“Heroization of the Victim”: How Russia Built a Cult on Death

Russia, the Soviet Union, and Putin’s Federation have used the same pattern: a hero from the people is not the one who lives and wins rights and freedoms for the people, but the one who dies for the power and wealth of the tsar.
From “For the Tsar and the Fatherland,” through “For the Motherland and Stalin,” to “For Putin and the offshore accounts”!

Imperial Russia: a holy martyr instead of a victor

Since the 17th century, monarchical propaganda sculpted the image of a commoner‑victim, whose entire biography was supposed to culminate in death for the Little Father Tsar.

Ivan Susanin. According to the legend, a Kostroma peasant led Polish soldiers into the forest and died saving the young Mikhail Romanov. The problem is that by that time the Poles had already left, Mikhail Filaretovich had not yet seized the throne, and the myth itself appeared decades after the described events. But Glinka’s opera “A Life for the Tsar” and the Romanovs’ jubilee cemented the canon: the peasant must lay down his life for the sovereign.

Kozma Minin. In schoolbooks – a merchant who gave up everything for the victory of the “people’s militia” in 1612. In reality – a butcher from Nizhny Novgorod, a Tatar, supplied with money by the English to organize a Tatar militia. Yet what remained in memory was not British intrigue, but “sacrifice for the Motherland” and a place on a monument near the Kremlin.

Razín and Pugachev. In songs – heroes, in official history – “executed rebels.” The message: anyone who rises against power always ends on the scaffold.

Result: the people’s hero in Tsarist Russia was a martyr, proving loyalty by death.

The Soviet Union: a factory of mythical dead heroes

The Bolsheviks inherited the mythology of sacrifice and brought it to the absolute.

Pavlik Morozov (1932). A young boy who informed on his own father, killed by relatives. Turned into a holy pioneer: “loyalty to the Party above family.” Millions of schoolchildren were taught: a hero is the one who slanders and informs on his loved ones, and supposedly dies for the idea.

Aleksei Stakhanov (1935). A record‑breaking miner. The record was staged in advance, the feat falsified. Stakhanov became the symbol of inhuman norms and slave labor, and in the end drank himself to death and died in obscurity.

Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya (1941). In the myth – a martyr “who did not surrender to the enemy.” In reality – a girl with a mental disorder, handed over by peasants whose homes she was ordered to burn. Perfect for propaganda: death and suffering. Reality, as always, didn’t matter.

28 Panfilov’s Men (1941). A completely fabricated story by Krasnaya Zvezda. There was no battle at Dubosekovo, no heroic death. In 1948 the USSR Prosecutor’s Office admitted: it was a fake. Yet the slogan “Russia is vast, but there is nowhere to retreat – behind us is Moscow!” became part of the false canon.

Alexander Matrosov (1943). Such stories may have occurred. But Matrosov was invented as a convenient symbol, a template, so that hundreds of soldiers would repeat him, because the system demanded literal self‑sacrifice.

The Young Guard (1942–43). The legend of teenage underground fighters in Krasnodon, created by Fadeyev. In reality, part of them collaborated with the Germans. Fadeyev rewrote their lives down to the last line, making martyrs. Later, realizing he had become the author of a giant lie, he shot himself.

Leningrad (1941–44). In the canon – the feat of the unconquered city. In reality – a deliberate genocide by the Kremlin: delayed evacuation, rations by Party lists, mass starvation, cannibalism. The citizens survived despite the Soviet government’s will, and their suffering was turned into a legend of a “heroic feat.” The fact that the authors of this “feat” were in the Kremlin – forgotten.

The Death Match (Kyiv, 1942). In the myth – football players defeated the Germans and were shot. In reality – if the match took place, there were no mass executions. The story was invented after the war, turning athletes into “martyrs of sport.”

Yuri Gagarin (1961). Seemingly a living hero. But he was quickly turned into an icon. After his death, the myth only grew with fables of a “final feat.”

Result: the Soviet hero was always a victim: fallen, tortured, burned out at work. Even the living were turned into safe icons.

Modern Russia: heroization of criminals – the new criminal elite of Russia

If in Tsarist and Soviet Russia the people’s hero was made through sacrifice, then in Putin’s Russia – through crime.
Today Putin’s propaganda elevates murderers, rapists, and looters, presenting them as “heroes of the special military operation.”

Wagner Group. Convicts for murder, rape, and robbery were released from prisons and thrown to the front. After death they were buried with honors, given monuments, awarded the title of “Hero of Russia.” Alive, society despised them; dead, they were made “people’s heroes.”

Prigozhin and his “musicians.” The head of a criminal army, himself a former convict, turned by propaganda into a symbol of “people’s patriotism.” His portraits were carried at rallies; his death was staged as “the death of a hero,” even though he was killed by his own, and behind him stretched a trail of torture, sledgehammer executions, and mass killings.

The cult of violence. Russian TV glorifies the “feats” of fighters who in reality looted, raped, and murdered Ukrainian civilians. Reports of “our heroes taking a village” omit the fact that they took it by first unleashing marauding and massacres.

Crime as the norm. Putin’s regime deliberately bets on criminals: easier to command, easier to control, and no one pities them. They have become the “new elite.” Now heroization is built not on sacrifice, but on the legitimation of brutality.

Result: in the 21st century Russia for the first time shifted from heroizing victims to heroizing killers.
This is a new, even more grotesque twist of the same pattern: power uses corpses and crimes to feed its myth of a “heroic people.”

Conclusion

For centuries Russia has sung hymns to the dead, omitting the truth of why and for whom they died.
They allegedly honor people’s heroes, but completely substitute the causes and motives that led to their deaths.
They know the people’s hero himself is not dangerous. The motive is dangerous.

Sacrifice for the state or the tsar – an excellent pattern for the masses.
Sacrifice for freedom or the happiness of the people – a blow to the vertical of power.

And Russia does not need blows.
It needs another corpse in the foundation of autocracy.
It needs another behavioral pattern for the masses, virtual shackles to keep them obedient and prepare them for future death – for Putin, for Usmanov, for their yachts, castles, palaces, offshore accounts.