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Seeing the Bigger Picture: Conspiratorial Revisions of World War II History in Recent Russian Cinema

This article analyzes revisions of World War II history in recent Russian cinema and television, including the feature film The Match (Andrei Maliukov, 2012), Spy (Aleksei Andrianov, 2012), and the television series Liquidation (Sergei Ursuliak, 2007). All these productions rely on the logic of conspiracy theory for their reimaginations of war history: pivotal developments during the war or its aftermath are presented as the result of subterranean manipulations by enemies or intelligence services. Through a narrative and visual analysis, the article shows how these films and series use the notion of conspiracy to reformat the contexts of wartime events and to place them within a speculative “bigger picture.” In doing so, they infer that what we know about the past is merely a part or effect of larger, hidden designs. Finally, the article situates these findings within a wider “reconciliation with the Soviet” in Putin-era culture, which increasingly centers on the remembrance of World War II.