Theme: Managing History

How the Kremlin exploits history. Putin's government has exerted great energy to shape and exploit Russia's historical narrative. This is most obvious in the case of WW2. The narrative is that Russia saved the world from Hitler but the West fails to acknowledge the debt and even slanders Russia's dead by talking about rapes in Berlin, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact or the Katyn massacres. WW2 was only celebrated in the USSR from the early 60s. Stalin feared troops returning from the West - they had acquired the dangerous habit of independent thought, a temporary necessity to defeat the German Army. So there was only one victory parade, in 1946. After this idea of bringing lots of soldiers together in the capital was too dangerous. The fetishisation of WW2 increased later in the USSR, especially as the promise of Socialist Paradise lost its lustre. WW2 was the one incontrovertible Soviet success and thus was milked to the full. Under Gorbachev's Perestroika the government became more open, in 1989 and 1990 the archives relating to Molotov-Ribbentrop and the Katyn massacres were opened. The KGB hardliners hated this and as soon as Putin came to office he began reversing Perestroika. But he went futher than the Soviets in exploiting history, reaching back to the Tsars, rehabilitating Ivan the Terrible, lauding Catherine the Great. Also pulled the Orthodox Church back into the historical narrative. These actions were not for rarefied academic circles. Historical grievance flooded Russian TV and media. The value of this was partly to divert - e.g. many Russians knows amazing detail about WW2 battles and role of Royal Navy on arctic convoys but nothing about Russian history since 2003. "It's unpatriotic to examine the harsh but necessary measure undertaken by the Russian state" Putin's government uses history to lend itself legitimacy - "only we will defend the memory of your grandfather's blood spilt in Stalingrad". And also to distract attention. A population focussed on the past is less like to notice or criticise failings in the present. Putin Crimea speech, 2014, "Crimea Tartars suffered unjust repressions. As did many nationalities within Russia, and above all Russians themselves". Similar line heard regarding Holodomor - "Yes there was a famine in Ukraine, but also in Russia, often worse". Always the victims, never the perpetrators.

Events