The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments

ISBN-13: 9780521123556 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 326 str.

Pe West Chester University Lisa A. Kirschenbaum (Professor

Opis

The siege of Leningrad constituted one of the most dramatic episodes of World War II, one that individuals and the state began to commemorate almost immediately. Official representations of heroic Leningrad omitted and distorted a great deal. Nonetheless, survivors struggling to cope with painful memories often internalized, even if they did not completely accept, the state s myths, and they often found their own uses for the state s monuments. Tracing the overlap and interplay of individual memories and fifty years of Soviet mythmaking, this book contributes to understandings of both the power of Soviet identities and the delegitimizing potential of the Soviet Union s chief legitimizing myths. Because besieged Leningrad blurred the boundaries between the largely male battlefront and the predominantly female home front, it offers a unique vantage point for a study of the gendered dimensions of the war experience, urban space, individual memory, and public commemoration."

Recenzje

'Lisa A. Kirschenbaum has produced a lucid account of the processes of commemoration and forgetting that began almost as soon as the blockade started ion September 1941 … This wealth of material is arranged and analysed so as to provide some fascinating answers to the question with which the book begins …' Modern Language Review

Spis treści

Part I. Making Memory in Wartime: 1. Mapping memory in St. Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad; 2. The city scarred: war at home; 3. Life becomes history: memories and monuments in wartime; Part II. Reconstructing and Remembering the City: 4. The city healed: victory parks and historical reconstruction; 5. The return of stories from the city front; 6. Heroes and victims: local monuments of the Soviet war cult; Part III. The Persistence of Memory: 7. Speaking the unspoken?; 8. Mapping the return of St Petersburg; Epilogue.