past, see Sherlock, “Confronting the Stalinist Past.” 37 Putin, “Speech at the Military Parade,” May 9, 2000. 38 Matveev, “’Vy ch’e, starich’e?’; Melikova, “Putin vyslushal veteranov.” In 1994 newly elected President Clinton also made a point of approaching World War II veterans as a younger son asking for guidance: Dowd, “The D-Day Tour: Reporter’s Notebook.” 39 Video of Putin’s visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWr_mLP2mn0. Over 20 different newspapers covered the event. For one example, see Rotkevich and Vinogradov, “Peterburg stal Leningradom.” In 2002 Putin had awarded a prize to author Pavel Gladkikh for his book Zdravookhranenie i voennaia meditsina v bitve za Leningrad, which discussed the battle of the Nevsky Nickel. According to Richard Bidlack (“Lifting the Blockade on the Blockade”), no expenses were spared in producing Gladkikh’s book, which includes 240 glossy photos with captions, 42 tables of statistical data, and a 37-page chronology of events. 40 Sverdlov and Bystrykh, “Pamiat’.” 41 Gamov, “Vizit nedeli”; Alekseeva, “Gossovet ushel na pensiiu”; Kolesnikov, “Protokol.” 42 “Peizazh posle prazdnikov”; Novikova, “Martyshki i ochki.” 43 “Putin’s Father Heavily Wounded”; “Rozhdenie Pobedy: Istoriia”; “V gody voiny mat’.” 44 “Vladimir Putin recalls family’s war-time struggle.” 45 Putin, “The Reading List.” 46 Gorenburg, “The Politics of Russian History.” 47 On Putin’s use of the Orthodox Church, see Admiraal, “Religion for the Nation.” 48 “Russia, Ukraine, Belarus Leaders.” 49 Shargorodsky, “Slavic Presidents Ring Bell for Unity.”

266  Elizabeth A. Wood 50 “At Katyn Memorial, Putin.” 51 “Church representatives take part.” 52 “Putin posetil ‘Nevskii piatachok’ ”; “Putin poshel po boevomu”; “Putin prays.” 53 “Putin posetil ‘Nevskii piatachok’.” In December 2008 religious authorities placed a cross on the St. Petersburg church where Putin’s father allegedly learned to work on submarines as part of his military training in the Baltic Fleet from 1932 to 1937, thus again sanctifying a connection to the president’s family. Beliakov, “Ustanovlen krest na meste.” 54 Polian, in “Iubilei a la Glavpour?,“ shows convincingly how Putin’s Pobeda (Victory) Committee is directly descended from the Main Political Administration of the Soviet Red Army (Glavpur). For the history of that organization, see von Hagen, Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship. 55 Gwertzman, “Yeltsin to Alter V-E Day Parade.” 56 On Putin overshadowing U.S. President George W. Bush, see “Bush Marks V.E. Day.” 57 “Full Text of Putin.” 58 For a list of the armored fighting vehicles in the parade, see http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/2008_Moscow_Victory_Day_Parade, accessed on July 10, 2011. In 2010 the May 9 parade on the 65th anniversary of the victory not only displayed an enormous quantity of Russian military hardware, including the latest Topol ICBM missiles, but also for the first time included foreign military units from the countries allied with Russia during the war. 59 Felgenhauer, “Old Weapons on Red Square.” 60 “Fashion Designer Yudashkin”; Baranets, “Iudashkin sh’et kal’sony.” Putin himself had passed a decree on the new uniforms on May 8, 2005, “O voennoi forme odezhdy, znakakh razlichiia voennosluzhashchikh, i vedomstvennykh formakh razlichiia.” 61 “Muscovites bid farewell.” 62 “Putin shown samples”; Halpin, “Dressed to Kill.” 63 “Sostav soveta pri prezidente”; Nikolaev, “U Putina novyi sovetnik.” 64 “Prezident naznachil sovetchikov.” 65 On July 25, 2005 Putin awarded Yudashkin the nation’s highest honor, “National Artist of Russia” [narodnyi khudozhnik Rossii]; Kornia, “Prezident nagradil vydaiushchikhsia grazhdan.” 66 Von Twickel, “From the Catwalks to the Trenches.” 67 Golts, “The Military’s New Clothes.” 68 Kilner, “Interview,” cited in McDermott, “Russia’s Armed forces.” See also, Golts, “The Military’s New Clothes.” 69 Finn, “Designer to the Russian Military.” On Putin as a glamour figure, see “Putinskii glamur”; and Goscilo, “Russia’s Ultimate Celebrity.” 70 “Singing Putin rescues.” 71 “Vladimir Putin spel s veteranami.” 72 “Putin spel v zemlianke.” 73 Denisov, “Uroki ot Prem’era.” 74 ““Pansion vospitannits Ministerstva Oborony”; Drobyshevskii, and Kniaz’kov, “Bez krinolinov.” 75 “Putin spel frontovuiu pesniu.” 76 Andreev, “Khlopoty pervoi stepeni.” 77 Kolesnikov, “Rukovoditel’ po shvam.” 78 Potekhina, “Priznanie Rossii.” 79 Guillory, “Putin and the Great Patriotic War Jump the Shark.” 80 Barry, “Vladimir Putin Describes Loss”; “Blogery nashli”; Expat Guide to Russia. “Putin Tells.” 81 RBTH, and Interfax. “Putin Pays.” 82 Hill and Gaddy, Mr. Putin, 364–67. 83 “Krym oshchetinilsia”; Stepanova, “Krym otvetil Evromaidanu.” Note that both of these articles appeared before Putin’s military attack beginning February 27, 2014.

Performing memory and its limits  267 84 Poroshin, “25 Great Soviet.” 85 Lipman, “Putin’s ‘Besieged Fortress.’ ” 86 Dozens of websites have been created for families to search for their own World War II relatives, thus creating a way for them to participate in the memory of this war. Just as Putin has been able to personalize this war and identify with it, so too his government and many enthusiasts have made it easy for the whole nation to engage in research and memorializing this era. For a list of the most important sites, “Ssylki dlia poiska informatsii.” On hierotopy, see Lidov, Hierotopy, 32–58. 87 MBKh Media. “Glavnyi khram”; Shakirov, “V RPTs sochli umestnoi.” 88 For the demolished image: Gusev, “Mozaika podozhdet svoego chasa.” On the planned images of the two icons (one with Putin and Shoigu; the other showing Stalin): Dzhordzhevich, “Izobrazheny rukovoditeli nashego gosudarstva.” Another key figure on the Crimea mosaic was supposed to be the Crimean Governor Sergei Aksyonov who played a pivotal role in the power transfer from Ukraine to Russia. 89 Malakhovskaia, “Bez Putina i Stalina.” 90 Putin, “The Real Lessons.” 91 “Defence Ministry Board meeting”; Sukhankin, “Russia’s ‘memory wars.’ ” 92 Pertsev, “Hurt feelings.” Russian reaction to not being invited can be seen here: “Pol’sha ne pozvala Putina.” 93 Ibid. Pertsev gives a good overview of Putin’s comments ten years earlier. 94 “CIS Informal Summit.” Putin also cited other treaties: the Franco-German Declaration of December 6, 1938; a Lithuanian-German treaty of March 22, 1939; and a Latvian-German Treaty of June 7, 1939. 95 “Defence Ministry Board meeting.” 96 Luxmoore, “Poles Apart”; and Luxmoore, “Why Russia Accuses Poland.” 97 On mobilization of “memory” among youth, see Laruelle, “Negotiating History.” 98 Gur’ianov, “Pamiat’ Naroda.” 99 Sperling, Sex, Politics, and Putin; Malinova, “Framing the Collective Memory.” 100 The range of responses mirrors what Alexei Yurchak (Everything was Forever) describes in the late Brezhnev years.

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270  Elizabeth A. Wood Gurin, Charles. “Russian Historians Denounce Re-Stalinization.” Eurasia Daily Monitor 2, no. 89 (May 6, 2005). https://jamestown.org/program/russian-historians-denouncere-stalinization/. Gusev, Sergei. “Mozaika podozhdet svoego chasa.” Kommersant’, May 1, 2020. www. kommersant.ru/doc/4335685. Gwertzman, Bernard. “Yeltsin to Alter V-E Day Parade to Draw Clinton.” The New York Times, March 17, 1995. www.nytimes.com/1995/03/17/world/yeltsin-to-alter-paradeon-v-e-day-to-draw-clinton.html. Halpin, Tony. “Dressed to Kill: The Russian Forces Are Back in Fashion, 19th-Century Style.” Times Online, January 30, 2008. www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/ article3272873.ece. Hill, Fiona, and Clifford G. Gaddy. Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2015. “Inauguratsiia ili koronatsiia?” Mir Novosti, 2008. www.mirnov.ru/arhiv/mn750/mn/02-1.php. “Inauguratsiia Putina—eto vam ne inauguratsiia Yeltsina. No pokhozhe.” Kommersant, April 15, 2000. http://kommersant.ru/doc/145526. “Iz Kremlia: Vstrecha s veteranami.” Krasnaia zvezda, February 25, 2000. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/sources/article.jsp?issueId=96044&pager.offset=4. Karush, Sarah. “Putin’s Inauguration Heralds Start of New Era.” Moscow Times, May 11, 2000. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/searchresults/article.jsp?art= 15&id=226400. Kent, Arthur. “Victory Day Rallies Become Forum for Political Dueling.” CNN, May 9, 1996. www.cnn.com/WORLD/9605/09/russia.parades/. Kilner, James. “Interview: Designer Says Russian Army Should Dress to Kill.” Reuters, February 7, 2008. Cited in Roger N. McDermott. “Russia’s Armed Forces: The Power of Illusion.” March 2009. http://marshallfoundation.org/documents/IFRI_Russian_ military_power_McDermott_ENG_mars_091.pdf. Kirillova, Dar’ia. “Avtor skandal’nykh knig, byvshii ofitser GRU Viktor Suvorov: Eto podlost’, rasschitannaia ochen’ khitro.” Komsomol’skaia pravda, August 15, 2003. www. kp.ru/daily/23094/5638/. Kolesnikov, Andrei. “Protokol. Vladimir Putin poluchil veteranskii zakaz.” Kommersant Daily, January 28, 2004. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/browse/ doc/5826779. ———. “Rukovoditel’ po shvam.” Kommersant, January 29, 2008. www.kommersant.ru/doc/846683. Korchagin, Valeria. “Veterans Come Out for Their Victory Day.” Moscow Times, May 12, 1998. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/searchresults/article.jsp?art= 0&id=241415. Kornia, Anastasia. “Prezident nagradil vydaiushchikhsia grazhdan: Glava gosudarstva snova poruchil pravitel’stvu pozabotit’sia o voennykh pensionerakh.” Nezavisimaia gazeta, no. 153 (July 26, 2005). http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/browse/doc/8002725. Kovalev, Sergei. “Putin’s War.” New York Review of Books, February 10, 2000. www. nybooks.com/articles/archives/2000/feb/10/putins-war/. “Krym oshchetinilsia—Prishlo vremia Nochnykh Volkov.” Ekonomicheskaia bezopasnost’, January 27, 2014. http://econbez.ru/news/cat/19623.

Performing memory and its limits  271 Kurilla, Ivan. “The Symbolic Politics of the Putin Administration.” In Identities and Politics During the Putin Presidency, edited by Philipp Casula and Jeronim Perovic. Stuttgart: Ibidem-Verlag, 2009. Laruelle, Marlène. “Negotiating History: Memory Wars in the Near Abroad and Pro-­ Kremlin Youth Movements.” Demokratizatsiia 19, no. 3 (2011): 233–52. Lidov, Alexei. Hierotopy: Creation of Sacred Spaces in Byzantium and Medieval Russia. Moscow: Progress-Tradition, 2006. http://hierotopy.ru/contents/CreationOfSacral Spaces_01_Lidov_Hierotopy_2006_Eng.pdf. Lipman, Maria. “Putin’s ‘Besieged Fortress’ and Its Ideological Arms.” In The State of Russia: What Comes Next?, edited by Maria Lipman and Nikolay Petrov, 110–36. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Luxmoore, Matthew. “Why Russia Accuses Poland of Monumental Ingratitude.” Codastory, December 18, 2017. www.codastory.com/disinformation/rewriting-history/ why-russia-is-accusing-poland-of-monumental-ingratitude/. ———. “Poles Apart: The Bitter Conflict Over a Nation’s Communist History.” The Guardian, July 13, 2018. www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/13/poles-apartthe-bitter-conflict-over-a-nations-history-poland-monuments-communism-sovietunion. Malakhovskaia, Elena. “Bez Putina i Stalina, no s altarem po zadumke Shoigu: Kak vygliadit dosroennyi khram Vooruzhennykh sil v Kubinke.” Otkrytye Media, May 13, 2020. https://openmedia.io/news/n2/bez-putina-i-stalina-no-s-altaryom-po-zadumke-shojgukak-vyglyadit-dostroennyj-xram-vooruzhyonnyx-sil-v-kubinke/. Malinova, Olga. “Framing the Collective Memory of the 1990s as a Legitimation Tool for Putin’s Regime.” Problems of Post-Communism (2020): 1–13. doi:10.1080/10758216. 2020.1752732 Matveev, Viktor. “ ‘Vy ch’e, starich’e?’ Vladimir Putin poobeshchal, chto skoro takoi vopros zadavat’ ne budut.” Vremia novostei’, no. 13 (January 28, 2004). http://dlib.east view.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/browse/doc/5826711. MBKh Media. “Glavnyi khram Vooruzhennykh sil ukrasiat mozaikoi s Putinym, Shoigu i Stalinym.” MBKh Media, April 23, 2020. https://mbk-news.appspot.com/news/ mozaika/. McFaul, Michael. Russia’s 1996 Presidential Election:  The End of Polarized Politics. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1997. Melikova, Natal’ia. “Putin vyslushal veteranov: No pomoch’ ne obeshchal.” Nezavisimaia gazeta, January 28, 2004. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/browse/ doc/5825795. Mendelson, Sarah E., and Theodore P. Gerber. “Soviet Nostalgia: An Impediment to Russian Democratization.” Washington Quarterly 29, no. 1 (2005): 83–96. Merridale, Catherine. “Redesigning History in Contemporary Russia.” Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 1 (January 2003): 13–28. Mijnssen, Ivo. “An Old Myth for a New Society.” In Identities and Politics During the Putin Presidency, edited by Philipp Casula and Jeronim Perovic. Stuttgart: IbidemVerlag, 2009. ———. “The Victory Myth and Russia’s Identity.” Russian Analytical Digest 72, no. 10 (2010): 6–9. “Muscovites Bid Farewell to VE—Day Parade Participants.” ITAR-TASS, May 9, 2008. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/searchresults/article.jsp?art= 6&id=14785257.

272  Elizabeth A. Wood “My obiazatel’no vosstanovim prestizh Vooruzhennykh sil.” Krasnaia zvezda, February 25, 2000. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/sources/article. jsp?id=3313048. Nikolaev, Konstantin. “U Putina novyi sovetnik.” Moskovskii Komsomolets, July 22, 2002. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/browse/doc/4229282. Novikova, Anna. “Martyshki i ochki.” Russkii kur’er, January 26, 2004. http://dlib. eastview.com.ezpprod1.hul.harvard.edu/searchresults/article.jsp?art=0&id=5825846. Oushakine, Serguei. “ ‘We’re Nostalgic but We’re Not Crazy’: Retrofitting the Past in Russia.” The Russian Review 66, no. 3 (2007): 451–82. ———. The Patriotism of Despair: Nation, War, and Loss in Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. “Pansion vospitannits Ministerstva Oborony Rossiiskoi Federatsii.” Accessed January 21, 2021. http://pansion-mil.ru/about/history. “Peizazh posle prazdnikov: Televizionnye zhurnalisty otsenivaiut glavnye sobytiia proshedshego mesiatsa.” Izvestiia, January 30, 2004. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1. Pertsev, Andrey. “Hurt Feelings Ever Since Warsaw Snubbed Him for a World War II Commemoration, Vladimir Putin Has Increasingly Blamed the Poles for the USSR’s Nonaggression Pact with Hitler.” Meduza, February 7, 2020. https://meduza.io/en/ feature/2020/02/07/hurt-feelings. Polian, Pavel. “Iubilei a la Glavpour? Rossiiskii organizatsionnyi komitet ‘Pobeda’ kak estestvennaia monopoliia.” Neprikosnovennyi zapas 2–3, no. 40–41 (2005). http://maga zines.russ.ru/nz/2005/2/pp18-pr.html. “Pol’sha ne pozvala Putina na godovshchinu nachala vtoroi mirovoi voiny.” Ria Novosti, July 18, 2019. https://ria.ru/20190718/1556659950.html. Poroshin, Leo. “25 Great Soviet and Russian Films About World War II.” Taste of Cinema, May 10, 2015. www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/25-great-soviet-and-russian-filmsabout-world-war-ii/. “Poslanie Prezidenta Vladimira Putina Federal’nomu Sobraniiu RF, 2000.” Intelros, July 8, 2000. www.intelros.ru/2007/01/17/poslanie_prezidenta_rossii_vladimira_putina_feder alnomu_sobraniju_rf_2000_god.html. Potekhina, Anna. “Priznanie Rossii.” Krasnaia zvezda, no. 244 (December 31, 2009). http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-February/003133.html. “Prezident naznachil sovetchikov.” Kommersant Daily, November 11, 2001. www.kom mersant.ru/doc/290679. “Putin posetil ‘Nevskii piatachok’ byvshevo Leningradskogo fronta.” Rian, May 29, 2010. www.rian.ru/society/20100529/240140500.html. “Putin poshel po boevomu puti ottsa.” Vesti, May 29, 2010. www.vesti.ru/article/2033436. “Putin Prays in the Church at the Battlefield Where His Father Fought.” Interfax, May 31, 2010. www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=7319. “Putin Shown Samples of New Military Uniform.” ITAR-TASS Daily, January 28, 2008. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/browse/doc/13337262. “Putin spel frontovuiu pesniu.” Vesti, 2009. Accessed November 11, 2010. www.vesti.ru/ videos?vid=213326. “Putin spel v zemlianke.” Korrespondent, May 8, 2009. http://korrespondent.net/ russia/830344-putin-spel-v-zemlyanke. Putin, Vladimir. “Speech at the Military Parade and the Parade of War Veterans Held to Celebrate the 55th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.” Military News Bulletin, May 9, 2000. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezpprod1.hul.harvard. edu/searchresults/article.jsp?art=0&id=136488.

Performing memory and its limits  273 ———. “Den’ Pobedy uchit i predosteregaet nas.” Nasledie, May 9, 2002. http://old. nasledie.ru/politvnt/19_44/article.php?art=0. ———. “Speech at the Military Parade Celebrating the 57th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War.” May 9, 2002. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjfqJBQc0wI. ———. “The Real Lessons of the 75th Anniversary of World War II.” The National Interest, June 18, 2020. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/vladimir-putin-real-lessons75th-anniversary-world-war-ii-162982. ———. “Vystuplenie na parade.” May 9, 2000. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgy9sNUM-sA. ———. “The Reading List.” HistoryNet. Accessed July 15, 2011. www.historynet.com/ vladimir-putins-world-war-ii-reading-list.htm. “Putin’s Father Heavily Wounded on Nevsky Patch.” RIANovosti, May 8, 2005. http:// en.rian.ru/russia/20050508/39950276.html. “Putin’s Inaugural Address: ‘We Believe in Our Strength’.” May 8, 2000. http://partners. nytimes.com/library/world/europe/050800putin-text.html. “Putinskii glamur.” January 22, 2008. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwsKkxfa-2A. RBTH, and Interfax. “Putin Pays Tribute to Siege of Leningrad Victims at Piskarevo Cemetery.” January 27, 2014. www.rbth.com/news/2014/01/27/putin_pays_tribute_to_ siege_of_leningrad_victims_at_piskarevo_cemetery_33566.html. Rotkevich Elena, and Mikhail Vinogradov. “Peterburg stal Leningradom.” Izvestiia, January 29, 2004. https://iz.ru/news/286293. “Rozhdenie pobedy: Istoriia.” Accessed May 24, 2011. www.pobeda.ntv.ru/tales. jsp?p=1190. “Russia, Ukraine, Belarus Leaders Recall WW2 Unity.” Reuters, May 3, 2000. http:// www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/0005a.html. “Russian Historians Denounce Re-Stalinization.” Eurasia Daily Monitor 2, no. 89 (May 6, 2005). www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=30367. Sapper, Manfred, and Volker Weichsel, eds. “Gaps of Memory: Russia and Germany 60 Years After the War.” Osteuropa 4–6 (2005). www.zeitschrift-osteuropa.de/ hefte/2005/4-6/english. Schmid, Ulrich. “Constitution and Narrative: Peculiarities of Rhetoric and Genre in the Foundational Laws of the USSR and the Russian Federation.” Studies in East European Thought. 62, no. 3–4 (2010): 431–51. “Sensatsiia: Mama Putina zhivet v Gruzii.” Pravda, November 29, 2004. www.pravda.ru/ news/society/29-11-2004/28683-0/. Shakirov, Evgenii. “V RPTs sochli umestnoi mozaiku s izobrazheniem Stalina v khrame VS Rossii.” Izvestiia, April 24, 2020. https://iz.ru/1004294/2020-04-24/v-rptc-sochliumestnym-mozaiku-s-izobrazheniem-stalina-v-khrame-vs-rossii. Shargorodsky, Sergei. “Slavic Presidents Ring Bell for Unity.” Associated Press. Accessed July 18, 2011. http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/0005a.html. Sherlock, Thomas. Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. ———. “Confronting the Stalinist Past: The Politics of Memory in Russia.” The Washington Quarterly, 2011. http://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fspublic/legacy_ files/files/publication/twq11springsherlock.pdf. Shlapentokh, Vladimir, and Vera Bondartsova. “Stalin in Russian Ideology and Public Opinion: Caught in a Conflict Between Imperial and Liberal Elements.” Russian History 36, no. 2 (2009): 302–25. Sieca-Kozlowski, Elisabeth. “Russian Military Patriotic Education: A Control Tool Against the Arbitrariness of Veterans.” Nationalities Papers 38, no. 1 (2010): 73–85.

274  Elizabeth A. Wood “Singing Putin Rescues Nervous Schoolgirl.” AFP, May 8, 2008. www.google.com/ hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jfsmUj18Oq2S-FQaRIGhnRYwro6g. Smith, Kathleen E. “Whither Anti-Stalinism?” Ab Imperio 4 (2004): 433–48. “Sostav soveta pri prezidente RF po kulture i iskusstvu.” Rossiiskaia gazeta, November 10, 2001. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/searchresults/article. jsp?art=2&id=1834570. Sperling, Valerie. “The Last Refuge of a Scoundrel: Patriotism, Militarism, and the Russian National Idea.” Nations and Nationalism 9, no. 2 (2003): 235–53. ———. “Making the Public Patriotic: Militarism and Anti-Militarism in Russia.” In Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion of Russia, edited by Marlène Laruelle, 218–71. Abingdon: Routledge, 2009. ———. Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. “Ssylki dlia poiska informatsii ob uchastnikakh BOB v internete.” Rossiiskaia gazeta, February 18, 2015. https://rg.ru/2015/02/18/ssilki.html. Staar, Richard F. “KGB & Other Buddies in Putin Apparat.” 2000. Accessed July 15, 2011. www.ncoic.com/putin2_3.htm. Stalin, I. V. “Prikaz Vooruzhennykh sil Soiuza SSSR no. 10.” Pravda, February 23, 1947. https://petroleks.ru/stalin/16-55.php. Stepanova, Maria. “Krym otvetil Evromaidanu: Otkryt Slavianskii antifashistii front.” February 6, 2014. www.nakanune.ru/articles/18592/. Sukhankin, Sergey. “Russia’s ‘Memory Wars’, Poland, and the Forthcoming 75th Victory Day.” International Centre for Defence and Security, April 24, 2020. https://icds.ee/en/ russias-memory-wars-poland-and-the-forthcoming-75th-victory-day/. Sverdlov, Il’ia, and Aleksandr Bystrykh. “Pamiat’. Vsem srochno spustit’sia v bomoubezhishche.” Gazeta, January 28, 2004. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul. harvard.edu/browse/doc/5827619. Tracy, Jen, and Catherine Belton. “Luzhkov, Putin Turn to Veterans.” Moscow Times, March 10, 2000. http://oldtmt.vedomosti.ru/sitemap/free/2000/3/article/luzhkov-putinturn-to-veterans/265711.html. Tumarkin, Nina. “Story of a War Memorial.” In World War 2 and the Soviet People, edited by John Garrard and Carol Garrard, 125–46. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993. ———. The Living and the Dead: The Rise and the Fall of the Cult of World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1994. “Urok pamiati o voine proidet 7 maia vo vsekh shkolakh Moskvy.” Rossiiskaia Gazeta, May 5, 2010. www.rg.ru/2008/04/16/putin-medvedev.html. “V gody voiny mat’ Putina edva ne umerla.” newsru.com, May 8, 2005. www.newsru.com/ russia/08may2005/dgw.html. “Victory Day in Russia.” www.timeanddate.com/holidays/russia/victory-day. von Hagen, Mark. Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet Socialist State, 1917–1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. “Vladimir Putin Recalls Family’s War-Time Struggle.” RT, May 9, 2010. www.rt.com/ news/ww2-anniversary-putin-memories/. “Vladimir Putin spel s veteranami.” Ntv, May 8, 2009. www.ntv.ru/novosti/160074/video/. “Vladimir Putin vystupil pered uchastnikami voennogo parada, posviashchennogo 55-i godovshchine Velikoi Pobedy.” Pervyi kanal, May 9, 2000. www.1tv.ru/news/200005-09/286887-vladimir_putin_vystupil_pered_uchastnikami_voennogo_parada_ posvyaschennogo_55_y_godovschine_velikoy_pobedy.

Performing memory and its limits  275 “Vladimir Putin Recalls Family’s War-Time Struggle.” RT, May 9, 2010. http://rt.com/ news/ww2-anniversary-putin-memories/. von Twickel, Nikolaus. “From the Catwalks to the Trenches.” The Moscow Times, September 20, 2007. http://dlib.eastview.com.ezp-prod1.hul.harvard.edu/browse/ doc/12612571. Womack, Helen. “Buoyant Yeltsin Woos War Veterans: Confident of Youth Vote, the President Targets the Elderly.” The Independent, June 24, 1996. www.independent.co.uk/ news/world/buoyant-yeltsin-woos-war-veterans-1338568.html. Wood, Elizabeth A. “Who Leads Russia?” In Audits of the Conventional Wisdom. Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Center for International Studies, June 2008. ———. “Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power: Vladimir Putin’s Iconic Rule, 1999– 2008.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18, no. 3 (2016): 329–50. Yurchak, Alexei. Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.

12 Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia as a foreign policy tool Anton Weiss-Wendt

The Holocaust as a non-subject in the Soviet Union Holocaust discourse in the former Soviet Union and contemporary Russia has been delineated by politics, both international and memory politics. Soviet authorities applied the word genocide excessively to all sorts of conflicts past and present yet proved tight-lipped when it came to the Nazi mass murder of the Jews. Whenever the Soviets evoked it, then, they did so for a reason other than historical accuracy. Preoccupied with the propaganda value of their message, Soviet ideologists sometimes managed to omit the name of the victim group altogether. Remarkably, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, especially in the wake of the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, generated one quarter of all references to genocide in Pravda between 1948 and 1988. For as long as the persecution of Palestinians by Israel had been classified in the Soviet Union as “genocide,” Jews could not possibly have been acknowledged as the specific target of the Nazis. On the contrary, any suggestion that the Soviets did injustice to history and/or memory was bluntly dismissed as a “Zionist lie.”1 In April of 1983, the Soviet Public AntiZionist Committee came into existence. Established at the behest of the Communist Party and the KGB, the committee served its purpose by denouncing the United States and Israel and quelling the clamor over Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. At a press conference, one of the committee’s founding members, Genrikas Zimanas, received the following question. A political correspondent of the Novosti News Agency wondered why the “Zionist propaganda spread slander,” as if commemoration of victims of the Nazi genocide had been prohibited in the Soviet Union. However suggestive the question, the high-ranking Lithuanian Communist Party official had a hard time avoiding it. He had heard of this “Zionist fabrication,” replied Zimanas. In Lithuania, like elsewhere in the Soviet Union, the sites of fascist mass executions had been properly marked, stated the wartime Jewish Partisan commander. The Zionist ringleaders knew full well, continued Zimanas, that the acts of commemoration embraced all victims regardless of their ethnicity. The Zionists told lies to cover up their own crimes in Lebanon, specifically the massacre at Sabra and Shatila.2 In search of further evidence for the aforementioned claims, Karen Khachaturov, a Soviet official with a Ph.D. in history, in 1985, visited the Ghetto Fighters’

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  277 House in Israel. The visitor from Moscow found quite a few shortcomings in the museum’s permanent exhibition. He said the role of the Soviet Army in the liberation of prisoner camps had been understated while that of Allied forces exaggerated. He objected to the use of the terms Nazi and Nazism instead of Hitlerite and Fascism. The documentary about the Jewish uprising in the Sobibór death camp, he noted, failed to mention the contribution of the Soviet prisoners of war. All of these things, according to Khachaturov, testified to the Zionists’ deliberate falsification of the causes of the Second World War and the origins of fascism, with its unambiguous anticommunist and anti-Soviet streak.3 A French documentary, Shoah, played in select movie theaters across the Soviet Union in 1988, three years after it had been originally released. Even then, the word Jews had not been spelled out. The article in Literaturnaia gazeta merely stated that the film “depicted the tragedy of genocide in Hitler’s death camps.” According to the Soviet journalist who had conducted an interview with the film’s director, Claude Lanzmann, quite a few people in the audience left halfway through the screening—unprepared to see what they saw.4 An official commemoration ceremony for the Jewish victims of the Nazi mass execution at Babi Yar in Kiev was for the very first time held at a cemetery in Moscow on September 23, 1988. Led by a Supreme Soviet delegate, Lev Shapiro, the ceremony was lowkey. Shapiro spoke of “Jews, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Moldovans, Russians, Kazakhs, Georgians—the Soviet people of many ethnicities” who perished in the Nazi genocide. The audience was described as the “Soviet public [obshchestvennost].”5 Pravda did not tell the entire story, however. Some speakers directed their anger not at the Germans but at the Soviet government. According to the Chicago Tribune, a Jewish war veteran told the 500-strong audience that “Babi Yar was a prelude to the spiritual genocide of the Jewish people in our country.”6 Coincidentally, President Reagan drew a similar parallel at the ceremony unveiling the cornerstone of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on the National Mall. In his speech to about 1,500 people on October 5, he renewed his challenge to the Soviet Union to relax restrictions on Jewish emigration.7 Back in the USSR, the Jews featured as a deliberate target group by the Nazis in another Pravda article, though only as a counter reference to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the notorious leader of the French far-right National Front.8 The Pravda news digest from mid-November 1988 featured a piece commemorating the Kristallnacht, the nationwide anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany 50 years earlier. As it turned out, that was just an introduction to the main theme of the article. As if they were mocking the memory of the past, reported Pravda, the Israeli soldiers on November 9 staged a pogrom on the occupied Palestinian territories, dispersing the general strike marking one year since the beginning of the intifada.9 Not until May of the following year did the Nazi genocide of the Jews appear as the subject in its own right, with no ideological strings attached. A Soviet journalist found himself wandering through the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, contemplating the scope of the tragedy befallen the Jewish people. Literally days before the Soviet Union began to unravel in August 1991, an announcement appeared about the forthcoming commemoration ceremony at

278  Anton Weiss-Wendt Babi Yar. In a rare moment, Pravda was telling the truth: “At the end of September 1941 on the Babi Yar ravine the Hitlerites launched genocide of the Jews in our country.”10 The collective memory of the Holocaust has evolved over a longer period and traversed several continents. The original Holocaust narrative had emerged in the 1950s in Israel, culminating in the establishment of the Yad Vashem Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority in 1953. Solidarity with the State of Israel fighting for its survival, especially in the aftermath of the 1973 Israeli-Arab War, has contributed to the emergence of Holocaust consciousness in the United States. During the following decade, the Holocaust has established itself as a historical event of universal significance, epitomized by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on the National Mall.11 The collapse of world Communism and the increased emphasis on shared European identity made the Holocaust a common reference point in Western Europe in the 1990s. The European Union and NATO eastward expansion toward the end of that decade has led to the institutionalization of Holocaust memory in East and Central Europe.12 New member states, somewhat reluctantly, have incorporated the Holocaust into respective national histories. Few have noticed, however, the emergence of a new major player in the field of Holocaust commemoration in the past decade or so—Russia. Throughout the 1990s, the public commemoration of the Holocaust in Russia was mainly thanks to the revival of Jewish communal life. During that period, whatever educational and research programs there existed were linked to Israel. Vladimir Putin, early into his first presidential term, recognized the significance of that link. Beginning in 2005, in the run-up to the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, formal references to the Holocaust proliferated. Since then, the Putin regime has firmly incorporated the Holocaust into its foreign policy, making it essentially an instrument of soft power. This chapter argues that the Holocaust narrative advanced by Putin’s Russia is not a natural progression but rather a part of the hybrid warfare waged by the Kremlin against the West.

Courting Israel’s Jews, building historical analogies As with any other developing discourse, it is difficult to pinpoint the exact point in time when the Putin regime added the Holocaust to its foreign political toolbox. The earliest indications are from 2003. Before Russia began in earnest exporting its interpretation of the Second World War, it tested it in Israel. This was an obvious choice. Beyond the collective identity shaped in part by the experience of the Holocaust, Israel has a high percentage of former Soviet/Russian citizens, including several thousand war veterans.13 Some of them exhibit certain nostalgia for the bygone Soviet days. Within an international setting, Putin referred to the Holocaust for the first time during the official visit of Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Russia in November of 2003. Putin stressed the importance of building bridges to the Russian diaspora in Israel and at once proposed organizing a Holocaust exhibition

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  279 at the Victory Museum in Moscow. The war veterans in Israel would be pleased to know, he said, that such an exhibition would be opened in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of Victory Day.14 When meeting with a group of Russian war veterans two weeks later, Putin compared questioning the leading role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of Hitler’s Germany to Holocaust denial.15 On January 27, 2005, Putin joined numerous other heads of state at the remembrance ceremony at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Putin chose a non-confrontational tone in his address and even apologized, indirectly, for occasional manifestations of antisemitism and xenophobia in Russia. Regardless, he issued a warning against any “attempts to rewrite history, by putting side by side victims and henchmen, liberators and occupiers.” A historical discourse with a reference to the 600,000 Soviet troops who died liberating Poland and the total of 27 million lives lost by the Soviet Union in the Second World War was followed by a call to jointly fight against the new enemy—international terrorism. He described the present ceremony as the first in a series marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, to culminate on May 9 in Moscow.16 Putin returned to the subject of antisemitism in the run-up to his historic visit to Israel in April of 2005. This time around, in a TV interview, he attributed it to “certain states that have been traditionally regarded as Israel’s strategic partners.” In some post-Soviet countries, he stated without elaborating, Jews and Russians have the same (low) status. This is why among the first to react to the glorification of Nazis and the German Waffen SS in those countries are Jewish organizations, summed up Putin.17 Putin further impressed his views on both history and current affairs during his tour of Yad Vashem. Prodemocracy protests of 2011–2012 in Russia made the newly reelected president hike up levels of political repression at home and seek allies abroad. Government doctrine on the history of the Second World War, and by extension the Holocaust, also became more stringent. On June 25, 2012, Putin was opening the so-called Victory monument in Netanya, Israel. Designed by Salavat Schcherbakov and two other Russian sculptors, the monument to the victorious Soviet soldier was sponsored by Russian Jewish businesses. In his speech, Putin situated the Holocaust among other Nazi crimes and praised the Red Army for saving Jewish “and many other peoples” from obliteration. Along the way, he called to preserve the “truth of the war and stand against attempts to whitewash Nazi accomplices.” “Turning history inside out,” continued Putin, “is a crime with respect to both the millions who sacrificed their life for Victory and the future generations who should know the true heroes of the Second World War, should be able to separate truth from cynical lies.”18 Putin has raised this issue nearly every time he has met with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both Russia and Israel are sensitive to a biased interpretation of history, he said at a joint press conference later that day. The people who had gone through the Holocaust—Putin put words in his host’s mouth—do not doubt the decisive role of the Soviet Union in the defeat of Nazism.19 Netanyahu was happy to oblige, having over the years emphasized that Israel and Russia see eye to eye on issues of history.

280  Anton Weiss-Wendt Back in Moscow, in November 2012, Putin was talking to the leaders of the Russian Jewry. There are currently about 156,000 Jews in Russia, or slightly over one percent of the total population. About half of some six hundred Russian Jewish organizations are religious, 218 of them ultra-orthodox.20 The conversation was held in conjunction with the opening of the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. In the works since 2001, the museum was originally meant as edutainment but later was put on a more solid foundation.21 Putin has been a great supporter of the project; in 2007, he symbolically donated his one-month salary toward the construction costs. The head of the FSB followed up by handing over to the chief rabbi 16 documents concerning the famed Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg. In fact, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia has a special department tasked with fostering cooperation with the Ministry of Defense and law-enforcement organs.22 While Rabbi Berl Lazar and Rabbi Alexander Boroda, who doubles as president of the federation, stressed tolerance and an attempt to comprehensively tell the history of Russian Jews in the museum’s exhibition, Putin had a rather different perspective. From the start, he suggested adding the word Russian to the name of the new institution: “it’s located in Russia, right? And we made it happened together.” Putin said he was impressed with the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem and expected something similar in Moscow, though with a caveat. There were many ethnicities in the Soviet Union who suffered at the hands of the Nazis, stated Putin. The new museum would, therefore, serve as both a memorial to the murdered Jews of Russia and a reminder of the tragedy that befell other peoples. Putin saw the opening of the Moscow museum as reciprocal to the recent unveiling of the monument to the Red Army in Netanya. In a bow to the Israeli leadership, he remarked, it is significant for bilateral relations.23 In an address read in his name during the opening ceremony, Putin declared the Moscow museum to be the biggest such institution anywhere and praised, in particular, the part of the exhibition honoring the “memory of victims of the Second World War.”24 The visiting President of Israel, Shimon Peres, echoed Putin in describing the Jewish Museum in Moscow as “unique,” and the Red Army’s contribution to victory over Nazi Germany an “unprecedented historical event.” Peres confirmed in his address what Putin had sought all along: Israeli–Russian relations have further strengthened on account of a joined history.25 Although the name of the institution remained unchanged, the Foreign Ministry took Putin’s suggestion to heart in referring to it as The Russian Jewish Tolerance Museum. It would be much too easy to dismiss the discourse outlined so far as Putin’s personal opinion. In the undemocratic, top–down system of government put in place in Russia, the voice of the head of state gets passed down and amplified through multiple bureaucratic and popular channels. Indeed, the new–old paradigm of Jews as a constituent of the “peaceful Soviet population” targeted for destruction by the Nazis is having an effect on patterns of memorialization locally. The case at hand is a former Nazi mass execution site at Rostov-on-Don, marked by a massive memorial from 1975. In 2004, the local Jewish community installed in Zmiiovsk gorge a memorial plaque that read: “Here, on August 11–12, 1942, Nazis murdered over 27,000 Jews. This is the largest Holocaust memorial

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  281 in Russia.” In the course of reconstruction seven years later, the original plaque was replaced with another: “Here, in Zmiiovsk gorge in Rostov-on-Don, Hitlerite occupiers in August 1942 murdered over 27,000 peaceful citizens and Soviet prisoners of war. Among the victims were people of different ethnicities. Zmiiovsk gorge is the largest mass extermination site in Russia where fascist invaders destroyed Soviet citizens during the Great Patriotic War.” Russian Jewish organizations were dismayed by this revision and took local authorities to court. The ensuing debates—punctuated by antisemitism peddled by certain Russian “patriotic” organizations—led to an easy compromise. In May 2014, Lazar and Boroda unveiled yet another memorial plaque. The new plaque reproduced the 2011 text, except that the words Soviet citizens were replaced with Jews.26

Russian foreign ministry’s use of the Holocaust Taking cues from President Putin, the Foreign Ministry began molding the subject of the Holocaust into its agenda from about 2004. As its first target, it chose Latvia. In March of that year, the Foreign Ministry published on its website a lengthy note, “On the Participation of the Latvian Waffen SS Legion in War Crimes in 1941–1945 and Latvia’s Attempts to Revisit the Nuremberg Tribunal Judgment.” Loosely following a Soviet historiographic thread, the note drew a direct line between the fascist groups in interwar Latvia, mass murder of Jews, and Latvian military units, specifically the Waffen SS legion established by the Germans. The Foreign Ministry cited nebulous figures from the Soviet Extraordinary Commission in the late 1940s, according to which 313,000 civilians and 330,000 Soviet prisoners of war perished in Latvia during the Nazi occupation. Having overwhelmed prospective readers with dates, figures, and proper names, the Foreign Ministry delivered its core message: Latvia exonerated war criminals in the runup to joining NATO and the European Union and had maliciously promoted a comparison of mass crimes committed by the Nazi and Soviet regimes. The note linked past and present by insinuating that the “concept of Latvian history in the Second World War superimposed on the society is regarded by the authorities as one of the chief factors in passing the naturalization exam, which is obviously unacceptable to a majority of Russians, Belorussians, Ukrainians, Jews, and other minorities. Such a position on problematic aspects of history is aggravating the split within the Latvian society.”27 In parallel, on April 16, Russia sponsored a resolution by the UN Commission on Human Rights that condemned “ ‘glorification’ of the Waffen SS as an expression of racial intolerance and xenophobia, which contravened both the Nuremberg Judgment and the UN Statute.”28 Later that month, Russia partook in the OSCE conference on antisemitism in Berlin. This time around, the Russian representative spoke of abstract “collaborators” and praised the initiative of the British Holocaust Educational Trust to identify sites of mass executions of Jews in the Baltic States.29 The same verbal sequence—glorification of the Waffen SS, collaborators, antisemitism, revival of Nazism—was used by the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister when the UN General Assembly came to discuss the memory of the Holocaust

282  Anton Weiss-Wendt in its October 2005 session. He claimed, without giving any specifics, that “my country is religiously [sviato] preserving the memory of Nazi victims, including six million Jews, half of whom, that is, three million, were Soviet citizens.” The same type of commemoration, he said, should be accorded to the soldiers [read: Red Army soldiers] who sacrificed their life to rescue Europe from fascism, saving Jews and other nations from assured destruction.30 The Russian delegation took one step further during the UN debates on the liquidation of racism and racial discrimination the following month. This time around, the Russian representative on the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Issues) juxtaposed the “glorification of the Waffen SS” with “defiling memory of the countless victims of fascism and the Holocaust.” It was also in New York, that Moscow, for the very first time, alerted world public opinion to the danger of “revisiting the results of the [Second World] War and rewriting history.” Most significantly, the UN General Assembly, at Russia’s initiative, on December 19 passed Resolution 61/147, “The Inadmissibility of Certain Practices that Contribute to Fueling Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” which effectively restated the earlier resolution adopted by the Human Rights Commission.31 Resolution 61/147 reaffirmed that the Nuremberg Statute and Judgment in 1945–1946 declared the Waffen SS to be a criminal organization and drew attention to the resurgence of neo-Nazism, neo-Fascism, and violent nationalism. More specifically, it condemned the “glorification of the Nazi movement and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials as well as holding public demonstrations.” Such practices, according to the resolution, “do injustice to the memory of the countless victims of crimes against humanity committed in the Second World War, in particular those committed by the SS organization, and poison the minds of young people.” The resolution placed said offenses within the scope of the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and declared that the freedom of speech and assembly, as provided in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, does not apply. Resolution 61/147 was passed by 107 votes, with the United States voting against and all EU countries abstaining.32 Although Resolution 61/147 did not mention any offending country by name— as Foreign Minister Lavrov had emphasized—Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations gladly filled in. Shortly before the document had gone to a vote in the General Assembly, Rossiiskaia gazeta ran an interview with the late Vitaly Churkin. Did Russia have in mind a situation in the Baltic Republics when it had originally proposed that resolution, asked the newspaper? “Of course, it’s no secret that all of this is of direct relevance to the processes going on in Latvia and Estonia,” said Churkin, “We are concerned that officials in those countries join commemorative events in honor of the Waffen SS legionaries.” Referring in passing to criminalization of Holocaust denial in select European countries, he further explained that the resolution makes it an international issue, going beyond

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  283 bilateral, Russian–Baltic, relations—contrary to the desire of the United States and the EU.33 The Russian delegation in the United Nations evoked the language of the resolution in conjunction with yet another resolution, on Holocaust denial, sponsored by the United States and passed on January 26, 2007. According to a press release, it was symbolic that the United Nations had adopted a new resolution on the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day which marks the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp by the Red Army.34 Foreign Minister Lavrov drew a connection between the latter and the “glorification of the Waffen SS” in his address on the occasion of the Holocaust Remembrance Day.35 The Russian representative on the UN Committee on Information several months later, however, chose to link the Holocaust and the removal of Soviet Second World War memorials in Eastern Europe (i.e. in Tallinn, Estonia on the night of April 27, 2007).36 The Foreign Ministry is one of many Russian federal agencies represented in the Victory organizing committee, which was established in 2000 by President Putin mainly for the purpose of coordinating activities for the May 9 celebration. Deputy Foreign Minister, Alexander Yakovenko, who took part in the January 2009 committee meeting, referred to the Nazi mass murder of Jews just once in his address. His office was preparing a large-scale campaign to counter efforts by the West to steer attention to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and similar “ambiguous historical events,” as well as Holocaust denial and the glorification of Nazi collaborators, he said. From the Foreign Ministry’s perspective, the international status of Russia can be further strengthened through an affirmation of the leading role of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany and liberating Europe.37 The attempted falsification of history was also the main subject of interest to the Foreign Ministry during a conversation with the Director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Sara Bloomfield, on a visit in early 2010.38 Since 2009, Russian Jewish organizations have been increasingly incorporated into Moscow’s designs. On January 27, 2009, the Foreign Ministry, in collaboration with the UN Committee on Information, organized in New York a panel, “Lessons of the Holocaust and Modernity.” According to a Russian diplomat, the event featured “leading Russian and American nonprofit organizations,” Moscow Human Rights Bureau and the American branch of the World Congress of Russian Jews. In December 2009, in Berlin, the latter organization—in cooperation with unspecified Jewish and antifascist entities from Europe and CIS—held a conference with a revised title, “Lessons of the Second World War and the Holocaust.”39 Next, the Foreign Ministry deployed heavy guns, the government proxy World without Nazism. On February 10, 2011, at the UN Headquarters, the World Congress of Russian Jews and World without Nazism put together a roundtable, “World without Nazism: A Global Challenge to Mankind and the Sixty-Fifth Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trial.” The roundtable proclaimed the Nuremberg Judgment to be the ultimate truth, condemned the “glorification of Nazism,” and decried an attempted falsification of history. To spread the truth about the Second

284  Anton Weiss-Wendt World War, the roundtable participants proposed carrying out educational and “media propaganda” (sic) campaigns.40 The Foreign Ministry classifies entities like World without Nazism and Historical Memory Foundation as “Russian NGOs with international exposure.” Lavrov explicitly called for the mobilization of such organizations, expected to “expose the fact and manifestations of the glorification of Nazism,” and subsequently communicate their findings to the UN Human Rights Council and the General Assembly. Poignantly, the Russian Foreign Minister made such a statement at a January 2012 conference in Moscow ostensibly dealing with the Holocaust.41 A  few months later, Lavrov mentioned specifically Jewish organizations— the World Jewish Congress [of Russian Jews] and the European Jewish Congress—as Russia’s allies in the fight against historical revisionism, especially in the Baltic States. Particularly desirable he regarded further cooperation with Israel in this field: “The Holocaust constitutes holy memory for Israelis, and they very much appreciate the decisive contribution in the defeat of fascism and prevention of a global Holocaust made by the nations comprising the Soviet Union.”42 Determined to keep up the heat on East Europeans, the Russian delegation in 2012 sponsored yet another condemnatory resolution in the United Nations. The General Assembly Resolution 67/154 arrived exactly six years after Resolution 61/147 and featured similar content, except that the “glorification of Nazism” was now in the name of the document. Twice the size of the original document, the new resolution went into an all-important detail: Waffen SS members were now said to be collectively implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity [read: standing up against the Red Army on the Eastern Front]; anyone who fought against the anti-Hitler coalition [read: USSR] could not be classified as belonging to a national liberation movement; desecration and/or demolishing monuments to those who took on Nazism in the Second World War [read: Soviet monuments] was deplorable. Vaguely worded, certain provisions of the resolution are hard to comprehend (e.g. nos. 8, 16): “attempts at commercial advertising aimed at exploiting the sufferings of the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Second World War by the Nazi regime”; “importance of history classes in teaching the dramatic events and human suffering which arose out of the adoption of ideologies such as Nazism and Fascism.”43 Russian representative, Vasily Nebenzia, in explaining his country position, cited an example of a monument honoring local members of the Waffen SS recently erected in Bauska, Latvia. “Why is it that in European countries, in some of which Holocaust denial is outlawed,” he rhetorically asked, “one is allowed to erect monuments to exactly those who committed those crimes, those who perpetrated the Holocaust?”44 The voting pattern was pretty much the same as six years before, with the United States and Canada voting against the resolution, and EU countries abstaining. Both resolutions have been since reaffirmed on an annual basis at Russia’s initiative. While the number of abstentions went slightly down over the years, Ukraine in 2014 joined the United States and Canada in the no vote. The Foreign Ministry instantly counteracted by weaving Ukraine into its spiel on

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  285 resurgence of Nazism—the very first time the words Ukraine and the Holocaust were mentioned within the span of a single statement: “Especially distressing and troubling is the position of Ukraine. It’s hard to understand that the country whose people had fully experienced the horrors of Nazism and made a considerable contribution to the joint victory over it can vote against the document condemning the glorification of Nazism.”45 In short, UN Resolution 67/154, to a larger extent than its antecedent, is a classic example of manipulation and obfuscation driven by the Putin regime. Proving that Russia has been evoking the Holocaust vis-à-vis its neighbors instrumentally is relatively easy. Nearly all references in conjunction with the Holocaust through 2014 had been to Latvia and Estonia. One may wonder why would not the Russian government mention in the same breath also Lithuania? After all, nearly three times as many Jews were murdered in Lithuania (195,000) as in Latvia (70,000) and 22 times more than in Estonia (8,614). Proportionally, more Jews perished in Lithuania than in Latvia, while general levels of antisemitism were also higher in the former. More significant, brutalities committed by ethnic Lithuanians against local Jews in the summer of 1941 (e.g. the notorious Lietūkis garage massacre in Kaunas on June 27) have long been documented. If the Russian state genuinely wanted to draw attention to local collaboration in the Nazi mass murder of the Jews in the Baltic, it ought to have focused on Lithuania. The key factor, once again, is the Waffen SS. Attempts by the Nazis in 1943 to raise a Waffen SS division among Lithuanians—who they trusted politically and regarded as racially inferior to Estonian and Latvians—failed miserably.46 Consequently, there were no major Lithuanian-staffed military units facing the Soviets on the Eastern Front. It is the efforts to undo the consequences of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact—militarily in 1943–1944 and politically, legally, and psychologically since 1991—that the Putin regime had held against the Baltic States, now also with reference to the Holocaust. Consider yet another obvious inconsistency. While sparring with Poland over the substance and representation of the Holocaust, Russia has kept mum about the controversial amendment passed in January 2018, popularly known as the “Polish Holocaust law.” The Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, refused to comment on the new Polish law.47 When Zakharova got a similar question from the press, she engaged in a long tirade that dwelled on revisions of the results of the Second World War, the Nuremberg Trial, the removal of monuments to the Soviet soldier—anything but the Holocaust and the ill-founded law.48 Given the pattern of rhetoric emanating from the Kremlin, one would expect Russian authorities jump upon this opportunity to further stick it to the Poles. Yet they did not. This may have to do with the part of the amendment less frequently discussed in the media. Article 2a condemns crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists and members of the Ukrainian units within the German army and the police against Jews and ethnic Poles in Volhynia and Lesser Poland. It states that the Ukrainians had carried out genocide against the Poles. In effect, the new Polish amendment takes specific aim at Ukraine, which cannot but be appreciated in Moscow. Hence, in this particular case, the Putin regime apparently concluded that a historical

286  Anton Weiss-Wendt reference to atrocities committed by Ukrainian nationalists against the Poles, and the Jews was worth its silence on the issue of the Holocaust in occupied Poland. Yad Vashem has been running a database of the Righteous among the Nations— individuals who had rescued Jews during the Holocaust. Out of 27,712 individuals on the list, 215 are from Russia. For Eastern Europe, the largest number of rescuers is registered for Poland (7,112), Ukraine (2,659), Lithuania (916), and Hungary (869).49 Politicians in those and other countries are usually eager to participate in the award ceremonies held under the aegis of the Israeli Embassy—an easy way to show a commitment to the cause of preserving the memory of the Holocaust. President Putin, during his 20 years in power, has not been reported meeting individual Jewish survivors and/or their (few) rescuers outside of the context of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. Nor have lower-ranking government officials been spotted attending to Holocaust victims, unless so directed from the top. When they appear at commemorative events held locally, they usually do so in an individual rather than official capacity. In that respect, it has been no different from the conspicuous absence of state representatives at comparable ceremonies commemorating the victims of Stalin’s terror. The regime takes notice of Jews—necessarily as a group—only when and where it fits its agenda.

Putin’s Holocaust agenda during the war in Ukraine I date the beginning of a concerted propaganda campaign by the Russian government to influence the international discourse on the Holocaust from 2015. A year earlier, Russia brazenly violated Ukraine’s integrity by annexing Crimea and fueling unrest in the Donbass. During and after the Maidan uprising in Kiev, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski became one of the most recognizable faces of European politicians in Ukraine. For a brief while, Poland assumed the role of Ukraine’s Big Brother. Even traditional historical acrimonies going back to the Second World War appeared to have been put to rest. As mentioned earlier, Putin participated in the 2005 ceremony commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz death camp by the Red Army. Ten years later, in his third term as Russia’s president, Putin was conspicuously missing among the world leaders converging on Poland. Unlike earlier, the Russian leader did not receive a personal invitation from the Polish government to attend. Ostensibly, it was just a matter of diplomatic protocol. Russia’s foreign minister Lavrov, however, begged to differ. The Polish Prime Minister personally invited the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, to be part of the commemorative event during her official visit to Kiev earlier that January. Suddenly, it became an issue of status and prestige but not only that.50 The Russian side promptly concluded that diplomatic hand wrangling served a single goal—to keep Putin out in a time of heightened tensions between Russia and the West. It was also in Putin’s own interests to avoid the type of vacuum that he had experienced only a few months earlier at the G20 meeting in Brisbane, Australia. Non-invitation of Putin also served as a signal that the European leaders were to likely skip the forthcoming May 9 celebrations in Moscow. Had Putin

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  287 traveled to Poland nonetheless, he would certainly have stressed it was the Red Army that liberated the remaining Auschwitz prisoners.51 A few days prior to the commemoration ceremony at Auschwitz, novice Polish Foreign Minister, Grzegorz Shetyna, added fuel to the fire by claiming in a radio interview that it was actually ethnic Ukrainians belonging to the First Ukrainian Front that liberated the death camp. The Russian response was fast and furious. Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, correctly pointed out that the Soviet units that entered the camp territory on January 27, 1945, were composed of dozens of different ethnicities. His boss, Lavrov, did not mince words when he called his Polish counterpart’s statement a “blasphemy.”52 Instead of Auschwitz, Putin on January 27, 2015, visited the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. Accompanied by Lazar and Boroda, Putin toured the exhibition, “Human and the Holocaust,” that told a history of Nazi death camps. At the conclusion of the visit, Putin gave a long speech. Periodically returning to the theme of the Holocaust horrors, Putin effectively built his speech on juxtaposition and analogy. Thus, he spoke in one breath of antisemitism and russophobia, nationalism, and terrorism. Of the different ethnicities that fought within the Red Army ranks, Putin mentioned just two—Russians and Jews. Opposed to them were Bandera followers in Ukraine and Baltic Nazis. The former two fought side by side to rescue the Jewish people from total destruction, while the latter two collaborated in Nazi mass murder. The “lessons of history” Putin craftily linked to the “coldblooded destruction of the peaceful population of the Donbass.” Any attempts to rewrite history, he stated, are unacceptable and immoral. Curiously, on this occasion he did not mention Poland even once. The point Putin was making is hard to miss: Bound by the tragic experience, Jews should join Russians in pushing back violent nationalism of the Ukrainian and Baltic kind, which is based on the exact same ideology that made the Holocaust possible.53 Back in January 2016, President Putin had a meeting with the leaders of the European Jewish Congress. He got straight down to business by declaring the congress to be Russia’s natural ally in fighting antisemitism, safeguarding the memory of the Second World, and consistently standing up against the “glorification of Nazism.” Viacheslav Moshe Kantor, Russian-born billionaire and since 2007 president of the European Jewish Congress, returned the favor by designating Putin a “true friend of the Russian [Jewish] community” and supporting Russia’s military operations in Syria. In the aftermath of terrorist attacks in France, Kantor expressed concern about the rise of antisemitism in Europe. Of all European countries, he believed that the situation of Jews was the best in Russia. Putin agreed, encouraging Jews to move to Russia: “[Jews] had emigrated from the Soviet Union—let them [now] come back.”54 The governor of the Jewish Autonomous Republic in Russia’s Far East instantly backed Putin’s proposal by extending a warm welcome to Jews fleeing Europe. The invitation, which arrived in the wake of a report of a racially motivated attack on a suburban train in Moscow, sparked little enthusiasm among European Jews. Population statistics pinpoint the opposite trend altogether: according to Israeli authorities, some five thousand

288  Anton Weiss-Wendt Russian Jews immigrated to Israel in 2014—double the figure for any of the previous 16 years.55 Russia’s permanent representative to the OSCE, Alexander Lukashevich, capitalized on Kantor’s evocations to further situate Holocaust denial within the attempted falsification of history. The efforts to bury the information about Jewish massacres by “Baltic Nazis” and Bandera followers in Ukraine he contrasted with the comprehensive Holocaust remembrance program in Russia: sites of mass murder being identified and marked (backed by an evangelical Christian organization); schools routinely holding Holocaust history lessons; a center for Holocaust and genocide studies has been established at the Russian State University for the Humanities, and so on. Along the way he incorporated a novel element into the official Russian discourse on the Holocaust and the civilizational mission performed by the Red Army in Europe. Jews count not only among the victims of the war; they also made a big contribution to Victory over Nazism by fighting within the Soviet Army ranks.56 A year later in the same setting, Lukashevich further extended this line of argumentation. He now argued that in some unspecified countries, authorities have destroyed monuments to the Soviet soldiers “who had sacrificed their lives liberating concentration camp prisoners and putting an end to the Holocaust.”57 Ironically, the Russian diplomat here resorted to what Moscow has been accusing neighboring countries of doing for decades, namely the falsification of history, for no evidence has come to light of Soviet soldiers killed en masse when overrunning the Nazi death camps. When evoking ad nauseam “attempts to falsify history,” Russian authorities fail to explain in detail how it relates specifically to the Holocaust—the new point of reference in the official lexicon. In the few cases when particular examples have been enumerated, it does not take long to establish that those are actually the very same aspects of the Second World War that Moscow has been hitting East European countries, especially former Soviet republics, with since the early 1990s. During his meeting with the representatives of the European Jewish Congress on October  10, 2007, President Putin specifically praised Jewish organizations for their work toward the “preservation of historical truth about the Holocaust, other Nazi crimes, and, of course, the heroism of the soldiers who died liberating Europe from ‘brown plague’.” By historical revisionism in the new EU member states, Latvia and Estonia, Putin meant annual gatherings of former Waffen SS veterans held unopposed in those countries. Among more recent examples, he cited the relocation of a monument to the Soviet soldier from downtown Tallinn. In the case of Ukraine, he mentioned “attempts by certain political forces” to whitewash the reputation of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).58 When Russian diplomats do make a direct link between particular wartime organizations and the Holocaust, they invariably do so incorrectly. Hence, they do not differentiate between Himmler’s SS and the Waffen SS, and consequently state that the latter was proclaimed a criminal organization at Nuremberg (without mentioning the clause that accounts for post-1943 forced conscription). With some exceptions, the Waffen SS—or former Baltic nationals among its ranks to be

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  289 precise—did not take part in the Nazi mass murder of the Jews. Those who did, particularly in 1941–1942, were paramilitary units/auxiliary police, local branches of the German Security Police, and police battalions. However, since that does not make the news in either the Baltic States or Russia, it is not reflected in Russian history politics either and consequently is missing from formal statements. Hence, there are references to abstract “collaborators who had exterminated hundreds of thousands of peaceful citizens, prisoners of war, and camp inmates in the territory of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Poland, and other countries.”59 Neither do Russian diplomats often have their facts right when they talk about the victims of the Holocaust. For instance, in January 2005 Foreign Minister Lavrov stated at a press conference that “millions of people who were imprisoned and murdered at the [Auschwitz-Birkenau] camp had been deported [ugnany] from the Soviet Union.” Russian permanent representative at OSCE 11  years later modified that figure even further: millions of people murdered, including about one million Jews. While giving our due to the victims of the Holocaust—he preached—we should also remember “some ten million Slavs . . . who perished in Nazi concentration camps.”60 All six Nazi death camps were situated in the occupied Polish territory but not in Germany, Czechoslovakia, or the Soviet Union—as the Foreign Ministry maintains (i.e. Theresienstadt was a ghetto, not a “death factory”).61 From 2015 onward, Russian diplomats started reaching out to other East European countries under the guise of Holocaust commemoration. In Romania, for example, they laid a wreath to a Holocaust memorial.62 The Russian Foreign Ministry promptly, if indirectly, explained why it chose Romania rather than any other country. The commemoration of the Jews and Roma deported by the Antonsecu’s regime during the war coincided with an exhibition on the postwar deportation of Transylvania Germans to the Soviet Union. The Bucharest exhibition, stated Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, had “clear anti-Soviet and antiRussian overtones.” She went on to remind everyone that the Romanian army fought on the German side and referred to over 300,000 Jews murdered in the territory controlled by the regime, disparaging the present German ambassador to Romania along the way.63 The most extensive celebration of Victory Day organized by a Russian Embassy anywhere is held in the Republic of Macedonia, which Moscow has been trying hard to talk out of joining NATO and the European Union. Among other institutions annually participating in the commemorative events is the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia in Skopje.64 Even less obvious a location to commemorate the Holocaust, with the participation of the Russian diplomats, was Cuba, in July 2015. In fact, the word Holocaust (or Jews) was not even mentioned beyond the news item’s title. A local artist in Matanzas, west of Havana, displayed a series of his works, “Auschwitz: Memory of Horror.” The event was billed as part of the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the Great Victory, accompanied by the standard pledge to forestall the resurgence of Nazi ideology and whitewashing of Nazi war criminals and their accomplices.65 Beginning in 2015, Moscow has also engaged the Commonwealth of Independent States—a

290  Anton Weiss-Wendt rather symbolic alliance that emerged from the USSR’s rubble—to annually issue a solemn declaration projecting the Russian take on the Second World War, with the requisite, single reference to the Holocaust.

Conclusion The present Russian discourse on the Holocaust is surprisingly similar to the late Soviet one. The Holocaust is typically evoked in just two cases: collaboration in the Nazi mass murder of Jews in Eastern Europe and/or the Soviet contribution to putting an end to the Nazi genocide. Needless to say, this kind of juxtaposition of evil versus good does not account for the complexity of the phenomenon known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust is significant for the Putin regime only insofar as it helps advance its foreign political goals. In short, it makes good propaganda. As historian Pavel Polian has sarcastically remarked: 6 million Jews, by fact of having been murdered by fascists, became Russia’s allies in the fight against Neofascism.66 The Russian efforts to fashion the (Soviet) victory over Hitler’s Germany as a central event in world history are a carbon copy of the discourse developed by the Soviets right after the end of the Second World War. Only the references changed, while the substance remains the same. Back in 1948, Stalin’s government linked genocide to Fascism and “similar racial ideologies,” while the Putin regime today has reconciled to using a universally accepted term Nazism. In the 1940s, the Soviets intended to get at the United States and the colonial powers like Britain by means of the Genocide Convention; since the mid-2000s, the Russians have been evoking the UN resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism to condemn select East European countries, specifically Baltic States. In either case, Moscow is using the Holocaust as a convenient tool. The sanctification of the Nuremberg Judgment—impressed through paragraph 354.1, “Glorification of Nazism,” of the Russian Penal Code (May 2014)—is yet another example of marrying history and politics. When it comes to engaging with the Russian Holocaust narrative, Israel, of all countries, finds itself in the trickiest situation. Over-represented among other segments of the Israeli population, Russian-speaking Jews, and a limited nostalgia that some of them may feel for their country of origin (the Soviet Union), make them less critical vis-à-vis Russia’s overtures. It is a truism to state that Israel finds itself in a tough neighborhood. In the wake of the Syrian crisis, and especially after Putin’s decision to support Bashar al-Assad militarily, Israel needs to maintain good working relations with Russia more than ever. Although playing along with the official Russian discourse on the Second World War and the Holocaust may seem like a small price to pay, in the long term it may draw Israel even closer into Russia’s orbit. Unless, of course, Israeli historians and politicians alike start taking history politics as advanced by the Russian Government more seriously. Otherwise, the cultivation of Jewish support by the Putin regime is purely instrumental, which shows in occasional slips of the tongue. To give just one example, in March 2018 Putin received universal condemnation when he dismissed the

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  291 accusations of Russian interfering in the 2016 US Presidential elections by suggesting it might have been done by just anyone, say, Jews.67 Putin’s Russia is molding the Holocaust narrative to address any new twist in memory politics it regards as adversarial. In recent years, the Russian Foreign Ministry has displayed a certain finesse which until now it had lacked in presenting its perspective on the Holocaust. This goes hand in hand with the potential of soft power rediscovered by Moscow since the 2011–2012 democratic protests in Russia and particularly in the aftermath of military aggression against Ukraine in 2014. Since 2015 Russia has been building an alternative, popular Holocaust narrative, complete with its own commemoration dates, NGOs, motion pictures, and exhibitions.68 The United Nations proved an important, and malleable, conduit for Russian history politics. Under the guise of a tribute to the victims of the Holocaust, the Foreign Ministry has been able to take its pitchfork battles with East European neighbors to an international level. Formal Russian statements outwardly honoring the Jewish victims of the Nazis is an affront to the memory of the Holocaust. As with other aspects of Russian hybrid war, their goal is to subvert and obfuscate. On the one hand, the chances of Russia succeeding at changing the global perspective on the Holocaust are close to zero. Research on the Nazi genocide of the Jews in Russia, in Russian, regrettably, has added little to our fundamental knowledge of the Holocaust. Few dedicated scholars and the public at large are aware of Moscow’s concerted efforts to shift the focus from the victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust to the rescuers, that is, those wearing Soviet military uniforms.69 Few register that Moscow’s raising the issue of the Holocaust is a means to stick it to its former East European vassals. Mobile exhibitions and talks sponsored by the Russian delegation to the United Nations are only seen and heard by random diplomats passing through the UN building in New York. UN Resolution 67/154, “Glorification of Nazism,” is one among 120 adopted by the General Assembly in December 2012. Not many people take notice, and herein lies the danger. After all is said and done, Russia’s objective is not to radically change the conversation—which it is unable to accomplish anyway—but to muddle it. With a document backlog at the United Nations, convoluted Russian formulations that could be understood only by those familiar with Soviet doublespeak easily escape critical attention. The Putin regime seeks to divert the conversation and to sow confusion, which effectively amounts to a divide-and-rule policy. And the Russian agenda on the Holocaust is a policy, coordinated at the highest government level. It is part and parcel of the hybrid warfare strategy pursued by the Kremlin.70

Notes

1 2 3 4 5 6

Cf. Weiss-Wendt, A Rhetorical Crime, 133–49, 169, 177–79. Abarinov, “Paguba i nadezhda.” Khachaturov, “Pokhititeli razuma.” “Rai, obernuvshiisia adom.” “Miting obshchestvennosti.” “Soviet Rally.”

292  Anton Weiss-Wendt 7 “Reagan Challenges.” 8 “ ‘Mesie Nenavist.’ ” 9 “Mir za nedeliu.” 10 “Massovye rasstrely.” 11 See Novick, The Holocaust and Collective Memory. 12 Judt, Postwar, 803–31. 13 According to Putin’s own estimates, a good quarter of Israelis are Russian speakers. “In that sense, Israel is essentially a Russian-speaking country,” he claimed, “which injects a special charm in the relations between our two countries and serves as a solid basis for advancing bilateral relations.” See Kremlin, April 20, 2005. 14 Kremlin, November 3, 2003. 15 Kremlin, November 18, 2003. 16 Kremlin, January 27, 2005. 17 Kremlin, April 20, 2005. 18 Kremlin, June 25, 2012. 19 Kremlin, June 25, 2012. 20 Figures from Bagno-Moldavsky, “The Jewish Diaspora,” 13. 21 Cf. museum’s website. 22 “Itogi raboty.” The document handover by the FSB can be safely described as hypocrisy, taking into account that the agency had consistently refused to release documents concerning the circumstances of Wallenberg’s arrest and subsequent death in Soviet imprisonment in 1947. In July 2017 Wallenberg’s niece threatened to take the FSB to court on that account. See “Plemiannitsa umershogo”; Volchek, “Delo Vallenberga.” 23 Kremlin, November 7, 2012. 24 MID (Russian Foreign Ministry), November 8, 2012. 25 Kremlin, November 8, 2012. 26 Cf. Makarenko, “V Rostove-na-Domu.”; “Zmiiovskaia balka”; “V Rostove-na-Donu utverzhdaiut.” According to Yad Vashem, the death toll is closer to 15,000–16,000. 27 MID, February 13, 2004. 28 MID, July 30, 2004. 29 MID, April 30, 2004. 30 MID, November 2, 2005. 31 MID, November 9, 2005. 32 UN Resolution 61/147. 33 MID, November 21, 2006; MID, September 1, 2012. 34 MID, January 27, 2007. 35 MID, January 29, 2007. 36 MID, May 1, 2007. For details of the 2007 events in Tallinn see Ehala, “The Bronze Soldier.” 37 MID, January 28, 2009. 38 MID, February  1, 2010. Bloomfield’s visit prompted no bilateral initiatives within Holocaust studies besides a systematic copying of Holocaust-related records from the Russian archives that the Washington museum has been pursuing since the early 1990s. 39 MID, February 18, 2010. The World Congress of Russian Jews was established in 2002 in Moscow for the purpose of rallying Russian-speaking Jews in support of Israel. 40 MID, February 11, 2011. Similar roundtables were held at Russian embassies in various countries, for example, Norway. 41 MID, March 14, 2012. 42 MID, December 10, 2012. 43 UN Resolution 67/154. The wording of the resolution is heavily influenced by the Russian/Soviet linguistic tradition. To give just one example, the indeterminate “sufferings” (in plural) is a direct translation of the Russian word stradaniia, which also

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  293 conveys emotional pain. The Foreign Ministry in November 2014 used the exact same wording of provision 16 in its annual statement reaffirming Resolution 67/154. 44 MID, November 27, 2012. 45 MID, November 22, 2014. 46 Cf. Weiss-Wendt and Üngör, “Collaboration in Genocide.” 47 MID, February 15, 2018. 48 MID, January 31, 2018. On June 27, 2018, due to the international pressure, the Polish government made a U-turn and decriminalized the offenses enumerated in the amendment. 49 Yad Vashem’s Righteous among the Nations statistics. 50 Krechetnikov, “Pochemu Vladimir Putin.” 51 Ibid. 52 “Lavrov nazval.” Later that September, the Russian ambassador in Warsaw placed a share of guilt for the outbreak of the Second World War on Poland. See “Posla RF v Pol’she,” 53 Kremlin, January 27, 2015. 54 Kremlin, January 19, 2016. 55 Bigg, “Putin’s Invitation to European Jews.” 56 MID, January 22, 2016. 57 Ibid; MID, January 27, 2017. 58 Kremlin, October 10, 2007. 59 Cf. MID, April 30, 2004; MID, June 9, 2005; MID, November 2, 2005. 60 Cf. MID, January 19, 2005; MID, January 22, 2016. 61 MID, April 18, 2018. 62 MID, October 12, 2015. 63 Ibid; MID, February 4, 2016. 64 MID, May 10, 2016; MID, May 23, 2017; MID, May 9, 2018. Coincidence or not, in October 2016 Russia stood accused of attempting a coup d’état in another former Yugoslavian republic, Montenegro, which entertains the same ambition as Macedonia to eventually join NATO and the EU. 65 MID, July 20, 2015. 66 Polian, “Istoriomor.” 67 “Putin Condemned.” 68 For details see Weiss-Wendt, Putin’s Russia and the Falsification of History, 202–16. 69 According to Yefim Pivovar, president of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Sobibor is all about the “heroism and resilience of the Soviet soldier.” Cf. “Vosstanie v Sobibore.” 70 On the subject of hybrid warfare carried out by Russia, see, in particular, Mark Galeotti’s writings.

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294  Anton Weiss-Wendt Glukhov, Yuri. “Bezmolvnyi krik.” Pravda, May 3, 1990. Grigoriev, Alexei. “Krugovaia oborona.” Izvestia, August 22, 1979. “Itogi raboty Federatsii evreiskikh obshchin Rossii v 2007 godu.” Interfax-Religion, December 25, 2007. www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=documents&div=694. “Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center.” Moscow. Accessed October 12, 2020. www. jewish-museum.ru/en/about-the-museum/museum-history/. Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. New York: Penguin, 2005. Khachaturov, Karen. “Pokhititeli razuma.” Izvestiia, January 13, 1985. Krechetnikov, Artem. “Pochemu Vladimir Putin ne poekhal v Osventsim?” BBC Russian Service, January 27, 2015. www.bbc.com/russian/international/2015/01/150126_putin_ auschwitz_ analysis. Kremlin. “Vstupitel’noe slovo na vstreche s Premierom-ministrom Izrailia Arielem Sharonom.” November 3, 2003. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22182. ———. “Vladimir Putin vstretilsia s veteranami Vooruzhennykh sil Rossii.” November 18, 2003. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/29770. ———. “Interviu Pervomu kanalu izrail’skogo televideniia.” April 20, 2005. http:// kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22928. ———. “Vystuplenie na gosudarstvennoi tseremonii, posviashchennoi 60-letiiu osvobozhdeniia sovetskimi voiskami kontslageria Aushvits-Birkenau.” January 27, 2005. http:// kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/22802. ———. “Vstupitel’noe slovo na vstreche s chlenami Ispolnitel’nogo komiteta Evropeiskogo evreiskogo kongressa.” October 10, 2007. www.kremlin.ru/events/president/ transcripts/24586. ———. “Otkrytie Memoriala pobedy Krasnoi armii nad fashistskoi Germaniei.” June 25, 2012. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/15727. ———. “Vstrecha s Premier-ministrom Izrailia Beniaminom Netaniakhu.” June 25, 2012. http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/15728. ———. “Vstrecha s glavnym ravvinom Rossii Berlom Lazarom i prezidentom Federatsii evreiskikh obshchin Alexandrom Borodoi.” November 7, 2012. http://kremlin.ru/events/ president/news/16768. ———. “Vstrecha s Prezidentom Izrailia Shimonom Peresom.” November 8, 2012. http:// kremlin.ru/events/president/news/16772. ———. “International Holocaust Remembrance Day.” January 27, 2015. www.kremlin.ru/ events/president/news/47529. ———. “Vstrecha s chlenami Ispolnitel’nogo komiteta Evropeiskogo evreiskogo kongressa.” January 19, 2016. www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51184. “Lavrov nazval ‘koshchiunstvom’ slova Skhetyny ob Osventsime.” BBC Russian Service, January 22, 2015. www.bbc.com/russian/international/2015/01/150122_lavrov_ schetyna_ auschwitz_comments. Makarenko, Victoria. “V Rostove-na-Domu sporiat o natsional’noi prinadlezhnosti liudei, kaznennykh fashistami.” Novaia gazeta, May 29, 2012. www.novayagazeta.ru/ articles/2012/05/30/49943-holokost-doshel-do-suda. “Massovye rasstrely nevinnykh liudei.” Pravda, August 8, 1991. “ ‘Mesie Nenavist.’ ” Pravda, September 14, 1988. MID. “Ob uchastii latyshskogo legiona SS v voennykh prestupleniiakh v1941–1945 gg. i popytkakh peresmotra v Latvii prigovora Niurnbergskogo tribunala.” February 13, 2004. www.mid.ru/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/ id/485504.

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  295 ———. “Kommentarii k podgotovlennomu latviiskimi istorikami I. Feldmanisom i K. Kangerisom material ‘O latyshskom dobrovolcheskom legione SS’.” July 30, 2004. www.mid.ru/web/guest/maps/lv//asset_publisher/9RJVTEXfWg7R/content/id/463074. ———. “Transcript of the Press Conference of Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergei V. Lavrov on the Foreign Policy Results of 2004 at the Press Centre of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia.” January 19, 2005. www.mid.ru/web/ guest/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/451196?p_p_ id=101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw&_101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw_ languageId=en_GB. ———. “Vystuplenie rukovoditelia delegatsii Rossiiskoi Federatsii, Postoiannogo Predstavitelia Rossiiskoi Federatsii pri OSCE A. N. Borodavkina na otkrytii Konferentsii OSCE po antisemitizmu i drugim formam neterprimosti, Kordova.” June 9, 2005. www. mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/rso/osce//asset_publisher/bzhxR3zkq2H5/content/ id/436186. ———. “Vystuplenie zamestitelia Ministra inostrannykh del Rossiiskoi Federatsii A. V. Saltanova na 60-i sessii Genassamblei OON po punktu 72 ‘Pamiat’ o Kholokoste’.” November 2, 2005. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/news//asset_publisher/ cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/422284. ———. “Vystuplenie predstavitelia Rossiiskoi Federatsii G. E. Lukiantseva v Tretiem komitete 60-i sessii General’noi Assamblei OON po punktu 69 povestki dnia ‘Likvidatsiia rasizma, rasovoi diskriminatsii.” November 9, 2005. www.mid.ru/web/guest/ vystuplenia-zaavlenia/-/asset_publisher/97FOfHiV2r4j/content/id/421588. ———. “Interviu Postoiannogo predstavitelia Rossii pri OON v Niu-Iorke V. I. Churkina ‘Rossiiskoi gazete’ 18 noiabria 2006 goda.” November 21, 2006. www.mid.ru/web/ guest/foreign_policy/news/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/387224. ———. “O priniatii 61-i sessiei General’noi Assamblei OON rezoliutsii ‘Otritsanie Kholokosta’.” January 27, 2007. www.mid.ru/web/guest/maps/ee/asset_publisher/ mo1LgbIkJbRf/content/id/383026. ———. “Privetstvennoe poslanie Ministra inostrannykh del Rossii S. V. Lavrova uchasnikam memorial’nogo vechera, posviashchennogo Mezhdunarodnomu dniu pamiati Kholokosta.” January 29, 2007. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/news/ asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/382962. ———. “Vystuplenie predstavitelia Rossiiskoi Federatsii B. N. Malakhova na 29-i sessii Komiteta OON po informatsii.” May 1, 2007. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/ un/asset_publisher/U1StPbE8y3al/content/id/374644. ———. “Tezisy vystupleniia Zamestitelia ministra Inostrannykh del Rossii A. V. Iakovenko na zasedanii Rossiiskogo organizatsionnogo komiteta ‘Pobeda’, Sankt-Peter burg.” January 28, 2009. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/news/asset_publisher/ cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/308316. ———. “Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Ryabkov Meets with Director of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Sara Bloomfield.” February  1, 2010. www.mid.ru/ web/guest/maps/us/-/asset_publisher/unVXBbj4Z6e8/content/id/265374?p_p_id=101_ INSTANCE_unVXBbj4Z6e8&_101_INSTANCE_unVXBbj4Z6e8_languageId=en_GB. ———. “Summary of Remarks by Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov at a Meeting with Representatives of Russian Nongovernmental Organizations, Moscow’.” February 18, 2010. www.mid.ru/ru/meropriatia-midrossii/asset_publisher/aLRfN6MT9msV/ content/id/262470?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_aLRfN6MT9msV&_101_INSTANCE_ aLRfN6MT9msV_languageId=en_GB.

296  Anton Weiss-Wendt ———. “O ‘kruglom stole’ v OON na temu ‘Mir bez natsizma—globalnaia zadacha chelovechestva na sovremennom etape i 65-letie Niurbegskogo protsessa’.” February 11, 2011. www.mid.ru/web/guest/pravozasitnye-social-no-ekonomiceskie-gumanitarnyevoprosy-deatel-nosti-oon/-/asset_publisher/Z02tOD8Nkusz/content/id/219098. ———. “Theses of Speech of S.V. Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia, at Meeting with Representatives of Russian Non-Governmental Organizations of International Standing.” March 14, 2012. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/news/ asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/164842?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_ cKNonkJE02Bw&_101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw_languageId=en_GB. ———. “Speech of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia S.V. Lavrov at MGIMO (U) MFA and Answers to the Questions Asked by Students, Moscow.” September 1, 2012. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/news/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/ id/145330?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw&_101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw_languageId=en_GB. ———. “Speech of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey V. Lavrov at the Opening of the Russian Jewish Museum of Tolerance in the Presence of the President of Israel Shimon Peres, Moscow.” November 8, 2012. www.mid.ru/web/guest/maps/il/asset_publisher/IkK5VYQAOmaG/content/ id/135738?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_IkK5VYQAOmaG&_101_INSTANCE_ IkK5VYQAOmaG_languageId=en_GB. ———. “Speech of the Representative of the Russian Federation V. A. Nebenzi During the Voting on the Project of the Resolution of the Third Committee of the 67th Session of the UN General Assembly ‘Glorification of Nazism’.” November 27, 2012. www.mid.ru/web/ guest/vystuplenia-zaavlenia/-/asset_publisher/97FOfHiV2r4j/content/id/133098?p_p_ id=101_INSTANCE_97FOfHiV2r4j&_101_INSTANCE_97FOfHiV2r4j_ languageId=en_GB. ———. “Iz otvetov na voprosy Ministra inostrannykh del Rossiiskoi Federatsii S. V. Lavrova.” December  10, 2012. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/news/ asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/130966. ———. “Comment by the Information and Press Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Approval by the Third Committee of the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly of a Resolution Against the Glorification of Nazism.” November 22, 2014. www.mid.ru/web/guest/general_assembly/asset_publisher/lrzZMhfoyRUj/content/ id/790178?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_lrzZMhfoyRUj&_101_INSTANCE_lrzZMhfoyRUj_languageId=en_GB. ———. “O vystavke v pamiat’ o zhertvakh Kholokosta.” July 20, 2015. www.mid.ru/web/ guest/maps/cu/asset_publisher/ZCoR8WfDPJng/content/id/1620206. ———. “Ob uchastii Posla Rossii v Rumynii O. S. Malginova v tseremonii posviashchennoi Dniu pamiati zhertv Kholokosta v Rumynii.” October 12, 2015. www.mid.ru/web/ guest/maps/ro/asset_publisher/WzuFsB3Aw7t3/content/id/1843940. ———. “Remarks by Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich at the OSCE Permanent Council Meeting, Vienna.” January 22, 2016. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/rso/osce/asset_publisher/bzhxR3zkq2H5/ content/id/2016113?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_bzhxR3zkq2H5&_101_INSTANCE_ bzhxR3zkq2H5_languageId=en_GB. ———. “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova’s Reply to a Media Question about Demonstrations of Revanchist Sentiments in Romania.” February 4, 2016. www.mid.ru/web/guest/maps/ro/-/asset_publisher/WzuFsB3Aw7t3/content/

Holocaust discourse in Putin’s Russia  297 id/2062408?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_WzuFsB3Aw7t3&_101_INSTANCE_ WzuFsB3Aw7t3_languageId=en_GB. ———. “O prazdnovanii Dnia Pobedy v Makedonii.” May 10, 2016. www.mid.ru/web/guest/maps/mk/asset_publisher/Bx1lWHr8ws3J/content/id/2269988. ———. “Vystuplenie Postoiannogo predstavitelia Rossiiskoi Federatsii A. K. Lukashevicha na zasedanii Postoiannogo soveta OBSE, Vena.” January  27, 2017. www.mid.ru/ web/guest/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/2615545. ———. “O prazdnovanii Dnia Pobedy v Makedonii.” May 23, 2017. www.mid.ru/web/guest/maps/mk/asset_publisher/Bx1lWHr8ws3J/content/id/2763673. ———. “Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova.” January 31, 2018. www.mid.ru/web/guest/foreign_policy/news/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/ id/3051107?p_p_id=101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw&_101_INSTANCE_cKNonkJE02Bw_languageId=en_GB. ———. “Interviu Posla Rossii v Pol’she S. V. Andreeva pol’skoi radiostantsii ‘RMF FM’.” February 15, 2018. www.mid.ru/web/guest/maps/pl/asset_publisher/D2CPYayAgyuG/ content/id/3085960. ———. “Ob otkrytii v Parlamente Cheshskoi Respubliki rossiiskoi dokumental’noi vystavki ‘Kholokost: unichtozhenie, osvobozhdenie, spasenie’.” April 18, 2018. www.mid. ru/web/guest/maps/cz/-/asset_publisher/k0a3O6Z8NHnZ/content/id/3176716. ———. “O tseremonii vozlozheniia venkov k monumentu partizanam-antifashistam v g. Skopie.” May 9, 2018. www.mid.ru/web/guest/k-70-letiu-pobedy-v-velikoj-otecestvennoj-vojne/-/ asset_publisher/fTsGoCVQTjkk/content/id/3222640. “Mir za nedeliu.” Pravda, November 13, 1988. “Miting obshchestvennosti.” Pravda, September 26, 1988. Novick, Peter. The Holocaust and Collective Memory. London: Bloomsbury, 1999. “Plemiannitsa umershogo v sovetskom plenu diplomata Shvetsii podala v sud na FSB RF.” Segodnia, July 27, 2017. www.segodnya.ua/world/europe/plemyannica-umershego-vsovetskom-plenu-diplomata-shvecii-podala-v-sud-na-fsb-rf-1042088.html. Polian, Pavel. “Istoriomor: Strukturizatsiia pamiati i infrastruktura bezpamiatstva.” Neprikosnovennyi zapas 3 (2015). http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2015/3/16pp.html. “Posla RF v Pol’she Sergeia Andreeva vyzovut v MID dlia roziasnenii.” Radio Liberty, September 27, 2015. www.svoboda.org/a/27273221.html. “Putin Condemned for Saying Jews May Have Manipulated US Election.” Washington Post, March 11, 2018. “Rai, obernuvshiisia adom.” Literaturnaia Gazeta, May 23, 1984. “Reagan Challenges Soviets at Holocaust Memorial Site.” LA Times, October 5, 1988. “Soviet Rally Commemorates Nazi Massacre of Jews.” Chicago Tribune, September 26, 1988. Volchek, Dmitry. “Delo Vallenberga.” Radio Liberty, July 13, 2019. www.svoboda. org/a/30040326.html. “Vosstanie v Sobibore—apogei evropeiskogo soprotivleniia fashizmu.” TV Roundtable, RIA Novosti, April 10, 2018. www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMkLfqyeYcY&feature= share. “V Rostove-na-Donu utverzhdaiut, chto evrei v Zmievskoi balke razzhigaiut natsionalnuiu rozn.” Revizionizm Holokosta, December 12, 2012. http://holocaustrevisionism.blogspot.com/2012/12/blog-post_8.html. “UN Resolution 61/147.” December 19, 2006. www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc. asp?symbol=A/RES/61/147&Lang=E.

298  Anton Weiss-Wendt “UN Resolution 67/154.” December 20, 2012. www.un.org/en/ga/search/view_doc. asp?symbol=A/RES/67/154&Lang=E. Weiss-Wendt, Anton. A Rhetorical Crime: Genocide in the Geopolitical Discourse of the Cold War. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018. ———. Putin’s Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control Over the Past. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. Weiss-Wendt, Anton, and Uğur Ümit Üngör. “Collaboration in Genocide: The Ottoman Empire 1915, the German-Occupied Baltic 1941–1944, and Rwanda 1994.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 25, no. 3 (2011): 418–21. Yad Vashem. “Righteous Among the Nations Statistics.” January 2020. www.yadvashem. org/righteous/statistics.html. “Zmiiovskaia balka—teper i v sude.” Memorial, May 31, 2012. http://urokiistorii.ru/ article/3436.

13 The war film and memory politics in Putin’s Russia Stephen M. Norris

In December 2011, protests over Duma election fraud led to massive rallies in Moscow and other major Russian cities. The demonstrations only grew larger after Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister of Russia since 2008, announced he would run again for President in March 2012. Chants of “Russia without Putin” rang through these gatherings, the largest one held on Bolotnaia Square in the Russian capital (and therefore many refer to the protests using the name of that location). The government responded by organizing pro-Kremlin rallies, including a large one at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium. Coming as they did after a series of the so-called color revolutions in former Soviet republics, the largest and most significant being the 2004–2005 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the demonstrations in Moscow and elsewhere represented the largest, most sustained opposition to Putin since he took office in 2000. As a result, as Maria Lipman has noted, “the Kremlin abandoned its policy of tolerance” toward most dissent, which it had pursued up to that point, with television and other media outlets turning to smear campaigns that labeled the protest leaders as “pro-Western, unpatriotic, and immoral.”1 Putin’s return to office came with more crackdowns and more restrictions on political speech, policies that Lipman labels “Putin 2.0” in contrast to those pursued in Putin’s first turn as President (2000–2008). When he formed his new government in the wake of these protests, Putin tapped Vladimir Medinskii to be his new Minister of Culture. Medinskii, who held the position until early 2020, perfectly embodied the policies of the new Putin era. He had first gained national attention as a member of then-President Dmitry Medvedev’s commission to counteract the “falsification” of history. Established in 2009 and meeting for the first time in 2010, the commission was asked to “counteract attempts to falsify history to the detriment of the interests of Russia” and tasked with “summarizing and analyzing information about falsifications of historical facts and events that are intended to belittle the international prestige of the Russian Federation.” Medvedev, as Pål Kolstǿ has written, inherited a highly politicized approach to understanding history and his commission mostly sought “to preserve the sacred memory of Soviet victory in the Second World War.”2 The commission did not achieve much in terms of new legislation (Kolstǿ argues it was established to prevent new laws), but it did highlight the increasing turn to “protecting” a particular memory practice associated with the Victory.

300  Stephen M. Norris Once appointed Minister under Putin’s less tolerant system, Medinskii’s ministry got to work.3 In 2013, the Ministry rolled out a new “Fundamentals of State Cultural Policy.” It heralded a major shift, aligning state policy more toward the crackdowns of Putin 2.0. Putin provided the inspiration for the policy in his 2013 Valdai International Discussion Club speech, where he called for more robust spiritual, cultural, and national development to counteract what he saw as the harmful effects of Western policies. The Fundamentals rested on a single, “civilizational” definition of Russian culture, one that centered on history and meant to foster greater attachment to Russia. The document quoted Medinskii in stating that other cultures and cultural codes circulated in Russia, but only those that built support, that united the people, deserved attention: “let a hundred flowers bloom,” the Minister said, “but we will only water those that are useful to us.” The goal was stated clearly too: “the formation of a full-fledged person, a citizen of a united Russia, a preserver of the historical and cultural traditions of our civilization.”4 As part of these renewed fundamentals, the Ministry wanted movies, books, and other works of art that stressed Russian historical continuity, Russia’s “unique” civilization, and Russian patriotism. Critics called out the policy for its neo-Soviet tone, with the editor of Iskusstvo kino (The Art of Cinema), Daniil Dondurei, suggesting the state had not issued anything like it since the Brezhnev era. Patriotism itself had already become a watchword of the Putin era and soon became the concept promoted through this new policy. In 2016, Putin would declare patriotism Russia’s only national idea, with the state needing to promote it relentlessly and in all sorts of forms.5 One of those forms, one acknowledged by Medinskii to be particularly important, was cinema. Russian films had experienced a notable revival in the 2000s and had long been associated with Russian (or Soviet) cultural greatness.6 Films about World War II played a starring role in this rebirth and even tackled taboo topics, explorations made possible under the more tolerant funding policies overseen by then Culture Minister Mikhail Shvydkoi. This chapter will analyze the politics of contemporary World War II memory as reflected in recent Russian cinema. More specifically, it will analyze several films released after the 2011 political protests in Moscow and Putin’s subsequent return to the presidency in 2012, films released under Medinskii’s new guidelines and more active role as culture minister.7 This chapter analyzes the political uses of “approved” patriotic films that cover four topics (and it is important to note here the number of war films that appeared from 2015 to 2020 and how they can be grouped in themes): all expressed a form of “patriotism” that Medinskii’s ministry endorsed and that the Putinist state endorsed. Collectively, movies about women warriors, a “patriotic” Holocaust, the T-34 tank, and the heroism displayed in the Siege of Leningrad point toward what could be termed an increasing “Putinization” of war memory, one where a film’s conclusions about past heroics dovetail with the state’s promotion of patriotism. At the same time, the reception of these films differed widely. The Putinization of war memory remains a goal of the state and the cinema it supports, but the reception of recent war films reveals a more complex picture of how patriotic culture functions in post-2012 Russia.8

The war film in Putin’s Russia  301

A patriotic project: women warriors defend the motherland On March 18, 2014, President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech announcing the formal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. In it, Putin began by drawing attention to “the history of Crimea and what Russia and Crimea have always meant for each other.” Crimea, in Putin’s interpretation, spoke to a “shared history,” to the beginnings of Russian civilization, to the values that “unite the peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.” Moreover, Crimea is where Russian military valor and glory had been displayed many times. “In people’s hearts and minds,” he declared, “Crimea has always been a part of Russia.”9 Released just over one year after the speech—on April 2, 2015—on a 124m ruble budget with support from the Russian Cinema Fund, Sergei Mokritskii’s Battle for Sevastopol tapped into strong mythologies and contemporary geopolitical battles all at once. Timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of victory, the film narrates the story of Liudmila Pavlichenko, the famous Soviet sniper also known as “Lady Death.” The bulk of the film narrative follows her fortunes and her romances, from learning how to become a marksman (she enrolls in a course) to her move to Odessa, where she is living when the war breaks out, to her successes as a sniper, deeds that gain her attention throughout the world. On the romance front, Pavlichenko endures heartbreak: two fellow snipers she falls in love with die, as does one of her prewar loves, a Jewish doctor who helps to save her life. Her success on the battlefield—first in Odessa and then in Sevastopol— is more straightforward, as she quickly demonstrates her prowess, including a sequence involving her tracking and killing a famous German sniper (echoing Jean-Jacques Annaud’s 2001 film Enemy at the Gates). In the battle sequences, while the romantic elements are played up and contrived, they nonetheless rest on her real-life story: Pavlichenko fell in love with and married a fellow sniper, Aleksei Kitsenko, who died fighting in the battle for Odessa (in the movie, he is renamed Leonid Kitsenko and played by Evgenii Tsyganov). The film also wrestles with how Pavlichenko presented herself in her autobiographical account from 1942, one where she stated she was excited to test out “what a girl can do.”10 As Anna Krylova has interpreted this life story, Pavlichenko’s is one that uncovers the hidden talents of her “unconventional female self—a self she would never have known had she not had an opportunity to learn the rifle.”11 Lady Death would prove herself in this regard, with 309 acknowledged kills, capturing what Svetlana Alexievich has termed “the unwomanly face of war,” one where women could do what men also could (and sometimes better).12 The film ramps up the romance a bit to make her seem more womanly, but her onscreen deeds, like Pavlichenko’s in the war, still comment on how she broke with gender norms. Battle for Sevastopol has another storyline, one that opens and closes the film and one that captures the contemporary politics with which the movie engages. Again based on Pavlichenko’s life but again massaging it in meaningful ways, the film opens in 1942, when the sniper, after suffering an injury in Sevastopol, takes part in a Soviet mission to America. She visits with and befriends First Lady

302  Stephen M. Norris Eleanor Roosevelt, who invites her on a tour of the country. She is also there to drum up support for the Second Front, delivering a speech in Chicago that contained lines widely reported at the time: “Gentlemen, I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascists by now. Don’t you think, gentlemen, that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?” The speech came in part because Pavlichenko had been treated as an oddity in the American press. The American media reported on her attire and whether or not she could wear cosmetics at the front (she retorted to a New York Times reporter that “there are no rules against it” but that “no one thinks about it” because they are too busy gaining the “great satisfaction a hunter feels who has killed a beast of prey.”).13 Enthralled by her American visit, Woodie Guthrie would write “Miss Pavlichenko,” singing that “Russia’s your country, fighting is your game, The whole world will love her for a long time to come, For more than three hundred Nazis fell by your gun.” The film closes with Pavlichenko’s 1957 return visit to the United States, this time under the cultural exchanges offered during the Thaw, where she meets up with Roosevelt once more, rekindling their friendship. In framing the film this way and focusing so much on her American visits, Battle for Sevastopol fires back at the long-standing wounds caused by the Anglo-American recalcitrance to open the Second Front. The USSR had acted anyway, defending its territory, including the Crimean city of Sevastopol. That the film appeared just over a year after Russian forces occupied the Crimean Peninsula, an action condemned in Washington and London alike, was not lost on many. Yet the film resonated, mostly because it managed to avoid overt patriotic messaging, despite its title and timing. Writing in Afisha, the prominent critic Anton Dolin first acknowledged the geopolitics of that time before concluding the film had “no trace of falsehoods or tendentiousness.”14 Others agreed, noting that the film lacked the exaggerated patriotism of other recent war epics, including films about women at war such as Battalion, with one even arguing that the movie was the first in Russian cinema “not only about a person [chelovek] in war, but also about the relationship between war and a person.”15 The film had larger implications. “From the bottom of my heart, I  sincerely hope everyone will watch this movie,” Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinskii told reporters, because “it’s just a great movie.” While he was extolling the virtues of Mokritskii’s movie, the Minister was also taking pot shots at Ukrainian laws, noting that the film would be released on 300 screens in Ukraine but would have to be dubbed into Ukrainian “to avoid panicky consequences.” The Rada, Medinskii reminded readers, had passed a law banning films from Russia that promoted the army or other government structures.16 At the Moscow premiere, Medinskii could also not help criticizing American war films, claiming “as a historian, I have always admired how American filmmakers are able to create fantastic war movies without real-life heroes,” citing Saving Private Ryan as an example. Battle for Sevastopol, he argued, was a movie “where every frame is true, every character real.”17 That year brought other movies dedicated to real-life women heroes of war. Before Battle for Sevastopol struck cinemas, Dmitrii Meskhiev’s blockbuster

The war film in Putin’s Russia  303 Battalion had already appeared on screens. A retelling of the Women’s Battalion of Death and its engagements during the Great War, the film stressed a reflexive patriotism centered on defense of the motherland and the Orthodox faith, ignoring more nuanced narratives about the infamous Battalion. “Patriotism” became the word through which to evaluate it. Susana Al’perina noted in the main government newspaper that the movie was promoted as one produced by the creators of Brest Fortress and Stalingrad (both films about World War II released in 2010 and 2013) as a sign that “the program for creating patriotic cinema is operating.”18 Lidiia Maslova thought the patriotism excessive;19 Anton Dolin agreed, calling it a “hurrah-patriotic film [ura-patrioticheskii fil’m].”20 In her review for the more open Novaia gazeta, the prominent Russian critic Larisa Maliukova characterized Battalion as proof of a new ideological project in Russian cinema, one spearheaded by Medinskii (whose name and organizations with which he associated are in the credits).21 This form of patriotism, she argues, comes without adjectives: it just is. Battalion debuted on February 20, 2015; Battle for Sevastopol on April 2. At the end of that month, on April 30, Renat Davlet’iarov’s The Dawns are Quiet Here hit screens, a remake of Stanislav Rostotskii’s beloved 1972 film about a Russian corporal training a group of women to become gunners in the Great Patriotic War. Based itself on a 1971 story by Boris Vasil’ev, the 2015 remake seems to be, in Frederick Corney’s apt summary, “nostalgia for nostalgia.”22 Davlet’iarov’s version of Dawns differs very little from Rostotskii’s. The main point of the new version, as many critics noted, was to recycle a patriotic story for a new generation. Daria Serebrianaia, one of the critics who made this claim, also argued that the new The Dawns are Quiet Here contained all the “pathos and action” that serve as “the two fundamental bonds of contemporary Russian war-patriotic cinema.” “Of course,” she concludes, “it’s unpatriotic to forget about the sacrifices of our noble ancestors, but it’s even more unpatriotic to make a bad movie about them.”23 The Dawns are Quiet Here had a lavish premiere at the Kremlin Palace. Medinskii attended and was photographed with the director, Renat Davlet’iarov.24 A newspaper story noted that the Minister liked it and that he particularly recommended it for anyone who had not seen the Soviet version or read the original story.25 What is notable about these three 2015 films about women warriors at war, including two set during World War II, is the sort of patriotism they all espouse. Women fought too, they fought patriotically, and that’s that. What is equally notable is the Russian critics—noticing Medinskii’s program and its application onscreen—began to detect and openly identify what they saw as a state-driven patriotic project. Of course, also worth noting is that none of the films was terrible, at least as judged by spectators (who rated Sevastopol 7.5/10, Battalion 7.1, and Dawns 7.0 on kinopoisk.ru). Patriotism and even a state-driven patriotic war film project could be commercially successful in 2015, with the films making $8.7m, $8.9m, and $5.25m, respectively.

304  Stephen M. Norris

Scripting a patriotic Holocaust? One of the most talked-about films of 2018, a film eventually selected by Russia’s Oscar Committee for consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film competition, was Konstantin Khabenskii’s debut movie, Sobibor. Khabenskii was famous as an actor, starring in big blockbusters (the Night Watch and Day Watch films), critically acclaimed films (2005’s Poor Relatives and 2013’s The Geographer Drank His Globe Away), and even cameos in Hollywood films (Wanted; Tinker, Tailor, Sailor, Spy). Yandex, the Russian equivalent to google, aggregated data in 2017 and named Khabenskii the most popular actor in Russia for each of the first 15 years of the 2000s.26 Khabenskii’s first time directing would have been a big event regardless of the subject material. That he turned to the Holocaust and specifically to the Soviet-led uprising in a Nazi death camp made it all the more significant. Sobibor premiered on May 3, 2018. With a 180m ($2.6m) ruble budget, it made $5m at the box office. The film tells the story of Lt. Alexander Pecherskii (played by Khabenskii), a Jewish Red Army soldier captured in the early days of the war and sent first to the Minsk Ghetto and then the Sobibor death camp. There, in October 1943, he helped to organize a revolt, one of two in Nazi death camps that year (the other was in Treblinka), and the most successful revolt in any major Nazi camp: Pecherskii was one of 300 to escape after killing 11 guards and 1 of approximately 50 to survive the war. The film begins with Pecherskii’s arrival at the camp, where he manages to gain the eye and raise the ire of its brutal commandant, Frenzel (played by Christopher Lambert). Most of the narrative concerns the extreme sadism and horrific violence of the Nazi guards and commanders, culminating in a scene where prisoners, including Pecherskii, are forced to act as “horses” pulling the “chariots” of Nazi guards. The hellish nature of the camp— the film relishes in it—leads Pecherskii to take control of a planned uprising. His training as a Red Army soldier makes him more strategically minded and more willing to actively resist, the film suggests, than other Jewish inmates. The culmination comes when Pecherskii leads the revolt and escapes into the woods.27 Sobibor is significant in being the first Russian film dedicated to the subject. The Soviet government downplayed the Holocaust in its focus on the “universal suffering” of all citizens, one counterbalanced by the “hierarchical heroism” of different ethnic groups (as Amir Weiner has argued).28 The fact that Pecherskii had been a prisoner of war was also a taboo topic in the Soviet era. As a result, the film had some unusually high-profile screenings: Putin watched it with Benjamin Netanyahu in their summit and German Bundestag members were shown clips in a session. Most of the reviews also noted its significance. Nina Tsyrkin of Iskusstvo kino called it “above all, a social act, which also recalls an act of restorative justice.”29 Pecherskii’s story, she notes, was not reported in the USSR before he died in 1990 and he only received a posthumous state order in 2016. Khabenskii’s rendering of his story, Tsyrkin concludes, does justice to him and to the extreme violence of

The war film in Putin’s Russia  305 the camps (her view was in the majority: 83 percent of Russian critics gave it a favorable review).30 In a dissenting opinion, Lidiia Maslova called it a “confusing patriotic film” that did not quite know how to balance the escape story with the violence and that leaned heavily on sentimental clichés. The cinematic retelling of Pecherskii’s story is a good thing, she concludes, but “tired visual metaphors and high-flown theatrical elements” ruin its effects.31 Khabenskii, for his part, claimed he wanted to make a film that made an emotional impact, one that also countered depictions of Jewish passivity in the Holocaust. The main character in Sobibor, he would claim, was the death camp itself, a way for the director to explain so many violent scenes. When asked if his film went against the “typical” war film that stressed patriotism, Khabenskii retorted, “why, this is a correct and good word,” elaborating that “patriotism” can also be about a creative act, one where individuals can see themselves in heroic actions from the past.32 While certainly the film that reached the largest number of Russians and that garnered the most significant press coverage, Khabenskii’s was not the only Russian film released between 2016 and 2018 to tackle the subject of the Holocaust. Andrei Konchalovsky’s Paradise (2016) won him Best Director at the Venice Film Festival before sweeping the domestic Russian awards. The film focuses on a Russian emigrant and member of the French resistance who ends up in a camp. Paradise delved into her relationships with a French collaborator and an SS officer she meets in the camp. Aleksei Fedorchenko’s Anna’s War (2018) recounts the story of a young Jewish girl whose parents were shot early in the war as part of the Nazi war of extermination and who remains hidden in silence for the duration of the war. Sparse, succinct, and claustrophobic (the six-year-old actor does not say a single word), Anna’s War received mostly positive reviews on the festival circuit. Konchalovsky’s and Fedorchenko’s films were not marketed widely in Russia and were aimed mostly at international art-house audiences. It was Khabenskii’s film, therefore, that many reports connected to Medinskii’s cultural mission. The “patriotic Holocaust film” apparently was the Minister’s idea: many of the reviews suggested the Cultural Minister had scripted this latest patriotic offering. He later told students at Moscow’s premier film school, VGIK, that he did not get a fee for it, for he was not a screenwriter, but that “I did write a several page story and gave it to the producer.” The film itself he described as “amazing, simply unique.”33 In some ways, Medinskii’s conclusion contains a truth: for all of its flaws, Sobibor did perform an act of restorative justice in the way the critic Nina Tsyrkun suggested.34 For all of its flaws, Khabenskii’s film acknowledged Pecherskii’s Jewishness, told the story of the uprising he led as one that runs against stereotypes of Jewish passivity, yet also depicted the horrific suffering of Jews during the Holocaust. Pecherskii may no longer be the “hostage to history” he was during his lifetime (he died in 1990, before his story could be fully told).35 Instead, his amazing, simply unique story has become embraced as a patriotic example for others to follow.

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Supervising patriotic tanks A movie review headline from 2018 captures quite a lot to be analyzed more fully: “Kim Druzhinin’s Tanks: Our Response to the Film The Death of Stalin: A Patriotic Blockbuster Filmed under Vladimir Medinskii’s Supervision.”36 Written by Anton Dolin and published in Meduza, a media outlet located in Riga, Dolin’s review openly claimed that Medinskii ordered patriotic pictures designed to meet the Kremlin’s needs. The review declares that a new film about the T-34 Tank, one of the symbols of the Soviet Victory in World War II, was not so much a window into the past, but the frankest self-portrait of the people who control Russia today. Dolin also saw the film as a direct, more patriotic, response to Armando Iannucci’s 2017 dark comedy, The Death of Stalin, which Medinskii’s ministry had banned in Russia. On January 23, 2018, after stating that Russia does not engage in censorship and instead welcomes critical engagement with the past, Vladimir Medinskii announced that he had revoked the distribution license for Iannucci’s film. Medinskii’s decision, which came two days before the scheduled Russian premiere, resulted in part from a letter sent by Duma deputies that claimed the film contained “characteristics of extremism” and would “stir up hatred” because it “disparaged the Russian (Soviet) people.” The banning of the film also came after Medinskii had a number of cultural figures and politicians prescreen it, including Nikita Mikhalkov, Leonid Vereshchagin, Sergei Miroshnichenko, and Elena Drapenko. The latter claimed that The Death of Stalin aimed to convince Russians “that our country is horrible, that our people are idiots, and our rulers are fools.” In a letter written by the cultural luminaries, headed by Mikhalkov, they claimed the film was a “malignant and absolutely inappropriate so-called ‘comedy’ ” that “soils the memory of our citizens” and represents “a libel against the history of our country.”37 This, then, is how the Ministry of Culture operated under Medinskii: it guards against historical “falsifications” that discredit Russian greatness, particularly related to films about the war (it was the gist of the commission Medinskii served on under Medvedev). However, there is more to the story. Kim Druzhinin, the director mentioned in Dolin’s headline, had first become well known for a movie he co-directed about the legendary Panfilov’s Guardsmen, a group of Soviet soldiers who defended Moscow in 1941. Medinskii openly praised and later approved of state funding for the film, the first in Russia to raise its initial budget through a crowdsourcing effort. While the film was still in production, however, the director of the state archives of Russia released documents that the story of the Panfilov defenders had been partly falsified. The news provoked an angry response from Medinskii, who retorted “even if it was all made up and Panfilov never existed, it’s a sacred legend that people should not touch,” calling anyone who did so “washed-up scum.”38 Still, the revelation, coming as it did after Medinskii had already made news about his attempts to combat “falsified history” and those who belittled Russia’s past, proved embarrassing.

The war film in Putin’s Russia  307 Druzhinin’s follow-up was a film about the production of the T-34 tank; one initially announced with the working title Tanks for Stalin. The movie played fast and loose with historical facts, mostly because the actual facts of how Mikhail Koshkin invented his famous tank in early 1940 Kharkhov and then drove it to Moscow are fairly boring (that is pretty much the story). Tanks had spies trying to steal the plans, White Guards still living in Ukraine and wanting revenge, and Nazis somehow in the country before the war started all trying to thwart Koshkin and his crew. In addition, Tanks had Stalin in it, there to praise the tank and its creator and there not to despoil the sacred history of the war. At the film’s debut in the Moscow International Film Festival, Medinskii urged viewers “not to treat this film as a strictly historical movie,” but one that still contained a “historical truth.”39 Of course, Medinskii could not help but explain the film’s contemporary patriotic purpose, noting that its premiere took place before Russian troops in Syria, stating, “those guys liked the movie.” Dolin’s review picked up on this posturing, while also pointing out that Medinskii received credit in the film’s credits for coming up with the film’s concept. The Minister was also recognized for his ministry’s funding for the film and for his role in the support given by the Russian Military-Historical Society for the film. More disturbing for Dolin was the way Stalin was depicted in the film, one where he appeared as benevolent, God-like, a source for devotion. In Dolin’s words, Medinskii does not really support history as much as he promotes “correct myths.”40 Fortunately for Russian audiences (or unfortunately, depending on how they looked at it), the domestic cinema industry put out two films about the T-34 Tank within nine months of each other. Druzhinin’s Tanks debuted in April 2018; Aleksei Sidorov’s T-34 hit screens on New Year’s Day 2019, now the biggest day for blockbuster releases in Russia. Aside from the focus on the tank and the fact both were meant to appeal to the masses, the two are quite different in meaningful ways. Sidorov plunges us directly into the Great Patriotic War and the first deployments of the famous tank. The opening sequence is a dizzying and dizzyingly fun duel between a young tank commander with his recently appointed crew and an entire battalion of Nazi tanks commanded by a ruthless Nazi commander. The T-34 crew is outmatched but outperforms their enemies. At the end of the encounter, both the Nazi commander and our Russian hero, Nikolai Ivushkin (played by Aleksandr Petrov), are wounded (the audience initially is led to believe they die). We then flash forward to 1944, where Ivushkin has survived for three years in a concentration camp and had managed to withhold his name and rank from his captors. His former adversary, Jaeger, appears at the camp to recruit some Russians to repair and then test out a T-34. Jaeger spots Ivushkin and, through the camp interpreter, Anya, convinces him to join this test. Ivushkin picks a new crew who initially see him as a collaborator, only to escape in a spectacular and spectacularly unbelievable sequence that involves their repaired T-34 tank, some hidden live explosions, and subterfuge at a demonstration before Nazi higher-ups about the Soviet tank’s performance. Some Nazis die; the Soviet crew escapes.

308  Stephen M. Norris One final duel has to take place, this time to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, before Ivushkin and his tank definitively best Jaeger and his Panther (who falls over a cliff a la Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). The T-34 is better, its heroic crew is better. And Ivushkin gets the girl (Anya) in the end. Tanks attempted to be fun and engaging but these attributes seemed forced. T-34, as the majority of critics and audience members agreed, was fun and engaging on its own terms. Writing for Evening Moscow, Andrei Agafonov noted Sidorov’s film resembled “a comic book” and warned viewers not to watch it if they wanted accuracy and truth about the Second World War but to go if they wanted a good adventure.41 Susanna Al’perina, writing in the government newspaper Rossiiskaia gazeta, largely concurred, calling T-34 “fun” and “well-made,” one also without “pseudo-patriotism and unnecessary pathos,”42 a not-too-subtle dig at Tanks. Dolin, writing again in Meduza, was critical of the clichéd plot but praised it as an “honest, entertaining genre film,” one that also managed to avoid the “patriotic propaganda” of other war films (he even noted the film has no Stalin or Stalinist ideology in it).43 The film also had Medinskii’s backing: he called it a “worthy, contemporary” movie and particularly recommended Russians watch it with their children.44 The cultural minister also defended it against those who criticized it (again casting doubt on the credentials of anyone casting doubt about the film’s plot, again shifting his focus to the “fairytale” aspects of American films such as Saving Private Ryan and Fury while casting T-34 as largely “true.”).45 T-34’s producers included Studio Tri-te, Nikita Mikhalkov’s company, the very same director who denounced the Death of Stalin. But herein lies an important truth about the nature of the cinematic memory politics of the contemporary Putin era: tanks and appeals to patriotism are best made organic and fun, without Stalin or the taint of overt government support. Russian audiences agreed. Tanks had a budget near $2m and made $2m; T-34 had an $8m budget but made $32m, becoming the ­second-highest grossing Russian film of all time. Patriotism could still sell by the end of 2018, as long as it could be contained in a good-old-fashioned action movie.

Immortalizing the siege, counteracting patriotism As Lisa Kirschenbaum has written, “the extraordinary and unexpected plight of blockaded Leningrad easily lent itself to mythmaking.”46 Yet the memories and myths of the Siege, as Kirschenbaum has explored, were complicated, contested, and not so easily reduced to a dichotomy of state propaganda on the one side and people’s personal recollections on the other side. On January 27, 2019, Aleksei Kozlov’s action film set in the Siege of Leningrad, Saving Leningrad, debuted. Less than four months later, on May 16, 2019, Kantemir Balagov’s drama Beanpole, set in Leningrad just after the war ended, debuted at the Cannes Film Festival (where it would win an award for Best Director). Before these two movies hit screens, a third, Aleksei Krasovskii’s comedy The Holiday, set during the Siege of Leningrad, first streamed online on January 3, 2019 (more about why later). What would end up being the last year Medinskii

The war film in Putin’s Russia  309 spent as Minister of Culture—he was not reappointed when Putin reshuffled his cabinet on January  15, 2020—brought an unusual constellation of films set in Leningrad. Collectively, the three reveal important aspects to the politics of war memory in Putin 2.0 Russia. Kozlov’s film is the most straightforward. Saving Leningrad is set at the beginning of the Siege and, therefore, focuses on the establishment of the so-called “Road of Life” across Lake Ladoga (the Wehrmacht cut off all roads to the city on September 8, 1941). Central to this cinematic narrative is the German attempt to bomb barges carrying Leningraders to safety, including the infamous September 16–17, 1941, bombings of two boats carrying people to safety (nearly 1500 Leningraders died). Kozlov, who co-wrote the script, compresses these themes into one day and centers his story on two young Leningraders in love, Kostya, a cadet, and his girlfriend, Nastya. Both end up on the fateful barge but manage to escape before it is hit by Nazi bombs. Saving Leningrad provides some interesting backstories: Kostya’s father is a colonel who approves of the barge being loaded up and sent away, knowing his son may be on board; while Nastya’s father has been repressed in the purges, arrives back on the fateful day, only to be sent to the front by the dogged NKVD officer pursuing him. Timed to be released for the 75th anniversary of the lifting of the Siege on January 31, 1944, Saving Leningrad’s last scene connects the bravery and tragedy of 1941 to the present, for it ends with a parade of the Immortal Regiment down Nevsky Prospekt, including those who survived the barge bombing carrying the portraits of those who did not. A neat memory trick is, therefore, performed: Saving Leningrad dissolves the distance from wartime sacrifice and contemporary remembrance of that sacrifice. Balagov’s Beanpole contrasts sharply with Saving Leningrad. Set in the immediate aftermath of the war, the title refers to a traumatized woman named Iya who is nicknamed “beanpole” because of her height. She is mute and undergoes episodes where she freezes whenever her previous traumas are triggered. We learn she has suffered immeasurably, both at the front where she served and back home and will continue to carry her traumas in the postwar years. Through Iya’s story and that of Masha—a woman who returns home and who served at the front with Iya—we are forced to confront rape, abortion, violence, mercy killings, and more. The end offers no release; instead, it promises that the bleakness Iya, Masha, and others have lived through will go on. An art house film from a young director who studied with noted art house director Alexander Sokurov, Beanpole garnered rave reviews worldwide and was a finalist for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Balagov was inspired by Svetlana Alexievich’s The Unwomanly Face of War, which he noted “opened up a whole new world for me” and made him “realize how little I knew about the war and about women in the conflict.”47 Reading the book made him wonder about what would happen to a woman after the war. He also thought to place this imagined, mentally wrecked woman in Leningrad, which had suffered its own horrific traumas. The two melded, as the director noted in interviews, for the ruins of the city’s buildings and other spaces can be detected in the women’s eyes and faces. Balagov also wanted to film against the grain in contemporary

310  Stephen M. Norris Russian war films, which he characterized as mostly “patriotic, nationalist films.” Beanpole aimed to be “more truthful and not simply tales of bravery” so that Russians “can somehow avoid repeating the same tragedy.”48 The film’s setting acts as an unintentional commentary on the end of Saving Leningrad, for the horrors of the postwar world call into question the grandiose celebrations of Victory Day then and now.49 Then there’s The Holiday. The film gained notoriety long before its release. A “dark comedy about the Siege of Leningrad,” as the film was billed, raised the ire of United Russian lawmakers, who aired their grievances on Twitter and other social media outlets. The director, Aleksei Krasovskii, aware of the politics of patriotism, crowdsourced his funding and ultimately did not seek a license to release the film on screens, instead putting it out for free on YouTube on January 3, 2019 (originally slated for a later release, the film beat Saving Leningrad and Beanpole to the punch). Set on December 31, 1941, the film is about the Voskresenskii family’s celebration of the New Year (the holiday in question). The family lives in Leningrad and has had no trouble with the Siege because the patriarch, Georgii, is a professor who works in a top-secret lab. He, therefore, enjoys the privileges of his current position, which during the blockade means he can feed his family enough to survive and to hold a happy holiday for them. Of course, outside, the family has to pretend to be suffering like everyone else. The dark comedic elements appear when outsiders arrive at the party, starting with son Denis bringing a starving young woman, Masha, whom he has met at a bomb shelter. Masha’s parents have starved to death and her siblings kept her father’s corpse on the apartment balcony so they could continue to receive his meager rations. Daughter Liza meanwhile brings a draft dodger, Vitalii, to the celebration (he has shot himself in the foot to avoid serving at the front). Some subterfuge and turning of the tables ensues, making the film mostly a commentary on how some in wartime Leningrad benefitted (mostly the Party and agents of the state) and how most suffered (mostly ordinary citizens). Krasovskii added further fuel to this fire by stating his movie was a parable for people “who enrich themselves at the misfortune of others.”50 Kozlov wanted viewers to immerse themselves in the plot of Saving Leningrad to gain more truth about the events,51 but audiences mostly immersed themselves elsewhere. The film made a modest $3m at the box office and was mostly ignored by critics (the film aggregator site kinopoisk.ru only lists one). Nikolai Kornatskii, writing in Izvestiia, entitled his review “Titanic on Ladoga” and notes how Kozlov’s film echoed James Cameron’s before concluding that Saving Leningrad is a “film-monument, which reminds us of horrible and important events without actually bringing us closer to them.”52 Medinskii did not comment publicly on Kozlov’s adventure, but the film did feature in one of the Minister’s plans. On March 15, Medinskii noted that Russian cinema needed to be a “strong force” in the world by promoting “our values, our ideas about good and evil.” “This is not soft power,” he went on, “this is hard power.”53 Two weeks later, Saving Leningrad was licensed for screening in a number of countries, including the United States.54

The war film in Putin’s Russia  311 Beanpole aimed at a different domestic audience but enjoyed success on the worldwide art-house circuit. Russian critics were more divided over the film than their foreign counterparts, with a majority praising it for its fresh approach, its artistry, but also how it served as an antidote to the patriotic war films that have proliferated in Putin’s Russia. Others thought the movie too distant, too slow, too artsy, and thus too strained.55 Medinskii also did not comment on it publicly, but several news outlets reported that he had “promised to watch it” after the Russian Oscar Committee selected it.56 In this sense too the film is instructive, for it illustrates how Russian cinematic soft power operates. Like Andrei Zvyagintsev’s movies Leviathan and Loveless, which both received Oscar nods, Beanpole allows the Ministry of Culture to enjoy a win–win–win scenario. If the film were to win the Oscar, it is proof of Russia’s thriving cultural prowess and that Russian culture is not simply state propaganda. If it loses, it is proof that the West still does not “get” Russian cultural prowess and its nuances. Domestically, however, films such as Leviathan or Beanpole can also be used as proof that state funding is not just for obviously patriotic films. At the same time, Medinskii and his ministry have often “complained” about how Western film festivals and critics only like movies that make Russia look bad even though state cinema commissions select the films for Oscar consideration. The Minister can have his cake and eat it too.57 Critics also divided over The Holiday. Anton Dolin liked it as a sitcom-like set piece and because it managed to skewer everyone: conservatives because it suggested even in wartime Leningrad some people prospered, liberals because the prosperous party hosts were members of the intelligentsia.58 Others, including Natalia Grigor’eva of Nezavisimaia gazeta and Ivan Chuviliaev of Fontanka, thought the scandal overshadowed an otherwise mediocre film that did not skewer enough sacred cows.59 Medinskii largely got off without much scandal since Krasovskii elected not to seek a distribution license (the Minister did manage to say he would have reviewed the film like all films, that he would scrutinize it under the law to ensure it was not slanderous, but did say he was “not a reader of nonsense” in general).60 Meanwhile, though, Krasovskii’s strategy did pay off: 1 million people watched the film within the first few days, and it now has nearly 3 million views on YouTube.61 Collectively, the three films set in the Siege point to a conclusion about the uses of the war in recent Russian cinema. A mediocre action film with state funding but a patriotic message at the end led to a mediocre response at the box office. An art-house film with rave reviews also had state support, including a selection from the Oscar Committee, but explicitly challenged the heavy patriotism of other war films. The one film that did not receive state funding also challenged the patriotic trend and generated a lot of domestic reviews and domestic YouTube views. These narratives and the reactions to them demonstrate that the Siege still mixes previous memories and myths and still produces contestation. They also illustrate how Russian cinematic narratives function as a culture of remembrance: the state approves or disapproves of films based on their patriotic content through funding, even approved films can offer nuanced messages about the past, critics critique

312  Stephen M. Norris the messages, and audiences decide whether to see them and what to score them on web sites devoted to movies.

Conclusion: patriotic saturation? In the 2010s, 7 of the 10 films the Russian Oscar Committee submitted to the American Academy for the Best Foreign Film were set in or immediately after World War II. Three have figured in this chapter: Konchalovsky’s Paradise (2016), Khabenskii’s Sobibor (2018), and Balagov’s Beanpole (2019). Aleksei Uchitel’’s The Edge (2010) explores a postwar Gulag camp populated by former Red Army soldiers, German enemies, and criminals, while Nikita Mikhalkov’s Burnt By the Sun 2: Citadel (2011) begins in a Gulag camp just as war comes. Karen Shakhnazarov’s White Tiger (2012) concerns a T-34 commander obsessed with catching the titular mystical German tank, while Fedor Bondarchuk’s Stalingrad (2013) revives mythical stories about that battle. These nominated films, when placed alongside those analyzed in this chapter and even those that were not (other war films appeared in the Medinskii era, other patriotic blockbusters stressed similar themes to those in the war films, and a host of television serials also focused on the patriotic war) signal a patriotic saturation point. War films, war serials, reviews of war films, airings of old and new war films: Russian screens are awash in the Great Patriotic War. In his monumental project dedicated to French sites of memory, Pierre Nora defined memory in opposition to history (perhaps too neatly, but instructively). Memory, he writes, is “all-powerful, sweeping, un-self-conscious, and inherently present-minded: a memory without a past that eternally recycles a heritage, relegating ancestral yesterdays to the undifferentiated time of heroes, inceptions, and myth.”62 Memory belongs to a sacred vision of the past; History to a critical understanding of it. One outcome of the Putin 2.0 cultural plan is that war films are ever-present, eternally recycling themes of patriotic behavior.

Notes 1 Lipman, “How Putin Silences Dissent,” 42. 2 Kolstǿ, “Medvedev’s Commission,” 740. 3 Here it is useful to note that Medinskii is not the sole actor responsible for policy, just the head of the ministry (albeit one that enjoyed far more press coverage than his predecessor, Mikhail Shvydkoi did). It is more accurate to see “Medinskii” in a fashion similar to “Putin”; that is, part of a system that is best described as “Putinist.” 4 The entire policy is available here: https://iz.ru/news/569016 5 See the TASS news announcement: https://tass.com/society/1154865 6 This revival is the subject of my book, Blockbuster History. 7 I have explored films the Ministry of Culture banned in two book chapters listed in the bibliography. 8 The tendency in memory studies has been to focus on the Russian state or some sort of outcome absent of its reception. This approach has yielded some intriguing studies, and certainly ones I borrow on, but here I adopt an approach more akin to Alon

The war film in Putin’s Russia  313 Confino’s study, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance. For more on Russian memory, see Etkind, Warped Mourning and Weiss-Wendt, Putin’s Russia. 9 The speech—with annotations from 13 scholars—is available in English: https:// crimea.dekoder.org/speech. 10 Quoted in Krylova, Soviet Women in Combat, 55. 11 Ibid., 56. 12 Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War. 13 See King, “Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet Sniper;” “Girl Sniper,” 17. 14 Dolin, “Bitva za Sevastopol’.” 15 Trofimenkov, “Vystrel v dushu.” 16 See the RIA Novosti news release: https://ria.ru/20150217/1048190281.html 17 Bakanov, “ ‘Bitva za Sevastopol’.’ 18 Al’perina, “Ot kniagin’ do krest’ianok.” 19 Maslova, “K shtyku priravniali rebro.” 20 Dolin, “  ‘Batal’on’.” See also my review for KinoKultura: www.kinokultura. com/2016/51r-batalion.shtml 21 Maliukova, “O patriotizme bez prilagatel’nykh.” 22 See Corney’s review for KinoKultura: www.kinokultura.com/2016/51r-zori.shtml 23 Serebrianaia, “A zori zdes’ tikhie . . .” 24 “Prem’era ‘A zori zdes’ tikhie’.” 25 Solgalova, “Medinskomu ponravilas’ novaia ekranizatsiia.” 26 See the results: www.kinopoisk.ru/special/15years/ 27 See the excellent critical review by Youngblood. 28 Weiner, “When Memory Counts,” 192. 29 Tsyrkin, “Chernyi pepel.” 30 See the statistics on: www.kinopoisk.ru/film/905031/ 31 Maslova, “Sobibor.” 32 “Ochen’ silen stereotip.” 33 See the RIA Novosti press release: https://ria.ru/20180215/1514712640.html 34 Tsyrkun, “Chernyi pepel.” 35 Leydesdorff, Sasha Pecherky. 36 Dolin, “ ‘Tanki’ Kima Druzhinina.” 37 The affair, including the above quotes, is covered well in Lebedev, “Don’t Die, Daddy” and “Russia Has Banned.” I wrote about the film in “Killing Stalin.” 38 Quoted in Cichowlas, “To be Great Again.” See my review of the film: www. kinokultura.com/2017/56r-28panfilovtsy.shtml 39 See the TASS release: https://tass.ru/kultura/5148236 40 Dolin, “ ‘Tanki’ Kima Druzhinina.” 41 Agafonov, “T-34.” 42 Al’perina, “Balet na tanke.” 43 Dolin, “Vykhodit ‘T-34’.” 44 Lokhanin, “Vladimir Medinskii prizval.” Medinskii tweeted his son’s response to the film as cooler than Batman and Superman. 45 Lokhanin, “Vladimir Medinskii vozmutilsia.” 46 Kirschenbaum, Legacy of the Siege, 2. 47 Barraclough, “Filmmaker Kantemir Balagov.” 48 Bittencourt, “Interview.” 49 Dolin makes this point in his review, “ ‘Dylda’ ” (but does not reference Saving Leningrad). 50 Quoted in Mesropova, “Review.” 51 Radiuk, “Rezhisser.” 52 Kornatskii, “Titanik na Ladoge.” 53 “Medinskii prizval.”

314  Stephen M. Norris 54 “Rossiiskii fil’m.” 55 See Dolin, “Dylda” and Kirienkov, “Fil’m-kontuziia” for the former; Zel’vinskii, “Dylda” for the latter. 56 See the TASS announcement: https://tass.ru/kultura/6926815 57 See Strukov’s perceptive analysis of the committee’s selection of Leviathan, “Russian ‘manipulative smart power’.” 58 Dolin, “Na YouTube.” 59 Chuviliaev, “Blokadnyi ‘Prazdnik’ ” and Grigor’eva, “Prazdnik.” 60 Quoted in the TASS news announcement: https://tass.ru/kultura/5709602 61 The film is still available: www.youtube.com/alkrasss?reload=9&fbclid=IwAR25HjQ GfUZW5jate0uuVpxu1Ik4enGN2I_wmq72uyVJ1etMsdlrcwI3KJU 62 Nora, Realms of Memory, 3.

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316  Stephen M. Norris “Medinskii prizval prodvigat’ za rubezhom rossiiskoe kino.” Izvestiia, March 15, 2019. https:// iz.ru/856862/2019-03-15/medinskii-prizval-prodvigat-za-rubezhom-rossiiskoe-kino. Mesropova, Olga. “Review of Holiday.” KinoKultura 66 (2019). www.kinokultura. com/2019/66r-prazdnik_OM.shtml. Nora, Pierre. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer, vol. I. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Norris, Stephen M. Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, Patriotism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. ———. “Killing Stalin: An Interpretation in Three Acts.” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 19, no. 4 (Fall 2018): 827–47. ———. “War, Cinema, and the Politics of Memory in Putin 2.0 Culture.” In The Future of the Soviet Past: The Politics of History in Putin’s Russia, edited by Anton Weiss-Wendt and Nanci Adler. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021. ———. “On Russian Cinema Going West (and East): Fedor Bondarchuk’s Stalingrad (2013) and Blockbuster History.” In Transnational Russian Studies, edited by Andy Byford, Connor Doak, and Stephen Hutchings, 197–212. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019. “Ochen’ silen stereotip: evrei kak smirennaia natsiia ne sposobnaia bunt.” Meduza, April 28, 2018. https://meduza.io/feature/2018/04/28/ochen-silen-stereotip-evrei-kaksmirennaya-natsiya-ne-sposobnaya-na-bunt. “Prem’era ‘A zori zdes’ tikhie’ v Kremle.” Gazeta, April 25, 2015. www.gazeta.ru/culture/photo/premera_a_zori_zdes_tihie . . . _.shtml. Radiuk, Ekaterina. “Rezhisser kartiny ‘Spasti Leningrad’ Aleksei Kozlov.” Kinoafisha, August 17, 2018. www.kinoafisha.info/news/rezhisser-kartiny-spasti-leningrad-alekseykozlov-nash-film-smozhet-probudit-interes-zritelya-k-istorii-barzhi-752/. “Rossiiskii fil’m ‘Spasti Leningrada’pokazhut za rubezhom.” Izvestiia, March 29, 2019. https:// iz.ru/862208/2019-03-29/rossiiskii-film-spasti-leningrad-pokazhut-za-rubezhom. “Russia Has Banned the Film ‘The Death of Stalin’ but Isn’t That Censorship?” Meduza, January 25, 2018. https://meduza.io/en/cards/russia-has-banned-the-filmthe-death-of-stalin-but-isn-t-this-censorship. Serebrianaia, Daria. “A zori zdes’ tikhie . . .” Time Out Moscow, 2015. www.timeout.ru/ msk/artwork/60025/review. Solgalova, Ol’ga. “Medinskomu ponravilas’ novaia ekranizatsiia ‘A zori zdes’ tikhie’.” Metro News, February 12, 2015. www.metronews.ru/novosti/russia/reviews/medinskomuponravilas-novaya-ekranizaciya-a-zori-zdes-tihie-1160929/. Strukov, Vlad. “Russian ‘Manipulative Smart Power’: Zviagintsev’s Oscar Nomination, (Non-)Government Agency, and Contradictions of the Globalized World.” New Cinemas 14, no. 1 (2018): 31–49. Trofimenkov, Mikhail. “Vystrel v dushu.” Kommersant, April 6, 2015. www.kommersant. ru/doc/2701964. Tsyrkin, Nina. “Chernyi pepel.” Iskusstvo kino, May 9, 2018. http://old.kinoart.ru/blogs/ chernyj-pepel-sobibor-rezhisser-konstantin-khabenskij. Weiner, Amir. “When Memory Counts: War, Genocide, and Postwar Soviet Jewry.” In Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the Twentieth Century, edited by Omer Bartov, Atina Grossmann, and Mary Nolan, 191–216. New York: The New Press, 2002. Weiss-Wendt, Anton. Putin’s Russia and the Falsification of History: Reasserting Control Over the Past. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Weiss-Wendt, Anton, and Nanci Adler, eds. The Future of the Soviet Past. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2021.

The war film in Putin’s Russia  317 Youngblood, Denise. “Review of Sobibor.” KinoKultura 62 (2018). www.kinokultura. com/2018/62r-sobibor.shtml. Zel’vinskii, Stanislav. “Dylda Kantemira Balagova: zhenskaia drama v poslevoennom Leningrade.” Afisha, May 16, 2019. https://daily.afisha.ru/cinema/11934-dylda-kantemirabalagova-zhenskaya-drama-v-poslevoennom-lenigrade/.

14 Jews, gender, and just wars Remembering and rewriting the Great Patriotic War in 2015 war films Adrienne M. Harris On May 1, 2015, Leonid Pliaskin’s remake The Young Guard debuted on Pervyi kanal (First channel).1 The miniseries opens with a close up of two uniformed partisans lying prone on the ground, arguing about whether or not a hut might be a safe refuge for their unit of 30—viewers quickly learn that the one speaking standard Russian is Tret’iakevich, a name likely unfamiliar to them. As the combatants rest in this Donetsk okrug (region) outpost, Nazis ambush and a dying comrade dispatches Tret’iakevich, the only survivor, to Krasnodon. Shortly before the nine-minute mark, the Nazi officer who witnesses Tret’iakevich escaping makes the decision to not chase him, scoffing “what can one Russian boy do against Germany?” The next 12 episodes show the viewer what this new addition to The Young Guard pantheon was capable of doing. The 70-year anniversary of the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany proved to be fertile ground for patriotic cinematography. Between April 2 and May  9, 2015, three feature films and one 12-part miniseries, all supported by the Ministry of Culture, debuted on Russian screens: Battle for Sevastopol, The Dawns are Quiet Here, Road to Berlin,2 and The Young Guard. While featuring a breadth of characters in terms of nationality and origins, gender, and military position, all of these films revise familiar narratives.3 Careful viewings of these productions and comparisons of the films to their predecessors reflect the war in Eastern Ukraine that broke out in April 2014, and a general crisis as Russians reevaluated the meanings of “we” versus “they,” “self” and “other.” Though the projects predate the February–March 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent conflict in the Donbass, the films were still in production when the war broke out and the preceding years of increasing tensions between Russia and Ukraine undoubtably impacted the screenplays and production and directorial decisions, down to Mokritskii’s choice to release a Ukrainian-language version of Battle for Sevastopol as Nezlamna (Indestructible).4 The revisions give evidence that this tension and eventual conflict have complicated well-known narratives and imbued them with renewed relevance. The directors all share unifying messages, yet whom they aim to unify and mobilize varies from film to film. Since the fall of the USSR, Russians have continued to debate their post-Soviet identity as a nation,5 as an “imagined community,” to use Benedict Anderson’s term.6 Homi Bhabha defines a nation as “a system of cultural signification”7

Jews, gender, and just wars  319 in which national identity is located in a nation’s cultural signs: its narratives, images, monuments, and heroes. In the decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians have reevaluated, rejected, and embraced the cultural signs and revised the history and myths inherited from the Soviet past.8 In his discussion of the contested past in Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian film, Sander Brouwer underscores the importance of narratives, specifically cinematic, for the formation of identity: “As identity by necessity takes the form of a narrative, such identity narratives produced and advanced in the public sphere are especially relevant to study, and this goes a fortiori for cinematic narratives: films and documentaries being the most widespread and most directly appealing media in the modern context for the dissemination of such constructions.”9 Birgit Beumers has detailed how the dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in cinematic narratives addressing questions of national identity as 1990s filmmakers re-established links with the tsarist past and rewrote Soviet history.10 When Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency in 2000 and began investing billions of rubles in cultural products to bolster patriotism, as discussed by Stephen M. Norris in his book on Russian blockbusters, big-budget films and miniseries depicting key battles on Soviet land began to join classic Soviet films about the war.11 These films, all victories, even if only morals and spirits triumph when the last soldier perishes, revise Soviet narratives by addressing themes formerly forbidden and revitalize images of Soviet heroes and victims.12 While some of the plots are entirely new, many are reworkings of biographies or myths and elaborations of narratives known to citizens raised in the Soviet Union. The post-Soviet period has seen numerous film adaptations, readaptations, or remakes of Soviet films and literary works, some previously included in the centralized Soviet curriculum. Beginning with Lebedev’s The Star (2002), these popular films and miniseries have helped recentralize the position of the Great Patriotic War within Russian national identity and have served as memory places where one may negotiate collective memory of the war. Russian World War II films that debut in April/early May hold specific cultural significance: every spring, Russians who choose to eschew the great outdoors in favor of the small screen find war films and miniseries that feature prominently as part of the patriotic programing that encompasses the ritualized televised aspect of the May holidays. Reviews and conversations in forums on kinopoisk.ru and kino-teatr.ru give evidence that many viewers approach post-Soviet remakes through their memories of older Soviet versions of various genres: films, fiction, official histories and biographies, and rumors and myths. Likewise, published interviews show directors to be highly aware of previous versions of their remakes. Furthermore, I have come to realize that Russians who care enough to write reviews on film sites are approaching these well-known narratives as metaphorical lieux de mémoire, or “memory places” to use Pierre Nora’s term: “sites in which a residual sense of community remains,”13 places where people negotiate memory. In other words, I am analyzing these films and their cultural precedents as multi-layered records that serve as sites where post-Soviet Russians negotiate memory.

320  Adrienne M. Harris While their audiences and source material differ, a comparison of the 2015 films to their predecessors reveals a notable pattern meriting analysis: Jewish characters, largely ignored in Soviet depictions of World War II, are featured considerably more prominently than in previous versions of three of these four films, particularly in the two set in presently contested regions of Ukraine. This pattern prompts three questions: (1) What is the nature of these portrayals and how might one explain decisions to embellish or invent Jewish characters? (2) How do these films promote a traditional set of gender roles that does not threaten the masculinity of Slavic men regardless of how others—women and Jewish men—perform in wartime situations? (3) How do these films foster national unity in a time of conflict? I argue that these three questions about ethnic identity, gender identity, and national identity intersect in Russia during and immediately after the eruption of conflict in Ukraine. Informed by secondary works within gender, Jewish, and cinema studies, this article asks how directors’ and screenwriters’ choices redefine notions of community and otherness, of “ours” (nashi) and “other” (chuzhie). Most of the discussion focuses on three productions, Sergei Mokritskii’s feature film Battle for Sevastopol, Leonid Pliaskin’s 12-part miniseries The Young Guard, and Renat Davlet’iarov’s feature film The Dawns are Quiet Here. After a brief summary of the three films and their predecessors, this chapter endeavors to answer the three questions detailed in the previous paragraph by addressing Jewish stereotypes, portrayals of gender and ethnic performances, and the role Jewish losses play within these films. In short, I analyze the representation of both actions performed by active agents and passive depictions. The chapter then considers a perceived need for veracity in contemporary films about the Great Patriotic War and the way these films tap into nostalgia as a means to unify post-Soviet Russians.

Battle for Sevastopol Battle for Sevastopol, a long-awaited Russian-Ukrainian production, debuted on April 2, 2015, in Russian and Ukrainian theaters—with the titles Bitva za Sevastopol’ (Battle for Sevastopol) in Russian and Nezlamna (Indestructible) in Ukrainian. A lengthier version appeared in serialized form on TV channel Pervyi kanal on Victory Day. Sergei Mokritskii, the director and screenwriter, based the film on the wartime achievements of Hero of the Soviet Union Liudmila Pavlichenko, the famous sniper who killed 309 Nazi soldiers before embarking on a diplomatic trip to the United States with the purpose of convincing the US to enter the European theater. While Mokritskii claims that the film was based largely on archival documents, it includes numerous invented characters and plots. Pavlichenko’s last name indicates Ukrainian heritage, but the historical figure, née Belova, was Russian—the name belonged to an ex-husband erased from the film. Pavlichenko’s child, born before the war when Pavlichenko was 15, also disappeared from the plot.14 Unencumbered by a child, the character carries on romantic relationships with two sniper commanders and enjoys the unrequited love of a Jewish doctor, Boris Chopak.15 Below the layer of Pavlichenko’s biography lies

Jews, gender, and just wars  321 another narrative, the story of Sevastopol itself, depicted in Russia’s first fulllength feature film, The Defense of Sevastopol (1911).16 Mokritskii was born in Zhitormir oblast, Ukraine, but holds Russian citizenship. Viewers on kino-teatr.ru have given his film 7.1 out of 10 stars.17 It received nominations and won several awards. Several months before the debut, Mokritskii expressed the hope that “this film will unite people and at least for two hours, for the length of this film, people can come together in our shared history.”18 While Pavlichenko’s image and story appeared widely during the war, her compatriots would remember the heroic exploits of female martyr-heroes, and the beautiful nurses and radio operators of male-authored fiction, far more frequently and ardently than they would remember Pavlichenko’s tally of war kills.19 Mokritskii’s film re-centers Pavlichenko and other armed female combatants into the collective memory of the war.

The Dawns are Quiet Here Boris Vasil’ev’s 1969 novella The Dawns are Quiet Here and Stanislav Rostotskii’s 1972 film tell the story of five female soldiers who die on a reconnaissance mission, reconnoitering Nazi numbers and positions, while led by their commander Fedot Vaskov. Both novella and film were released during the height of the Soviet cult of World War II, using Nina Tumarkin’s term.20 Regardless of whether the women’s deaths served a greater purpose in the war, Russian viewers loved Rostotskii’s 1972 film and, according to viewers’ ratings on kino-poisk.ru, kinoteatr.ru, and imdb.com, it remains popular. What, then, merited a new version in 2015? In an August 2014 interview with Gazeta.ru, director Renat Davlet’iarov insisted that his version of Boris Vasil’ev’s eponymous novella would not be a “remake” of Rostotskii’s 1972 film but a new adaptation of the novella, as a remake would indicate some dissatisfaction with the beloved film. Nevertheless, Davlet’iarov claims that “Vasil’ev’s novella is harsher (zhestche) than Rostotskii’s film,” pointing to a return to a more violent or tragic original. Davlet’iarov retains Rostotskii’s structure of flashbacks interspersed with military narrative in his version.21 These flashbacks introduce the women’s prewar histories and combat motivations to viewers. The five women represent a variety of geographic and class backgrounds. Relevant to this chapter, Sonia Gurich, a Jew originally from Minsk, had been studying at Moscow State University prior to the outbreak of war. By adding scenes that develop the plot before and during the narrative, Davlet’iarov both broadens and amplifies the personal tragedy of Sonia’s story into a national tragedy of Soviet Jewish victimhood.

The Young Guard The martyrdom narrative of the Young Guard as popularized by Aleksandr Fadeev’s Stalin-era novel proved to be a powerful and dynamic myth for postwar youth as Juliane Fürst has detailed in Stalin’s Last Generation.22 The recent conflict in Ukraine would seem to provide an opportunity to give new relevance to the

322  Adrienne M. Harris Young Guard narrative as it features a group of young people fighting fashisty— Nazis and collaborators in occupied Krasnodon, Ukraine, located in the Donbass. During Nazi occupation of Krasnodon, roughly 100 young people, mostly teenagers, operated within an underground group that identified as the Young Guard (Molodaia gvardiia); January–February 1943, Nazis tortured and executed 80 of them. Five achieved posthumous renown as Heroes of the Soviet Union. Propagandists and authors canonized Oleg Koshevoi as commissar and organizer, although documents show that Russian-born Belarusian Viktor Tret’iakevich might have served as commissar; he certainly played a role in the organization. Accused of betraying the group, he disappeared from narratives early on. In 2003, Ioffe and Petrova, the authors of the document collection Molodaia Gvardiia: Artistic Image and Historical Reality, noted that many questions remain and that historians still lack a unified opinion regarding the roles of Koshevoi and Tret’iakevich in the leadership of the organization. In 1946, Fadeev published a fictionalized account of the group in his Stalin-prize winning novel The Young Guard and 1948 saw Sergei Gerasimov’s feature film The Young Guard. A revised version of the novel that developed the role of Party leadership appeared in 1952. Fürst finds that many young readers and viewers expressed admiration—and even infatuation—with the characters, although she also notes that feuds among families in Krasnodon tarnished the image of the myth, at least locally.23 In 1965, a large museum in Krasnodon, based on Fadeev’s fictional narrative, opened. Tret’iakevich was rehabilitated in 1959, yet remains excluded from museum exhibits. During the 1990s, interest in the Young Guard evaporated. The Putin-era revitalization of interest in World War II led to republications of Fadeev’s novel: a 2008 young adult novel set in southern Russian, Komanda: A Super-remake of the Cult Novel “Molodaia Gvardiia” and The Last Confession (2006), a four-part miniseries with heavy religious overtones and low production values—hardly the type of programing capable of inspiring today’s Russian youth, accustomed to big budget blockbusters both domestic and imported. The untold story of the rehabilitated Viktor Tret’iakevich provided a legitimate reason for Pliaskin to revisit and revise the Young Guard narrative for a new generation, and Pliaskin introduced new themes to reshuffle the hierarchy of heroism within the famous narrative, to develop more realistic heroes who struggle with the realities of war and occupation, and to present a new masculine ideal for post-Soviet viewers. Although Pliaskin claims that he based his 12-part miniseries on archival documents and witnesses’ testimony, the new version of The Young Guard includes numerous invented characters and plots, namely Tret’iakevich’s love interest, a young Jewish woman named Sonia.

Jewish representation and World War II in the Soviet cinematic tradition In most respects, all three of these films depict a deeply held Russian cultural understanding of war and present a well-known narrative: the Soviet people defend their nation heroically against an incontrovertible and formidable enemy,

Jews, gender, and just wars  323 sacrificing themselves and suffering great losses.24 For example, in Battle for Sevastopol, all of the male characters—all three men who fall in love with Pavlichenko and the pilot-fiancée of Pavlichenko’s friend Masha—die. In light of the recent annexation of Crimea and the civil war in Ukraine, it presents a unified picture of the multinational Soviet people united against a common enemy: fascism.25 Yet these films retell Soviet narratives, and the prominence of sympathetic Jewish characters sets them apart from previous versions. Olga Gershenson notes that “throughout most of the Soviet era the silencing mechanism remained the same: the Holocaust was not denied, it just was not treated as a unique separate phenomenon.”26 Gershenson finds that Soviets “universalized” Jewish losses, subsuming them as a part of the larger Soviet tragedy or located atrocities specific to Jews beyond Soviet borders.27 Approximately 300,000 to 500,000 Jews served as combatants;28 the estimate of Jewish deaths in Nazi-occupied regions of the USSR is 2.6–2.7 million.29 Harriet Murav explains that “official Soviet history is part of the reason for the absence of the Holocaust in the former Soviet Union. Zvi Gitelman and Amir Weiner, among other historians, agree about the failure of Soviet historiography and commemoration to acknowledge the unique fate of Jews during World War II. . . . Weiner’s Making Sense of War traces the evolution of the Soviet version of the ‘Great Fatherland War’ that made Jews disappear—both as soldiers and as Holocaust victims.”30 Gershenson argues that while Soviet officials ignored Jewish victims—both in narratives and in policy—Soviets working in the arts preserved the memory of the Holocaust on Soviet soil. Throughout her book, she discusses the subtle, sanitized approaches directors employed when portraying specifically Jewish suffering, alluding to mass death through shots of columns of Jews moving toward execution sites or camps as in the well-known flash-forward in the 1967 film Commissar and by euphemistically referring to them as “peaceful Soviet citizens.”31 The post-Soviet period, however, saw far greater attention to Jewish themes in comparison to the Soviet period, and some directors showed explicit execution scenes as in Nikolai Zaseev-Rudenko’s 2002 TV film Babi Yar.32 Gershenson writes about these post-Soviet productions: All these films made in the post-Soviet times are in some way in marked contrast to the ones made (or attempted) in the Soviet era. With censorship restrictions completely removed, these films no longer universalize: they speak openly about the Jewish identity of their characters and about the persecutions Jews faced. Similarly, instead of the prevailing discourse of the “internationalist friendship of Soviet people,” they reflect instances of local anti-Semitism and collaboration with the Nazis. It is more common now to encounter minor Jewish characters or Holocaust references in war dramas; the discourse of the Holocaust has been normalized.33 Clearly, the Jewish characters in these films emerge from the post-Soviet acknowledgment of the Holocaust, yet a careful unpacking of scenes reveals that these “rhetorical figures”—both as living figures with agency and deceased, murdered

324  Adrienne M. Harris by Germans and Ukrainians—function as malleable or “wandering signifiers,” to use Erin Graff Zivin’s term. As in her discussion of Jewishness in Latin American literature, these “wandering signifiers” serve as tools to discuss a secondary agenda.34 Mokritskii’s incorporation of Jewish characters did not go unnoticed. In December 2015, the Federation of Jewish communities of Russia awarded director Sergei Mokritskii the “Fiddler on the Roof” award35 for Battle for Sevastopol. On the organization’s website, the “Fiddler on the Roof” prize “recognizes people who have, through their activity, made a significant contribution to the development of the country’s culture and public life of the country, regardless of their nationality or religious confession.”36 The organization’s website states that the Federation of Russian Jewish societies primarily aims to “create the conditions for full religious and national-cultural life for Russian citizens who practice Judaism and identify as ethnic Jews.”37 The 2015 films relocate Jewish characters into more central positions within narratives and transgress the overarching Soviet memory of the war that ignored specifically Jewish suffering, the Holocaust, and Soviet collaboration with Nazis. Nevertheless, the depictions of characters perpetuate long-held stereotypes about Jewish men and continue to differentiate Jews as “other.”

New prominence of an old stereotype: Jewish intellectuals make ineffectual fighters This cohort of films conveys the message that, by and large, Jewish characters find themselves incapable of performing in combat—they are too intellectual to defend themselves in war—and the men are not sufficiently masculine. Sander Gilman’s discussion of masculinity and the body sheds light on the dual approaches to gendered depictions and shows that the stereotypes reflected in the 2015 films are neither new nor specific to Russia. Gilman argues that while “all aspects of the Jew, whether real or invented, are the locus of difference,”38 the representation of “the male Jew, the body with the circumcised penis—an image crucial to the very understanding of the Western image of the Jew at least since the advent of Christianity . . . lies at the very heart of Western Jew-hatred.”39 His findings that in Austria, the notion of the Jew as soldier, which arose in the 19th century as Jews entered armed service, accompanied increased criticism that Jewish men were unfit for combat.40 Turning to this century, one saw efforts of Jewish physicians to counter arguments about Jewish weakness. Furthermore, Freudian readings of circumcision set Jewish men apart: “the ‘damaged’ phallus becomes the Jew.”41 The perpetuation of this stereotype raises the question of why a Jewish organization would honor a film that rehashed a tired stereotype. All three films include intellectual, bookish Jewish stereotypes, yet The Young Guard and Battle for Sevastopol are most overt. Both films show the viewer how a tendency to prefer books to action makes Jewish men ineffectual fighters and subverts notions of masculinity defined by a man’s ability to defend women and his motherland. Immediately after identifying battle-ready and duty-bound Tret’iakevich as “a Russian boy,” The Young Guard provides an example of a

Jews, gender, and just wars  325 Jewish intellectual incapable of defending home and country. As Tret’iakevich makes his way to Krasnodon, he witnesses a demonstration of anti-Semitic violence that tests his skills as a combatant as he comes upon Ukrainian collaborators attempting to hang a middle-aged, bespectacled man, history teacher Mikhail Lipkin—the father of Viktor’s soon-to-be-beloved, Sonia. Within the context of the impeding German occupation, the young men intend to extract revenge for Lipkin’s supposed involvement in one of the young men’s expulsion from the Komsomol. The collaborators proclaim the slur “yid!” (zhid) as they hang their victim and assault other members of the family. While the elderly grandmother argues with the collaborators and a small boy kicks at his captors, Lipkin defends neither himself nor his family; he can only plead with his tormentors “you were a good boy!” as they choke him with the torn-out pages of a book. Sonia, unseen, watching the scene unfold tells Viktor “I’ll kill them myself!” but he holds her back protectively until he intervenes, killing the anti-Semitic thugs and saving the family, which Mikhail cannot do himself. The subtext is clear: having spoken a mix of Ukrainian and Ukrainian-accented Russian, the collaborators are clearly Ukrainian and the aggrieved victim of Komsomol exclusion bears a Ukrainian surname: Tifchuk. Only a righteous, Russian-speaking Slavic man dedicated to duty can save the family—and others left helpless after fascists overrun Ukraine— from these Ukrainian fascists. Tret’iakevich’s performance as a combatant and his battle-readiness rather than his intelligence or his musical talent, still unknown to Sonia, prompt the young woman to fall in love with him. The Young Guard includes no other Jewish men. One might respond to this omission by noting that there are no Jewish men hanging around Krasnodon because they are all serving on the front, but Pliaskin could have written a Jewish teenage boy into the ranks of the underground group had he wanted to show active Jewish resistance to the enemy beyond the ineffectual childish kicks of Sonia’s brother. In Battle for Sevastopol, Boris Chopak clearly exemplifies the ineffectual intellectual incapable or unwilling to defend his family and homeland. The director shames Chopak and questions his masculinity from his first scenes in the film. When the audience first meets Chopak on an Odessa beach from Pavlichenko’s viewpoint—through her binoculars—he stands out as other: fully dressed in a khaki suit and briskly, awkwardly walking with an attaché case, surrounded by healthy bodies clad in swimsuits playing sports. Questions of masculinity promptly arise in the next scene when the director juxtaposes Chopak with uniformed pilots eager to defend their country; Chopak professes a belief in pacifism and exposes a naive certainty in Soviet propaganda as he reads aloud from Komsomolets Ukrainy as his source for information that there will be no war. The day the war breaks out, Chopak and Pavlichenko quarrel: having completed a shooting course, she is eager to enlist; Chopak insists that “war is not a place for women” and she counters by shaming him with “war is not a place for cowards.” Immediately afterward, Pavlichenko’s father encourages her to enlist after she expresses shame for remaining home. Again, Mokritskii juxtaposes Chopak’s reluctance to fight with other characters’ eagerness to defend the motherland, only in this case, the defender is a woman. Not only does Chopak not measure up to a

326  Adrienne M. Harris masculine standard set by other men; he cannot even achieve a Slavic woman’s soldierly potential. Chopak never hides his romantic intentions from Pavlichenko, yet after the start of the war, she spurns him by choosing subsequent romantic relationships with not one but two combatants, both her commanding officers, over Chopak. In both cases, the viewer watches Chopak painfully process the relationships as they take place in front of him. In the first situation, while serving as her attending physician, after gazing at a ring intended for Pavlichenko, Chopak sees Captain Makarov and Pavlichenko lying together in a hospital bed as Pavlichenko recovers from battle wounds. Prior to returning to the front, the captain asks Chopak to care for her. In a romance following Makarov’s death, at a New Year’s 1942 party, Pavlichenko introduces Chopak to Leonid Kitsenko,42 the commander who replaces the deceased Makarov. In the inversion of a common rumor that posits that female soldiers enlisted in the war effort just to follow boyfriends, lovers, or husbands, as the two men declare their interest in Pavlichenko, Chopak states that “if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here” and asks if Kitsenko loves her. Kitsenko responds through aggression: by punching another reveler presumably showing interest in Pavlichenko and aggressively kissing her—again within sight of Boris. In the next scene, Kitsenko and Pavlichenko consummate their relationship in a cave. By juxtaposing these scenes, the film repeatedly shames the man who chooses not to kill, yet chooses to heal, a non-violent military duty; in this film, that man self-identifies as Jewish. Pavlichenko never claims Russian or Ukrainian identity—the historical Pavlichenko, née Belova, was an ethnic Russian, but this fictionalized Pavlichenko bears her father’s surname, so she would presumably be Ukrainian. None of the other characters identify themselves ethically, although Mokritskii chooses Makarov and Kitsenko as identifiably Russian and Ukrainian surnames. Yet Mokritskii leaves no doubt about Chopak’s identity: as he walks Pavlichenko to the submarine that will evaculate her, he assures her: “I’m a Jew from Odessa. I’ll get away. I’ll go on the next steamer,” pointing to a rich mythology that paints Odessa as a city known for clever Jewish tricksters and schemers.43 Chopak demonstrates his selflessness as he gives Pavlichenko his evacuation pass so that he may save her; the viewer, however, likely knows that Chopak’s sister Sonia and parents have already perished as victims of the Odessa massacre during Romanian and German occupation of the city and that Chopak will not survive the siege of Sevastopol.44 Likely Chopak is no longer as naive as early in the film, and he knowingly chooses to sacrifice himself for Pavlichenko. In any case, Mokritskii flips their gender roles. In his discussion of wartime masculinity in 1942, Steven Jug claims that propagandists and political workers sought to connect the soldier of 1942 with the New Soviet Man and masculine labor heroes of the 1930s. This new ideal, the “Stakhanovite-at-arms,” strove to exterminate the hated enemy by engaging his fellow soldiers in socialist competition. Frontline propaganda presented such competitions as an easy task befitting the optimistic tone of the period. Official rhetoric promoted a high number of enemies

Jews, gender, and just wars  327 killed as the measure of a hero, rather than the bravery or risk-taking otherwise involved in successful battle performance. . . . The act of killing also distinguished the heroic Red Army men as the foremost contributors to the Soviet war effort, elevating them above the women who supported them in non-combat and civilian roles.45 One can apply Jug’s description of 1942 masculinity to Pavlichenko and her sniper comrades; Chopak saves her but not as a man—he repeatedly patches her up when wounded—the traditional role for the nurturing nurse. As R. W. Connell argues, masculinity and femininity act in relation to each other imbued with meaning as relational concepts, as a “cultural opposition” that holds regardless of the historical period of societal demarcation. “Masculinity as an object of knowledge is always masculinity-in-relation.”46 The two sniper lovers, Makarov and Kitsenko, perform a soldierly masculinity much more in line with traditional expectations for men in battle, 1942 norms, and present-day ideas than Chopak’s chaste, lifegiving love for Pavlichenko. Finally, like the other two 2015 cinematic productions, The Dawns are Quiet Here also undermines Jewish men’s suitability for battle, although subtly. In this version, Davlet’iarov develops Sonia’s plot—showing both her family in Minsk and her suitor’s death on the battlefield. No version—neither Vasiliev’s, Rostotskii’s nor Davlet’iarov’s—specifies the ethnic identity of Sonia’s beloved. However, in his 1972 version, Rostotskii casts a well-known Jewish actor Igor’ Kostolevskii to play Misha, Sonia’s beloved, so many Soviet viewers likely would have equated the actor’s ethnic identity with the character’s ethnic identity. The viewer sees Misha’s deployment as he accepts a rifle yet learns nothing of his fate. In the 2015 version, Davlet’iarov shows the unnamed suitor armed and leaving for the front on a truck with other armed soldiers. In a later scene, the camera zooms out from his body on the battlefield, one body amidst other slain combatants. Davlet’iarov has chosen to give Sonia’s beloved more screen time and to depict him more clearly as a defender who sacrifices himself for his nation along with countless other men. Yet, in this version, Davlet’iarov casts a Slavic actor, Latvian-born, ethnic Russian Il’ia Ermolov, rather than a Jewish one. When presented with an opportunity to cast a Jewish man to play a combatant performing a more clearly delineated soldierly masculinity, Davlet’iarov chooses a Slav. Davlet’iarov retains Vasil’ev’s and Rostotskii’s portrayal of Sonia in his version of The Dawns are Quiet Here. She stands out among other soldiers as an avid reader who met her beloved in the halls of Moscow State University after colliding with him while carrying a stack of books. Referring to the 1972 film, Gershenson describes the character as “completely disconnected from anything physical, and looks entirely out of place in the military context.”47 Davlet’iarov maintains this intellectual separation between Sonia and her comrades. One could argue that her sentimentality triumphs over practical judgment in battle and leads to her demise. She so loves poetry, she reads it aloud, prompting her commander to ask her to read more quietly as “the dawns here are quiet.” In all versions, Vaskov includes Sonia in the group because her German proficiency makes her

328  Adrienne M. Harris a potential translator, but her bookish intelligence and proclivity for academics do not improve her battle performance and she dies before she is able to use her ­German—making her education pointless. Within the context of Russian interference in the war in Ukraine and the Russian media’s sole narrative of fascists overrunning Ukraine and killing innocent citizens thus meriting both humanitarian aid and the military aid of “volunteers” fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists, Battle for Sevastopol and The Young Guard present clear messages to Russian men: Slavic men are particularly suited for combat and must be willing to sacrifice themselves to save innocents. In Battle for Sevastopol, Pavlichenko’s words for Chopak and a speech directed at a press conference in the United States clarify that pacifism is shameful when one is dealing with fascists. Russian and Ukrainian men fight Nazis beside her while Chopak avoids combat by serving as a doctor and Americans “hide behind her back,” donating pocket change while refusing to open a second front. The overtly anti-Ukrainian The Young Guard shows viewers how a “Russian boy”— the adult Belarusian Tret’iakevich—prevents and then avenges atrocities committed by Ukrainians.48 The following section will elaborate on the function and significance of these Jewish losses, as well as the presence of Ukrainian collaborators, within the context of these films.

More attention to Jewish losses Although one should expect attention to mass executions of Jews in post-Soviet films about the Holocaust on the Eastern Front (such as Babi Yar), The Young Guard, a well-known narrative deeply rooted in nostalgia for the Soviet Union, has never been a Jewish story, or Krasnodon a Jewish space. Pliaskin invented the mass executions portrayed in the 2015 The Young Guard. Unlike many Ukrainian cities, Krasnodon did not boast a large Jewish population prior to the Second World War—just 107 residents or 0.48 percent of the population. At 19,120, Jews comprised 1.58 percent of the Voroshilovgrad (now Luhansk) oblast, making it the least Jewish oblast in Ukraine in which 11.71 percent of the population was Jewish. In 1939, 4.69 percent of the USSR was Jewish.49 The addition of local anti-Semitism and collaboration and Jewish characters to this well-known and frequently revised narrative must be intentional, especially when one considers the fact that a Jewish woman occupies the role of the feminine ideal, and merits analysis. The 2015 The Young Guard includes numerous scenes that feature specifically Jewish persecution: anti-Semitic collaborators tormenting Jews; the common Soviet trope of rounded-up Jews walking through town; Jews collected in an outdoor camp; a mass execution in which Jews are shot and fall into a pit; and heaps of Jewish corpses. Gershenson argues that “Jewish corpses on screen do not invite a redemptive narrative”50 in Russian films that depict the Holocaust. However, in the 2015 The Young Guard, not only do Jewish victims redeem and elevate certain characters, but they also serve as catalysts for action. These victims bring the group together during the first two episodes, which (for a miniseries) are vital

Jews, gender, and just wars  329 as one is trying to get viewers invested in the series. In previous versions, Nazi murders of communists and wounded Red Army soldiers had served that role in the plot. The following discussion pinpoints the specific moments in which Jews and their bodies play central roles in the plot, primarily early in the narrative. 1

2

3

4

The protagonist demonstrates his battle-readiness, righteousness, and appeal to the opposite sex. As discussed earlier, Viktor Tret’iakevich first demonstrates his courage and battle-readiness when encountering anti-Semitism and the terrorization of a Jewish family by local collaborators; during that episode, he meets Sonia, the daughter in the family and romantic feelings develop almost immediately. From a narrative point of view, the director uses Sonia and her family’s fate to justify this trained 18-year-old man’s continued presence in occupied Krasnodon, rather than service at the front. The following scene depicts Sonia’s family’s evacuation as Tret’iakevich walks alongside their cart. Upon parting, Lipkin gratefully thanks Tret’iakevich, and both Lipkin and his wife call Tret’iakevich “synok” [son]—they have claimed his as “nash” [ours]—as part of the same family, a family united by shared opposition to enemies: Nazis and their Ukrainian collaborators. An encounter with Jewish persecution compels the protagonist to remain in Krasnodon longer, delaying departure for the front. Shortly after entering Krasnodon, Tret’iakevich encounters Nazis and collaborators shouting orders in Ukrainian-accented Russian, marching a mass of Jews through the city. This type of scene is not entirely new: rather than depicting mass death in Soviet films, directors would allude to these executions through such marches of “peaceful citizens.” When Tret’iakevich finds Sonia and her family among the Jews, he learns that Nazis intercepted them as they evacuated and that they were all being herded toward a camp. This encounter interferes with Tret’iakevich’s plans as he prioritizes Sonia’s salvation over departure for the front. The Jewish woman’s rescue creates solidarity among future molodogvardeitsy (members of the Young Guard). Tret’iakevich manages to rescue Sonia from the camp and hide her in his attic but after Nazis suddenly turn up to be billeted in his home, he must rescue her with the help of his acquaintance, Sergei Tiulenin. The two had previously feuded in large part over Tiulenin’s immaturity and rascally nature. In Young Guard narratives, Tiulenin had always been represented as а kind of crafty, impoverished hooligan and Pliaskin exaggerates this characterization, transforming him into a “gopnik,” according to one review.51 Sonia’s rescue brings the two together and reveals Tiulenin’s righteousness and bravery—the traits of a positive hero—beneath his rough exterior. The mass execution of Jews reiterates the evil nature of the enemy and motivates the molodogvardeitsy to act. After hiding Sonia in a barn, Tret’iakevich, Tiulenin, and another friend (Ivan Zemukhov) witness mass executions of the Jews previously captured, including all of Sonia’s family. The director shows exactly what the Holocaust looked like on Soviet soil: not “wasting

330  Adrienne M. Harris bullets,” Nazis, and those collaborating with them, throw live Jews to their deaths into open mines. In this scene, Ukrainian collaborators commit some of the cruelest acts and behave with particular hatred; the viewer will recognize Solikovskii, the head of the Krasnodon auxiliary police who, in the first episode, had executed partisans and then killed one of the partisan’s wives when she mourned her husband loudly—all in sight of their child. Tiulenin’s, Ivan’s, and Viktor’s expressions reflect their horror and their motivation to act.   By this moment in the second episode, viewers cannot miss the fact that in this version of The Young Guard, Ukrainian identity and its markers are unambiguously negative and tied to cruelty and fascism. While the members of the Young Guard speak in clear unaccented Russian, collaborators speak in either Ukrainian, surzhyk (a mixed language, usually some variety of Ukrainian and Russian), or Ukrainian-accented Russian. They wear vyshyvanky, the embroidered shirts that, within a Ukrainian context, have become markers of national identity and gained popularity during and after Maidan as symbols of opposition to Russia. These Ukrainian collaborators prove to be the most anti-Semitic characters in the film. Much crueler than Nazis, they ­relish torturing the molodogvardeitsy and delivering them to their deaths. The series points toward known Ukrainian collaboration during the Second World War and illustrates the need for intervention—even covert intervention—at all costs in the fight again fascism. In stark contrast to Sergei Gerasimov’s 1948 film in which all of the molodogvardeitsy dance to a Ukrainian song in a spontaneous outburst of Ukrainian narodnost’, or national feeling, Pliaskin’s 2015 version bears the 2014 imprint of the Russian media’s narrative of fascists overrunning Ukraine and killing innocent citizens, the situation demanding action. 5 The death of the Jewish woman transforms the protagonist into an avenger who seeks out evil-doers. The witnesses soon witness another gut-wrenching death. While the three future molodogvardeitsy had been witnessing the mass execution, two Nazis plundering livestock kill Sonia in her barn hiding spot. Viktor is distraught when he discovers her body. When a collaborator speaking Russian heavily accented by Ukrainian comes upon Viktor mourning Sonia and captures Viktor, Viktor manages to kill him—the second time proximity to Sonia prompts Viktor to kill. His first two kills occurred when he comes across Ukrainian collaborators, yet Sonia’s death has transformed Viktor into an avenger. He then pursues the Nazi murderers, racing after them on the back of motorcycle stolen by Tiulenin. The director makes Viktor’s motivation clear just before he kills one at point blank range: “In the name of the Soviet nation, for the murderous assault on our land and for the pillaging and death of Sonia, I sentence you to death.”   The death of Sonia prompts analysis of this invented character. Although she enjoys relatively few minutes on screen, resulting in a 23rd place in the list of actors and characters, her moments on screen are disproportionally important within the plot. She is intelligent, clever, and playful. Clad in a delicately

Jews, gender, and just wars  331

6

flowered white dress, she embodies innocence and femininity. In fact, her name, Sonia, a diminutive of Sofia—divine wisdom—gives evidence early on that Sonia serves as a feminine ideal, a role previously played by Uliana Gromova.52 In her high-pitched feminine voice, she promises to wait loyally for Viktor. The Nazis demonstrate their inability to see beauty when they call her a Jewish pig. When Viktor finds her dying in the barn, he identifies her as rodnaia—as one of his own, pointing to a shared identity as Soviets in opposition to fascists. The director juxtaposes Tret’iakevich with Oleg Koshevoi through their romantic relationships: while Koshevoi’s romance with a collaborator initially distracts him from his duty, Tret’iakevich’s unwavering love and fidelity to Sonia drive his actions. Her memory continues to strengthen Tret’iakevich’s resolve as the miniseries progresses. Around his neck, he wears a watch-pendant, given to him upon their parting in the first episode—“so that he may remember her.” When wearing a shirt with only the chain visible, this symbol of his faithfulness to her memory makes it appear as though Tret’iakevich is wearing the Orthodox cross that marks much more than just religious affiliation in a Russian context. This death prompts the molodogvardeitsy to become a cohesive group and to swear the oath that has always played a central role in the Young Guard myth. Viktor and two comrades bury Sonia by a tree and later that evening, they make a fire and spend time by the grave. In the next scene, the four young men proclaim their oaths, their hands making a cross over a burning fire. If not paying careful attention, one could easily miss the fact that these molodogvardeitsy are standing in an abandoned mine that would become the underground headquarters. The fire by Sonia’s grave and the fire in the mine knit the two scenes together and symbolizes the unifying determination to avenge the innocent and to fight the fascists in their midst. Sonia’s death sparks this burning desire to fight at all costs. Almost the entire group has formed by the end of the episode, in the aftermath of Sonia’s death, and Jewish characters disappear from the screen for several episodes. In previous versions, the murder of communists (1946) and wounded Red Army soldiers (2006) served as catalysts, unifying the members and motivating them to act.

Jewish bodies return in the eighth episode as one very important character— Oleg Koshevoi, a teacher’s privileged child in this version—needs to see them to understand the evil nature of the Nazis. His relationships have led him to underestimate Nazi cruelty and, as a result, he has a distorted view of the Nazi occupation. He has become the assistant to the fictional Golf, the German engineer billeted with Oleg and his mother, and Oleg has developed a childish romance with a girl whose family collaborates. In episode eight, members of the group force him to confront the corpses of the Jews murdered in the mass execution. These victims lead him to understand the cruelty of Nazis and instill a drive to avenge these victims. They bring him into the Young Guard fold and prompt him to reject his collaborator girlfriend and to turn on Golf. Contact with these bodies transforms this apathetic boy into a patriotic martyr.

332  Adrienne M. Harris Early in the miniseries, these bodies drive the plot and help shape the notion of us/them. Those who torment Jews—either Ukrainian or German—are “other” while Sonia is rodnaia and falls into the category of “ours,” in spite of her father’s traditional Jewish attire. The director rewrites the Young Guard myth, shuffling the hierarchy of the heroes based on their involvement with Jewish victims. The Holocaust, previously absent from all Young Guard narratives, holds a central place in this version. In 1969, when Vasil’ev referenced Jewish suffering in particular, in his novella The Dawns are Quiet Here, few authors had approached the subject explicitly, with Vasilii Grossman and Evgenii Evtushensko serving as exceptions.53 In all versions of The Dawns are Quiet Here, Sonia Gurich references her parents’ likely deaths when her commander, Vaskov, asks “Are you an orphan?” and she claims that while she does not know, she likely is. The conversation continues and she explains her background: although she was studying in Moscow when the war broke out, her parents remained in her hometown of Minsk. Vaskov clarifies her ethnicity, asking if she and her parents are “of the Jewish nation.” “Naturally (estestvenno),” she responds, as both Vaskov and viewers should know about Minsk’s large Jewish population and its role as a historic Jewish center. She then hopes that they might have escaped.54 Vaskov continues “if they had been in Moscow, they would be fine,” drawing the audience’s attention to the massive Jewish losses that occurred in Western Soviet cities. Rostotskii includes this brief conversation in his 1972 film yet does not expand it. Davlet’iarov, in contrast, includes scenes depicting Gurich’s parents and her hometown both before and during Nazi occupation. In October 1940, just before Gurich and her beloved meet at Moscow State University, the viewer sees Sonia’s mother as Sonia leaves for university. The camera zooms in on their simple wooden home and on a plaque displaying an obviously Jewish name—her father, as he is a medical doctor. Sonia’s mother’s tears prompted by her daughter’s departure endears the viewer to this woman before we see her fate unfold on the screen. In a later scene, right after Vaskov’s and Sonia’s dialogue detailed earlier, a voice-over tells viewers that “Sonia did not know that her father and sister were dead and that her mother bore a yellow star on her chest.” It specifies that Sonia’s mother was a prisoner of the Maly Trostenets camp while serving on a work detail. The name of Maly Trostenets reminds—or informs—the viewer of the tragedy of the Holocaust and specifically Jewish suffering. Although the story deviates from historical reality, Sonia’s mother dies working in post-invasion Belarusian rubble while most, if not all, Jewish prisoners at Maly Trostenets were killed immedi­ ately upon arrival. Davlet’iarov superimposes the well-known recognizable experiences of central European Jews onto the reality of Soviet Jews, rewriting history. He shows us an apocalyptic scene of war-ravaged Belarus and Sonia’s sick, weak mother shoveling rubble as a Nazi yells at her. When he determines that she works too slowly, he kicks her and shoots her. In previous versions, Sonia’s family’s fate remains ambiguous; the Brezhnev-era versions depict only prewar Minsk. The 2015 version shows viewers what Minsk looked like when Nazis occupied the city, reminding them of the crimes of which fascists are capable.

Jews, gender, and just wars  333 Although not as explicit, Battle for Sevastopol also reminds the viewers of the Soviet Jewry’s persecution during the war. As Boris Chopak convinces Pavlichenko to evacuate while he stays behind, he proclaims: “I am a Jew from Odessa. I’ll get away.” Perhaps this comment points to the naivety Chopak displayed earlier in the film when he believed Soviet papers that promised no war with Germany. Nevertheless, his words draw viewers’ attention to the fate of Jewish Odessa—what happened to the 233,155 Jewish citizens of Odessa. As they receive no other information, viewers can assume that Chopak’s sister Sonia and his parents perished as well; viewers’ previous acquaintance with these characters gives Odessa Jewish victims faces. In her discussion of Mark Bernes’s character Arkadii in the 1942 film Two Soldiers, Gershenson writes “Odessa was such a Jewish city that in the Soviet Union its unique humor and style were associated with Jews.”55 By having Chopak identify himself as an Odessa Jew who will be able to escape craftily, Mokritskii points to the rich mythology surrounding old Odessa as a city of Jewish swindlers and gangsters.56 The choice of Odessa as Chopak’s hometown and Mokritskii’s decision to name it transforms Chopak into a symbol of Soviet Jewry.

Conclusion: truth and nostalgia There was a fifth film about the war that debuted in 2015, not in the spring but in August: In that Distant Forty Five . . . Encounters on the Elbe. The film enjoyed neither a wide release nor support from the Ministry of Culture. Based on Petr Iefimovich Todorovskii’s screenplay, it would have been the award-winning director’s last film. After serving in the Second World War, Todorovskii enjoyed a six-decade career as a director and, like Mokritskii, he also received the Russian Federation of Jewish Societies “Fiddler on the Roof”/“Person of the Year” award. Even though Todorovskii’s war films reflected his military experiences and this screenplay was based on his experiences as a young officer on the Elbe, the Ministry of Culture refused to fund the project because of the script’s “deviation from historical accuracy.”57 His widow Maria Todorovskaia, with Polish funding and private financing, realized Todorovskii’s vision. The impressionistic In that Distant Forty Five captures a yearning for youth and love that transcends nationality. The film depicts the joy and promise of the Soviet-American meeting at the Elbe at the end of the Great Patriotic War, the nostalgic tendency Svetlana Boym would define as “reflective nostalgia” focused on “longing and loss, the imperfect process of remembrance.”58 Todorovskii’s perspective and reputation mattered little during the years immediately preceding the conflict in Ukraine given that the film lacked a clear message about the primacy of Soviet or Russian men as skilled and brave fighters guided by a moral sense of duty. It included no selfless heroes, innocent victims, or unifying message and thus served no didactic purpose and did not fit 2010s historicizing. The Ministry of Culture funded three projects that prominently featured Jewish characters, yet it effectively silenced the voice of a widely respected Jewish veteran. Though not censored per se, the case of In that Distant Forty Five serves as an example of how the government—through the

334  Adrienne M. Harris Ministry of Culture—manages to control the memory of the war and chooses not to fund projects that do not offer a usable past. The three films discussed in this chapter invoke the tendency of nostalgia that Svetlana Boym defines as “restorative nostalgia,” “the kind that proposes to rebuild the lost home and patch up the memory gaps.”59 [Restorative] nostalgics do not think of themselves as nostalgic; they believe that their project is about truth. This kind of nostalgia characterizes national and nationalist revivals all over the world, which engage in the antimodern myth-making of history by means of a return to national symbols and myths and, occasionally, through swapping conspiracy theories. Restorative nostalgia manifests itself in total reconstructions of monuments of the past, while reflective nostalgia lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time.60 All three films portray or reference happy prewar lives in Stalinist Russia devoid of anti-Semitism, though Davlet’iarov does add prewar scenes depicting victims of the purges. The films portray a recreated version of “lost past,” a period when the Soviet Union was united in a righteous war to save a people from fascists in Ukraine (The Young Guard); a time when all lived peacefully in Ukraine and language was not an issue (Battle for Sevastopol); when Sevastopol and the Donbass were indisputably “ours” and the border between Russia and Ukraine was insignificant—Battle for Sevastopol begins in Kyiv and concludes in Moscow; and when the USSR was an international nation. Several kinopoisk reviewers applaud Pliaskin for capturing the “spirit” of the time, a time one reviewer idealizes as “not being so focused on money and i-phones as the present day.” In the cases of The Young Guard and The Dawns are Quiet Here, many viewers reference their memories of reading the novels—both were included for years in the Soviet educational curriculum—or watching the Soviet films. In a reflective sense, these films prompt viewers to revisit their youth, but, in a restorative sense, these remakes “return national symbols and myths” and Pliaskin’s return of the forgotten Tret’iakevich appeals to conspiracy theorists. Circumstances in 2014, while these films were in production, prompted a need to mobilize public sentiment behind military intervention in Ukraine and World War II films, featuring heroic behavior in defense of innocent victims, served as the perfect vehicle to do so. Evgeny Dobrenko asserts that “true ‘historical reality’ lies not in the subject (representations of the past) but precisely in the time of production; that is, the historical film does in fact construct history, but it also ‘reflects’ above all the time of its production.”61 In this cohort of films, one can see the imprint of the conflict in Ukraine in a perceived need to unify the nation and to prevent another group of innocent victims from falling prey to “fascists.” Battle for Sevastopol erases differences between Ukrainians and Russians and focuses on a shared Soviet identity. More overtly, the Ukrainian collaborators in The Young Guard should put contemporary Russian audiences on alert regarding Ukrainian “fascists” today. Grounded in images, these films reiterate the sacrifice

Jews, gender, and just wars  335 made by generations past for today’s youth and illustrate the reasons why one should take the threat of fascists seriously. They show what “Russian boys” like Tret’iakevich can and should do. The inclusion of pacifist, weak, or helpless Jewish male characters in these 2015 films reinforces Slavic masculinity and portrays these men as “other.” Sander Gilman notes that “bodies have a way of being seen again and again in the past, and identity—whether that of Jews or blacks or Hispanics or women—always has to perform a perilous balancing act between self and Other.”62 Mokritskii and Pliaskin juxtapose Boris Chopak and Mikhail Lipkin with Slavic men in ways that emphasize their physical difference and distance them from idealized portrayals of masculinity: Chopak’s stuffy khaki suit contrasts with the pilots’ scantily clad, physically fit bodies as they play volleyball and their Red Army uniforms as they discuss the possibility of war. In traditional attire, Lipkin appears oldfashioned and consequently, old and “other.” While Jewish women can become rodnye by exhibiting idealized feminine traits and performing a traditional femininity, Jewish men remain “other” in relation to Slavic men, falling into the category of “innocent victims” along with women and children. Since they cannot defend themselves or their families, they need Slavic men to fight for them. As 300,000–500,000 Jews served in the Soviet army during the Second World War,63 the representation of Jewish men in the spring 2015 films bears no connection to reality, in spite of directors’ claims of a dedication to truth and reliance on historical documents and witnesses’ testimony.64 The 21st century has seen the Second World War emerge as the most sacred, unifying event inherited from the Soviets, one that can be capitalized upon to further post-Soviet political objectives. The Ministry of Culture’s support of war films, especially those that debut in spring, continues to shape Russians’ memory of this war and to remind them of its continued relevance. These films demonstrate patriotic ideals and desired behavior. In 2014, while these films were in production, circumstances prompted a need to mobilize public sentiment behind military intervention in Ukraine and World War II films, featuring heroic behavior in defense of innocent victims—in this case weak Jewish characters—served as a perfect vehicle to do so.

Notes 1 The series debuted for online streaming on May 1, 2015 and was broadcast on television May 5, 2015. 2 Sergei Popov’s Road to Berlin, based on Emmanuil Kazakevich’s Two in the Steppe, remakes Anatolii Efros’s artfilm Two in the Steppe. Although the film shares themes with the other 2015 films—nationality, a focus on “truth” with accompanying documentary techniques—Jewish themes and a clear response to the Ukrainian crisis are absent, so this article does not analyze the film. 3 For the purpose of this chapter, focused on narrative content rather than cinematic genre or artistry, I do not differentiate between a miniseries and a feature film. 4 The filming of Battle for Sevastopol took place Fall 2013-July 2014. www.1tv.ru/ movies/statyi/bitva-za-sevastopol-chto-ostalos-za-kadrom 5 “Meditations on Russia: Yeltsin Calls for New National ‘Idea.’ ”

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6 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6–7. 7 Bhabha, ed., Nation and Narration, 2. 8 Smith, Mythmaking in the New Russia; Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering. 9 Brouwer, Contested Interpretations of the Past in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian Film, x. 10 Beumers, A History of Russian Cinema, 214–16. 11 Norris, Blockbuster History in the New Russia. 12 Ibid., 120. 13 Nora and Kritzman, Realms of Memory, 1. 14 Mokritskii emphasizes Pavlichenko’s unwavering femininity—in spite of her military successes—by frequently referencing her ability to attract heterosexual men. Not one, but three men fall in love with her. 15 For a detailed biography of Pavlichenko, see Begunova, Angely smerti, 27–160. 16 Begunova, Angely Smerti, 27–160. 17 “Bitva za Sevastopol’.” 18 www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3033808/Lady-Death-female-sniper-killed300-Nazis-Russian-Ukrainian-biopic-legendary-sharpshooter-aims-unite-formerallies-despite-ongoing-crisis-torn-apart.html 19 Harris, “The Myth of the Woman Warrior and World War II in Soviet Culture,” 270–78. 20 Tumarkin, The Living & the Dead. 21 “Moi fil’m A Zori Zdes’ Tikhie.” 22 Fürst, “Wartime Heroes for Post-War Youth: The Rise and Fall of The Young Guard” in Stalin’s Last Generation, 137–66. 23 Fürst, Stalin’s Last Generation, 143–55. 24 See Carleton, Russia: The Story of War for a discussion of how the myth of war and, in particular John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” structures Russia’s national identity. See Youngblood, Russian War Films, 232–36 for a discussion of enemies and heroes in war films. 25 The film includes an additional plot that functions as a framing device and delivers a message that the West, namely Americans, cannot understand the war that is taking place in Soviet space, this battle for Sevastopol. By extension, Americans do not understand the current “battle for Sevastopol.” This plot functions around Pavlichenko’s diplomatic mission to the United States upon her demobilization in later 1942. She explains the grave military situation to Americans who do not understand the circumstances in which the Soviet people are living; to drive this point home, the director contrasts New Year’s 1942 in Odessa with New Year’s Eve 1943 in Chicago. 26 Gershenson, The Phantom Holocaust, 2. 27 Ibid., 2. 28 Mordechai Altshuler, “Jewish Combatants of the Red Army Confront the Holocaust,” in Murav and Estraikh, eds., Soviet Jews in World War II, 16; Oleg Budnitskii, “Jews at War: Diaries from the Front,” trans. by Dariia Kabanova in Murav and Estraikh, eds., Soviet Jews in World War II, 60, 82. In general, estimates of Jewish combat participation and losses are difficult to pinpoint as names did not always reflect ones ethnic identity. 29 Murav, Music from a Speeding Train, 111. 30 Murav, “Poetry after Kerch’: Representing Jewish Mass Death in the Soviet Union” in Murav and Estraikh, eds., Soviet Jews in World War II, 151. 31 Gershenson, The Phantom Holocaust, 2–7, 223–25. 32 Ibid., 219. 33 Ibid., 221–22. 34 Graff Zivin, The Wandering Signifier, 3–7. 35 https://ria.ru/religion_news/20151208/1338572482.html accessed 9 July 2017 The “Fiddler on the Roof” award was formerly known as “the person of the year” award.

Jews, gender, and just wars  337 36 www.feor.ru/annualprize/ accessed 9 July 2017 37 www.feor.ru/about/ accessed 9 July 2017 38 Gilman, The Jew’s Body, 2. 39 Ibid., 5. 40 Ibid., 42. 41 Ibid., 165 42 Kitsenko is based on a historical precedent, Pavlichenko’s husband who was killed several weeks after their front-line wedding. 43 Tanny, City of Rogues and Schnorrers. 44 The Odessa massacre refers either to the events of October 22–24, 1941 in which some 25,000 to 34,000 Jews were shot or burned, or to the murder of well over 100,000 Ukrainian Jews in the town and the areas between the Dniester and Bug rivers, during the Romanian and German occupation. 45 Jug, “All Stalin’s Men?” 46 Connell, Masculinities, 44. 47 Gershenson, The Phantom Holocaust, 186. 48 Tret’iakevich’s ethnic identity as a Belarusian plays no role in the film. Pliaskin’s version also elevates the Tret’iakevich family’s economic circumstances based on archival documents. 49 At 19,120, Jews comprised 1.58% of the Voroshilovgrad (now Luhansk) oblast. Altshuler, ed. Distribution of the Jewish Population, 20, 27–28. 50 Gershenson, The Phantom Holocaust, 227. 51 See reviews on kinopoisk: www.kinopoisk.ru/film/molodaya-gvardiya-2015-880743/ Aleksandr Petrovskii, who read the novel as an eighth grader and disliked Pliaskin’s remake, describes Tiulenin as а gopnik who teaches young ones to steal. DaryaSV, who generally liked the series and awarded it 8/10 stars complains that “Tiulenin is not a young man with a lively character, but something like a gopnik.” A “gopnik” is usually a lower-class member of an East-Slavic suburban subculture. 52 The previous female lead, Uliana Gromova, cuts her long, dark hair after an attempted rape and often yells aggressively at people. Liubov’ Shevtsova, always a flirt, becomes a true sex symbol in this version. 53 Vasil’ev also deviates from the canon of Russian war literature about the Second World War by depicting armed female combatants capable of killing Nazis after the Soviets collectively forgot and disarmed these women, focusing instead on women-martyrs and traditionally feminine nurses and radio operators usually present in narratives because of their relation to men as objects of sexual desire. 54 Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews, footnote 15, 218. Bemporad notes that prior to the war, Minsk’s 71,000 Jews comprised roughly 30% of the population, but by June 1941, on the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the population had swelled to 100,000 as refugees from Poland fled east. 55 Gershenson, The Phantom Holocaust, 174. 56 Tanny, City of Rogues and Schnorrers, 2–4. Tanny notes that the myth survived the 20th century wars and Brezhnev era stagnation, only to “return with a vengeance” after Gorbachev relaxed censorship. Tanny, 191. 57 “’Spoi ty mne pro voinu.’ ” In her discussion of how this film relates to Todorovsky’s previous films, Elena Stishova writes “In the process of viewing, I kept pushing away the idea that I was watching a rare documentary.” 58 Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, 41. 59 Ibid., 41. 60 Ibid., 41. 61 Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History, 4. 62 Gilman, The Jew’s Body, 243. 63 Murav and Estraikh, eds., Soviet Jews in World War II, 16.

338  Adrienne M. Harris 64 The war films of the 2010s merit a much longer discussion, particularly Konstantin Khabenskii’s 2018 Sobibor, which demonstrates that the situation had already evolved by 2018 with the release of Khabenskii’s film based on another forgotten hero— Aleksandr Pecherskii, a Jewish Red Army soldier who leads a successful uprising and escape at the Sobibor death camp. In the film, Khabenskii simultaneously depicts a strong example of Jewish soldierly masculinity on screen while eschewing opportunities to depict Ukrainian guards negatively. For more on Sobibor, see Stephen M. Norris’s chapter in this volume.

Bibliography Altshuler, Mordechai, ed. Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939. Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1993. Anderson, Benedict R. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. New York: Verso, 2006. Begunova, Alla. Angely Smerti: Zhenshchiny-Snaĭpery, 1941–1945. Moscow: Veche, 2014. Bemporad, Elissa. Becoming Soviet Jews: The Bolshevik Experiment in Minsk. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Beumers, Birgit. A History of Russian Cinema. London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Bhabha, Homi K., ed. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge, 2010. http://ezproxy.baylor. edu/login?url=http://site.ebrary.com/lib/baylor/docDetail.action?docID=10714959. “Bitva za Sevastopol’ (2015)—Neznamna—Informatsiia o Fil’me—Rossiiskie Fil’my i Serialy—Kino-Teatr.ru.” Accessed October 1, 2018. www.kino-teatr.ru/kino/movie/ ros/105774/annot/. Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Connell, Raewyn. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Dobrenko, Evgeny. Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution. 1st ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008. “Federatsiia Evreiskikh Obshchin Rossii.” Accessed July 9, 2017. www.feor.ru/ annualprize/. Fürst, Juliane. Stalin’s Last Generation: Soviet Post-War Youth and the Emergence of Mature Socialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Stages, vol. 8. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Gershenson, Olga. The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe. Jewish Cultures of the World (Jewish Cultures of the World), 275. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013. Graff Zivin, Erin. The Wandering Signifier: Rhetoric of Jewishness in the Latin American Imaginary. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Harris, Adrienne Marie. “The Myth of the Woman Warrior and World War II in Soviet Culture.” PhD, University of Kansas, 2008. https://search.proquest.com/pqdtglobal/ docview/89134284/abstract/ 3AC31C7F79B54CECPQ/1. Jug, Steven George. “All Stalin’s Men? Soldierly Masculinities in the Soviet War Effort, 1938–1945.” PhD, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2013. https://search.proquest.com/pqdtglobal/docview/1550844675/abstract/55E1548BF7064F50PQ/1. Kinopoisk. “Molodaia gvardiia. Reviews.” Accessed July 9, 2017. www.kinopoisk.ru/ film/molodaya-gvardiya-2015-880743/Aleksandr Petrovskii. “Meditations on Russia: Yeltsin Calls for New National ‘Idea.’ ” Accessed October 12, 2018. https://apnews.com/122cd732a8cf8b35989afeec4db69dcd.

Jews, gender, and just wars  339 “Moi fil’m A Zori Zdes’ Tikhie . . . Eto ne Remeik.” Gazeta.ru. Accessed June 25, 2018. www.gazeta.ru/culture/2014/08/27/a_6191533.shtml. Murav, Harriet. Music from a Speeding Train: Jewish Literature in Post-Revolution Russia. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. Murav, Harriet, and G. Estraikh, eds. Soviet Jews in World War II: Fighting, Witnessing, Remembering. Boston, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2014. Nora, Pierre, and Lawrence D. Kritzman. Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Norris, Stephen M. Blockbuster History in the New Russia: Movies, Memory, and Patriotism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012. “Palimpsest, N. and Adj.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed June 25, 2018. www.oed.com.ezproxy.baylor.edu/view/Entry/136319. Smith, Kathleen E. Mythmaking in the New Russia: Politics and Memory During the Yeltsin Era. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. “ ‘Spoi ty mne pro voinu. . .’. V dalekom 45-m. Vsetrecha na El’be, Directors Mira Todorovskaia, Petro Aleksovskii.” Iskusstvo kino. Accessed September 3, 2020. https://old. kinoart.ru/archive/2015/05/spoj-ty-mne-pro-vojnu-v-dalekom-45-m-vstrecha-na-elberezhissery-mira-todorovskaya-petro-aleksovskij. Tanny, Jarrod. City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Tumarkin, Nina. The Living & the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia. New York: Basic Books, 1994. Wertsch, James V. Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

15 The 21st-century memory of the Great Patriotic War in the “Russia – My History” Museum Karen Petrone On September 11, 2020, the 22nd branch of the “Russia – My History” Museum opened in the North Caucasian city of Piatigorsk in South Russia. Its webpage boasts that the Piatigorsk historical park is one of the biggest in Russia, at 11,000 square meters, with the largest interactive floor LED screen in the world, and a concert hall seating nearly 600. The museum is advertised as “a living textbook, in which the entire history of the country is presented with the help of contemporary technology.”1 It is located in Piatigorsk’s newly renovated “Victory Park,” whose 2018 restoration demonstrated that “the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War is immortal.”2 In Piatigorsk, the “Russia – My History” Museum and the narratives that it presents are thus both geographically and conceptually associated with renewed attention to Soviet Russia’s greatest historical feat: the victory over the Nazis in the Second World War. This location closely ties the museum to a narrative of national achievement and one of commemoration and solemn or even sacred remembrance. The site potentially intensifies both the political/ patriotic and the affective nature of the museum itself and inscribes the narrative that the museum presents into a very particular landscape of war memory and commemoration. Simultaneously, the museum is situated in a newly refurbished landscape of leisure activities. Although I have applied the term “museum” to the now 23 (and growing) number of locations, the “Russia: My History” website calls the new Piatigorsk site a “historical park” and a “multimedia complex.” “Russia: My History” is a state-ofthe-art digital history museum that creates a comprehensive narrative of Russian history from the beginnings of the Russian state in the 9th century to the present. This historical project was originally developed within the Russian Orthodox Church though it also receives substantial financial support from the Russian State and also from Gasprom.3 The 23 branches are located in cities across the vast expanse of Russia from St. Petersburg in the North and West to Iuzhno-Sakhalinsk and recently Vladivostok in the East to Makhachkala in the South. Each of the locations has a portion of its museum dedicated to the local history of its region. All of the museums also contain the same four main exhibits that are reproduced everywhere: “The Rurikids,” “The Romanovs,” “From the Great Shocks to the Great Victory, 1914–1945,” and “Russia: My History—1945–2016.” This chapter

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will focus on the treatment of the Second World War and its aftermath in the latter two exhibits. My analysis is based primarily on visits to the St. Petersburg and Moscow museums in August 2018. The St. Petersburg branch of “Russia – My History” is located directly across Iurii Gagarin Prospect from Victory Park, in the Moscow District of St. Petersburg. This museum location, like the one in Piatigorsk, is tied both to leisure activities and to the commemoration and remembrance of great heroes of the Soviet era like the Cosmonaut Gagarin, and especially heroes of the Great Patriotic War. It is adjacent to a site that is connected to the tragic history of Leningrad during the 1941–1944 blockade. Victory Park, which now contains ponds, cafes, and children’s playgrounds as well as monuments to Great Patriotic War heroes, was once a crematorium and is a burial site for blockade victims. There is now a Russian Orthodox chapel near the site where the crematorium once stood.4 Like in Piatigorsk, St. Petersburg’s “Russia – My History” is thus situated in an affective landscape of both solemn commemoration and pleasure. Not surprisingly, given the Moscow-centric nature of the contemporary Russian state, Moscow’s branch of “Russia – My History” is the original, providing the template for exhibitions that were then copied everywhere else. This branch is located in a renovated exhibition pavilion at the Exhibition of National Economic Achievements (VDNKh). VDNKh was the Soviet Union’s version of a permanent World’s Fair, exhibiting the agricultural achievements of the Soviet republics and the successes of various Soviet industries in an amusement park atmosphere. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the location fell upon hard times, and according to the Moscow mayor’s website “resembled a large shashlik restaurant with lots of kiosks and BBQs.” In 2014, the buildings, fountains, and gardens in the park were lovingly restored, and in 2015, “Russia – My History,” opened its doors in one of the park’s many pavilions.5 VDNKh is thus a setting replete with leisure activities and entertainment but without an explicit element of solemn remembrance. The placement of the first “Russia – My History” Museum at this site emphasizes continuity with Soviet achievements and their centrality to narratives of the contemporary Russian nation. The timing is also not accidental; the Russian state built new narratives of Russian historical glory at the same time that it restored an Exhibition originally dedicated to Soviet achievements, an Exhibition that, after the fall of the Soviet Union, had turned into a hodge-podge of commercial spaces and had been allowed to fall into extreme disrepair. What can these museum narratives and visual displays about the Soviet Union’s participation in the Second World War tell us about politics, leisure, and museumcraft in the 21st century? What do these museums reveal about Russian conceptions of statehood and nationhood and Russia’s relation to the Soviet Union’s participation in the Second World War? What do these museum experiences, which are designed to be both entertaining and educational, tell us about how contemporary Russian state officials, museum directors, and educators seek to influence the population’s understanding of the Russian past?

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“Russia – My History” Museums represent a significant attempt to create an atmosphere of emotional and social belonging to the Russian nation, for citizens all across Russia, through combining educational and leisure activities. The memory of the “Great Patriotic War” plays a pivotal role in this nation-defining effort, as the most crucial moment in 20th-century history, when all Russians united to defeat the Nazis. Because of the “Great Patriotic War’s” dominant place in the hierarchy of Russian national events, the creators of “Russia – My History” seek to protect canonical Second World War narratives against any competing narratives that diminish the glory and heroism of the war. The “Russia – My History” exhibits present the Putin-era restoration of “Great Patriotic War” memory as a significant historical event in its own right, suggesting that the Russians have found unity under Putin just as they did during the “Great Patriotic War.” While professional Russian historians decry this politicization of history, the “Russia – My History” Museums have devoted considerable resources to promulgating these official national narratives to students and the broad Russian population in a pleasing leisure setting. The extent to which the museum’s audience has absorbed these narratives is an excellent topic for future research.

“Russia – My History” and its narratives A significant innovation in contemporary Russian museum-ship as represented in “Russia – My History” is the reproduction of identical exhibits all over the country. Each “Russia – My History” Museum houses a limited amount of original curatorial work related to the region in which it is located. Almost all of the exhibits in each museum are exact replicas of curatorial work first done in Moscow. The replication or the “cloning” of the original exhibits (as Russian critics of the museum put it), and the dissemination of these same exhibits all across Russia bring to mind political scientist Benedict Anderson’s influential work Imagined Communities. This work describes the ways in which print capitalism and the circulation of newspapers across a defined geographic space transmitted the idea of the nation as an “imagined community” in the 19th century.6 “Russia – My History” defines the geography of Russianness through the proliferation of institutions that frame a specific national narrative all across the vast expanse of Russian territory. The geography of Russianness that the museums help to define is not just visible in the placement of the numerous branches in major cities all across the Russian Federation. It is also visible in the local geographies of the specific branch locations. These branches are part of affective landscapes that associate the “imagined community” of the Russian nation with a variety of emotions. These landscapes are not uniform in the same way that the museum itself is, and they offer a wide variety of possible emotional connections to the national narrative of the museum—the pleasure of an amusement park or the joy to be found in nature; the pride in landmarks once run down and crumbling, but now sparkling and renewed; and the solemn recognition of sites of mourning and commemoration of

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the dead. Each “Russia – My History” venue offers its visitors the possibility to take part in a national community shaped by shared emotions. The designers of “Russia – My History” intended for the museum to define the contemporary Russian state and nation through a grand narrative of continuity and legitimacy, stemming from the arrival of Russia’s first rulers in the 9th century to the present day. This museum is not unique; it joins other national history museums around the world that, rather than seeking to pose questions and to encourage independent answers to those questions, instead seek to legitimize present-day politics and strengthen contemporary patriotism with narratives that validate and valorize the nation.7 The “Russia – My History” exhibits drive to a teleological endpoint of the glorious present, all the while seeking to consolidate the particular Russian national project of the Putin era. “Russia – My History” is meant to be straightforwardly didactic but that does not necessarily mean it always achieves its goals. A key concept in the study of memory is its malleability, which leads to aspects of memory being continually contested and reaffirmed.8 There is a difference between formulating goals for any museum and actually succeeding in influencing viewers in the desired way. The exhibit’s authors and artists may not narrate or illustrate the material clearly, despite their own best intentions. Visitors to the museum may accept, ignore, transform, or subvert the messages that the museum intends to send, and more research is needed to determine the extent to which the museum’s master narrative of the glorious Russian state is received and embraced by visitors. What is very clear, however, is that the creators of “Russia – My History’s” exhibits are making serious attempts to influence visitors’ perceptions of the course of Russian history and to narrow the possible interpretations of the historical events depicted. To place “Russia – My History’s” presentation of the Second World War within the museum’s master narrative, I draw on the work of three scholars: David Brandenberger, Gregory Carleton, and Ekaterina Klimenko. In David Brandenberger’s important work about Russian nationalism under Stalin, National Bolshevism, he argues that in the 1930s Stalin did not embrace Russian nationalism per se, but rather a Russo-centric statism.9 This Russo-centric statism positioned Stalin and the Soviet state as the successors to Muscovite and Imperial figures who strengthened the Russian state and enlarged its territories. Stalin celebrated such figures as Aleksandr Nevskii, Ivan the Terrible, and Peter the Great to argue for the stability and permanency of a strong Russian state. The thousand-plus year narrative of “Russia – My History” demonstrates a clear continuity with earlier Soviet attempts, initiated by Stalin, to project the image of a powerful and enduring state. At the same time, there are some clear differences. Stalin’s Russo-centric narrative reflected the atheism of the 1930s and sidestepped questions of Christianity, even though Russian Orthodoxy had been a crucial component of Kievan, Muscovite, and Russian Imperial state ideology. But since “Russia – My History” was based on exhibits originally created by the Russian Orthodox Church, Christianity plays a much more significant role than in narratives of the Soviet era. One of the

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highlights of the Rurikid exhibit is Christianity’s victory over paganism in 988, and in the Rurikid exhibit there is even a prominent video exhibit on “miracles” in Russian History.10 Such a conceptualization of historical events would be unlikely in a fully secular rendering of the history of the Russian state. A second set of insights into the shape of Russian grand historical narratives is provided by the work of Gregory Carleton in Russia: The Story of War.11 Carleton argues that the dominant retelling of Russian history, from the mid-19th century to the present, is cyclical and focused on Russia’s wars. When Russians are disunified, disaster strikes, and they are defeated by foreigners; when they are unified, they can restore the glory of the Russian state and fight off enemy invaders. Key examples of the former are the Mongol invasions, the Time of Troubles, and the Revolution/Civil War; the most pertinent examples of the latter are Muscovy’s defeat of the Mongols, the establishment of the Romanov Dynasty in 1613, the 1812 victory over Napoleon, and central to this chapter, the event simply known as “the Victory,” the defeat of the Nazis in the “Great Patriotic War of the Fatherland.” This cyclical story that Carleton identifies is very clearly reflected in “Russia – My History,” with the Great Patriotic War serving as the culminating event in an exhibit that reflects one full cycle: “From the Great Shocks to the Great Victory, 1914–1945.” The “Russia – My History” webpage makes clear the close connection between this war-centric view of the nation and the intended goals of the museum. A slideshow overview of the museum for teachers, available for download on the “Russia – My History—St. Petersburg” website, proclaims that one goal of the museum is the “implementation of government policy.” The accompanying illustration shows nine young boys (perhaps seven or eight years old), intently viewing a “Russia – My History” Museum display. They are in dress military uniforms and are likely students of a Suvorov Military Boarding School.12 The historical narratives of the museum not only link the history of the Russian nation to the history of its wars but also serve as state-sponsored patriotic education to prepare the next generation of boys for the next war in the cycle. In a recent article in Nationality Papers, Ekaterina Klimenko also underlines the cyclical nature of the narrative in “Russia – My History” and uses the historical parks to reject recent analyses that the ruling elite tried to silence the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution during the 2017 Centennial. Klimenko persuasively argues that, rather than suppressing the memory of the Revolution during the Centennial, the Russian leadership situated the Revolution within the larger cyclical narrative “that covers Russian history from Kievan Rus’ to the present-day Russian Federation.” As a result, “the (statist) tale of the Russian Revolutions, which is narrated in the historical parks, becomes focused on national unity rather than internal division, and historical continuity rather than rupture with the past.” This narrative of historical continuity reminds Russian citizens that “(internal) disputes and (revolutionary) changes” generally have “catastrophic consequences,” and it “bolsters the legitimacy of Russia’s current political regime, which has been silencing dissenters and arresting change throughout the last two decades.”13 Klimenko points to the events of the Revolution and Civil War as the

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negative part of the cycle that has to be overcome, and in the “Russia – My History” exhibits, is overcome by the unity that led to victory in the Great Patriotic War. The museums, therefore, both reflect continuities with historical narratives extant in both pre-Soviet and Soviet Russia and rewrite those narratives to replace emphasis on the Revolutionary era (awash in unwanted disunity) with stress on the Soviet achievements that united the population and led to victory in the Second World War. One factor complicating the Russian celebration of the Great Patriotic War today is Joseph Stalin, and the role that he played in “the Great Victory.” On the one hand, it is impossible to tell the story of the Second World War without considering Stalin’s actions. On the other hand, criticism of Stalin’s preparation for the war has been a part of Soviet discourse since Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in 1956, and negative evaluations of Stalin’s leadership during the war multiplied after the onset of glasnost’ in the 1980s, and during the Yeltsin era. How then to frame the Soviet victory so that Stalin’s faults do not tarnish it? How then to represent Stalin within the context of the Great Patriotic War? The Great Patriotic War occupies such an important place in the 21st-century Russia memory-scape that it has been the subject of official policing through the introduction of watchdog commissions and memory laws. A Presidential Commission to “counter attempts to falsify history” was created during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev in 2009 and existed until 2012. Scholars have speculated that the Commission’s creation in the summer of 2009 might have had something to do with the upcoming 70th anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin Pact.14 In Spring 2014, a controversy led to closure of the independent news channel TV Rain after it published a poll on its website in January 2014 that asked “Should Leningrad have been surrendered to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people?”15 After this incident, in May of 2014, Irina Iarovaia (now Deputy Chairman of the State Duma) sponsored a law that made it illegal, punishable by up to a 300,000 ruble fine or three years in prison, to provide “deliberately false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War.”16 The “Russia – My History” exhibit, therefore, both models a correct approach to the war and responds to earlier criticisms of Soviet actions.

The heroic Leningrad Blockade In the main lobby of the Moscow branch of “Russia – My History,” there is a timeline of all Russian History beginning with the calling of the Varangians in 862. The entries between 1939 and 1945 are as follows: 1939–1945—Second World War, 1939–1940—Soviet-Finnish War, 1941–1945—Great Patriotic War, 1941– 1944—Blockade of Leningrad, 1942–1943—Battle of Stalingrad, and 1943— Battle of Kursk. The next entry after the Battle of Kursk is the 1957 launching of Sputnik.17 Notably, this timeline singles out only three specific events during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, elevating the Blockade of Leningrad and the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk above all other events during the war. In the “Great Victory” exhibit itself, an illustrated timeline groups these three events

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together as the “fundamental turning point” of the war and proclaims these events to be sites of “mass heroism at the front.” There is a change of vocabulary, however, in the way that the Blockade of Leningrad is represented within “the Great Victory” exhibit. While the timeline in the lobby of the Moscow museum speaks of the “Blockade of Leningrad,” the panel within the St. Petersburg exhibit celebrates the “Feat/exploit (podvig) of Leningrad,” a word with Orthodox Christian overtones that has come to mean something achieved through heroic effort.18 The tendency of “Russia – My History” to heroize and glorify the Great Patriotic War is crucial to the war’s role as the culminating event in the historical cycle that redeems the disorder of revolution. The St. Petersburg branch of “Russia – My History,” like all the other branches, employs local curators to incorporate site-specific historical materials; in St. Petersburg, there is material on the Leningrad Blockade. Unlike the solely military battles of Stalingrad and Kursk, the Leningrad “podvig,” as described by the exhibit, “was a time of unparalleled heroism of the Red Army and of the enduring tenacity of the blockaded citizens (blokadniki).” The comprehensive section on the Leningrad Blockade includes a step-by-step explanation of how the blockade came about, what its effects on the population were, how it was ameliorated by securing food and fuel supplies, and when it was finally ended. The narrative emphasizes that despite starvation, aerial bombardment, and a lack of fuel for heating, neither the soldiers nor the civilians of Leningrad gave in, and the Germans never succeeded in capturing the city. This exhibit builds on the myths of the Siege of Leningrad that emerged in public discourse primarily in the Khrushchev era. After the end of the war, Stalin suppressed discussion of Leningraders’ heroism in his eagerness to “claim responsibility for the overall victory.”19 This section of “the Great Victory” exhibit is notable for its photographic evidence of the soldiers and citizens of Leningrad during the siege, providing a much more intimate and detailed view of the blockade than of most of the other events in the exhibit. Both photographs and paintings capture the everyday-life experiences not only of soldiers but also of women and children as they fled the city on the “road of life,” the ice road on Lake Ladoga; cleared rubble after devastating bombardments; pushed streetcars immobilized by the lack of fuel and draft animals; and carried water from an outdoor pump in freezing weather. The accompanying text also describes the meager (and decreasing) size of the bread rations in the fall of 1941. Civilian suffering and death are emphasized in the visual components of the exhibit; one striking photograph shows a woman matter-of-factly using a wheelbarrow to transport a shrouded corpse on a crowded St. Petersburg street. A painting shows starving children with angular and downcast faces, and a nurse attempting, but not necessarily succeeding, to restore them to health. One of the children is either asleep or unconscious. The children have a notebook, and there are pages of a diary strewn on the floor. Although the exhibit does not name the artist who created the painting, or give an explanation of what is depicted, anyone familiar with the Siege of Leningrad would know that one of the children was likely Tanya Savicheva. Savicheva’s diary recorded how her entire family starved

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to death during the winter of 1941–1942. She herself died in 1944. The death of child-martyrs like Savicheva represented the high cost of achieving Leningrad’s podvig. The text of the exhibit emphasizes both the horror of the siege and the bravery and self-sacrifice of the blokadniki. Although it states that “Leningraders died from hunger and cold,” it does not specify the very large number of civilian deaths.20 The text acknowledges that cases of cannibalism “were recorded” but then turns immediately to a discussion of the city’s extreme heroism and sacrifice. Despite the hunger and cold, the “city continued to fight. The Kirov Factory produced tanks; city-dwellers put out fires. Twenty-eight staff members of the All-Union Institute of Crop Production, which was located in Leningrad, died of hunger. But not one grain of the unique seed fund, collected at the Institute, was touched.” In places, the narration omits key facts (like the number of dead) and at other times it nods to the existence of controversies, while either deflecting attention away from them or responding to them obliquely. The exhibit sidesteps defeatism and other unheroic civilian behaviors, the very topic that got TV Rain into trouble. The exhibit does directly address the question of whether Soviet authorities had mismanaged the stockpiling of food in the Summer of 1941.21 The text explains that “food warehouses were priority goals for German airstrikes, but even without this, the provision of food for the Leningraders was the most difficult task. Like every big city, Leningrad was supplied ‘by wheels,’ and no warehouses could compensate for the suspension of food deliveries.” This statement rejects the possibility that Soviet policies could have ameliorated the starvation. It is an oblique defense of Stalin and the Soviet leadership during the war, implying that no one could have prevented Leningrad’s food situation. At the same time, the material on the Leningrad blockade reinforces key aspects of the decades-old Leningrad myth: the great victory achieved at the cost of the suffering of women and children; the extreme sacrifices and determination of Leningraders; and the military victories that succeeded in ending the encirclement. The exhibit secures the place of the Leningrad podvig as a quintessentially heroic and glorious moment in the heroic and glorious Great Patriotic War. This section of the Leningrad Blockade exhibit also raises significant questions about the exhibit’s audience. The narrative is relatively straightforward, but, in places, it is clearly in conversation with both proponents and detractors of the museum’s version of events, without acknowledging the dialogue. The defense of the Soviet leadership’s food policies, the emphasis on universal Leningrad heroism, and the underplaying of certain horrific aspects of the siege are responses to criticisms, meant to convince an audience that the siege is, indeed, the pinnacle of Soviet heroism. But how do these explanations read to an audience who is not familiar with the controversies in the first place? Likewise, those familiar with the history of the siege would immediately recognize the diary of Tanya Savicheva. But what about those visitors who are not familiar with this document and the tragic story that it tells? The narration presupposes certain kinds of knowledge on the part of its audience, and so, potentially, the audience’s lack of that

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particular knowledge could interfere with the reception of the museum’s narrative.22 “Russia – My History’s” reticence to tackle some controversies head-on and its equal and opposite failure to spell out the details of well-known myths result in a narrative that is less clear than it could be and with ambiguities surrounding key issues.

The role of Stalin The historical timeline in the lobby of the Moscow “Russia – My History” museum makes a distinction between “The Second World War” and “The Great Patriotic War,” demonstrating a continuity with earlier Soviet historical practice. This distinction raises one of the most pressing questions about Soviet participation in the war—how to narrate and justify the Soviet Union’s actions between late August 1939 and June 1941, when Stalin signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Nazi Germany, and invaded Eastern Poland, the Baltic States, and then Finland, annexing their territories to the Soviet Union. In Soviet tradition, these events of “The Second World War” are conceptually separated from “The Great Patriotic War,” the heroic effort to expel the Nazis after the June 22, 1941, invasion. Explaining Soviet actions during the years 1939–1941 is central to “Russia – My History’s” presentation of the war era. As in the Leningrad exhibit, however, there is a certain lack of clarity in pinpointing Stalin’s role in concluding the agreement “known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.” While Stalin does appear in two photographs taken at the signing of the pact, his name does not appear in the exhibit text. Throughout the narration, the names of countries and the capital cities stand in for the leaders actually making the decisions, with the exception of Germany, which is referred to as “Hitler’s Germany.” The text refers to “the Soviet side” and “the Soviet leadership,” without specifically mentioning Stalin; Stalin’s participation in this notorious event is implied but not emphasized. The exhibit discusses the French and British betrayal of Czechoslovakia at the Munich Conference and then goes on to explain that during negotiations in 1939, “the Soviet side,” became convinced that England and France were “not interested in reaching concrete agreements.” The Soviet Union was also worried about a possible two-front war, after localized conflicts with Japan at Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol. After “evaluating the political risks,” the “Soviet leadership” chose to conclude a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany. The tone of the exhibit then turns sharply defensive, dealing directly with the controversy about the Soviet-German pact. The text explains that the Soviet Union received a lot of criticism for signing the Non-Aggression Pact with Germany, with critics “all but declaring it the main reason for the Second World War.” The exhibit dismisses this charge, as well as accusations of totalitarianism and “collusion with fascism,” as “near-historical (okoloistoricheskaia) demagogy.” It then reminds its viewers that Poland had a pact with Germany and took Czech and Slovak territory during the partition of Czechoslovakia in 1938. The display proclaims that, like England and France appeasing Hitler at the cost of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union was simply pragmatically defending its own interests and “improving its foreign policy position” by annexing Western

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Ukraine, Western Belarus, Bessarabia, and the Baltic States. This section of the exhibit defends Soviet behavior as reasonable, given the unreliability of its potential allies, and suggests that the criticism leveled by the West because of the Soviet partition of Poland and the occupation of the Baltic States is hypocritical. The treatment of these events points to a theme that runs through the “Russia – My History” exhibits: distrust of the Western powers, in this case for abandoning Czechoslovakia and then holding the Soviet Union to a standard they themselves did not keep. The text then explains that the “Soviet leadership” expected a repetition of the First World War, in which France and Germany would fight a bitter war of attrition and the Soviet Union would reap the benefits of neutrality. But then the situation “turned upside down” with Germany’s “lightning-fast defeat” of France in the summer of 1940, and with England across the Channel and inaccessible to the German army. Under these new circumstances, “Moscow . . . tried in every way possible to prepare the country for war, but very little time remained.” This passage justifies the Soviet leadership’s decision to sign the pact, despite its highly negative outcome, and begins to explain why the Soviet Union was unprepared for war. Obviously, there are other significant reasons why the Soviet Union was not ready for war, including the purges of the military during Stalin’s Great Terror and Stalin’s reluctance to believe intelligence indicating that the non-aggression pact with Hitler was about to be breached. Although the earlier part of the exhibit acknowledges The Great Terror and discusses the geography of the Gulag system and the number of prisoners, it does not directly connect Stalin to the purges (though the “statistics of repression” do cover the years 1921 to 1953, ending without explanation at the year of Stalin’s death). There is one photo of “The Great Terror in Leningrad” which shows Stalin at Sergei Kirov’s lying-in-state, and the accompanying text notes that Kirov’s murder “was used as a reason to strengthen political repressions.” The passive voice allows the actors who instigated the purges to remain unnamed; the purge of the military is not mentioned at all. On the other hand, the question of whether “the higher leadership of the USSR knew about the invasion plans of the Third Reich” is covered in depth. The exhibit goes into much greater detail than usual, listing all of the people who sent “the Kremlin” information about German plans. But, paradoxically, the text explains, this “flood” of intelligence coming in about a planned German attack made the reports less and less trusted. The Germans changed the date of the attack several times and used disinformation techniques to mask troop movements and confuse the Soviets. “Real life is nonetheless different than spy novels,” and the informants were low-level officials and junior officers with narrow technical specialties or journalists who had only “crumbs” of information. “Roughly speaking,” the exhibit explains, they knew as much as the “foreman of the plasterers” about the “plans for the whole skyscraper.” As a result, there was information “on Stalin’s desk,” in the Fall of 1940, that the invasion would begin at the beginning of 1941, then in May 1941, and then on June 15, 1941, but the war did not start. “It is not

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surprising that the more that this happened, the less attention the Kremlin paid to such messages.” In addition to this rather defensive (and not entirely convincing) justification, the exhibit further explains that given the uncertainty about whether there would be war or not, there were economic reasons not to mobilize. A mobilization in May or June would have meant taking away “millions of working hands” as well as trucks, tractors, and draft animals on “the eve of sowing.” In this situation, “a repeat of the terrible famine of 1932 would have been quite likely.” This astonishing statement simultaneously represents the “Soviet leadership” as sober and responsible caretakers of the Russian people for their inaction to a foreign threat and obfuscates Stalin’s culpability in creating the 1932 famine during the brutal collectivization campaign. The exhibit is extremely vague about Stalin’s decision-making powers and goes out of its way to excuse the mistakes of the Soviet leadership, only discussing “the Cult of Personality,” and Stalin wrongfully claiming all the credit for the victory in the Second World War, as negative developments in the postwar “Russia – My History, 1945–2016” exhibit. The narration about the immediate prewar years is in dialogue with decades of criticism of Stalin’s handling of the outbreak of the war. Yet it does not explain these criticisms or provide the full context for historical events as it rebuts them. It cherry-picks exculpatory evidence and creates a false narrative of competent and conscientious Soviet leadership. Stalin’s actions are not overtly glorified in the exhibit but neither is he held responsible for his disastrous mistakes. This rewriting of history to whitewash Soviet mistakes in the immediate prewar period is clearly tied to the elevation of “the Great Victory” as a unifying moment in contemporary politics. This determination to represent an exclusively glorious war, demonstrated here in exhibits that fail to come to grips with the reality of Soviet actions between 1939 and 1941, has been carried to even greater extremes. A Russian blogger was fined 200,000 rubles and ended up fleeing the country because he posted an article on VKontakte (the Russian version of Facebook) that claimed that “Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had collaborated on the attack on Poland in September 1939 and thereby unleashed the Second World War.”23

From allies to enemies The authors of the “Great Victory” section of the “Russia – My History” exhibit framed the section around comparisons of the Allied and Axis war efforts; they sought to demonstrate the superiority of the Soviet war effort over the German and also over the American effort. A not-too-subtle example is the inclusion of a banner with a quote from Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “It’s hard to walk away from the obvious fact that the Russian army destroyed more enemy soldiers and weapons than those taken by all the other twenty-five Allied governments.”24 A key element reflected here is not just Soviet prowess but also Western recognition of Soviet superiority in fighting the Germans.

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Both the 1914–1945 and the 1945–2016 exhibits include summary charts indicating the goals, manpower, weaponry, and results of the war for the major combatant countries. In the “Great Victory” exhibit, the statistics demonstrate that the Soviet mobilization for war was, overall, far more intensive than the American effort: the Americans mobilized 16,000,000 soldiers while the Soviets fielded more than twice that number, 34,000,000 soldiers. The charts show that Soviet industry outproduced the Americans in tanks and artillery, though not in airplanes. The Americans fielded 99,000 tanks, 100,000 artillery pieces, and 192,000 airplanes. The Soviet chart carefully distinguishes between Soviet-made weaponry and weapons delivered by the Allies through the Lend-Lease program. The Soviets had 125,000 tanks, including 12,537 sent by the Allies, 350,000 artillery pieces, and 130,000 airplanes, including 17,000 sent by the Allies. This careful delineation acknowledges the Soviet debt to the Allies while simultaneously demonstrating the powerful industrial might of the wartime Soviet Union, which produced three times more artillery pieces than the Americans and 13,000 more tanks. The “results” charts show the stark differences between American and Soviet losses. The Soviets had “irrevocable losses” of 11,400,000 servicemen and women; 18,000,000 wounded; 9,700,000 prisoners of war and forced laborers; and 15,200,000 civilian victims. The Americans, meanwhile, suffered 410,000 dead; 650,000 wounded; and 140,000 missing and/or prisoners of war.25 The enormous loss of life in the Soviet Union is truly staggering compared to the American loss of life, and the exhibit displays these raw facts as a way of casting doubt on the overall contribution of the United States to defeating the Nazis. The “Great Victory” exhibit also implicitly criticizes the Soviet Union’s allies for failing to shoulder their share of the burden of war. Prominent in the exhibit is a banner with a picture of the famous Soviet sniper Liudmila Pavlichenko and a quote from her famous 1942 speech to a US audience in Chicago, Illinois: “Dzhentl’meny! I am twenty-five years old. At the front, I have already succeeded in destroying 309 fascist invaders. Don’t you think, dzhentl’meny, that you’ve been hiding behind my back for too long?” Pavlichenko addressed her audience as “gentlemen,” and this English word is transliterated in her quote, creating an ironic juxtaposition between effete American men and the bold Russian woman sniper who protected them with her own body. Her visit to the US underscored the urgency of the Allies opening up a second front. This banner depicting her in the “Great Victory” exhibit reminds visitors that all Soviet citizens, both men and women, were battling Nazi invaders while American men stood on the sidelines of the European war. In the portion of “Russia – My History” that explores the years from 1945– 2016, mistrust of the West is а prevalent theme. Over and over again, the exhibit documents Western willingness to attack the Soviet Union and even to annihilate it in the nuclear age. A quote from Stalin sets the tone, asserting that Churchill and the USA are giving an ultimatum to non-English speaking nations: “Accept our domination willingly and everything will be in order. Otherwise, war is inevitable.” Stalin is confident that the nations that defeated Hitler, “will not agree to enter a new slavery.” Hence, Stalin implies, war with the West is inevitable.

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The exhibit documents the willingness of the former Western allies to obliterate the men, women, and children of the Soviet Union through descriptions of American and British military planning in the late 1940s and 1950s. It especially emphasizes American war plans that call for nuclear attacks. A banner early in the exhibit displays a quote from a 1949 American Joint Intelligence Committee Report: “From the point of view of our national interests, atomic weapons stand above all, for the benefits of immediate use in a war with the USSR.” Four different plans to attack the Soviet Union are featured in the exhibit: Unthinkable (conventional warfare) and three nuclear plans: Totality, Dropshot, and the Strategic Air Command Plan. Unthinkable was a 1945 joint British and American plan to solve “the Polish question” through conventional warfare against the USSR. In 1946, Totality was to bomb 21 Soviet cities with 600 nuclear weapons. In 1949, Dropshot estimated 60,000,000 Soviet casualties in the first stage of nuclear bombing. The SAC plan of 1956 aimed for “systematic destruction” of 1,000 Soviet military and civilian targets. The description of each American plan also includes an explanation of the ever-growing ability of the Soviet Union to respond in-kind to American attacks through the creation of its own atomic bombs, airplanes, and missiles. This section of the exhibit uses striking images of nuclear destruction to capture visitors’ attention. There is an image of Uncle Sam clutching the globe and directing all of his allies (Japan, China, Pakistan, Israel, Western Europe, and the USA) to attack the USSR—with a small brown bear representing the innocent Soviet victims of the attacks. Uncle Sam’s finger is pointing directly to Israel, indicating perhaps the artist’s desire to dog-whistle an anti-Semitic message. The exhibit contrasts the American and Soviet understandings of nuclear war through two very different pictures. One is a photograph of a battered woman’s or young girl’s shoe lying in the grass abandoned, representing the civilian toll of any potential nuclear war. Although the other picture is not specifically identified in the exhibit, it is a November 1946 shot of American Admiral William H. P. Blandy and his wife, who is wearing a very frilly hat (see Figure 15.1). They are cutting an “Operation Crossroads” cake fashioned into the shape of a mushroom cloud, in honor of the successful nuclear tests on the Bikini Atoll. These photographs contrast feminine elements—the shoes of Soviet young women murdered by a nuclear blast, and an American woman in a frivolous hat celebrating nuclear destruction with an equally frivolous cake. Through both text and images, the “Russia – My History, 1945–2016” exhibit reminds viewers that although they were once Soviet Allies, the war-mongering British and Americans are now dangerous enemies ready to slaughter Soviet women and children.

Putin and the Great Patriotic War Despite the fact that Vladimir Putin was not yet born during the Second World War, he makes an appearance in the “Great Victory” exhibit in five large photographs of his participation in the “Immortal Regiment (Bessmertnyi Polk)” parade on Red Square on Victory Day, May 9, 2015, the 70th anniversary of the war’s

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Figure 15.1 Admiral William Blandy and his wife cut a mushroom cloud cake, 1946. Source: Photograph by Harris and Ewing Studio (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

end. In 2015, Vladimir Putin marched in the so-called “people’s section” of the Victory Day Parade with a picture of his father, “а common soldier,” who had been severely wounded during the war.26 In each of the images, Putin stands amidst a crowd of marchers, honoring the legacy of his deceased father and symbolically including his father in the festivities on Red Square. The exhibition of these pictures tied “the Great Victory” to Putin’s contemporary rule and also reminded visitors of the “immortal” nature of the victors in the Great Patriotic War who are alive (at least symbolically) in both the past and the present. Several additional pictures of the May 2015 “Immortal Regiment” march, with and without Putin in them, appear throughout the “Great Victory” exhibit, emphasizing the enormous number of marchers and the mass popularity of the event. The march also serves as an important feature of the final exhibit in the museum, “Russia – My History 1945–2016,” that explicitly ties the “Immortal Regiment” to politics in present-day Russia. A picture of Putin at the 2015 “Immortal Regiment” parade appears in the section of the exhibit called “The People’s Historical Memory,” dedicated to Putin’s “restoration of patriotism, sovereignty, and spirituality,” after the crises of the 1990s27 (see Figure 15.2). Another picture shows

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tens of thousands of people marching in a St. Petersburg “Immortal Regiment,” parade, explaining, The memory of the Second World War is a means of uniting the Russian people (narod). There was a high degree of consolidation in society’s rejection of attempts to revise the history and outcomes of the war, de-heroizing the feat (podvig) of the people. . . . The formation in Russian society of genuine historical memory and a return to national values became mass actions, dedicated to the popular memory of the war—“St. George’s Ribbons,” and the “Immortal Regiment.” Here the organizers of the “Russia – My History” exhibit lay out a clear justification for their emphasis on “The Great Victory” in the exhibits dealing with the 20th and 21st centuries. The memory of the war was a lynchpin of government and societal efforts to consolidate national feeling and unite the Russian people. Not only is the Great Patriotic War itself worthy of attention in this national exhibit, but the efforts to use the war as a unifying force for Russian nationalism are also documented as key moments in the exhibit’s narration of Russian

Figure 15.2 “Russia – My History” display of Vladimir Putin holding a picture of his father at the “Immortal Regiment” parade. Source: Photograph by the author.

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history. The memory of the war redeems the nation from its disunity after the fall of the Soviet Union. The remembrance fostered in the “Immortal Regiment” parade forms the basis for the successful and unified conclusion of yet another cycle, in which the disunity of the late Soviet and Yeltsin eras is vanquished by the unity of the Putin era. This unity is not formed by the consolidation of society during an actual war but rather by the consolidation in remembrance of a past war, “the Great Victory.” Mirroring the physical restoration of the Soviet amusement park VDNKh in which the Moscow museum is nestled, the “Russia – My History” exhibit asserts the spiritual restoration of national pride and celebration of national achievements in the Putin era. Notable in the exhibit’s discussion of the Great Patriotic War is a rejection of the attempts of unnamed people to “revise the history and outcomes of the war, de-heroizing the feat (podvig) of the people.” Like most national narratives, this one constructs a clear division between “us” and “them.” In this case, “the other” consists of those who in any way denigrate the efforts of the Russian people in fighting the “Great Patriotic War,” those who acknowledge Soviet mistakes, criticize Soviet actions, or recognize the moral complexities that all people fighting a total war must face. In addition to the TV Rain controversy, there have been other disputes related to the Great Patriotic War such as the 2016 demotion of Sergei Mironenko, the Director of the Russian State Archive. Mironenko was punished for proving that the tale of the 28 “Panfilov Guardsmen,” who supposedly sacrificed themselves to stop the German advance in the Battle of Moscow, was a fake.28 Policing the boundaries between heroization and de-heroization of the war has become an essential aspect of identifying those who truly belong to the national community.

Reception Reception of these exhibits is an important part of understanding their role in contemporary Russian society, though here I will be limiting my discussion to the response of professional historians. Further research into reactions of schoolchildren, university students, and casual visitors to the exhibits is well worth pursuing. As might be imagined from my descriptions of the exhibits, historians in Russia have been highly critical of the master narrative in “Russia – My History.” Historians found significant problems in “Russia – My History’s” displays in general, including false quotations from Western leaders, tendentious historical interpretations, and outright conspiracy theories that minimize the faults of the tsars while blaming revolutionary activity on Western influences.29 Ivan Kurilla, a historian at the European University in St. Petersburg called the overarching narrative of the museum “anti-Western, anti-liberal and statist,” and explained the dilemma of professional historians asked to correct inaccuracies in the exhibit. “This request fueled heated debate among historians: they could fix the falsified quotations, but could not change the narrative of the exhibition, and, thus, their help would only increase the power of the anti-Western and anti-liberal narrative.”30 Kurilla and the other historians clearly recognized the power of such

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a totalizing narrative that draws from familiar Soviet and pre-Soviet myths of national unity, while adding a newly confident layer of Russian Orthodox doctrine. Sergei Ivanov, a historian at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow suggests that the overriding ideas of the exhibition are “monarchism, clericalism, and an all-pervasive conspiracy theory” and complains that “the idea that all Russia’s ills come from the outside or from hostile internal forces will be hammered into schoolchildren’s heads in a centralized fashion.” Adrian Selin, a historian at the Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg sees the key themes of the exhibition as focusing on “Russia as a besieged fortress” and emphasizing the “country’s supposed ‘special path’.” He argues that the museum rejects “all the professional historical knowledge accumulated since the 19th century.” Interestingly, Selin is also highly critical of the regional portion of the St. Petersburg exhibition at the St. Petersburg branch of “Russia – My History” and suggests that the “role of ‘regional components,’ is to ‘tie’ the exhibition to the various localities where it is replicated, but also to amalgamate, and, as it were, endorse the federal history.”31 These interpretations from Russian scholars underscore the ways in which the museum is consciously trying to create a specific kind of national community. As a potential part of a national school and university curriculum, the museums serve, like textbooks, to homogenize and limit the possible interpretations of history across Russian geographic space. Furthermore, the interpretations proffered are not ones based on the work of professional historians; instead, they are simplified popular narratives driven by a specific set of political goals. The variations within each museum with a nod to “the local” are also political devices to attract the inhabitants of each region to the museum and also tie the regions into the political whole. This master narrative of the Russian national project, embraced by the museum and its “clones,” is hotly contested by a significant portion of Russia’s history professionals. In December of 2017, a civic association of historical professionals, “The Free Historical Society” wrote to the Minister of Education Ol’ga Iurievna Vasil’eva to protest the Ministry of Education’s proposal to use the resources of “Russia – My History,” as part of the university-level history curriculum. The Free Historical Society objected to turning the museums from “enterprises of public leisure” to “a teaching aid.”32 The Free Historical Society engaged in a heated public interchange about the inaccuracies of the exhibit with Tikhon (Shevkunov), the Metropolitan of Pskov and Porkhov.33 The Council of the FHS used detailed pictorial evidence from the museum to prove its claims about inaccuracies and attacked the museum for its “rigid monologue” that did not take the “polyphony of history” into account.34 This exchange demonstrates that many professional historians opposed the efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state to employ historical narrative as a nationalizing force. My analysis of the exhibits diverges slightly from that of the Council of the Free Historical Society in that I argue that echoes of dialogues can be heard in the exhibit, but only by those who are familiar with the historical controversies of the past 30, and, in some cases, 60 years. The FHS Council is correct in stating that the “polyphony” of history is not adequately presented to the museum’s

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audience of schoolchildren and university students, who lack the background to probe the weak spots of the exhibit. The exhibits are not open to questioning and individual inquiry by viewers but rather seek to provide all of the answers. What conclusions can we draw about the role of “Russia – My History” and its nature as a museum? The first is that this museum is clearly a national project, whose identical exhibits in numerous cities across Russia are meant to create a unified Russian national narrative across the vast expanse of Russia, a narrative that is tied specifically to educational goals and devoted to building an “imagined community.” Even the ostensibly “local” portions of the museum both echo the larger narratives and serve to create a relationship between specific localities and the nation, tying local to national patriotism. This national narrative is based in part on long-standing 19th- and 20th-century ahistorical national myths, especially about war, and it restores the Russian Orthodox elements that had been prominent in the 19th century but largely absent from Soviet-era narratives. Many professional historians within Russia object to “Russia – My History’s” failure to conform to expert knowledge, and its tendencies to reinforce national and political ideals in a monologic way. In the meanwhile, “Russia – My History” Museums have become leisure destinations, attracting students and teachers on class trips, and the public at large, with their multimedia technology and attractive locations. Their geographic placement within their cities reinforces a variety of messages ranging from celebrating national achievements, as in Moscow’s All Russian Exhibition Center, the former VDNKh, to commemorating the “Great Patriotic War” in “victory parks” as in Piatigorsk or St. Petersburg. The museums situate this national narrative within local landscapes of national belonging that activate national feelings through association with pleasure, leisure, pride, achievement, commemoration, and other emotional registers. Because of the layering of meanings both inside and outside of the exhibition halls, these new museums have the potential to be a formidable weapon in the arsenal of creating contemporary Russian national identity.

Notes 1 “V Piatigorske otkrylsia krupneishei v strane park;” On 26 December 2020, a 23rd branch opened in Vladivostok: “ ‘Rossiia Moia Istoriia otkryvaet 23-i istoricheskii park.” 2 “Park Pobedy u Novopiatigorskogo ozera.” 3 Klimenko, “Building the Nation,” 2; Sotnikov, “Arkhipelag Shevkunova.” 4 Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 137–38. “Park Pobedy v Sankt Peterburge.” 5 Khazov-Cassia and Coalson, “Russian ‘History Parks.’ ” 6 Anderson, Imagined Communities. 7 Araujo et. al., “Museums, History, and the Public,” especially contributions by Denise Ho and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. 8 See Winter, Remembering War, 3–4; Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History,” 1391. 9 Brandenberger, National Bolshevism. 10 “The Rurikids.”

358 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

Karen Petrone

Carleton, Russia: The Story of War. “Presentatsiia o resursakh istoricheskii park.” Klimenko, “Building the Nation,” 1, 7, 10. Kolstø, “Dmitrii Medvedev’s Commission,” 754. See also Koposov, Memory Laws, Memory Wars, especially Chapter 6. Englund, “Russian TV channel takes flak.” Kolstø, “Dmitrii Medvedev’s Commission,” 757. “Russia – My History,” Main Lobby. “From the Great Shocks to the Great Victory.” Kirschenbaum, The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 3. The number of the civilian dead is estimated at 900,000. (Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, 1). All quotes in this section are from “From the Great Shocks to the Great Victory.” For a discussion of controversies surrounding the Blockade, see Bidlack and Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, 4–8. In some of the branches of “Russia – My History” it is possible to order excursions, and the docents’ additional narration might clarify or complicate the museum’s visual and written narrative. Kolstø, “Dmitrii Medvedev’s Commission,” 758. Howard, History of the Second World War, Volume 4, xvii. Roosevelt said these words to his Chiefs of Staff on 6 May 1942. The researcher accidentally failed to photograph the bottom line of the American chart. The estimated number of American civilian deaths is 12,000. “Russia: Putin Talks of His Father.” “Russia – My History 1945–2016.” Hobson, “Battle in the Archives.” Kurilla et al., “History as an Ideological Tool.” Ibid. Ibid. “Obrashchenie Vol’nogo istoricheskogo obshchestva.” “ ‘Bez panegirikov tsariam.’ ” “Eshche raz o mul’timediinykh parkakh.”

Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised ed. New York: Verso, 2016. Araujo, Ana Lucia, Alice L. Conklin, Steven Conn, Denise Y. Ho, Barbara KirshenblattGimblett, and Samuel J. Redman. “AHR Conversation: Museums, History, and the Public in a Global Age.” American Historical Review 124, no. 5 (December 2019): 1631–72. doi:10.1093/ahr/rhz1189. “ ‘Bez panegirikov tsariam’ proekt ‘Rossiia—moia istoriia’ zashchitili ot kritikov.” ria.ru, RIA Novosti, December 13, 2017. https://ria.ru/20171213/1510875369.html. Bidlack, Richard, and Nikita Lomagin. The Leningrad Blockade, 1941–1944: A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Brandenberger, David. National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Carleton, Gregory. Russia: The Story of War. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2017. Confino, Alon. “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method.” American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (December 1997): 1386–403. doi:10.2307/2171069.

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Englund, Will. “Russian TV Channel Takes Flak Just for Asking: Should Leningrad Have Surrendered?” Washington Post, January 30, 2014. www.washingtonpost.com/world/ europe/russian-tv-channel-takes-flak-just-for-asking-should-leningrad-have-surren dered/2014/01/30/c1455812-89c0-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_story.html. “Eshche raz o mul’timediinykh parkakh ‘Rossiia—moia istoriia’.” volistob.ru, Vol’nogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, December 22, 2017. https://volistob.ru/statements/ eshche-raz-o-multimediynyh-parkah-rossiya-moya-istoriya. “From the Great Shocks to the Great Victory, 1914–1945.” Russia – My History. St. Petersburg, August 8, 2018. Hobson, Peter. “Battle in the Archives—Uncovering Russia’s Secret Past.” The Moscow Times, March 24, 2016. www.themoscowtimes.com/2016/03/24/battle-in-the-archivesuncovering-russias-secret-past-a52254. Howard, Michael. History of the Second World War, Volume 4: Aug 1942–Sept. 1943. London: H.M. Stationary Office, 1970. Khazov-Cassia, Sergei, and Robert Coalson. “Russian ‘History Parks’ Present KremlinFriendly Take on the Past.” rferl.org, RFE-RL, October 13, 2019. www.rferl.org/a/russian-orthodox-church-gazprom-history-parks/30214143. html#:~:text=The%20first%20permanent%20Russia%20%2D%2D,their%20doors%20 across%20the%20country. Kirschenbaum, Lisa A. The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Klimenko, Ekaterina V. “Building the Nation, Legitmizing the State: Russia – My History and Memory of the Russian Revolutions in Contemporary Russia.” Nationality Papers, no. 1 (February 2020): 1–17. doi:10.1017/nps.2019.105. Kolstø, Pål. “Dmitrii Medvedev’s Commission Against the Falsification of History: Why Was It Created and What Did It Achieve? A Reassessment.” The Slavonic and East European Review, 97, no. 4 (October 2019): 738–60. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5699/ slaveasteurorev2.97.4.0738. Koposov, Nikolai. Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Kurilla, Ivan, Sergey Ivanov, and Adrian Selin. “ ‘Russia, My History’: History as an Ideological Tool.” PONARS Eurasia, August 5, 2018. https://www.ponarseurasia.org/ point-counter/russia-my-history-as-ideological-tool. “Obrashchenie Vol’nogo istoricheskogo obshchestva k ministru obrazovaniia i nauki Rossiiskoi Federatsii O. Iu. Vasil’evoi.” volistob.ru, Vol’nogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, December 7, 2017. https://volistob.ru/vio-news/obrashchenie-volnogo-istoricheskogoobshchestva-k-ministru-obrazovaniya-i-nauki-rossiyskoy. “Park Pobedy u Novopiatigorskogo ozera obretaet vernuiu smyslovuiu nagruzku i dostoinyi oblik.” pyatigorsk.org, Gorod-Kurort Piatigorsk, April 1, 2018. https://pyatig orsk.org/13977. “Park Pobedy v Sankt Peterburge.” tonkosti.ru, Tonkosti turisma. Accessed January 10, 2021. https://tonkosti.ru/Парк_Победы_в_Санкт-Петербурге. “Presentatsiia o resursakh istoricheskii park.” myhistorypark.ru, “Rossiia—Moia Istoriia”. Accessed January 25, 2021. https://yadi.sk/d/RowqvH1BsxPuhg/%D0%A1%D0%B0% D0%BD %D0%BA%D1%82%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B5%D1%80%D0% B1%D1%83%D1%80%D0%B3. “ ‘Rossiia Moia Istoriia otkryvaet 23-i istoricheskii park v strane.” myhistorypark. ru, “Rossiia—Moia Istoriia”. December 24, 2020. https://myhistorypark.ru/news/ rossiya-moya-istoriya-otkryvaet-23-y-istoricheskiy-park-v-strane/.

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Index

Note: Page numbers in italic indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. Page numbers followed by “n” indicate a note. Abdykalykov, M. A. 25 Accursed and the Slain, The 143 – 144 Afisha 302 Aleksandrov, Nikolai 70 Alexievich, Svetlana 133, 301, 309 Allies, the 8, 23, 76, 90, 156 – 159, 161, 164, 166 – 169, 350 – 352; see also Grand Alliance Almaty 86; Panfilov Guardsmen monument 107, 115 – 116, 116 Amerika 157 analogies see historical analogies Anna’s War 305 anti-Hitler coalition 54, 222, 239, 284; monument to 213 appropriation 46 – 49, 57 Arctic convoys 159, 210, 212, 222 – 223 Argumenty i fakty 214 Astaf’ev, Viktor 134, 141 – 144, 152n56 – 57 Babi Yar 90, 277 – 278 Babi Yar 323, 328 Ballad of a Soldier 122 Battalion 302 – 303 Battle for Sevastopol 183, 301 – 303, 318 – 325, 328, 333 – 334, 335n4 Battle of Berlin 91, 111 Battle of Kulikovo Field 31 Battle of Kursk 90, 166, 249, 255 – 256, 345 – 346 Battle of Moscow 43 – 45, 89, 114, 166, 355 Battle of Stalingrad 54 – 56, 90, 218, 249, 255, 345 – 346 Battle of Stalingrad memorial 107, 110 – 114, 112 – 113, 118

Battle of the Dnieper memorial 114 – 115, 114, 118, 122 BBC 20 Beanpole 308 – 312 Bednyi, Dem’ian 19 Belarus: and the celebration of World War II 253, 256; and fiction 144 – 149; and parades 235, 241 – 242; and Victory Day 64, 67, 70 – 72; and war films 301, 332 Bergson, Henri 4 Beria, Lavrentii 45, 56, 161, 236 Berkhoff, Karel 22 Berlin 53, 76, 91, 97, 111, 230 – 238, 281 – 283 Bird of Passage 144 Blandy, William (Admiral) 352, 353 Blokada Leningrada 255 boarding school 258 – 260 Bolshevik 28 Boltin, Evgenii 50, 53 Bredov, Anatolii (monument) 203 Brest Fortress 303 Brezhnev, Leonid 1, 3, 11, 31; and fiction 140; and the Great Patriotic War 97 – 101; and Lend-Lease 159; and representations of gender 109 – 110, 122 – 123; and Sevastopol 181, 188 – 189, 191, 195; and Stalin 56; and Victory Day 64, 67, 69, 74 – 78; and war films 300, 332 Brintlinger, Angela xi, 8, 11 Britain see Great Britain Britanskii Soiuznik 157 Brunstedt, Jonathan xi, 6 Budapest 76 Burdzhalov, E. N. 24

362 Index Burnt By the Sun 2: Citadel 312 Bykau, Vasil’ 133 – 135, 143 – 149, 152n64 campaigning 252 – 254 Caucasus 21 cemeteries 65, 72, 98, 143, 218; Miasnoi Bor 209 – 210, 210 Central Asia 21 Central Committee 25 – 26, 33, 41, 49, 71, 74 – 75, 77 Chas shakalov (The Hour of the Jackals) 145 Chechens 27, 66, 148, 252; Chechen war 216, 257 Cheerful Soldier, The 144 Chernetskii, Semen Aleksandrovich 235 Chicago Tribune 277 cinematic tradition, Soviet 322 – 323 Civil War 21, 44, 78, 190, 234, 344 coins: bearing Stalin’s portrait 254; celebrating the Arctic Convoys 159; commemorating June 24th parade 235 Cold War 76 – 78, 111, 123, 160 – 162, 211, 218, 233 collective memory 4 – 6, 134 – 136, 139 – 141 Column of Military Glory 208, 209 Commander of Genius of the Great Patriotic War, A 48 commemoration 97 – 100; see also commemorative practices; war commemoration commemorative practices 69 – 74 Commissar 323 Commission on the History of the Great Patriotic War 26 Communist Party 1 – 2, 17 – 18, 33, 65, 73 – 74, 97, 113 community building 219 – 223 conservatism 216 – 219 COVID-19 181, 194, 240 – 243 Crimea 2, 180 – 184, 186 – 196, 203, 206, 224; and the celebration of World War II 260 – 263; and Holocaust discourse 286; and war films 301 – 302, 318, 323 Crimean War 180 – 184, 186 – 192, 194 – 195, 260 – 261 Czechoslovakia 65, 70, 239, 262, 289, 348 – 349 Davis, Vicky 5 Davydov, Denis 24 Dawns are Quiet Here, The 109, 303, 318, 320 – 321, 327, 332, 334

Dead Don’t Feel Pain, The 145 – 146 Death of Stalin, The 306, 308 Deborin, Grigorii 49 Defenders of the Soviet Arctic, monument to 212 Defense of Sevastopol, The 321 Derzhavin, Nikolai 27 Dnepropetrovsk 74 – 75 Dobrenko, Evgeny 57, 334 Dolgaia doroga domoi (The Long Way Home) 145 Donskoi, Dmitrii 19 Dreaming of Space 222 – 223 Druzhba narodov 140 – 141 Dubosekovo: Panfilov Guardsmen monument 107, 115, 115 Dubrovskii, Aleksandr 24 Durkheim, Emile 4 Eastern Front 48, 170, 208, 284 – 285, 328 Edele, Mark 73, 78 Edge, The 312 Efimov, Aleksei 27 Ehrenburg, Ilya 19, 42 elementary schools 92 – 97 Emel’ianov, A. 53 enemies 350 – 352 Enemy at the Gates 301 Estonia 2, 72, 282 – 283, 285, 288 – 289 Eternal Flame 73, 96 – 98, 120, 184, 190 – 191, 194 – 195, 242 Evening Moscow 308 exceptionalism, Russian 156 – 163; in flux 163 – 170 Falsificators of History 158 Fate of a Man 133 father figure, Putin as 258 – 260 female fertility 121 – 124 fertility 121 – 124 fiction 133 – 134, 149 – 150; Bulat Okudzhava 136 – 141; Soviet images and collective memory of war 134 – 136; Vasil’ Bykau 144 – 149; Viktor Astaf’ev 141 – 144 films see war films Finland 54 – 55, 164, 348 First Person 255 First World War 23, 120 – 121, 198n59, 231, 349 Five-Year Plans 21 – 22, 51 Fokin, N. 51, 55 Fontanka 311

Index foreign ministry (Russia) 281 – 286 foreign policy 290 – 291; and the Holocaust as a non-subject 276 – 278; and Israel 278 – 281; and Russian foreign ministry’s use of the Holocaust 281 – 286; and the war in Ukraine 286 – 290 France 23, 28, 31, 155, 190; and the celebration of World War II 257 – 259; and Holocaust discourse 277, 287; and parades 231, 238 – 239; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 348 – 349; and Victory Day 65 – 66; and war films 305, 312 Freud, Sigmund 4, 324 Front, The 44 Gabowitsch, Mischa xi, 7 Gallagher, Matthew 48 – 49 Gefter, M. Ia. 42 gender 107, 318, 320; male authority and female fertility 121 – 124; memorials and meaning 124 – 126; war monuments and masculinity 110 – 121; women’s military service and its postwar erasure 107 – 110 General Staff 45, 52 Golubev, Konstantin 43 Gorbachev, Mikhail 1, 92, 126, 195, 211, 252 Grand Alliance 47, 156, 160; monument to 162 Grande Armée 18 Great Britain 156 – 159, 164 – 165, 168 – 169, 221 – 222, 234, 239, 290 Great Patriotic War 86 – 87, 100 – 101, 318 – 320, 340 – 342, 350 – 352, 355 – 357; and attention to Jewish losses 328 – 333; Battle for Sevastopol 320 – 321; The Dawns are Quiet Here 321; in elementary school 92 – 97; and Jewish representation 322 – 328; Leningrad Blockade 345 – 348; and Putin 352 – 355; “Russia – My History” and its narratives 342 – 345; and school activities 97 – 100; and Stalin 348 – 350; in 10th-grade history textbooks 87 – 92; truth and nostalgia 333 – 335; The Young Guard 321 – 322 Grekov, Boris 26 Grossman, Vasily 17, 32, 256, 332 Halbwachs, Maurice 4, 135 Harris, Adrienne M. xi – xii, 10

363

hero cities 67, 96 – 98, 195 Heroes of the Soviet Union 322; memorial to 191, 220 historical analogies 2, 22, 25, 278 – 281 history 41 – 42, 56 – 57; appropriating the history of the war 46 – 49; and Khrushchev’s Thaw 49 – 56; situating Stalin in the war 42 – 45 History of the Fatherland 88 History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 87 History of the Kazakh SSR 25 – 26 History of the Second World War 1939 – 1945 56 History of the USSR 87 – 88 history textbooks 87 – 92 Hitler, Adolf 22 – 24, 209; and the celebration of World War II 260, 262 – 263; and the Great Patriotic War 89, 91, 94; and Holocaust discourse 277 – 279, 281, 290; and Lend-Lease 164, 168; and parades 239; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 345, 348 – 349, 351; and Stalin 50, 54 Hoffmann, David L. xii Holiday, The 308, 310 – 311 Holocaust 9 – 11, 121, 323 – 324, 328 – 330, 332 Holocaust discourse 290 – 291; Holocaust as a non-subject 276 – 278; and Israel 278 – 281; patriotic 304 – 305; Russian foreign ministry’s use of 281 – 286; and the war in Ukraine 286 – 290 Hour of the Jackals, The 145, 147 – 149 Iakovlev, Aleksei 26 I Am Twenty 135 – 136 ideological polarization 216 – 219 Imagined Communities 342 immortalization 308 – 312 Immortal Regiment 3, 13, 57, 221, 224, 238 – 239, 309; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 352 – 355, 354; and Sevastopol 193 – 195 individual memory 4 – 6 instrumentalization 238 – 240 In that Distant Forty Five 333 – 334 In the Fog 145 – 147 Iskusstvo kino 221, 300, 304 Israel 75 – 76, 262, 276 – 281, 284, 286 – 288, 290, 292n13, 352 Isserson, Georgii 54

364 Index Istrebiteli 163 Izvestiia 29, 310 Japan 65 – 66, 91, 165, 348, 352 Jews 278 – 281, 318 – 320; attention to Jewish losses 328 – 333; representation of 322 – 328 jubilees 21 – 22, 97, 229, 231 – 232, 237 – 238 “Katyusha” 139 Kazakhs 25, 115, 277 Kazakhstan 72, 240, 242; see also Almaty Kharkiv 65 Khmelevskii, V. A. 29 Khrushchev, Nikita 1; and the Great Patriotic War 88 – 89, 97; and LendLease 159, 167; and representations of gender 110 – 111, 122 – 124; Secret Speech 6, 188, 191, 345; and Sevastopol 188 – 189, 195; and Stalin 41, 46; Thaw 11, 49 – 56, 88; and Victory Day 64, 67 – 68, 70 – 71, 73 – 75, 77 Kiev 65, 89 – 90, 97, 260 – 261, 277, 286; see also Kyiv Kirill (Patriarch) 3, 256 Kiriushkin 29 Kirsanov, S. 23 – 24 Kirschenbaum, Lisa 5, 120, 125, 308 Komanda 322 Komsomol 73, 90, 93, 98, 209, 325; commemorative rally 31 Komsomol’skaia metro station 30 – 31 Komsomol’skaia pravda 214, 217 – 218 Konkka, Olga xii, 7, 159 Korneichuk, Aleksandr 44 Kornblium 28 – 29 Kosmodem’ianskaia, Zoia 7, 89, 109, 124, 182 Krasnaia zvezda 41, 49 – 50 Krasnyi Chernomorets 182 – 183 Kubinka 3 Kucherenko, Olga xii, 8, 10, 12 Kukryniksy 21 Kulish, V. 32 Kutuzov, Mikhail 19, 24, 29, 31, 81n46, 253 Kyiv 67, 70, 73 – 75, 78, 114, 208, 334 Kyrgyzstan 115, 240, 242 Last Confession, The 322 Last Witnesses 133 Latvia 2, 72, 281 – 282, 284 – 285, 288 – 289, 327

Lavrov, Sergei 282 – 284, 286 – 287, 289 Lecture Bureau 30 Lend-Lease 155 – 156, 170 – 171; constructing the exceptionalist narrative 156 – 163; exceptionalism in flux 163 – 170 Lenin, Vladimir 19 – 21, 24, 31; and parades 232 – 233; and Sevastopol 186, 190, 192; and Stalin 48 – 49, 56 – 57 Leningrad 21, 66, 98 – 99, 124 – 125, 255, 260, 341 Leningrad Affair 66 – 67 Leningrad Blockade 250, 345 – 348; see also Siege of Leningrad Lenin Library 111 Lenin Mausoleum 19, 233, 243 Leonov, Leonid 19 Leshchinskii, Lev 53 – 54 Leviathan 311 liberation days 68 – 69, 72 lieux de mémoire (sites of memory) 5, 86, 232, 319 Life and Fate 17, 32 Lion and the Kitten, The 23 Literaturnaia gazeta 277 Lithuania 2, 267, 276, 285 – 286, 289 Litvinov, Maxim 54 local community 219 – 223 local media 202 – 203, 223 – 224; landscapes of 214 – 216; and local community building 219 – 223; local memory cultures transformed 207 – 214; and memory 203 – 205; and pluralism and conservatism 216 – 219; uses of World War II memory in the Russian regions 205 – 207 local memory 214 – 216 local memory cultures 207 – 214 Long Road Home, The 145 Loveless 311 Lukashenko, Alexander 145, 241 Lukashevich, Alexander 288 L’viv 67 Machine-Gunner Khanpasha 27 Main Cathedral of the Russian Armed Forces 3, 249, 261 Making Sense of the War 323 Malenkov, Georgii 45 male authority 121 – 124 Malinovskii, Marshal 76 – 77 Maloiaroslavets operation 43 Mamaev Kurgan 73, 111, 253

Index Mann, Yan xii, 6, 10 marches 230 – 231, 238, 329; through Velikii Novgorod 206; see also Immortal Regiment; parades Marxism-Leninism 6, 19, 26, 28, 42, 50 masculinity 110 – 121 master narratives: in elementary school 92 – 97; in 10th-grade history textbooks 87 – 92 May Day 41, 69 May Ninth 31 media 203 – 205; see also local media Medinskii, Vladimir 102n21, 127n29, 221, 299 – 300, 302, 306 – 308, 310 – 312 Meduza 306 Medvedev, Dmitry 254, 257, 300, 306, 345 memorialization 122 – 125, 257, 267n86, 280; see also war memorialization memorials: and meaning 124 – 126; see also war memorials; and specific memorials memory 155 – 156, 170 – 171, 340 – 342, 350 – 352, 355 – 357; constructing the exceptionalist narrative 156 – 163; control of 46 – 49; exceptionalism in flux 163 – 170; Leningrad Blockade 345 – 348; and media 203 – 205; persistence of 192 – 195; and Putin 352 – 355; “Russia – My History” and its narratives 342 – 345; and Stalin 348 – 350; uses in the Russian regions 205 – 207; see also collective memory; individual memory; local memory; memory cultures; memory politics; performing memory; remembering; war memory memory cultures 207 – 214, 229 – 230, 242 – 243; Moscow’s parades 232 – 233; parades as an object of research 230 – 232; parades in the time of Corona 240 – 242; Putin’s instrumentalization of the victory 238 – 240; Soviet-era parades 233 – 235; the Victory Parade 235 – 238 Memory Lessons 252, 259 memory politics 299 – 300; immortalizing the siege 308 – 312; scripting a patriotic Holocaust 304 – 305; supervising patriotic tanks 306 – 308; women warriors defend the motherland 301 – 303 Merridale, Catherine 4 Meshcheriakov, Mikhail 46

365

Miasnoi Bor 218, 223; memorial cemetery 209 – 210, 210 Mikhalkov, Nikita 306, 308, 312 Mikhalkov, Sergei 94 milieux de mémoire 5 military service 107 – 110 military uniforms 257 – 258 Minin, Kuz’ma 19 Minsk 43, 54, 241, 321, 327, 332 Mints, Isaak 26 – 27 Molotov, Viacheslav 22 – 23, 42, 45, 54, 56 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact 2, 50 – 51, 217, 251, 283, 285, 248 Mongolia 242 Mongols 24, 28, 344 Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad 107, 117 – 120, 117 – 120 monuments see war monuments; and specific monuments Moscow 1 – 3, 19 – 20, 23 – 25, 28 – 30; and Holocaust discourse 277, 279 – 280, 282 – 291; and Lend-Lease 156 – 157, 162 – 166; and parades 232 – 238, 241 – 243; and representations of gender 114 – 116; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 345 – 349, 355 – 357; and Sevastopol 184 – 185; and Stalin 41 – 45; and Victory Day 64 – 65, 67 – 68, 70 – 71, 73 – 76; and war films 299 – 302, 305 – 308, 332 – 334 Moscow Committee 44 Moscow Counteroffensive 44, 48, 52 Mosfilm 23, 260 Motherland Calls, The (statue) 111 – 112, 112 Murmansk 207 – 214; Anatolii Bredov, monument to 203; Countries of the Anti-Hitler Coalition, monument to 213; Defenders of the Soviet Arctic, monument to 212; Murmansk harbor workers, memorial to 211 Murmansk harbor workers, memorial to 211 Murmanskii vestnik 214 – 215, 221 – 222 mushroom cloud cake 353 myth: of the war 5, 11, 100, 202, 205, 223, 250, 261 – 262; of abolished Victory Day 64 – 69; of the heroic soldier 144, 149; of Soviet Sevastopol 184; of the Young Guard 321, 331 – 332; see also Valaam Myth Nabutov, Kirill 255 Nálepka, Ján 70

366

Index

Napoleon 18, 22 – 23, 29, 209, 242, 344 Napoleonic wars 231 narratives 135, 143 – 144, 163, 181, 202 – 204, 207, 217, 311, 318 – 319, 323 – 324, 342 – 345; see also master narratives Na strazhe Zapoliar’ia 215 National Bolshevism 343 National Interest, The 262 NATO 2, 148, 238, 278, 281, 289 Nazi airstrikes, memorial to victims of 211 Nazi Germany 1 – 2, 47, 138, 158, 206, 262; and Holocaust discourse 277 – 280, 283, 286, 289 – 290; and parades 229, 233 – 235, 239, 243; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 348, 350; and Victory Day 75 – 76; and war films 318 Nepovtorimoe (Not to be Repeated) 236 Nevskii, Aleksandr 19, 24, 29, 343 New York Times 302 Nezavisimaia gazeta 311 Nicholas II 2, 225n27, 265n27 1941 jubilee 21 Nora, Pierre 5 – 6, 86, 312 Norris, Stephen M. xii, 10, 12, 319 nostalgia 333 – 335 Novaia Novgorodskaia gazeta (NNG) 214 – 215, 219 – 221 Novaia gazeta 303 Novgorod see Velikii Novgorod Novgorodskie vedomosti 214, 217 Novgorodskii Komsomolets 209 Novorossiisk 73, 191 Nuradilov, Khanpasha 27 October Revolution 1, 20 – 22, 28, 32, 42, 78, 234 October Revolution Day 72 Okudzhava, Bulat 134, 136 – 141, 149 On Media Memory 203 – 204 On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 55 Oskotskii, V. 32 Panfilov Guardsmen 44 – 45, 89 – 90, 95 – 97, 182, 219, 221, 355; monuments 107, 114 – 116, 115 – 116, 125, 127n28; movie 306 Pankratova, Anna 25 – 27, 86 – 88 pan-Slavism 18 Parade, The 229 parades 229 – 230, 242 – 243, 257 – 258; of Moscow 232 – 233; as an object

of research 230 – 232; and Putin’s instrumentalization of the victory 238 – 240; of the Soviet era 233 – 235; in the time of Corona 240 – 242; the Victory Parade 235 – 238; see also specific parades Paradise 305, 312 Parad Pobedy 234 Parker, Ralph 20 Patriot 216, 219 Patriotic War of 1812 18, 23, 27 patriotism: counteracting 308 – 312; scripting a patriotic Holocaust 304 – 305; supervising patriotic tanks 306 – 308; women warriors defend the motherland 301 – 303 Patriotism of Despair 250 Pavlichenko, Liudmila 108, 183, 301 – 302, 320 – 321, 323, 325 – 328, 351 Pavlov, Dmitrii 43, 54 People’s Commissar of Defense 52 – 54 Peregon 163 perestroika 66, 88, 92, 133, 136, 204, 211 – 213 performing memory 249 – 252, 260 – 263; the early war presidency and campaigning without campaigning 252 – 254; parades and military uniforms 257 – 258; personalizing connection to World War II 254 – 256; Putin as father figure 258 – 260; sanctifying Putin’s connection to World War II 256 – 257 persistence of memory 192 – 195 personalization 254 – 256 Pervyi kanal 318, 320 Peter the Great 24, 242, 251, 343 Petrone, Karen xiii, 10, 12 Pietà 113 Piskaryovskoye Cemetery 124, 260 pluralism 216 – 219 Poland 2, 65; and the celebration of World War II 249, 256, 262 – 263; and fiction 144 – 145; and Holocaust discourse 279, 285 – 287, 289; and parades 234, 237, 239 – 240; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 348 – 350, 352; and war films 319, 333 polarization 216 – 219 Politburo 45, 111 politicization 180 – 181, 195 – 196; and examples for posterity 181 – 184; persistence of memory and the return of Russia 192 – 195; and postwar rebuilding

Index 184 – 187; and travel guidebooks 187 – 191 politics of commemoration 1 – 4; individual memory and collective remembrance 4 – 6 Popov, Aleksei 80n20 Popov, Georgii 30 Popov, Grigorii 165 – 166 Popov, Sergei 335n2 Pörzgen, Yvonne xiii, 9 Pospelov, Petr 29, 50 posterity 181 – 184 Pozharskii, Dmitrii 19 Pravda (newspaper) 22, 28 – 30, 90, 158; and Holocaust discourse 276 – 278; and Stalin 41 – 44, 47, 50; and Victory Day 76 – 77 presidency 252 – 254 public opinion 75 – 76, 161, 207, 217, 224, 282 Putin, Vladimir 1 – 3, 5, 11 – 12, 57, 160 – 161, 163, 180, 193 – 195, 205, 238 – 240, 249 – 252, 260 – 263, 290 – 291, 299 – 300, 352 – 355; display of 354; the early war presidency and campaigning without campaigning 252 – 254; as father figure 258 – 260; and the Holocaust as a non-subject 276 – 278; immortalizing the siege 308 – 312; and Israel 278 – 281; parades and military uniforms 257 – 258; personalizing connection to World War II 254 – 256; and Russian foreign ministry’s use of the Holocaust 281 – 286; sanctifying Putin’s connection to World War II 256 – 257; scripting a patriotic Holocaust 304 – 305; supervising patriotic tanks 306 – 308; and the war in Ukraine 286 – 290; and women warriors defending the motherland 301 – 303 Qualls, Karl D. xiii, 8 Razin (Colonel) 47 rebuilding 184 – 187 reception: of war films 10, 12, 300; of wartime propaganda 24; of war memorials 125; of “Russia – My History” Museum exhibits 355 – 357 Red Army 2, 4, 19 – 25, 28; and the Great Patriotic War 89 – 92, 94 – 95; and Holocaust discourse 279 – 288;

367

and Lend-Lease 156 – 157, 164 – 168; and parades 231 – 232, 235 – 237; and representations of gender 108, 110 – 111, 117, 125; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 346; and Sevastopol 188; and Stalin 41 – 45, 47 – 49, 51 – 55; and Victory Day 67 – 68, 73; and war films 304, 312, 327 – 331, 335 Redozubov, Sergei 95 – 96 Red Pathfinders 98 – 99 regional media 214 – 216, 219 – 223; see also local media religious commemorative practices 69 – 74 remembering 86 – 87, 100 – 101, 318 – 320; attention to Jewish losses 328 – 333; Battle for Sevastopol 320 – 321; The Dawns are Quiet Here 321; in elementary school 92 – 97; and Jewish representation 322 – 328; and school activities 97 – 100; and 10th-grade history textbooks 87 – 92; truth and nostalgia 333 – 335; The Young Guard 321 – 322 Remembrance Days 72 representations 107; Jewish 322 – 324; male authority and female fertility 121 – 124; memorials and meaning 124 – 126; war monuments and masculinity 110 – 121; women’s military service and its postwar erasure 107 – 110 Revolution Day 66, 68 – 69 Road to Berlin 318 Romania 65, 145, 239, 289, 326 Rossiiskaia gazeta 262, 282 – 283, 308 Rozhdenie Pobedy 255 Russia. Kremlin. Putin. 195 – 196 “Russia – My History” Museum 340 – 342; from allies and to enemies 350 – 352; and the heroic Leningrad Blockade 345 – 348; and its narratives 342 – 345; Putin and the Great Patriotic War 352 – 355; reception 355 – 357; and the role of Stalin 348 – 350 Russian Armed Forces 3, 9, 261 Russian Civil War 21 Russian Foreign Ministry 3, 281 – 286, 291 Russian national patriotism 19 Russian Orthodox Church 2 – 3, 71, 81n46, 125; and the celebration of World War II 256, 261; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 340 – 346, 356 – 357; and the Russian North 202, 207 – 208, 221; and Sevastopol 192 – 193

368

Index

Russia: The Story of War 344 Russo-Japanese War 23 sanctification 256 – 257 Saving Leningrad 308 – 310 Saving Private Ryan 302, 308 school activities 97 – 100 schools, elementary 92 – 97 secular commemorative practices 69 – 74 Sevastopol 180 – 181, 195 – 196; and examples for posterity 181 – 184; persistence of memory and the return of Russia 192 – 195; and postwar rebuilding 184 – 187; and travel guidebooks 187 – 191 Sevastopol’: istoricheskie mesta i pamiatniki 188 Sevastopol’skaia gazeta 192 Sevastopol’skaia pravda 192 Severnyi rabochii 222 Shaposhnikov, Boris 45 Shcherbakov, Aleksandr 20, 27 – 28 Shchusev, A. V. 30 Shelest, Petro 74 – 76 Shepherd and Shepherdess 141 – 143 Shoah 277 Shoigu, Sergei 194, 249, 261 – 262 Short Biography of Stalin 50, 96 Siberia 67, 141 – 143, 164 Siege of Leningrad 9, 89, 125, 209, 249; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 346 – 347; and war films 300, 308 – 312 Simonov, Konstantin 19, 42 Slava Sevastopolia 192 Sobibor 304 – 305, 312 Sokolovskii, Vasilii 50, 52 Son of the Regiment 95 Soviet Army Day 68, 72 Soviet-German war 18 Soviet Military Economy in the Great Patriotic War, The 158 Stalin, Joseph 41 – 42, 56 – 57, 348 – 350; appropriating the history of the war 46 – 49; “great ancestors” speech 19 – 20, 24, 30 – 31; and Khrushchev’s Thaw 49 – 56; situating Stalin in the war 42 – 45; and Victory Day 64 – 69 Stalingrad 21, 45, 48, 54, 124, 165 – 166, 186, 202; see also Battle of Stalingrad Stalingrad (film) 261, 303 Stalingrad (novel) 32 Star, The 319 Starinov, Ilia 53

stereotypes: gender 107, 109 – 110, 120 – 121, 126; Jewish 305, 321, 324 – 328 Supreme Command 43 Suvorov, Aleksandr 19, 24, 31, 108, 253 Suvorovets (newspaper) 29 Suvorov Military Boarding School 344 Sverdlovsk 25 Swan Lake 308 Sweden 28, 211, 280 Talenskii, N. 47 Tallinn 67, 283, 288 tanks 306 – 308 Tanks for Stalin 307 Tarle, E. V. 23, 27 TASS 23, 52, 55, 261 teaching 86 – 87, 100 – 101; elementary school 92 – 97; and school activities 97 – 100; and 10th-grade history textbooks 87 – 92 Teaching History in the Context of the Great Patriotic War 86 Tel’pukhovskii, Boris 49 Teutonic Knights 28 textbooks 87 – 92 Timoshenko, Semion 55 Tolstoi, Aleksei 19 Tolstoy, Lev 180 travel guidebooks 187 – 191 Treptower Park 91, 111 True Story for Children, A 94 truth 333 – 335 tsarist era 2, 6, 19 – 28, 229, 234 – 235, 250 – 252, 319 Tula 31, 73 Tumarkin, Nina 1, 101, 321 Two Patriotic Wars, The 23 Two Soldiers 333 Tygodnik Powszechny 237 Ukraine 2, 17, 21, 115; and the celebration of World War II 252, 256, 260 – 261; and fiction 141 – 142, 145; and Holocaust discourse 277, 281, 284 – 291; and parades 237, 240; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 349; and the Russian North 206, 208, 221; and Victory Day 64, 67, 70 – 75; and war films 299, 301 – 302, 307, 318 – 326, 328 – 330, 332 – 335; see also Sevastopol United States 23, 123, 136, 238; and the celebration of World War II 256 – 257,

Index 262; and Holocaust discourse 276 – 278, 282 – 284, 290; and Lend-Lease 156 – 161, 164 – 170; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 350 – 352; and Victory Day 75 – 76; and war films 301 – 302, 308, 320, 328, 333, 336n25 Unwomanly Face of War, The 309 urban biography 187 – 191 USSR see Soviet Union Valaam Myth 66 Vasil’evich, K. V. 24 Vasilevskii, Aleksandr 45, 52 Vechernii Murmansk 214 Velikii Novgorod 202, 206, 207 – 214, 220, 223 – 224; see also Column of Military Glory; Heroes of the Soviet Union; Miasnoi Bor veterans 4, 46, 49, 64, 68, 72 – 73, 78 – 79, 96 – 101, 133 – 134, 149 – 150, 187, 192 – 194, 204 – 205, 212, 218 – 220, 222 – 223, 242, 251 – 255; Bulat Okudzhava 136 – 141; Soviet images and collective memory of war 134 – 136; Vasil’ Bykau 144 – 149; Viktor Astaf’ev 141 – 144 victory, instrumentalization of 238 – 240 Victory Banner 67, 193 Victory Day 1, 3, 30, 240 – 241, 249 – 251, 254, 257 – 258; and fiction 146; and the Great Patriotic War 87, 97, 100 – 101; and Holocaust discourse 289 – 290; the myth that Stalin abolished Victory Day 64 – 69; pre-1965 commemorative practices 69 – 74; return as a workfree holiday in 1965 74 – 79; and the Russian North 202, 214 – 216, 223 – 224; and Sevastopol 180 – 181, 193 – 195; and Stalin 46; and war films 310, 320 Victory Day parades 65, 74 – 75, 223, 235 – 238, 240 – 241, 257 – 258; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 352 – 353; and Sevastopol 193 – 194 Victory Park memorial 1 – 2, 12n3, 73, 125, 340 – 341 Vietnam 77, 241 Vladivostok 73, 340 Voennyi Vstrechnyi Marsh 242 Volgograd 2 – 3, 73, 96 – 97, 218, 253; see also Battle of Stalingrad memorial Volokolamsk Highway 76

369

Voroshilov, Kliment 48, 55 – 56, 188 – 189, 236 Vuchetich, Evgenii 111 – 114 war commemoration 1 – 2, 5, 11 – 12, 64 – 69, 72, 74, 78, 121, 125 war films 299 – 300, 318 – 320; and attention to Jewish losses 328 – 333; Battle for Sevastopol 320 – 321; The Dawns are Quiet Here 321; immortalizing the siege 308 – 312; and Jewish representation 322 – 328; scripting a patriotic Holocaust 304 – 305; supervising patriotic tanks 306 – 308; and truth and nostalgia 333 – 335; women warriors defend the motherland 301 – 303; The Young Guard 321 – 322 war memorialization 2 – 5, 109 – 111, 124, 180 – 181, 195 – 196; examples for posterity 181 – 184; persistence of memory and the return of Russia 192 – 195; postwar rebuilding 184 – 187; and travel guidebooks 187 – 191 war memorials 71, 75, 78, 98, 107, 183, 190, 202, 250, 283; male authority and female fertility 121 – 124; and masculinity 110 – 121; and meaning 124 – 126; women’s military service and its postwar erasure 107 – 110 war memory 18, 202 – 205, 223 – 224, 219 – 223; and local community building 219 – 223; and local memory cultures 207 – 214; and pluralism and conservatism 216 – 219; and regional media landscapes 214 – 216; uses of 205 – 207 war monuments 110 – 121, 124 – 125 Warsaw 65 wartime mobilizational strategies 18 – 20, 22 – 23, 31 – 33 Wehrmacht 19, 25, 208; and the Great Patriotic War 89, 95; and parades 232, 235 – 237; and Stalin 43 – 47, 51, 54; and war films 309 Weiner, Amir 5, 304, 323 Weiss-Wendt, Anton xiii, 9 – 10 Werth, Alexander 20 Western Front 43, 76 – 77, 90 White Tiger 312 Winter War 54 – 55 women’s military service 107 – 110, 301 – 303 Wood, Elizabeth A. xiii, 9, 12

370

Index

work-free holidays 74 – 79 World War I 23, 120 – 121, 198n59, 231, 349 wreath-laying 68, 208

Young Guard, The 7, 90, 318 – 325, 328 – 334 youth organizations 206 Yurchak, Alexei 41

Yad Vashem 277 – 280, 286 Yekelchyk, Serhy 25 Yeltsin, Boris 1 – 2, 195; and the celebration of World War II 251 – 254, 257 – 258, 265n30; and the “Russia – My History” Museum 354 – 355 Young Guard, The 90, 95, 329 – 332

Zaslavskii, D. 24 Zemlianka 258 – 259 Zhdanov, Andrei 27 – 28 Zhenya, Zhenechka 139 Zhukov, Georgii 43, 52, 55, 75, 166 – 167, 236 Zhurzhenko, Tatiana xiii – xiv, 8 – 9, 12