How well do you know your krai? The kraevedenie revival and patriotic politics in late Khrushchev-era Russia

Abstract

This article examines the state-sponsored rise of local patriotism in the post-1961 period, interpreting it as part of the effort to strengthen popular support for and the legitimacy of the Soviet regime during the second phase of de-Stalinization. It shifts the analytical focus away from the Secret Speech of 1956, the time of Nikita Khrushchev's full-scale assault on Iosif Stalin and his legacy, to the Twenty-Second Party Congress of 1961, the inauguration of a Utopian and pioneering plan to build communism by 1980. I consider how this famously forward-looking program gave rise to an institutionalized retrospectivism, as Soviet policymakers turned to the past to mobilize popular support for socialist construction. I examine how this process played out in the Russian northwest, where Soviet citizens were encouraged to turn inward, to examine their local history and traditions, and to reread these through a socialist lens.