War, Tourism, and Authenticity in Moscow’s Patriot Park

Abstract

This article examines practices of authenticating the history of the Second World War in contemporary Russia. How do Russia’s military-patriotic project and understandings of the sacred change when schoolchildren participate in historical reenactments instead of the Soviet-era Zarnitsa game, visit mock “partisan villages” rather than sites of military glory, and light candles in Orthodox churches instead of laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? How is authenticity implicated in the production of the sacred, and what does the demand for authentic historical experience reveal about the relationship between state and society?

Using Moscow’s Patriot Park—a memorial and entertainment complex that has become a model for new tourism developments across Russia—as a case study, I examine key features of contemporary Russian memory politics. Through authentic wartime artifacts, immersive exhibitions, and reconstructions of everyday military life, the park’s organizers not only promote a patriotic interpretation of the past, largely consistent with the Soviet narrative of the war, but also cultivate visitors’ embodied experience of history.

I argue that transforming the Second World War into a commercial and tourist brand serves not only as a heritage tourism strategy but also as a mechanism of political legitimation. Whereas in the Soviet Union the authenticity of the past rested primarily on censorship and ideological persuasion, in contemporary Russia it is produced through orchestrated experiences of personal participation in history. By shaping the ways the past is authenticated, the state retains authority over historical narratives, even as authenticity itself generates meanings that may exceed official intentions.

Article in Russian