9781422275771

Russia’s death toll of soldiers and civilians inWorldWar II topped 20million. This reenactment is one of the ways thememory of that national trauma is kept alive.

Though so-called enlightened despots made outward over- tures of reforming Russian government in society, the vast size of the Russian Empire lent itself to centralized rule. But during the second half of the 1800s, the peasant population of Russia began to organize against autocratic rule.The abolition of serfdom in the 1860s and subsequent land reforms did little to improve economic conditions that disproportionately affected common Russians, and Marxist ideas began to filter into the country.By the end of Russia’s involvement in World War I in 1917, communist ideals had taken hold, leading to the Bolshevik Revolution and the abdication and assassination of Nicholas II. By 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), more commonly known as the Soviet Union, was established under the leadership of first Vladimir Lenin and then Josef Stalin. Stalin’s totalitarian control of the Soviet Union further cen- tralized the socialist government and economy put forth by Lenin in the early 1920s. State-owned farms and industries attempted to grow the Soviet economy, while the government assigned employment to citizens based on needs rather than skills or spe- cialization. Following World War II, tensions between the USSR and the West worsened after Soviet troops remained in Eastern European countries so the Soviet government could maintain control of these bloc nations.

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