(Re)cycling the Collective Memory of the Great Patriotic War

Abstract

ABSTRACT The cult of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ regularly cycled through all Soviet administrations after it was initially crafted under Stalin and became further entrenched in everyday life under Leonid Brezhnev. The popularity and appeal of the cult rested on the fact that it was created by a combination of efforts that included the state’s propaganda apparatus, as well as the editors and correspondents of leading newspapers, the latter of which consisted of some of the most talented authors in the Soviet Union. Stalin’s censorship ensured that the reading public was regularly exposed to only sanitized versions of the war that rarely dealt in nuance, but offered much in the form of heroic self-sacrifice by Red Army men and women with Stalin acting as the cornerstone of the Soviet war effort. Nikita Khrushchev’s Thaw saw a flood of literature on the war, but most continued to retain Stalin’s narrative, which Brezhnev’s regime reinforced with public commemorations and memorials. While Boris Yeltsin was able to move away from the cult after the fall of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin has repurposed it and put it to work for his administration, appealing to the public with Stalin era rhetoric recycled for present day needs.