World War II Memory in the Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone to extraordinary lengths to commemorate the Second World War. Even though the war ended over 77 years ago, Putin has made World War II memory central to contemporary Russian national identity. This talk will compare Soviet and post-Soviet war memorialization to show the ways in which Soviet narratives and symbols continue to inform war commemoration in Russia today. It will also explore how Putin uses war remembrance to try to promote patriotism and build support for his war in Ukraine.
David L. Hoffmann is College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio State University. He has published four monographs, including Cultivating the Masses: Modern State Practices and Soviet Socialism, 1914-1939 (Cornell University Press, 2011) and The Stalinist Era (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He has also published several edited volumes, including The Memory of the Second World War in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia (Routledge, 2022).