Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies (Jan 2012)
Les compositions mémorielles autour de la Guerre patriotique. L’exemple du souvenir de Moussa Djalil, Tatar, stalinien, poète et patriote
Abstract
This article proposes to study the memorial destiny of Musa Dzhalil, a Tatar poet well-known in Russia for his Moabit Notebook written in the Berlin prison where he died in 1944. After 1956, he became posthumously an official Hero of the Soviet Union and won the Lenin Prize for his work. His popularity survived the disappearance of the USSR and Musa Dzhalil is still a popular figure in Russia today. This popularity is the result of a complex combination of factors : he is celebrated as a great patriot (for his military exploit in Germany) but also as a representative of the Tatar culture (he wrote his work in Tatar), as an artist (his poems were translated into Russian) and, last but not least, as a representative of the Soviet society (of the Stalinist period). Because of the mixing of these different components, the cult of Musa Dzhalil can be appropriated simultaneously by different groups in Post-Soviet society (Russian leadership, Tatar authorities, Communist Party, Cultural institutions). This complex combination of supports forbids any critical assessment of Dzhalil’s memory. Critics against him are immediately denounced as anti-Tatar, anti-Soviet, anti-cultural and anti-Russian. This paper thus shows, through the example of Musa Dzhalil, the insertion of Great Patriotic War memory in a complex collection of social and political bonds.
