The Great Patriotic War (Re-Visited)

Today, this narrative serves not simply as a historical memory but as a foundational pillar of Russia’s political legitimacy

The Victory Cult Behind Putin’s Russia: How a Soviet Myth Became a Tool of War

Published: 19 Nov / 2025   13:00

The so-called Victory Day military parade in Moscow in 2022. Photo: ap.org /Alexander Zemlianichenko

A defining feature of Vladimir Putin’s contemporary political system is its capacity not only to draw on the Soviet legacy, but to weaponize it. At the center of this legacy lies the cult surrounding the Soviet victory in the so-called Great Patriotic War—an idealized, sacralized narrative of the USSR’s defeat of Nazi Germany.

>. . .. "It permeates state-controlled memory politics, propaganda, foreign policy messaging, and even military operations—most notably the war against Ukraine. In all these arenas, the myth functions as a strategic ideological instrument designed to rationalize imperial ambitions, domestic repression, and external aggression.

Read more in the article by Petro Oleshchuk, political scientist, Ph.D, expert at the United Ukraine Think Tank.

1. Firstly, the author emphasizes that the myth of the Great Patriotic War emerged during Stalin’s rule. The term itself did not appear immediately after the German invasion; it was introduced weeks later with an explicitly ideological purpose. Its primary function was to unify society under the Soviet state and turn a real existential threat into a heroic story of national salvation.

The war was sanctified by framing it as a cosmic battle between pure good and absolute evil—a “holy war.” At the same time, it provided Soviet authorities with a powerful means of legitimizing totalitarian control and portraying immense human losses as a “necessary sacrifice” for triumph.

Following the 1945 victory, this cult was institutionally codified within the Soviet system, especially after 1965 when May 9 became an official holiday. Yet the narrative acquired its full ideological force only in post-Soviet Russia, filling the ideological void of the 1990s. Under Putin, the victory cult was not merely revived but elevated into the core symbol of Russian statehood, effectively substituting for the absence of a shared national idea.Secondly, political scientist argues that since 2014, this narrative has been weaponized in the most literal sense. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and involvement in the Donbas war were framed through the rhetoric of “fighting Nazism”—from portraying the invasion as the “denazification” of Ukraine to reusing WWII symbols in modern political and military contexts.

2 Secondly, political scientist argues that since 2014, this narrative has been weaponized in the most literal sense. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and involvement in the Donbas war were framed through the rhetoric of “fighting Nazism”—from portraying the invasion as the “denazification” of Ukraine to reusing WWII symbols in modern political and military contexts.

This analogy is artificial and historically baseless. As historian Georgiy Kasyanov notes, today’s Ukraine is a pluralistic democracy where far-right groups hold minimal political power. Nevertheless, Russian propaganda merges disparate elements of Ukrainian nationalism—from the OUN to the Azov Regiment—into a fabricated image of “Ukrainian Nazism” allegedly threatening Russia’s existence.

This narrative enables the Kremlin to present the current war as a continuation of the Great Patriotic War—a “second chapter” of the anti-fascist struggle supposedly left unfinished in 1945. This is why Putin declared in 2022: “This is a fight for truth, for memory, for our heroic past.”

3 Finally, the expert summarizes that in modern Russia, the victory cult is far more than remembrance of WWII. It functions as the ideological backbone of an authoritarian system, a mechanism of mass mobilization, and a tool of manipulation and war. It transforms catastrophe into celebration, victims into propaganda, and history into an instrument of imperial ideology. In such a system, truth, mourning, and empathy have no place—only a mythical past used to justify a violent present.

In this context, one of the central tasks for the democratic world is to resist the spread of this mythologized “alternative history.” 

• Equally important is the defense and promotion of a democratic memory founded on human rights, historical complexity, and the capacity for self-reflection rather than militarism.

Read the full article by Petro Oleshchuk on The Gaze: The Victory Cult Driving Putin’s Russia: How a Soviet Myth Became a Weapon of War