In the Shadow of Great Victory: Memory Cultures of the Red Army Latvian Rifle Corps

• In Event: Memory as a Weapon of Control and Resistance: Militarization of History and Culture in Russia and the USSR

Abstract

This paper explores cultures of memory and memorialization by veterans of the Red Army’s Latvian Rifle Corps Army after World War II. In the shadow of a growing all-Union cult of the Great Patriotic War, veterans of this special national formation developed their own local practices of commemoration, which both complemented wider Soviet memory culture and also subtly challenged it. In the wake of the demolition of all Soviet war memorials in Latvia in 2022, this paper seeks to dispute the idea of Great Patriotic War memory as undifferentiated and necessarily Russocentric.

Author

• Harry Merritt, Rhode Island College