This book analyses contemporary war commemoration in Britain and Russia. Focusing on the political aspects of remembrance, it explores the instrumentalisation of memory for managing civil-military relations and garnering public support for conflicts. It explains the nexus between remembrance, militarisation and nationalism in modern societies.

"By systematically comparing British and Russian commemorative practices, Danilova''s critical assessment of claims for the emergence of post-heroic warfare conducted by post-modern armed forces makes a valuable contribution to understanding how these societies strive to neutralise political debate over the aims and practices of contemporary wars." - T. G. Ashplant, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Life-Writing Research, King''s College London

"The Politics of War Commemoration in the UK and Russia provides a sophisticated and rich cross-cultural analysis of the politics of war commemoration. Through detailed theoretical and empirical mappings of the symbols and practices that characterise UK and Russian rituals of remembrance, Danilova invites us to push our thinking on what is remembered and forgotten further. In showing how commemorative rituals manifest differently not only in each national context but from war to war, Danilova offers an account of commemoration that is complex and dogged by contradictions, yet also awash with saliencies and adaptability. Throughout she pays careful attention to who benefits from discursive formations of commemoration, looking not only to the legitimation and reproduction of the state and state-sanctioned violence, but also to the opportunities commemoration affords for ''belonging'' among different communities of feeling. In so doing, Danilova not only firmly reinstitutes collective memory into the realm of the political, but blurs tradtional divides between the everyday and the geopolitical, highlighting their interdependencies. Her analysis may be one of two different societies where context matters, but it is also one of two societies that are both searching for meaning in past, present and future wars. Despite the inherent instability of this searching, her book compellingly alerts us to the power of commemoration in neutralising political contestation, normalising military fatalities, and making war an integral part of the national story." - Victoria M. Basham, University of Exeter, UK