Memory Makers of the Great Patriotic War

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-32
Author(s):  
Anne E. Hasselmann

In the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Soviet museum curators began to establish a museal depiction of the war. This article analyzes these early beginnings of Soviet war commemoration and the curtailing of its surprising heterogeneity in late Stalinism. Historical research has largely ignored the impact of Soviet museum workers (muzeishchiki) on the evolution of Russian war memory. Archival material from the Red Army Museum, now renamed the Central Museum of the Armed Forces, in Moscow and the Belarus Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War in Minsk documents the unfolding of locally specific war exhibitions which stand in stark contrast to the later homogenized official Soviet war narrative. Yet war memory was not created unilaterally by the curators. Visitors also participated in its making, as the museum guestbooks demonstrate. As “sites of commemoration and learning,” early Soviet war exhibitions reveal the agency of the muzeishchiki and the involvement of the visitors in the “small events” of memory creation.

Author(s):  
A. Y. Borisov

From ancient times, war was called "the creator of all things". And winners created the postwar world order. The article reveals the backstage, the diplomatic history of the Great Patriotic War, which make the picture of the main events of the war, that culminated in victory May 1945 in the capital of the defeated Third Reich, complete. The decisive role of the Soviet Union and its armed forces in the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies was the strong foundation on which to build the strategy and tactics of Soviet diplomacy during the war. It was implemented in the course of negotiations with the Western Allies - the United States and Britain, led by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. World history teaches, large and small wars have been fought on Earth for centuries for specific political interests. In this context, the Second World War has been a shining example not only to curb the aggressor states, the liberation of peoples from the Nazi tyranny, but also an attempt by the victor to organize a new, better postwar world order to guarantee a durable and lasting peace based on the cooperation of the allied states. But the allies in the war did not become allies in the organization of the postwar world. Their collaboration briefly survived the end of hostilities and was overshadowed start turning to the Cold War. It was largely due to the US desire to realize their material advantages to the detriment of the Soviet Union after the war and build a system that would be a one-sided expression of the interests of Washington. Americans, especially after the death of President Roosevelt, and during his successor Truman understood international cooperation as an assertion of its global leadership while ignoring the interests of the Soviet Union, which bore the brunt of the war.


Author(s):  
E. G. Guzhva

On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, it is important to analyze the moral factors that contributed to the uplift in the Red Army and the manifestation of mass heroism to defend the Fatherland. During the ordeal, when the fate of the country hung in the balance, the Soviet leadership was forced to revert to the heroic pages of national history and raise the patriotic spirit and the offensive of the armed forces on the front and high productivity at home. Since the 40s of the 19th century in the Russian army it was considered a holy tradition to start the evening roll call from the heroes. During the Great Patriotic War, the tradition was revived. Thus, according to the order of People's Commissar of Defense of the September 8,1943 the hero of the Soviet Union Alexander Matrosov was enlisted in the lists of the 1st company of 254-th Guards Rifle Regiment. Thus, the traditions of the Russian army, revived during the Great Patriotic War, testifies to their eternal spiritual values in matters of moral and patriotic education of servicemen of the Russian armed forces. This historical and pedagogical analysis is of great importance for the spiritual, moral and patriotic education of youth and soldiers of the Russian army at the present stage of development of society.


2020 ◽  
Vol 955 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-58
Author(s):  
A.V. Nikonov ◽  
T.V. Vashchalova ◽  
E.I. Dolgov ◽  
S.V. Sergeev

On the eve of the 75th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic war, the events of it continue to live in people’s memory, and its veterans are still the best examples of patriotism and true serving the Motherland. It seems relevant to take a look at the events of the first days of the war with the eyes of their witnesses. The authors describe the events of June and July 1941, presented in the memoirs of the militaries who served in the Red Army Military topographic service, and performed topographic works in the border zone in a significant separation from their military units and staffs. On the basis of the collected material the authors show the participation of topographic units in the fighting of the first days of the war, provide the data on the losses of the Red Army Military topographic service in the starting period of the war. The article is devoted to the memory of the officers and soldiers, who selflessly did their duty in the beginning of the Great Patriotic war.


Author(s):  
Jörg Baberowski

This chapter looks at Stalinism during the Great Patriotic War. It first discusses Joseph Stalin's changing approaches to terror following the end of his policy of exterminatory violence. This shift is well illustrated by two incidents, one in September 1939 when Nikita Khrushchev traveled with Marshal Timoshenko to the town of Vynnyky. This episode shows that the Stalinist terror was also an instrument of ethnic cleansing with which the Stalinist regime did its best. The other incident was in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The front-line soldiers of the Red Army were trapped in a cycle of violence from which there was no escape. This chapter considers how the Great Patriotic War allowed Stalinism to develop to its full potential. The Soviet Union had become a world power, and yet it could offer its subjects nothing but misery and slavery. Only the death of Stalin on March 5, 1953 put an end to Stalinism and with it, despotism.


Author(s):  
Steven A. Barnes

This chapter focuses on the Gulag during the Armageddon of the Great Patriotic War. It shows how the institutions, practices, and identities of the Gulag shifted in accord with the demands of total war. The war was an era of mass release on an unprecedented scale side by side with the highest mortality rates in the history of the Gulag system. After four years of brutal, exhausting warfare and a disastrous initial stage, the Soviet Union emerged from its Armageddon victorious. The early postwar period offered no indication that the Gulag would cease to be a mass social phenomenon within fifteen years. Rather, the Gulag remained a pillar in the reestablishment of the Soviet system, following the Red Army into liberated territories, so that every liberated district received its own corrective labor colony. By 1944, the camp and colony population began to grow again.


2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-179
Author(s):  
Alexander Hill

Anthony Beevor, Stalingrad (London: Viking, 1998), 512 pp., £25.00, ISBN 0-670-87095-1. David Glanz, ed., The Initial Period of the War on the Eastern Front 22 June–August 1941 (London: Frank Cass, 1993, reprinted 1997), 511 pp., £22.50, ISBN 0-714-64298-3. David Glanz and Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed – How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 414 pp., £14.50, ISBN 0-700-60899-0. Leonid Grenkevich, The Soviet Partisan Movement 1941–1944 (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 368 pp., £17.50, ISBN 0-714-64428-5. Mark Harrison, Accounting for war – Soviet production, employment and the defence burden, 1940-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 338 pp., £40.00, ISBN 0-521-48265-8. Richard Overy, Russia's War (London: Penguin, 1997), 394 pp., £20.00, ISBN 0-713-99223-9. V. A. Zolotarev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945. Kniga 1 – Surovie ispitaniia (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 542 pp., ISBN 5-020-10136-2. V. A. Zolotarev et al., Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina 1941–1945. Kniga 2 – Perelom (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 499 pp., ISBN 5-020-09736-5.


Author(s):  
Catherine Andreyev

After a long period of scholarly neglect, owing partly to political reasons, the Second World War is now being studied as an integral part of the history of the Soviet Union. This chapter considers the war’s far reaching effects on state and society, taking a multi-faceted, comparative view. Beginning with German and Soviet war aims, the chapter goes on to highlight recent historiography, which has revealed much about the experience of the individual Soviet soldier and has emphasized that by concentrating on military set-pieces, such as the battle of Stalingrad, we risk distorting our understanding of the war. Also discussed are controversial subjects such as collaboration and partisan warfare, and the impact of the war on the Russian Orthodox Church and on Russian national identity.


Author(s):  
Albert Resis

The precise function that Marxist-Leninist ideology serves in the formation and conduct of Soviet foreign policy remains a highly contentious question among Western scholars. In the first postwar year, however, few senior officials or Soviet specialists in the West doubted that Communist ideology served as the constitutive element of Soviet foreign policy. Indeed, the militant revival of Marxism-Leninism after the Kremlin had downplayed it during 'The Great Patriotic War" proved to be an important factor in the complex of causes that led to the breakup of the Grand Alliance. Moscow's revival of that ideology in 1945 prompted numerous top-level Western leaders and observers to regard it as heralding a new wave of Soviet world-revolutionary messianism and expansionism. Many American and British officials were even alarmed by the claim, renewed, for example, in Moscow's official History of Diplomacy, that Soviet diplomacy possessed a "scientific theory," a "weapon" possessed by none of its rivals or opponents. This "weapon," Marxism-Leninism, Moscow ominously boasted, enabled Soviet leaders to comprehend, foresee, and master the course of international affairs, smoothing the way for Soviet diplomacy to make exceptional gains since 1917. Now, in the postwar period, Stalinist diplomacy opened before the Soviet Union "boundlesshorizons and the most majestic prospects."


Author(s):  
А.А. Oskembay ◽  
◽  
F.K. Kabdrakhmanova ◽  

The article provides an assessment of the patriotic education of S. Amanzholov's soldiers during the Great Patriotic War. A comprehensive analysis of S. Amanzholov's activities as a political leader is presented. The article provides new data on the use of heroic deeds of Kazakh batyrs by scientists to raise the military spirit of soldiers. During the Great Patriotic War, patriotism became the most important value in Soviet society. Selfless devotion to their Motherland manifested itself among millions of Soviet citizens and became a source of unprecedented mass heroism. From February 1942 to June 1946 S. Amanzholov was on active military service in the ranks of the Soviet Army. He conducted political and educational work among soldiers of non-Russian nationality, published in the Kazakh language the "Notebook of the Red Army Agitator" and leaflets about the heroes of the Soviet Union.


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