1 As examples from these fields, the following are typical: Victor Yasmann, “Russia: Nostalgia for USSR Increases,” at www.rferl.org/articleprintview/1073655.html (last accessed 1 June 2011); Lionel Beehner, “Russia’s Soviet Past Still Haunts Relations with West,” at www.cfr.org/society-and-culture/russias-soviet-past-still-haunts-relations-west/p!3697 (last accessed 1 June 2011); Holak, Susan L., Matveev, Alexei V., and Havlena, William J., “Nostalgia in Post-Socialist Russia: Exploring Applications to Advertising Strat-egy”, Journal of Business Research 60, no. 6 (June 2007): 649–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Arkady Ostrovsky, “Flirt-ing with Stalin,” Prospect Magazine 150 (28 September 2008), at www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/09/flirtingwithstalin/ (last accessed 1 June 2011); Simon Sebag Montefiore, “Putin in the Shadow of the Red Czar,” New York Times, 24 August 2008, at www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/24sebag.html?pagewanted=print (last accessed 1 June 2011).

2 Lipovetsky, Mark, “Post-Sots: Transformations of Socialist Realism in the Popu-lar Culture of the Recent Period,” Slavic and East European Journal 48, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 356–77.Google Scholar The films are Voina, directed by Aleksei Balabanov (2002), and Zvezda, directed by Nikolai Lebedev (2002).

3 Lipovetsky, “Post-Sots,” 361–62.

4 Official support for patriotic initiatives in history, culture, and the arts is encapsu-lated in the government decree of 16 February 2001, “Patrioticheskoe vospitanie grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii na 2001–2005 gody,” reprinted in Tiushkevich, S. A.,Vproshlom ishchut nepepel-ogon’ (Moscow, 2005), 335–42.Google Scholar

5 See Tumarkin, Nina, The Living and the Dead: The Rise and Fall of the Cult of World War II in Russia (New York, 1994)Google Scholar, and Weiner, Amir,MakingSense of War: The Second World War and the Fate of the Bolshevik Revolution (Princeton, 2001).Google Scholar

6 This is most evident in the ending of the 2002 remake, absent in both the novella and the 1949 film, in which the Soviet soldiers are immolated in a barn. After this extended, almost lyrical scene, their dead captain, in a posthumous voice-over, enumerates, as a parade of ghosts march by, the countries of eastern Europe liberated at the cost of Soviet blood.

7 Regarding the renewed interest in World War II in cinema, see Youngblood, Denise J. Russian War Films: On the Cinema Front, 1914–2005 (Lawrence, 2007), 218–30.Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Norris, Stephen, “Guiding Stars: The Comet-Like Rise of die War Film in Putin’s Russia: Recent World War II Films and Historical Memories”, Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema 1, no. 2 (March 2007): 163–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Oushakine, Serguei, ““We’re Nostalgic But We’re Not Crazy’: Retrofitting the Past in Russia”, Russian Review, 66 no. 3 (July 2007): 451.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 On the potential of a “new ‘official line’ on the [Soviet] past” in education today, see David Brandenberger, “A New Short Course? Filippov, A. V. and the Russian State’s Search for a ‘Usable Past”, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 10, no. 4 (Fall 2009): 825–33Google Scholar.

11 Shlapentokh, Dmitry, “Russian History and the Ideology of Putin’s Regime through the Window of Contemporary Russian Movies”, Russian History 36, no. 2 (2009): 279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 The Nikonian Chronicle, vol. 1 , From the Beginning to the Year 1132, trans. Serge, A. and Zenkovsky, Betty Jean (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 151.Google Scholar

13 On the role of Saints Boris and Gleb in this manner, see, for example, Gleb, “Slovo o kniaz’iakh,” Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi, XII vek (Moscow, 1980), 239–43Google Scholar, and Gleb, “Rasskaz o prestuplenii riazanskikh kniazei,” Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi, XIII vek (Moscow, 1981), 128–29Google Scholar; also Fedotov, George P.,The Russian Religious Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), 94–97 Google Scholar, and Lenhoff, Gail,The Martyred Princes Boris and Gleb: A Socio-Cultural Study of the Cult and the Texts (Bloomington, 1989), 73, 98-99, 100Google Scholar. On the Mongol invasions, see “Letopisnye povesti o mongolo-tatarskom nashestvii,“ Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi, XIII vek, 133–63.

14 Abaturovetal, V V,Otechestvennaia voennaia istoriia, 3 vols. (Moscow, 2003), 1:75, 90–91;Google Scholar and Zolotarev, V. A. et al.,“Skazhite vsem, chtoRus’ vsegdazhiva. “Ratnyedela Otechestva: Rus’ i iunaia Rossiia VI–XVIw. (Moscow, 2004), 26.Google Scholar

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16 Got’e, Iurii, Smutnoe vremia: Ocherk istorii revoliutsionnykh dvizhenii nachala XVII stoleliia (Moscow, 1921), 3. The text was written in 1919.Google Scholar

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18 Got’e, Smutnoe vremia, 3.

19 Eliot Borenstein, Overkill: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Russian Popular Culture (Ithaca, 2008), 6,199. He locates the roots of this “Dostoevskian nightmare world in which the absence of God turns men into beasts” in a Soviet-dependent context with the term be-spredel migrating from criminal argot into general usage. While he convincingly argues his case, one could also see bespredel as an extreme, modern-day manifestation of the smuta phenomenon. Indeed, Fedor Dostoevskii's own Verkhovenskii, the most famous voice of that “nightmare world,” himself identifies the disease they will sow among the people as “smuta,” which “will unleash such destruction [raskachka] as the world has never seen.” Cited from Besy in Dostoevskii, F. M.,Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad, 1974), 10:324, 325.Google Scholar For use of the seventeenth-century smuta to reference the 1990s, see Kukovenko, Vladimir,Smutnoe vremia (Moscow, 1996)Google Scholar, and Evdokimov, Dmitrii, DmitriiPo-zharskii: Letopis’ Smutnogo vremeni (Moscow, 2001).Google Scholar

20 This distinction is made clear when the protagonist, after shooting the Chechen racketeer, murders in cold blood two Russian gangsters, with whom he has just worked on a stakeout. He brings the Russian corpses back to his homeless companion, the German, who serves as his conscience and who tells him only God can pass judgment. The first killing allows no pause for reflection, as if to suggest that, given the conditions, it was justified.

21 Abaturov et al., Otechestvennaia voennaia istoriia, 2:178–228.

22 This understanding of the war, which became and has remained dominant since the turn of the twentieth century, is best reflected in cyclical commemorations of the battle of Gettysburg, from President Lincoln’s address in November 1863, to Shaara’s, Michael Pulitzer-prize-winning novel The Killer Angels (New York, 1974)Google Scholar. See also, Amy Kinsel, “From Turning Point to Peace Memorial,” in Borrit, Gabor, ed.,The Gettysburg Nobody Knows(New York, 1997), 217–21Google Scholar; Desjardin, Thomas A.,These Honored Dead: How the Story of Get-tysburg Shaped American Memory (Cambridge, Mass., 2003)Google Scholar; LaFantasie, Glenn W.,Gettysburg Heroes: Perfect Soldiers, Hallowed Ground (Bloomington, 2008).Google Scholar

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24 Cited from Chris Baldwin, “Action movie an allegory for Putin”s Russia,’ Reuters, at www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleID=USIndia-30309520071103 (last accessed l june 2011).

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27 Cited from Pamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi, XIIvek (Moscow, 1981), 426–39. For preSoviet adaptations, see Velikii kniaz’ Aleksandr Nevskii (Leningrad, 1992), a reprint of M. Khitrov, Svyatyi blagovernyi velikii kniaz’ Aleksandr Iaroslavich Nevskii (1893); for Soviet adaptations, see Pashuto, V. T.,Aleksandr Nevskii i bor'ba russkogo naroda za nezavisimost’v XIII veke (Moscow, 1951).Google Scholar

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32 Boris Vasil'ev, “Velikaia zagadka Evropy,” Liubi Rossiiu v nepogodu (Moscow, 2006), 7. The article was first published in 2003. Regarding existential threats, as Adam Zamoyski has recently argued, Napoleon did not constitute one for imperial Russia; in fact, Napo-leon’s motives for invading—and thus his objectives—were quite mixed, even to himself. This does not mean that the war could not be spun as such in real time for domestic consumption in Russia, however. See Zamoyski, Adam,Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March (New York, 2004), 147–59.Google Scholar

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36 Kirill, Patriarkh Moskovskii i Vseia Rusi, “Obrashchenie k chitateliam,” 7, and D. A. Medvedev, “Obrashchenie k chitateliam,” 9, both in Gajdukov, P. G. and Shka-renkov, P. P.,Aleksandr Nevskii: Gosudar', diplomat, voin (Moscow, 2010), 8–9 Google Scholar. Patriarch Kirill has also blessed a similarly massive volume dedicated to Nevskii on the occasion of, si-multaneously and in order, the 65th anniversary of victory in World War II, the 790th of anniversary of Nevskii's birth, and the 770th anniversary of his victory on the Neva. Reginskaia, N. V. and Tsvetkov, S. V.,Blagovernyi kniaz'pravoslavnoi Rusi sviatoi voin Aleksandr Nevskii (St. Petersburg, 2010).Google Scholar

37 Vladimir Putin, “Vystuplenie na rasshirennom zasedanii Gosudartsvennogo soveta ‘O strategii razvitiia Rossii do 2020 goda,’’ 8 February 2008, at president.kremlin. ru/text/appears/2008/02/159528.shtml (last accessed 1 June 2011). See also An-dreev, I. L. et al.,Den’ narodnogo edinstva: Biografiia prazdnika (Moscow, 2009).Google Scholar

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42. Istoriia Gosudarstva Rossiiskogo (directed by Valerii Babich, 2007). The series was produced for rJY Tsentr and is narrated by Iurii Shevchuk, the lead singer in the famous rock band DDT.

43 This is not to say that falsification does not occur, as with the Ministry of Defense’s claim (now rescinded) that Poland was guilty of provoking World War II. Other possible realms for falsification include the push to criminalize questioning the Soviet Union’s victory in World War II as well as to redo the history curriculum in schools. See Liudmila Rybina, “Istoriia bez prava perepiski,” Novaia gazeta, no. 71 (6 July 2009), at novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/071/00.html (last accessed 1 June 2011).

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49 Segen’, Aleksandr,Pop (Moscow, 2010), 99.Google Scholar It was first published in Nash sovremen-nik in 2006. Neither the novel nor the film was the first to frame the war as smuta saved by divine intervention. Nikolai Dostal’s 2004 miniseries, Shtrafbat, presents a similar scenario of a nation at war with itself and the Germans but with the Virgin Mary as intercessor against the latter.

50 Referencing recent Russian movies on World War II, Youngblood observes, ‘Just as many Americans resent the revisionist history of the United States, many Russians yearn for a usable past, one that inspires pride rather than shame.” Youngblood, Russian War Films, 230.

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52 Svetlana Boym popularized the term glocal to describe such a phenomenon whereby “local color” conditions the expression of a global language or orientation. See Boym, Svetlana,TheFuture of Nostalgia (New York, 2001), 67.Google Scholar