The Soviet Culture of Victory

Abstract

The Soviet Union after the Second World War can serve as a prime example of how victory ’locks in’ a political system. In a mirror image of Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s argument of how ‘cultures of defeat’ encourage social and political innovation, the Soviet ‘culture of victory’ reaffirmed a dictatorial system of government and a command economy based on collectivized agriculture and centrally planned industry. At the same time, however, the war also engendered changes, which played themselves out somewhat subterraneously at first. They include a complex system of veterans’ privileges, a growing welfare state, a more routinized administration, and an economy where individual and family farming p..