Page 485 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo II

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Photo 13: 2 December 1981 „Jugendstunde“ of the Society of German-Russian Friendship
in : „Leninskij Zal“ (The Lenin-Hall) in the „Muzej Kapituljacii“ (Museum of Capitulation), in:
Bundesarchiv-online, Bild 183-Z1202-035 / CC-BY-SA.

The ceremony should get a meaningful context after the visit of the „Museum of
Capitulation“. The military counterpart, the members of the army where equally asked
to visit the museum regularly. On the photo no. 14 one can see the swearing-in of young
Red Army soldiers in the Hall of Capitulation. These two examples show how the visi-
tors were part of the master-narrative, not only by looking at the exhibits and listening to
the guide, but even more playing their predetermined role. The visitors were thus meant
to identify with the different rolemodels represented in the exhibition.

Conclusion
In this paper it has been my aim to give an example of a transfer of a set of soviet
war-discourses. The analysis of the museal representation of the master-narrative of
the Great Patriotic War in the “Museum of Capitulation” in Berlin-Karlshorst shows an
integrated visual, perfomative and narrative-strategy by which the Soviet Union tried to
gain cultural hegemony in their empire.
The main purpose of this master-narrative was the visual representation of the “Great
Friendship” between the GDR and the Soviet Union. To achieve this aim, the curators
emphasised the following themes:
1. Closeness between the German antifascist resistance and the Red Army
2. Display of the atrocities comitted by the Nazis espescially on communist victims
3. Deconstruction of the German myth of their invincibility (Battle of Moscow)
4. Presentation of the Red Army as the (only) savior of Europe from Fascism