• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: “How Well Do You Know YourKrai?” TheKraevedenieRevival and Patriotic Politics in Late Khrushchev-Era Russia
  • Contributor: Donovan, Victoria
  • Published: Association for Slavic East European and Eurasian Studies, 2015
  • Published in: Slavic Review, 74 (2015) 3, Seite 464-483
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.5612/slavicreview.74.3.464
  • ISSN: 0037-6779
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: This article examines the state-sponsored rise of local patriotism in the post-1961 period, interpreting it as part of the effort to strengthen popular support for and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime during the second phase of de-Stalinization. It shifts the analytical focus away from the Secret Speech of 1956, the time of Nikita Khrushchev's full-scale assault on Iosif Stalin and his legacy, to the Twenty-Second Party Congress of 1961, the inauguration of a utopian and pioneering plan to build communism by 1980. I consider how this famously forward-looking program gave rise to an institutionalized retrospectivism, as Soviet policymakers turned to the past to mobilize popular support for socialist construction. I examine how this process played out in the Russian northwest, where Soviet citizens were encouraged to turn inward, to examine their local history and traditions, and to reread these through a socialist lens.