Journal Staff

The article focuses on Russian celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Soviet victory in the Second World War in May 2005. It is based on material collected druing fieldwork in St Petersburg at the time of the celebrations as well as Russian newspaper articles from the same period. In the celebrations, a prominent role was accorded to the Soviet Union, even though it had ceased to exist 15 years earlier. The article discusses the role of the Soviet Union - Soviet symbols in particular - in the contemporary celebrations of Victory Day. Recycled and used in a new context, such symbols change their meaning. War veterans also play an important role in the celebrations, as evident in the victory procession on St Petersburg's main street on Victory Day. Newspaper coverage leading up to the anniversary prominently featured stories about war veterans. The view of the war as expressed in these articles is quite uniform: any contrasting views of history are presented as external threats, and the main lines of history remain the same as they were during Soviet times