The Martyrdom of Nadezhda Kurchenko: Soviet Hero Cults and the Spiritual Turn in Late Socialism

Abstract This article argues that the spiritual turn in Soviet atheism under Brezhnev provided a meaningful solution to the problems of producing heroes when self‐sacrificing martyrs were losing their appeal. To support this claim, I examine the story of Nadezhda Kurchenko, a nineteen‐year‐old flight attendant killed by two hijackers on an Aeroflot plane in October 1970. This article traces the heroic and spiritual dynamics of Kurchenko’s martyrdom through her funeral, hagiographies, iconic photograph, and sacred spaces. The spiritual turn enabled the authors of her story to free it from the shadows of wartime youth martyrs and ground it in the conservative values of mature socialism. Her martyrdom was emblematic of Soviet atheism’s renewed project of supplanting religion with a secular spirituality, particularly around the life‐cycle rituals of birth, coming‐of‐age, marriage, and death. Although the aim of destroying religion failed, the spiritual turn created the cultural context in which the authors of Kurchenko’s story developed its meanings and rituals that endured after 1991. This article bridges the historiographies on hero cults and Soviet atheism, and it ends by considering the post‐Soviet afterlives of Kurchenko’s martyrdom during the Russo‐Ukrainian War.