2026, Vol. 17, No. 2. - go to content...

Permanent address of this page - https://sfk-mn.ru/en/48klsk226.html

Метаданные этой статьи так же доступны на русском языке

Full article in PDF format (file size: 498.2 KB)

For citation:

Nevzorov S.G. [The collective feat of Soviet prisoners of war as a cultural phenomenon: solidarity, identity, and places of remembrance] World of Science. Series: Sociology, Philology, Cultural Studies, 2026, Vol. 17, No. 2. Available at: https://sfk-mn.ru/PDF/48KLSK226.pdf (in Russian).

The collective feat of Soviet prisoners of war as a cultural phenomenon: solidarity, identity, and places of remembrance

Nevzorov Sergey Gennadievich
Orenburg State University, Orenburg, Russia
E-mail: sg-nevzorov@mail.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9974-2773
RSCI: https://elibrary.ru/author_profile.asp?id=776897

Abstract. The article provides a cultural analysis of the collective heroism of Soviet prisoners of war who were held in the Nazi camp system from 1941 to 1945. The author views this collective heroism not as a sum of individual heroic acts, but as a specific cultural practice that prisoners developed to preserve their dignity, group identity, and will to live in a camp designed to systematically eliminate them. Based on published research, the article reconstructs the internal logic of this practice: from mutual assistance and solidarity to refusal and organized resistance. It shows that the pre-war army experience, discipline, native language, common song, military etiquette, and memory of the Motherland were the carriers of collectivity, which in the camp environment acquired the significance of a cultural code and a tool for survival. It is shown that the same model worked outside the camps, in national formations and the European Resistance movement, where prisoners of different nations worked together. The author also examines the posthumous fate of the feat, its entry into the memorial culture through monuments, commemorative practices, and educational projects, as well as the accompanying distortions and omissions. The author concludes that the collective feat of the prisoners of war is a nascent «memory site» that can provide society with an answer to its own identity and offer a model of moral choice in inhuman circumstances.

Keywords: collective feat; Soviet prisoners of war; culture of memory; identity; solidarity; Nazi concentration camps; Resistance movement; places of memory; commemoration

Download article in PDF format