On the 13th of November Jonathan Brunstedt, Assistant Professor of European History at Utah State University, reported "Ambiguous Nation: 'Sovetskii Narod' and Late-Socialist Discourse about the War"

Regular research seminar of World War II Center

Regular research seminar of World War II Center

Recent studies have emphasized the high degree of influence that Russian nationalists were able to exert on the Party leadership during the late 1960s and 70s. This paper will examine the limits of this nationalist influence through the lens of the most ubiquitous political myth of the post-Stalin era: the myth of the Great Patriotic War. On its surface, the war appears highly conducive to russocentric mythmaking; after all, during the war pre-Revolutionary Russian heroes were employed to promote a sense of popular patriotism, and Stalin famously toasted the Russian people's singular role in the victory. This paper, however, will argue that a close examination of Soviet commemorative discourse reveals that the regime remained committed to propagating a supra-ethnic, all-Soviet vision of the war as an integrating force in Soviet society, and actively resisted russocentric calls for a more particularist emphasis. While ultimately a failed project, this paper will show that the theme of the war was deployed partly as an antidote to the growing nationalism (Russian and non-Russian) that eventually tore the Soviet Union apart.

Jonathan Brunstedt received his BA from UCLA and his MPhil and PhD from the University of Oxford. He is currently an IREX Individual Advanced Research Opportunities fellow for Kazakhstan and Russia, and is affiliated with the Center for the History of World War II and its Consequences. His research project focuses on war memory and nationalism in the Soviet Union. Previously he served as a visiting scholar at Moscow State University and the Kennan Institute in Washington DC. He returns to the United States in January as Assistant Professor of European History at Utah State University.