The Mythology of Victory: How the last fifty years of Russian political history have shaped the interpretation of the 9 May holiday

Since the Brezhnev era, the cult of victory has remained a tool for legitimising the existing political order, adapting to and absorbing its dominant ideological narratives.

In the 1990s, it served to underscore the organic nature of the new regime within the context of Russian history, linking its various eras and highlighting the role Russia played in the shared historical past with Europe.

In the early Putin period, the holiday went even further in bridging the Soviet and post-Soviet divide, asserting Russia’s historically earned rights as a superpower, which it was gradually regaining.

Subsequently, the celebration increasingly became the focal point of a statist cult of superpower status, and after 2014, it came to signify the role Russia had played in the fate of a Europe that had capitulated to fascism and was now losing its identity and attempting to diminish Russia’s contribution.

The further evolution of this principle state holiday followed the trajectory of authoritarian transformation in state ideology and institutions, gradually incorporating elements of sacralisation and repression. Deviations from the official victory narrative became criminalised, alongside disrespect toward war memorials and symbols of military glory. In the interpretation of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Great Patriotic War was portrayed as a redemptive sacrifice, and the victory as divine blessing bestowed on a God-pleasing militarism.

This emerging quasi-religious cult laid the groundwork for using the myth of the Great Patriotic War to justify a new war – the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This war was interpreted by the official ideological apparatus as a continuation or new stage in the struggle against fascism, which was now redefined to include both Ukrainian nationalism and European liberalism. The Church framed it as a heroic resistance against the kingdom of the Antichrist and the decay of godlessness.

The foundational layer of the current 'Victory' cult was laid during the Brezhnev era. In addition to the 'ceremonial' official side, it was largely a day for veterans – war participants who donned their medals and filled public squares with wartime songs. Yet even then, the holiday was deeply embedded in state ideology. As historian Mark Edele notes, in a mirror image of the argument that a 'culture of defeat' encourages social and political innovation, the Soviet 'culture of Victory' served to validate the success of the Soviet mobilisation system and used the cult of the 'great past' as a barrier to demands for change, thereby becoming a tool of the 'politics of stagnation'.

The law 'On the Perpetuation of the Victory of the Soviet People in the Great Patriotic War', signed by Boris Yeltsin for the 50th anniversary, declared Victory Day a nationwide holiday 'annually celebrated with a military parade and artillery salute'. By restoring traditional Soviet symbols, music, and the choreography of the parade itself, the Yeltsin era infused the spectacle with religious tropes and new Russian symbolism. Russia was becoming the legal successor to the 'Soviet Victory', which was meant to affirm the legitimacy of the new regime and its organic place in the national historical continuum. Moreover, amid economic crisis and political turbulence, Victory Day served as a reminder of a moment of national greatness, when the country had played a key role in the shared history of Russia and Europe.

At the beginning of Putin’s rule, his political strategists presented Victory Day as a unifying national holiday, symbolising the cohesion of various political forces through shared historical memory and bridging the divide between the 'Soviet' and 'post-Soviet' eras. In this sense, it echoed the decision to bring back the Soviet anthem, which now coexisted with the Russian tricolor as a key state symbol. However, already by Putin’s second presidential term, the holiday increasingly took on features of a statist cult and a kind of indication of Russia’s return to its organic status as a 'great power', lost during the turbulent 1990s.

To a significant extent in opposition to this cult, in 2012 a march with portraits of relatives who had fought in the war was held for the first time in Tomsk, organised by local journalists. This event gave rise to the Immortal Regiment initiative. This initiative positioned itself as a grassroots civic movement emphasising family memory, wartime losses, and intergenerational ties. The initiative emerged amid political protests against the falsification of the 2011 parliamentary election results and in many ways continued the practices of network-based solidarity and self-organisation.

The emergence of the initiative also touched on the central ideological dispute over the interpretation of 'Victory'. The liberal, democratic narrative viewed it as a feat of the people, achieved despite, or perhaps in defiance of, the totalitarian state machinery. The statist interpretation, on the contrary, saw that machinery as the source and main condition of the 'Great Victory', justifying its repressive and paternalistic nature.

However, after the defeat of the protest movement and the conservative turn in Russian politics that marked Putin’s third presidential term, the movement was effectively appropriated by the authorities. The mass production and distribution of posters and portraits, often unrelated to the real relatives of march participants, reduced the initiative to a state-sponsored ritual.

At the same time, the canonical part of the holiday, with a parade on Red Square against the backdrop of the annexation of Crimea and the growing conflict with the West, has finally become a symbol of the enduring greatness of the state. The power that had saved a helpless Europe from fascism, but which now, losing its historical identity, prefers ungratefully to forget. Victory Day did not become the central element of the state cult, but unlike during the Yeltsin era, it now emphasised not the unity of Russia’s and Europe’s historical destinies, but rather their divergence and opposition.

The further evolution of the main state holiday followed the course of the authoritarian transformation of state ideology and institutions, and thus incorporated elements of sacralisation and repression.

Article 354.1, which appeared in the Criminal Code back in 2014, criminalised the denial of the crimes of Nazism established by the Nuremberg trials, but was also supplemented by a proviso on the ‘rehabilitation of Nazism'.

Although the article on the ‘rehabilitation of Nazism’ criminalised the denial of the facts of Nazi crimes established by the Nuremberg trials, it was also supplemented by a clause on ‘spreading deliberately false information about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War’. Its appearance foreshadowed the beginning of the ‘memory wars', in which the official narrative opposes a 'correct', patriotic interpretation of the war to an 'incorrect' one, which is ‘hostile’ and Western-inspired interpretation.

While in the early years the number of convictions under the article on the rehabilitation of Nazism numbered only a few, in 2021–2022 the number of those found guilty under the main charge rose to 28–30 per year, and in 2023–2024 to just over 50 (according to the Judicial Department).

The atmosphere of repression surrounding the theme of ‘Victory’ affirmed, on the one hand, the state's monopoly on the interpretation of history and, on the other, the sacred status of ‘Victory', any encroachment upon which undermines the foundations of the state. Therefore, this article is used to persecute both ‘enemies of the regime’ who promote a liberal narrative of feats accomplished outside or against the state, and people who dry their socks on the ‘Eternal Flame’.

Victory Day is officially positioned as a ‘sacred’ and even ‘holy’ holiday for Russians, and the rhetoric of officialdom is replete with religious terms. The Russian Orthodox Church plays an important role in the process of its sacralisation. As researcher Ekaterina Klimenko notes, after the enthronement of Patriarch Kirill in 2009, the Russian Orthodox Church began to actively promote an interpretation of the Great Patriotic War based on the concept of martyrdom. The annual commemorative ceremonies organised by the Russian Orthodox Church are complex rituals in which church services and military parades, prayers and marches form a synthesis of Orthodox spirituality and militaristic symbolism.

Both the state and the Church were laying the groundwork to use the myth of the Great Patriotic War, embodied in the 'Victory' holiday, as a justification for a new war: the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This war was interpreted by the official ideological apparatus as a continuation or a new phase of the struggle against fascism, which could now encompass both Ukrainian nationalism and European liberalism. The Church, in turn, presented it as a heroic stand against the kingdom of the Antichrist and the decay of faith (→ Nikolai Mitrokhin: The Harvest of War).

As public opinion polls show, it was after 2014 that Victory Day began to be increasingly perceived as the main national holiday. On the one hand, it eclipsed the main religious holiday, Easter, and on the other, it partially drew on the emotional potential of the quasi-religious, private and family-oriented New Year. Data from polls conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) indicate that in the 2000s and early 2010s, around 30% of respondents named Victory Day and Easter as the most important holidays, while about 80% chose New Year, which continues to serve as a substitute for Christmas in post-Soviet society. Since 2015, the importance of Victory Day has been on the rise, and by 2017, it even began to 'steal' popularity from New Year’s.

‘Which of the following holidays are most important to you?’, 1998–2024, % of those surveyed

While the results of polls conducted in an authoritarian and repressive climate should be treated with caution (as more loyal segments of the population may be more likely to agree to participate), it can still be said that they clearly reflect the effects of ‘victory’ propaganda. Thus, over the past ten years, FOM polls show that the share of those who believe that it was impossible to achieve victory with fewer human losses has risen from 37% to 55%. The liberal narrative argues the opposite, thereby emphasising the disregard for human life inherent in authoritarian-statist ideology. In this context, it is logical that, as the proportion of those who justify the sacrifices grows, so does the proportion of those who approve of Stalin's policies during the war. In the 2000s, 40% of respondents rated them positively, in the early 2010s this had grown to 46%, and in 2025 it has reached 63%. Comparable shifts have occurred in public perceptions of the composition of the anti-fascist coalition. Ten years ago, 74% of Russians knew which countries were allies of the USSR during the war; today, only 54% do. At the same time, awareness of which countries sided with Nazi Germany has remained stable: 58% in 2015 and 57% in 2025. This suggests that the public discourse is being deliberately purged of the idea of the Allies’ role.