Nostalgia for the Soviet Union

Belarusian Honor Guard carrying the national flags of Belarus and the Soviet Union, as well as the Soviet victory banner, during the Minsk Independence Day Parade, 2019.
Protest against Ukrainian decommunization policies in Donetsk, 2014. The red banner reads, "Our homeland is the USSR".

The social phenomenon of nostalgia for the Soviet Union (Russian: Ностальгия по СССР, romanized: Nostal'giya po SSSR), can include sentimental attitudes towards its politics, its society, its culture and cultural artifacts, its superpower status, or simply its aesthetics.[1][2][3]

Modern cultural expressions of Soviet nostalgia also emphasize the former Soviet Union's scientific and technological achievements, particularly during the Space Age, and value the Soviet past for its futuristic aspirations.[4][5]

An analysis by the Harvard Political Review found that sociological explanations for Soviet nostalgia vary from "reminiscing about the USSR's global superpower status" to the "loss of financial, political and social stability" which accompanied the Soviet dissolution in many post-Soviet states.[6]

  1. ^ Taylor, A. (9 June 2014). "Calls for a return to 'Stalingrad' name test the limits of Putin's Soviet nostalgia". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 11 May 2015. Retrieved 6 September 2017.
  2. ^ "Why Russia Backs The Eurasian Union". Business Insider. The Economist. 22 August 2014. Archived from the original on 6 April 2019. Retrieved 29 March 2015. Often seen as an artefact of Vladimir Putin's nostalgia for the Soviet Union, the Eurasian Union has been largely ignored in the West.
  3. ^ Nikitin, V. (5 March 2014). "Putin is exploiting the legacy of the Soviet Union to further Russia's ends in Ukraine". The Independent. Archived from the original on 29 March 2015.
  4. ^ Hutton, Patrick (2016). The Memory Phenomenon in Contemporary Historical Writing: How the Interest in Memory Has Influenced Our Understanding of History. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. p. 143. ISBN 978-1137494641.
  5. ^ Majsova, Natalija (2021). Soviet Science Fiction Cinema and the Space Age: Memorable Futures. Lanham: Lexington Books. pp. xvi–xxv. ISBN 978-1-7936-0931-1.
  6. ^ "The Wake-Up Call for Soviet Nostalgics". Harvard Political Review. 30 April 2022. Archived from the original on 4 November 2022. Retrieved 4 March 2023.