The Victory Cult Driving Putin’s Russia: How a Soviet Myth Became a Weapon of War

One of the key features of the modern Putin regime is its ability not only to use the legacy of the Soviet past, but also to turn it into an ideological weapon. A central element of this legacy is the cult of victory in the so-called Great Patriotic War, a sacralized narrative of the Soviet Union's triumph over Nazi Germany.

This narrative plays the role of not just historical memory, but a legitimizing cornerstone of the entire political and social order of modern Russia. Its use in memory politics, propaganda, foreign policy narratives, and even in military campaigns, including against Ukraine, reveals it as a deeply instrumentalized ideological construct designed to justify imperial ambitions, repression at home, and aggression abroad.

The Origin of the Victory Cult: Between Victimhood and Messiahship

The myth of the Great Patriotic War was formed in Stalin's time. The term “Great Patriotic War” was first introduced not immediately, but only a few weeks after the German attack, and even then it had a clear ideological color. Its main goal was to mobilize the population around the Soviet state, to transform an existential threat into a heroic narrative.

The war was sacralized through the creation of an emotionally charged image: the war as a struggle between absolute good and absolute evil, as a “holy” war. At the same time, it was the war that gave the Soviet authorities the opportunity to legitimize totalitarian rule and justify mass casualties as a “necessary price for victory.”

After the victory in 1945, the cult was gradually canonized in the Soviet state apparatus, especially after 1965, when May 9 became an official holiday. However, it acquired a full-blown ideological content in post-Soviet Russia, especially in the ideological vacuum of the 1990s. With the advent of Putin, the cult of victory was not only restored, but transformed into the main symbol of Russian statehood, replacing the absence of a common national idea.

Victory as a Religion: the Ideology of the “Sacred State”

Putin's regime has built its own version of quasi-religion on the basis of the cult of victory, in which the state acts as a sacred institution and victory is an act of divine revelation. According to Polish scholar Maria Domanska, in this narrative, victory takes on an almost messianic character: Russia is the savior of the world from absolute evil, the only nation capable of sacrificing for the good of humanity.

This leads to several key characteristics of the cult:

The militarization of memory – annual parades, military reenactments, and children's participation in military marches. The May 9 parade has become a demonstration of power, weapons, and military triumph rather than a celebration of memory.

Mythologization of history – silencing or distortion of uncomfortable pages of the war (Katyn massacre of Polish prisoners of war, Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, deportations of peoples, Soviet crimes in Eastern Europe).

Monocentrism – the exclusivity of the USSR's role in the victory, denial of the significant contribution of the allies in the anti-Hitler coalition. Moreover, over time, even the contribution to the victory of non-Russian peoples of the former USSR, as is the case with Ukrainians, is being rejected.

The legal protection of the myth is the criminalization of “incorrect” interpretations of history through Article 354.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on the “rehabilitation of Nazism.”

This narrative functions not just as political propaganda, but as part of the Russian version of the “civilization mission” – an apologia for the messianic role of the state, which “protects the world” from threats.

The Cult of Victory as the Basis of Foreign Aggression

Since 2014, this ideological narrative has become a weapon in the literal sense. Russia's involvement in the occupation of Crimea and the war in Donbas was accompanied by the rhetoric of “fighting Nazism,” from the direct justification of aggression as “denazification” of Ukraine to the use of World War II symbols in the modern political context.

This parallel is artificial and historically absurd. As Georgiy Kasyanov writes, modern Ukraine is a pluralistic state where far-right forces do not have significant influence. However, Russian propaganda combines all elements of Ukrainian nationalism-from the OUN to Azov-into a fictional image of “Ukrainian Nazism,” which allegedly threatens the very existence of Russia.

This myth allows the Kremlin to position the current war as a continuation of the Great Patriotic War, the alleged “second series of the fight against fascism” that was not completed in 1945. That is why Putin repeated in 2022: “This is a struggle for truth, for memory, for the heroic past.”

One of the reasons why the cult of victory has become such a powerful tool is the identity crisis in post-Soviet Russia. After the collapse of the USSR, the state was unable to offer an attractive image of the future. In this situation, the past became the only legitimizing resource.

As M. Domanska notes, “the absence of an attractive vision of the future is compensated for by a hypertrophied cult of the heroic past.” The victory of 1945 becomes a kind of “eternal return” point, a symbol of an era when Russia (the USSR) was great, when it was feared and respected.

However, this approach is dangerous. It not only encourages nostalgia, it institutionalizes revanchism, hatred of dissent, and justifies repression. When the government says “We can do it again,” it not only devalues the victims of war, but also prepares society for new wars.

In general, the cult of victory is an example of “total memory” that lacks pluralism, self-reflection, and critical thinking. It is based on mechanisms such as falsification of causes (the most striking example being the denial of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact as the starting point) and exclusion of victims — silence about the functioning of the Gulag, deportations, and rapes by Soviet soldiers. The tool of reduction of experience is also actively used — the war is reduced to victory, not tragedy. At the same time, there is a substitution of subjectivity: the state acts as the hero, and the people are merely extras.

This approach is not only immoral, it is dangerous. When the memory of war is used to justify aggression, it turns victims into tools for new crimes. And as the war against Ukraine shows, this ideology is capable of producing not only television parades, but also real violence, massive destruction, and tens of thousands of new victims.

The cult of victory in Russia is not just a memory of the war. It is the foundation of an authoritarian regime, a mobilization tool, a weapon of war and mass manipulation. It has turned tragedy into triumph, victims into a propaganda tool, and history into a construct of great-power ideology. In this system, there is no place for truth, mourning, or empathy. There is only one thing: a phantom past that legitimizes the bloody present.

In this context, the main task for the free world is to prevent the imposition of this mythology as an “alternative historical truth.” And at the same time, to support a democratic memory based not on militarism but on human rights, the complexity of history, and the ability to self-criticize.

Petro Oleshchuk, political scientist, Ph.D, expert at the United Ukraine Think Tank