Jonathan Brunstedt

Jonathan Brunstedt is a historian of modern Russia, Eastern Europe, and the twentieth-century world. His research focuses on nationalism and historical memory in the context of the Cold War, particularly regarding the representation and commemoration of war. He is the author of The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR (Cambridge University Press), which Foreign Affairs selected as one of its “Best Books of the Year.” Through the lens of the myth and remembrance of victory in World War II, the book examines how a socialist society - ostensibly committed to Marxist ideals of internationalism and global class struggle - came to reconcile itself to notions of patriotism, homeland, Russian ethnocentrism, and the glorification of war. The study follows decades of tensions and competition between Russian-centered and “internationalist” conceptions of victory, arguing that these reflected a wider struggle over the nature of patriotic identity in a multiethnic society that continues to reverberate in the post-Soviet space.

His next project explores the role of war memory in sustaining U.S. and Soviet tensions and global interventions during the Cold War. After 1945, both the United States and the Soviet Union cultivated national myths celebrating their respective victories over fascism. These myths masked the moral ambiguities and compromises required to achieve victory while reinforcing a sense of national exceptionalism, patriotism, and moral rectitude in the domestic and international arenas. This project contends that these divergent “cultures of victory” were fundamental to the Cold War’s intensity, longevity, and global reach, and that the legacies of victory cultures continue to shape geopolitics today.

A recipient of the College of Arts & Sciences inaugural Research Impact Award, Brunstedt has published widely, including an award-winning article in Nationalities Papers. He currently holds an Arts & Humanities Fellowship and will, in 2024, serve as a Visegrad Fellow at the Open Society Archives in Budapest. Additionally, his research has been supported by the NEH, the Woodrow Wilson Center Kennan Institute, the Aleksanteri Institute, IREX, and the Scowcroft Institute, among other institutions. Previously, Brunstedt was an assistant professor of Modern European History at Utah State University. He completed his Ph.D. in Modern History and M.Phil., with distinction, at the University of Oxford.

Read more about Brunstedt’s ongoing research in a recent interview.

Areas of Speciality

• Russian and Soviet History
• 20th-Century Europe
• Eastern European History
• Cultural Memory

The Soviet Myth of World War II: Patriotic Memory and the Russian Question in the USSR (Cambridge University Press, 2021)