Senyavskaya, E. S. THE IMAGE OF HUNGARY AS AN ENEMY IN THE MINDS OF SOVIET CITIZENS DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR. Proceedings of Petrozavodsk State University. 2024;46(8):45–54. DOI: 10.15393/uchz.art.2024.1109


Russian history

THE IMAGE OF HUNGARY AS AN ENEMY IN THE MINDS OF SOVIET CITIZENS DURING THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

Senyavskaya
E. S. 		Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences
Keywords:
The Great Patriotic War
satellites of Germany
Hungary
the image of the enemy
the occupation regime
punitive actions
propaganda		 Summary: The article examines the image of the Hungarian enemy during the Great Patriotic War in the minds of the citizens of the USSR from the standpoint of historical imagology. Based on documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Archive and the materials of the newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda for 1942–1945, the formation and evolution of this image are shown both among the Red Army soldiers and among the civilian population who survived the occupation regime of Hungarian troops in the territory occupied by the enemy. The evidence of the brutal occupation policy and punitive actions of the Hungarian occupiers against peaceful Soviet citizens and prisoners of war is given. The article examines the attitude of the Soviet political and military leadership, the Red Army soldiers to the Hungarians after entering their territory and during the battles for Budapest. There are changes in the approaches of Soviet propaganda to the depiction of Hungarians at the fi nal stage of the war in order to leave Hitler’s Germany in complete isolation, to tear away from it the last ally that continues to fi ght against the advancing Soviet troops. The hostile behavior of the Hungarian population, which continued to provide assistance to Hungarian and German soldiers and offi cers who did not want to lay down their arms and were hiding from captivity, as well as the infl uence of these and later events on the preservation of the “image of the enemy” in the Soviet mass consciousness and historical memory, is shown.



Displays: 64;