In post-Soviet Russia, there is a persistent trend to repress, control, or even co-opt national history. By reshaping memory to suit a politically convenient narrative, Russia has fashioned a good future out of a "bad past."

While Putin's regime has acquired nearly complete control over interpretations of the past,The Future of the Soviet Past reveals that Russia's inability to fully rewrite its Soviet history plays an essential part in its current political agenda. Diverse contributors consider the many ways in which public narrative shapes Russian culturefrom cinema, television, and music to museums, legislature, and educationas well as how patriotism reflected in these forms of culture implies a casual acceptance of the valorization of Stalin and his role in World War II.

The Future of the Soviet Past provides effective and nuanced examples of how Russia has reimagined its Soviet history as well as how that past still influences Russia's policymaking.

Anton Weiss-Wendt is Research Professor at the Norwegian Center for Holocaust and Minority Studies. He is author of the two-volume Documents on the Genocide Convention from the American, British, and Russian Archives; A Rhetorical Crime: Genocide in the Geopolitical Discourse of the Cold War;The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention; andMurder Without Hatred: Estonians and the Holocaust. He is editor ofRacial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 19381945 andThe Nazi Genocide of the Roma: Reassessment and Commemoration. Nanci Adler is Professor of Memory, History, and Transitional Justice at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies and the University of Amsterdam. She has authored and/or edited, among others,Keeping Faith with the Party: Communist Believers Return from the Gulag,The Gulag Survivor: Beyond the Soviet System,Victims of Soviet Terror: The Story of the Memorial Movement, andUnderstanding the Age of Transitional Justice: Crimes, Courts, Commissions, and Chronicling. Her current research focuses on transitional justice and the legacy of Communism.

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Revisiting the Future of the Soviet Past and the Memory of Stalinist Repression, by Nanci Adler and Anton Weiss-WendtPart I: The Present Memory of the Past1. Presentism, Politicization of History, and the New Role of the Historian in Russia, by Ivan Kurilla2. Secondhand History: Outsourcing Russia's Past to Kremlin's Proxies, by Anton Weiss-Wendt3. The Soviet Past and the 1945 Victory Cult as Civil Religion in Contemporary Russia, by Nikita Petrov4. Russia as a Bulwark against Anti-Semitism and Holocaust Denial: The Second World War according to Moscow, by Kiril FefermanPart II: Museums, Pop Culture, and Other Memory Battlegrounds5. Keeping the Past in the Past: The Attack on the Perm 36 Gulag Museum and Russian Historical Memory of Soviet Repression, by Steven A. Barnes6. Known and Unknown Soldiers: Remembering Russia's Fallen in the Great Patriotic War, by Johanna Dahlin7. Fighters of the Invisible Front: Re-imaging the Aftermath of the Great Patriotic War in Recent Russian Television Series, by Boris Noordenbos8. War, Cinema, and the Politics of Memory in Putin 2.0 Culture, by Stephen M. NorrisPart III: Remembering and Framing the Soviet Past beyond Russia's Borders9. The 2014 Russian Memory Law in European Context, by Nikolay Koposov10. Tenacious Pasts: Geopolitics and the Polish-Russian Group on Difficult Issues, by George Soroka11. The 1968 Invasion of Czechoslovakia: Return to the Soviet Interpretation, by ¦tpán ernou¨ekIndex