The Future of the Soviet Past: The Politics of History in Putin's Russia

In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress, control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a good future out of a "bad past." While Putin's regime has acquired nearly complete control over interpretations of the past, The Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in which public narrative shapes Russian culture—from cinema, television, and music to museums, legislature, and education—as well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in World War II. The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Introduction: Revisiting the Future of the Soviet Past and the Memory of Stalinist Repression, by Nanci Adler and Anton Weiss-Wendt Part I: The Present Memory of the Past 1. Presentism, Politicization of History, and the New Role of the Historian in Russia, by Ivan Kurilla 2. Secondhand History: Outsourcing Russia's Past to Kremlin's Proxies, by Anton Weiss-Wendt 3. The Soviet Past and the 1945 Victory Cult as Civil Religion in Contemporary Russia, by Nikita Petrov 4. Russia as a Bulwark against Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial: The Second World War according to Moscow, by Kiril Feferman Part II: Museums, Pop Culture, and Other Memory Battlegrounds 5. Keeping the Past in the Past: The Attack on the Perm 36 Gulag Museum and Russian Historical Memory of Soviet Repression, by Steven A. Barnes 6. Known and Unknown Soldiers: Remembering Russia's Fallen in the Great Patriotic War, by Johanna Dahlin 7. Fighters of the Invisible Front: Re-imaging the Aftermath of the Great Patriotic War in Recent Russian Television Series, by Boris Noordenbos 8. War, Cinema, and the Politics of Memory in Putin 2.0 Culture, by Stephen M. Norris Part III: Remembering and Framing the Soviet Past beyond Russia's Borders 9. The 2014 Russian Memory Law in European Context, by Nikolay Koposov 10. Tenacious Pasts: Geopolitics and the Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Issues, by George Soroka 11. The 1968 Invasion of Czechoslovakia: Return to the Soviet Interpretation, by Štěpán Černoušek Index

About the Author :
Anton Weiss-Wendt is Research Professor at the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies. He is author of the two-volume Documents on the Genocide Convention from the American, British, and Russian Archives; A Rhetorical Crime: Genocide in the Geopolitical Discourse of the Cold War; The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention; and Murder Without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust. He is editor of Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938–1945 and The Nazi Genocide of the Roma: Reassessment and Commemoration. Nanci Adler is Professor of Memory, History, and Transitional Justice at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies and the University of Amsterdam. She has authored and/or edited, among others, Keeping Faith with the Party: Communist Believers Return from the Gulag, The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System, Victims of Soviet Terror: The Story of the Memorial Movement, and Understanding the Age of Transitional Justice: Crimes, Courts, Commissions, and Chronicling. Her current research focuses on transitional justice and the legacy of Communism.

Review :
Overall, this is a popular topic well handled and essential for students and scholars across several disciplines. The volume provides a good overview of contemporary Russia, and as scholars we should now consider how else these new avenues of research can be unlocked. - James C. Pearce - College of the Marshall Islands (The Russian Review) This volume considers the relationship between the history of the Soviet Union and contemporary Russian culture, exploring how cinema, television, music, education and more reflect historical narratives, particularly in relation to Josef Stalin. The contributors contend that 'Russia's inability to fully rewrite Soviet history plays [a] part in its current political agenda'. (Survival)