Protectors of the Great Victory: Commemoration of World War II in the Russian Community of Toronto

Anastasia Rogova

doi:10.18357/anthropologica64120221008

Authors

Anastasia Rogova University of Houston

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica64120221008

Keywords:

Diaspora, citizenship, war commemoration, Russian-speaking immigrants

Abstract

Political mobilization of the Russian-speaking immigrant community
in Canada is a relatively recent phenomenon, but it has permeated multiple
spheres of community life in recent years. This paper examines how Russian-
speaking immigrants living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) used the
history and memory of World War II to mobilize their community from
2014–21, what forms of war commemoration they performed, and what these
commemoration practices meant for the community and the individuals who
participated in them. The commemorative practices and performances in the
GTA’s Russian-speaking community remained controversial as they borrowed
extensively from Soviet and post-Soviet political imagery and rituals, yet, as I
argue in this article, political activism of Russian-speaking immigrants was also
informed by Canadian multiculturalism policies and international political
discourses and was intimately linked to their demands for full citizenship and
cultivation of their identities in Canadian society.

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