Victory in Death: Annihilation Narratives in Russia Today

A striking feature of contemporary Russian cinema and popular history is its obsession with a military unit's near or total annihilation in combat. Contrary to expectations, however, the carnage is marked as a good, even desired result. Victory in death is no oxymoron in Russian culture but a pronounced feature of its representation of the military, linked to Christian and other historical roots. This article not only demonstrates the widespread appeal of this template. It also seeks to explain why it has recently become so pronounced, how it operates as a positive ending and how it is tied to ongoing debates in Russia over the legacy of World War II, which often center on its unprecedented human costs, to real-life events, particularly in Chechnya, and to a resurgent Russian national identity—one distinctly bloody but quite resilient.