Voitonpäivänjuhla Sortavalassa

Juhlinnan ja muistin politiikkaa rajakaupungissa

Authors

• Olga Davydova-Minguet

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30666/elore.79218

Abstract

The article analyses Victory Day celebration in Sortavala, the Russian Karelian city situated just 60 kilometres from the border with Finland. The history of this city and the whole region of northern Ladoga is in contradiction with the Russian national understanding of World War II as the Great Patriotic War. The territory was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 as a result of the Winter War, then returned to Finland in 1941 and re-surrendered to the Soviet Union in 1944. All the present population of the region has a migrant background: they or their ancestors have moved there in the interwar period or after the war.

In Putin’s Russia Victory Day has become the most popular and most important national holiday. The analysis of the celebration is informed by literature on the politics of celebration and cultural memory production. The celebration is assessed as an interplay between memory hardware (the material artefacts in the city space) and software (historical narratives that are embedded in the ritual). The Victory Day celebration is produced by many actors – city officials, local search parties for those killed in action, the Orthodox Church – and involves the general public. The image of the war and victory constructed by different voices during the celebration is based on the Soviet-time ”victory myth”. Still, different actors bring their own meanings into the celebration.