Russia: the Great Patriotic War as a politics of memory

Abstract

The article analyzes the role of the victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War in the current memory policy of the Russian State. Recourse to victory has been a widely used tactic to achieve social and political cohesion around Vladimir Putin. At the same time that Russian society is politically and socially fragmented due to the difficulties faced by the country, the memory of the victory in the Great Patriotic War becomes, increasingly, an unifying factor and of national self-identification. New “invented traditions” arise in order to ritualize and “domesticate” the Russians’ relationship with the War, providing more and more cohesion to the social fabric.