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V icky D avis . Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev’s Hero City .

2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 125; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ahr/rhz802

1937-5239

Nina Tumarkin,

Chinese history and philosophy

What a good thing it is to read local history at its best, especially when its author skillfully embeds it in larger national imperatives. Without leaning on the by now already somewhat unfashionable concept of identity, Vicky Davis’s Myth Making in the Soviet Union and Modern Russia: Remembering World War II in Brezhnev’s Hero City details the evolution of a local war myth in all its complexity while retaining an admirable lucidity of analysis and exposition and making frequent forays into the nature of Soviet and Russian war memory and mnemonic politics. Malaia zemlia (Little Land), an outpost near the village of Myskhako, not far from Novorossiisk—a town of nearly a quarter-million inhabitants that is today Russia’s most important Black Sea port—was the site of months-long fighting in 1943, when Soviet forces struggled to end the German occupation and effected what has long been remembered as a heroic liberation of...