Political Uses of the Great Patriotic War in Post-Soviet Russia from Yeltsin to Putin

Abstract

This chapter examines the political uses of the Great Patriotic War in post-Soviet Russia as part of the official policy aimed at the (re)construction of Russian national identity. The focus is on political uses of the war memory by the governing political elite, that is, by those who speak on behalf of the state or who have sufficient resources to influence the official symbolic policy. The chapter analyzes political speeches and media coverage of commemorative ceremonies with a view to identifying the main frames of representation of the war in Russian official discourse under Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, and Dmitrii Medvedev, revealing links between the political use of history and Russian domestic and foreign policy.