Collective Memory In Ivan's War

To write her book Ivan’s War, Catherine Merridale had to face the challenges of moving past the collective memory surrounded Russia’s involvement in World War 2. Merridale navigates that remaining available sources in her search to find the truth of the Red Army. Using a variety of inventive research techniques, Catherine Merridale acquires the historic data the see need to weave these accounts of the war, into the few central characters in her book. Merridale focuses on constructing an image of the Red Army the truly shows Russia for what is was between 1939 and 1945. She does this while proving the importance of personal experiences to the retelling of history.
To begin, in the process of writing her book, Catherine Marridale had to navigate around many barriers put in place by the soviet reign. Frist, Merridale had to work around the collective memory that had been created around the involvement of the Russians in World War Two. Through war time tales, poems and song veterans created a safe depiction of the war, one that continued to influence how the war was understood in Russia for decades. As she states in her book, “the soldiers’ stories are a web of paradox, and sixty years of memory have only added to the
Prove to be productive in the search to find the truth of the Red Army, while searching to development the Russian ‘Ivan’. Merridale’s navigation of the issues surrounding World War Two, such as the censorship placed on Russia by the Soviet Union provided the information needed to show that Russian life during the war was far from perfect. Her variety of inventive research techniques, such as her hundreds of personal accounts weaved together to accurately construct the Red Army during this time. Thus, providing the information needed to proving that personal accounts of the war are vital to the construction of