Among my primary sources there were Soviet films, songs, literary works, notes from Soviet tourists, articles in popular Soviet newspapers and magazines, covering the period from the middle of World War 2 to the beginning of Khrushchev's liberalization of the political course.
The study showed that nostalgia, as a motif in official Soviet culture, appeared at the end of World War II as an attempt to bind soldiers to their homeland. Later, the feeling of nostalgia was used in campaigns to return the displaced persons and emigrants. On the domestic agenda, the longing of the emigrants was demonstrated as the evidence of the superiority of the Soviet system. An important factor in consolidating nostalgia in Soviet cinema, literature and mass media was the partial opening of the country during the reign of Khrushchev. At the same time, ideology dictated the maintenance of external openness to strengthen the emotional connection of a Soviet citizen with his Homeland. By 1956, the demonstration of nostalgic feeling had turned into a Soviet cliché.
In the ideological application of nostalgia from the late Stalinist to the Khrushchev period, there was a dynamic: from the bravura demonstration of Soviet superiority to sentimental sadness. The latter was an unintended result of de-Stalinization, when the state had allowed a citizen to feel something other than a willingness to fight.