Jonathan Brunstedt (USA)

Research Description

This project explores how competing memories of the Second World War helped forge ideological justifications for superpower interventions during the Cold War. Both the United States and the Soviet Union cultivated national myths celebrating their respective victories over Fascism. These myths masked the moral ambiguities and compromises required to achieve victory while reinforcing a sense of national exceptionalism in the domestic and international arenas. The research’s core hypothesis is that these divergent “cultures of victory” were fundamental to the Cold War’s intensity, longevity, and global reach, and that the legacies of victory cultures continue to shape geopolitics today.

Bio

Jonathan Brunstedt is Associate Professor of history at Texas A&M University. He is a historian of modern Russia, Eastern Europe, and 20th-century world, focusing on nationalism and historical memory in the context of the Cold War. He is the author of The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR (Cambridge University Press), which Foreign Affairs selected as one of its “Best Books of the Year.” A recipient of his university’s inaugural Research Impact Award, Brunstedt has published widely. He currently holds an Arts & Humanities Fellowship within the TAMU College of Arts & Sciences.

Final report

Available here.