Veterans about the Victory: a sociological analysis of historical memory

On the threshold of celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, we propose to assess the picture of those years from the perspective of real participants of military operations from the position of the current geopolitical situation. For this purpose, we present a fragment of the repeatedly republished book by V.N.Ivanov and V.K.Sergeev “Always a Great Victory”. It discusses the results of an interregional sociological study conducted by the Institute of Socio-Political Research of the FCTAS RAS together with the Moscow Institute of Socio-Cultural Programmes in March-June 2005 among 1400 combat veterans of the Great Patriotic War. Even then, the results of the research showed significant discrepancies between the opinions of veterans and the assessments of outside experts. Many of these discrepancies, in particular regarding the role of the USSR and the merits of the Allies, have reached a climax in the last three years, in the course of attempts to ‘cancel’ the significance of the contribution of Soviet soldiers to the achievement of victory. A sociological excursion into the history of our country and an analytical approach to key events of the past are necessary both for the preservation of historical memory and the education of patriotism in modern generations, and for a logical understanding of the events of the present.