<p>This article illuminates the ideological significance of Joseph Stalin’s public statements during the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. It argues that they served four purposes. First, they communicated Stalin’s official interpretation of the conflict to the Soviet people, while outlining the aims and policies of the Soviet government. Second, they augmented Soviet Marxism-Leninism with new propositions, derived from the experience of war. Third, they sought to validate Marxism-Leninism, by showing that this ideology correctly analyzed and underlined the Soviet victories. Fourth, they sought to imbue the Soviet military and people with Marxism-Leninism, and to thereby use communist ideology to help win the war and build socialism. Stalin’s wartime public statements remained ideologically significant during and after the conflict. In the USSR, propagandists and writers used them to inform, teach, and inspire the Soviet people and military; East Germany enshrined them in Berlin’s Treptower Memorial Park; and Kim Il Sung deployed them to guide North Korea’s military during the Korean War.</p>