Aineopinnot, yleinen historia

The lecture series focuses on the representations and narratives of the “Great Patriotic War” of the Soviet Union against the Nazi Germany. The primary emphasis in on cultural history of warfare, both in the political construction of wartime narratives and the cultural resonance of wartime narratives in subsequent politics in the USSR and the present-day Russia. The lecture series covers the construction of war propaganda and wartime narratives in 1941–1945, their significance in the Soviet era and their exploitation in the memory politics by the Putin regime, especially in the present-day invasion of Ukraine, where old images and narratives have been deliberately revived.

The lecture series aims to illustrate to the students such matters as the role of the Great Patriotic War as the cornerstone of Soviet patriotism comparable to the Revolution and as the paramount cornerstone of subsequent post-Soviet Russian patriotism; intersections between Soviet patriotism and Russian nationalism and their resonance to this day; importance of war propaganda and demonization of the enemy to the culture of war; significance of gender in the construction of wartime heroic myths and images; and the impact of the memory of war on the fault lines between loyalists and dissidents and its ability to transcend these fault lines.