ABSTRACT
Since 1965 the centrepiece of the 9 May Victory Day celebrations in Moscow has been a parade on Red Square in which the Victory Banner raised over the Reichstag on 30 April 1945 is ceremonially displayed by a guard of honour before the watching public. The Banner is a red Soviet flag bearing the hammer and sickle emblem, with name of the unit that raised it added in white. This chapter explores how Soviet flag came to acquire official state symbolic resonance and to trace its place within the practices of Second World War commemoration that have evolved since May 1945. The distinctive and privileged nature of the Victory Banner as a Soviet and Russian symbol of the Second World War becomes apparent from a consideration of its relation to the categories. The fact that the Victory Banner came to play so important a role in post-Stalin war commemoration culture is indicative of the Brezhnev era’s implicit rehabilitation of Stalin.
