The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR Brunstedt Jonathan
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022. This is a provocative new history of the Soviet myth of victory in World War II from its Stalinist origins to its emergence as arguably the supreme symbol of state…
Specifikacia The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR Brunstedt Jonathan
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022. This is a provocative new history of the Soviet myth of victory in World War II from its Stalinist origins to its emergence as arguably the supreme symbol of state authority during the late-socialist period. Jonathan Brunstedt shows how the memory of the war became a battleground between notions of a 'pan-Soviet' people on the one hand and of Russian leadership and Russian-led ethnic hierarchy on the other. While Russo-centric narratives of the pre-revolutionary and early Soviet eras persisted, the story of the war emerged as an alternative, supra-ethnic source of patriotic identity that was capable of subsuming a diverse range of loyalties to the Soviet whole. However, Brunstedt shows how a 'Russophile' faction of party elites and even some non-Russian party organizations, eager to preserve the primacy of unique ethnic identities, histories, and