What is it about?
This article explicitly demonstrates the process of myth-making in early Soviet Union, when the official narratives changed depending on various factors: economic, international, personal political fights in the early USSR. I tried to trace a case study based on ancient slave leader Spartacus and his reception by Soviet society.
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Photo by Soviet Artefacts on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Considering the legacy of Soviet myth-making in contemporary Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and some other post-socialist states, this topic still remains important. Moreover, my findings show the Soviet legacy withing current history-writing in schools and universities, sports, everyday toponymics and onomastics.
Perspectives
This article could a beginning of a larger project that would consider the perception of the ancient figures in the communist era in Europe and Eurasia. How could Brutus be linked to the Socialist ideas? How could Spartacus resemble the proletarian ideas? Why was the classical antiquity used if Marxism presented itself as a new era in world history?
Oleksii Rudenko
University of Glasgow
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Making of a Soviet Hero: the Case of Spartacus, The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, June 2020, Brill Deutschland GmbH,
DOI: 10.30965/18763324-20201365.
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