The Great Patriotic War as myth and memory

In the Soviet Union, the Great Patriotic War was both a uniquely traumatic ordeal that took the lives of approximately 30 million people, and the focus of a decades-long myth and cult that celebrated the most glorious achievement of the Soviet era. At the war s end, Stalin, whose mistakes and brutality had greatly increased Soviet war losses, sought to obscure popular memories of the war experience, but the Brezhnev regime turned an idealized memory of the Great Patriotic War into the focus of an elaborate cult. As the Soviet Union declined and finally expired, the memory of the war became highly contested, as ugly truths about the war were made public. Today the war myth lives on as evidence of Stalin s inhuman rule, and as a source of Russian national pride and patriotism.

Sozialistische, monumentalkunst und globale bildtransfers:

Book abstract. Socialist image cultures went far beyond political iconography: beyond hammer and sickle, red banners or stylized portraits of Lenin, they could create normality and have an integrative effect, create identity, but also be subversive. Images emotionally linked the population to the system. The anthology deals with various popular media from late socialism: picture postcards, packaging, shop window decorations and other everyday forms of pictures. The articles describe areas of tension between the political program of a uniform socialist hemisphere and the visual breaks in cultural and social practice. A glossary explains key aesthetic terms