SUMMARY:

This article explores ideological production in the late Stalinist USSR through the lens of the fledgling myth of the Great Patriotic War. It contends that the war myth coalesced as an alternative, more flexible model of patriotic identity. While Russocentric historical narratives of the prerevolutionary and early Soviet eras continued to stress Russian leadership and guidance, the story of the war provided a parallel but countervailing ideological current, which aimed to flatten hierarchical configurations. Using postwar Kazakhstan as a case study, the essay also examines how the center’s message of pan-Soviet friendship was by turns embraced and subverted at the republic level.