Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The War Theme in Poetry 1914–1941
- Chapter 2 Soviet Poetry 1941–1945: A Chronological Survey
- Chapter 3 Heroes and Leaders: Socialist Realism in Wartime Poetry
- Chapter 4 The Common Man
- Chapter 5 Women in Poetry and Women Poets
- Chapter 6 ‘No-one is Forgotten and Nothing is Forgotten’: The War in Post-war Poetry
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Transliteration
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The War Theme in Poetry 1914–1941
- Chapter 2 Soviet Poetry 1941–1945: A Chronological Survey
- Chapter 3 Heroes and Leaders: Socialist Realism in Wartime Poetry
- Chapter 4 The Common Man
- Chapter 5 Women in Poetry and Women Poets
- Chapter 6 ‘No-one is Forgotten and Nothing is Forgotten’: The War in Post-war Poetry
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Soviet fight against Nazi invaders is known in Russia as the ‘Great Fatherland War’, a title which evokes the ‘Fatherland War’ of 1812 against Napoleon. Both wars nearly proved disastrous for the state, but ended in resounding victory against an enemy believed by many to be invincible. The 1941–1945 war was enshrined as a central part of official Soviet culture, providing an enduring theme for writers and film-makers as well as sculptors and architects who designed vast and suitably-termed ‘memorial complexes’ constructed during the 1960s and 1970s to commemorate the suffering and courage of Soviet citizens. The memory of the past was kept alive to remind the population that the country's present was fought for at massive human and material cost, a reminder calculated to stifle potential dissatisfaction.
In 1985, forty years after the war ended, the poet Joseph Brodsky described this use of the war's legacy:
State propaganda rubs the wounds of the nation with ghoulish intensity. Taking a cue from a line by Olga Berggolz (a Leningrad poet who survived the siege) which says ‘No-one is forgotten and nothing is forgotten’, it sets up hundreds and thousands of war memorials across the country … finds and exhumes entire wartime graves, and reburies the remains of unknown and known soldiers with semi-religious pomp and ceremony … If there is any nostalgia, it is that of the state for the only time it enjoyed a true rapport with the nation, for the only time about which it had reasons to brag.’
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Written with the BayonetSoviet Russian Poetry of World War Two, pp. 5 - 18Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 1996