Weaponizing the Past: The Role of Historical Biopics in the Stalinist Culture War (1939–1941)

This article investigates how Soviet historical biopics produced between 1939 and 1941 functioned as instruments in Stalin’s culture war – a campaign to reshape public consciousness and justify Soviet policies during the initial phase of the Second World War. Through close analysis of films Minin and Pozharsky and Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, the study demonstrates how Stalinist cinema mobilized historical myth to legitimize aggression against neighboring states and to justify the new Soviet-German alliance. By reviving imperial narratives of an “eternal struggle” between the virtuous, united East Slavic peoples and the oppressive, Western-aligned Polish enemy, filmmakers transformed history into a weapon of ideological warfare. The resulting synthesis of nationalist and Marxist rhetoric exemplifies how the Stalinist regime turned culture itself into a political front.