Chapter 4 investigates how Russia constructs a repressive cult of victory around World War II, instrumentalizing the past for geopolitical legitimation. The chapter discusses the state’s sacralization of the “Great Patriotic War” and suppression of alternative narratives. It analyzes the strategic deployment of humiliation and trauma in the justification of imperial ambitions. Domestic dissent is marginalized as unpatriotic, while foreign criticism is dismissed as Russophobia. The case underscores how militarized memory consolidates authoritarian control and ideological orthodoxy.