The Soviet myth of the Great Fatherland War and the limits of inclusionary politics under Brezhnev: the case of Chalmaevist literature

Abstract

Influential scholarship on the Brezhnev era has described the instrumental official support for Russian nationalist themes and pre-socialist imagery in public discourse as a deliberate “politics of inclusion,” designed to co-opt certain nationalist intellectuals and the sympathies of the state's core of ethnic Russians for the purpose of popular mobilization. How this policy related to and interacted with the ubiquitous official commemoration and mythologization of the Great Fatherland War during this period, however, has remained unexplored. Based on a number of the most important Russophilic publications in the censored press – the writings of the so-called “Chalmaevists” – this article contends that despite unambiguously russocentric, single-stream readings of history in general, when it came to the war in particular, nationalist intellectuals tended to muffle their russocentrism through opaque language or an avoidance of the war's larger significance, or conformed to the war's official (supra-ethnic, socialist) reading. It was only in samizdat that the essentially Russian, primordial nature of victory in 1945 could be fully articulated. The present study thus probes the limits of the concept of inclusionary politics and underscores the party leadership's apparent commitment to maintaining the war myth's predominantly supranational, socialist significance as a means of fostering all-Soviet, rather than Russian national, solidarity.

Keywords:

• Second World War
• Soviet Union
• Leonid Brezhnev
• Russian nationalism
• commemoration

Acknowledgements

This publication was prepared (in part) under a grant from the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C. The author would like to thank the Kennan Institute for its support.

Notes

This anecdote is recounted in Yanov (1987, 113).

Indeed, in late 1982 historian John Dunlop began his survey of Brezhnev-era trends by remarking that the Russian nationalist “thought and sentiment that has increasingly made its present felt in the USSR since the mid-sixties … in one form or another, could become the ruling ideology of state once the various stages of the Brezhnev succession have come to an end” (1983, ix, 62).

On nation-shaping nationalism – that is, nationalism which aims “to nationalize an existing polity” from within – see Brubaker (1996, 79) and Brudny (1998, 5–6).

In contrast, Mitrokhin suggests that Russian nationalist intellectuals were instrumental in developing the war cult (2003, 114–16, 276–83, 291–93).

For some excellent recent discussions of Soviet identity under Stalin, see Johnston (2011), Brandenberger (2011), and Berkhoff (2012, 220–22).

The use here of the term “myth” is not meant to imply falsity, but rather, in the words of Slava Gerovitch (2011), “to stress the foundational, identity-shaping character of such claims.”

The establishment nationalism discussed throughout this article is roughly the equivalent of the national Bolshevik strand of nationalism defined in Dunlop (1983, 254–65).

Interestingly, and unbeknownst to Chalmaev, Matrosov may not have been Russian at all, but an ethnic Tatar from Bashkortostan (see Belenkaja 2005). This would not have concerned Chalmaev, however, who was clearly emphasizing Russian multiethnic, imperial qualities. It was well known, for example, that Petr Bagration, whom Chalmaev also mentions, was descended from Georgian royalty.

According to Dunlop, Dement'ev's article was the journal's attempt to “prove its bona fides to the regime, as well as to assail a tendency which its editorial board found particularly dangerous and repugnant” (1983, 221).

Important to note is that this treatment of the political Right was balanced by the decimation in early 1970 of the editorial staff of the liberal journal Novyi mir and by the removal of the ardent critic of Russian nationalism, Aleksandr Iakovlev, from his post as the party's chief ideologist. For an overview of the Iakovlev episode, see Mitrokhin (2003, 131–36), Iakovlev (2000, 188–91, 202–03), Brudny (1998, 94–102), Cherniaev (1995, 297–99), and Yanov (1987, 120–23).

Among the countless examples, see official statements concerning the 1972 commemoration of the founding of the Soviet state and the 30th anniversary of Victory Day in 1975. In both instances, non-ethnic values (“dedication to communist ideals”) were credited as the source of victory in 1945, and the standard reference to the Russian people as “first among equals” was dropped (“O piatidesiatiletii” 2–5; “Postanovlenie TsK KPSS” 1–2; “Velikii podvig” 1–3). On the areas of overlap between establishment Russian nationalism and the Soviet war cult, see Brunstedt (2011, 159–67).

Or, by Cosgrove's useful typology, Semanov represented a “Red Statist” orientation (2004, 36–39).

Semanov was removed primarily for his perceived connection to anti-Soviet nationalists (“Zapiska KGB SSSR v TsK KPSS ob antisovetskoi deiatel'nosti Ivanova A. M. i Semanova S. N.”; “Zapiska otdela”; “Zapiska KGB SSSR v TsK KPSS ob antisovetskoi deiatel'nosti S. N. Semanova”; “Chastnoe opredelenie”; “Radio Svoboda”; Zubok 2009, 331; Mitrokhin 2003, 548–54; Brudny 1998, 118).

On Russian nationalist samizdat during the Brezhnev era, see Mitrokhin (2003, 430–88).

This may also have had something to do with Brezhnev's declining health. The general secretary's health was certainly a factor in the decline of détente and the decision to intervene in Afghanistan (Zubok 2007, 257, 263–64).

Of course, reactions even within establishment nationalism to the Kulikovo anniversary varied. The majority emphasized the role of 1380 in forging a strong Russian state (gosudarstvenniki); others, led by Academician Dmitrii Likhachev, urged the glorification of the Russian people and a Russian cultural revival (vozrozhdentsy) (Duncan 2000, 77–81). Developments during these years are discussed in greater detail in the author's doctoral dissertation (Brunstedt 2010, ch. 2).

The novel was first published in serialized form in Nash sovremennik and later in two bound volumes (Chivilikhin 1982/1984; Brudny 1998, 123).