Loving Motherland Is Believing To The Future

4 Such anxiety regarding the young generation’s moral corruption was a phenomenon all too familiar to (...)

5 J. Liderman, “Kurs na patriotizm i otvet rossiiskogo kinematografa v 2000-e gody. Novye biudzhety, (...)

2In this respect, the War serves as a model for group solidarity and a means of social control. As its traumatic experience is passed from generation to generation, every new cohort is implanted with a feeling of guilt and irredeemable debt to their forefathers. This logic of indebtedness still offers redemption through a heroic service to the Motherland, who demands no less in her constant search for enemies. As will be shown, this approach follows a well-trodden Soviet path, with each new generation having to prove its worthiness. However there is a fear that, as matters stand now, current Russian youth will not live up to expectations. Reportedly infected with individualism, hedonism and disrespect for authority, the post-Soviet generation lacks the moral fibre required of future heroes4. Thus, the official policy of war commemoration, which enjoys the majority of public support, seeks to save this unheroic youth from itself, by teaching it a lesson in solidarity and self-sacrifice. And since it is widely believed that the best qualities of the proverbial “Russian character” manifest themselves only under extreme circumstances - traditionally in time of war5 - it is the War that is offered to the young as a truly formative experience.

• 
  6 See media-ratings and ticket sales, available at http://www.kinopoisk.ru/level/1/film/260315/; http (...)
  
• 
  7 I.A. Snezhkova, “Predstavleniia o Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine rossiiskikh starsheklassnikov na mat (...)
  
• 
  8 For excellent English-language film reviews by G. Dolgopolov and D. McVey, see KinoKultura # 22, Oc (...)
  
• 
  9 In carrying out research for this article, I consulted various online discussion sites and utilised (...)
  
• 
  10 The term was coined by Hayden White and used by Denise Youngblood to trace the history of Soviet wa (...)
  

3The best examples of this purification through violence recently appeared on screen in Russia and have quickly gained public acclaim6, with some viewers even proposing to include them in school curricula. As if in response to this request, the films have been broadcast on television numerous times throughout the past couple of years. This resulted in many schoolchildren naming them among the most influential celluloid productions about the War7. The duology We are from the Future (My iz Budushchego, dir. A. Maliukov (2008), My iz Budushchego-2, dirs. A. Samokhvalov and B. Rostov, 2010)8 and The Fog (Tuman, I. Shukhovetskii and A. Aksenenko (Dirs.), 2010) specifically target a young audience and are clearly intended as propaganda. Dubbed “agitation posters (agitki)” by some viewers9, they reflect and accommodate the political and social changes that are currently underway in Russia. In the frigid, increasingly militaristic cultural climate, where the war cult occupies a hegemonic position, these films, among other media, serve as a means of reaching out to the young and attempting to control their presumably destructive energies. In order to do so, producers of these features pay homage to the best heroic traditions of the official Soviet “historiophoty”10, all the while employing a mix of genres that is unusual for a combat film, to make the War more exciting and appealing to the target audience. Yet, what do these films actually say about Russia’s young generation as well as society at large, and their attitude to the Second World War? What role does the War play in the inter- as well as inner-generational conflict that is underway in Russia today? How do the War’s cultural representations affect Russia’s relationship with her neighbours? And what role do some of these cultural representations play in the transformation of real-life young cynics, as their cinematic counterparts quite literally revisit the battles of World War II?