Between Post-Stalinist Legitimacy and Stalin’s Authority: Memories of 1941 from Late Socialism to the Post-Soviet Era

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which post-Soviet debates over whether and how to remember the defeats of the early period of World War II were shaped by earlier Soviet-era debates over war memory and legitimacy. It argues that the reaction against the Khrushchev thaw in the early Brezhnev era—which eventually gave rise to the quintessentially late socialist “war cult”—initially led to a deep contestation between the state and some of the Soviet intelligentsia, not only regarding the Soviet narrative of 1941, but also over the broader question of whether Soviet public memory could and should accommodate defeats and trauma as well as celebration of victory. Though promptly curtailed by the exercise of party-state authority, this debate quickly resurfaced in glasnost’, when debates over the early war once again became a crucible for disputes over broader questions of Soviet memory and its role in legitimating (or re-legitimating) Soviet power. These two debates are then compared with the strikingly similar dynamics of war memory contestation in post-Soviet Russia.