Russia’s Hero Cities: From Postwar Ruins to Soviet Heroarchy by Ivo Mijnssen

Abstract

Reviewed by: Russia’s Hero Cities: From Postwar Ruins to Soviet Heroarchy by Ivo Mijnssen Adrienne M. Harris Russia’s Hero Cities: From Postwar Ruins to Soviet Heroarchy. By Ivo Mijnssen. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2021. xxii+310 pp. £33. ISBN 978– 02–5305622–1. In this volume Ivo Mijnssen uses the thirteen ‘Hero Cities’ of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus as a lens to understand how Soviet officials shaped war memory through ritualized space. He argues that the designation of hero cities created an idealized narrative of collective heroism which served the state’s needs. Furthermore, ‘as products of the Brezhnev era [. . .] the Hero Cities provide insights into the social and political dynamics of the late USSR’ (p. 6). Though the monograph covers all thirteen ‘quasi-sacred cities’ (p. 2), Mijnssen devotes most of his analysis to two cities on the geographic periphery, Tula and Novorossiysk. He shows how designation as a Hero City effected both large-scale change, such as monuments, and smaller-scale change, since the material benefits accompanying these designations and monuments created spaces for the performance of calendrical and life rituals. His book traces how this ‘honorary status shaped [the Hero Cities], their inhabitants, and the Soviet Union—both during the Brezhnev era and beyond’ (p. 9). Mijnssen’s thoughtful interpretation of a wide variety of source material distinguishes this monograph: he uses national and local archival documents, oral interviews (between 2012 and 2013), speeches and resolutions, newspaper articles, and material culture (stamps, postcards, coffee-table books, and tourist guides). Extensive notes demonstrate the rich body of secondary works with which he engages. Maps, charts, reproductions of published and archival photographs, photographs from interviewees’ personal collections, and Mijnssen’s own photographs illustrate the volume’s arguments. After briefly describing the individual Hero Cities, Mijnssen introduces the concept of the hero in the first chapter. He [End Page 734] identifies a ‘socialist contract born of the trauma’ of the Great Patriotic War (p. 6) and points to the multifaceted processes at play in the designation ‘Hero City’. Chapter 2 addresses the emergence of an official, idealized war memory under successive governments from Stalin to Brezhnev, while the third and fourth chapters analyse Tula, the last city awarded this designation during the Brezhnev era. In Chapter 3 Mijnssen discusses the multifaceted nature of war commemoration in the USSR, such as the erasure of women from war memory, contested memories of the war and taboos, Brezhnev-era expectations for youth and their activities, veterans’ material conditions, and various rituals. Chapter 4 details deficits experienced by Tula in both food and housing stocks, expectations for material privileges, and subsequent disappointment when ‘the state was less able to uphold its side of the socialist contract—the improvement of living conditions’ (p. 132). Only two hundred kilometres from Moscow, Tula exemplifies the gap between Moscow and regional cities. The next two chapters focus on a city which was privileged by Brezhnev’s favour, Novorossiysk. After addressing the city’s role in the war effort, Mijnssen turns to previously taboo subjects: deportation and repatriation, experiences under occupation, and the problems that partisan activity created for civilians. He details youth activity, including both spontaneous play in the battle-scarred wastelands surrounding the city and state-sanctioned, highly ritualized activities at memorial sites. Chapter 6, subtitled ‘Wartime Glory and Window to the World’, investigates Brezhnev’s affection for this city and its reconstruction and development under his patronage. The final chapter continues chronologically from the end of Chapter 2, as Mijnssen examines the dissolution of official war memory that occurred after Brezhnev’s death and during perestroika, and the resurrection of this cultural memory under Putin. He discusses the Immortal Regiment and the Cities of Military Glory, as well as the role played by Sevastopol and Kerch in rhetoric justifying the annexation of Crimea. He disagrees with those who identify ‘the state’s use of the past to promote authoritarian tendencies’ as re-Stalinization, arguing instead that Putin aims for a ‘re-Brezhnevization under the conditions of capitalism’ (p. 251). Although Mijnssen grounds his arguments in Jan Assmann’s work on collective memories and cultural memory, readers seeking rich theoretical discussion should look...