citizens. History is a portrayal of how states remember it. However, it is important to note that the elite and those in power will attempt to alter their nation’s political memory regime in order to influence and shape the worldviews of it citizens, effectively making them sheep.
This paper will focus on historical attempts to alter collective memory in order to develop a narrative that promoted the unification of Russia by omitting and reshaping events from the violent past of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin has spent his time in power attempting to twist the historical narrative a in order to justify political decisions and promote the perception of a strong Russia, even though we are seeing recurring trends with the communist oppressive USSR policies.
This paper will explore the use of revisionism and other attempts to control historical narratives from the Soviet Era to the modern Putin regime as a means of political influence over Russian citizens. The author will examine how the control of the collective memory of Russia is used to legitimize its current actions in geopolitics and the historical context of where these trends began. Vladimir Putin seems to be stealing pages from the Soviet playbook in order to return Russia to the territorial and political giant it was during the USSR era. By comparing the memory control policies of the USSR to the current polices of Russia, this paper will assess whether or not Putin is continuing the trend of altering collective memory to manipulate its citizens worldviews and if so, distinguish which methods are being used.
Survey on Political Memory
Olena Nikolayenko conducted a survey of post-Soviet youth in Russia and Ukraine that clearly demonstrates the effects of an altered memory regime. Regardless of all of the terrible acts Stalin committed throughout his time as leader of the USSR, one out of five young Russians stated they would have voted for him for President in a survey from 2005 (Nikolayenko, 2008). This empirical survey noted a clear relationship between modern Russian nationalism and Soviet nostalgia in adolescent youth (Nikolayenko, 2008). In a comparison with people the same age in Ukraine, the study demonstrated that “individuals socialized in the former imperial periphery (Ukraine) are less likely to hold positive views of the colonizer (the Soviet Union) than those that grew up in the core of the former empire (Russia)” (Nikolayenko, 2008). Nikolayenko equates this to the reinvention of historical narratives from the Soviet era during Putin’s ascendancy to power and equates this to Putin’s quest to “advance the notion of Russia’s enduring greatness and foster a sense of patriotism” (2008). This comparison demonstrates the Russians have somehow been able to maintain a sense of Soviet nostalgia despite the negative impact of the USSR on Eastern Europe throughout the 20st century. How has a legacy of violence been reshaped in a positive light in order to promote support for modern geopolitical strategy in Russia?
Revisionism in Russian History: Use of Tsarist Past
Historical modification is not a recent development in Russian politics; it was used to create a foundation of legitimacy early in the Soviet era. It's important to note that until the 1970’s, Soviet history was kept outside of the discipline due to the influence of government, which led to corruption and a lack of objectivity in the discipline (Fitzpatrick 2007).
The Soviet Union used historical revisionism to justify its policies and influence citizens since its inception. From the time he took power (and especially in the 1930s-1940s), Stalin pushed for a rehabilitation of the Tsarist past of Russia. Historical figures, such as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great were revived and reinvented in literature and popular culture during this time period as “heroic state-builders” (Brandenberger and Platt 2006). Stalin was able to draw parallels between these historical “myths” of Russia’s tsarist past as a source of legitimacy and authority. Stalin capitalized on the generally uneducated mass audience and used “epic revisionism” to promote Soviet propaganda to continue to influence the collective memory of Russian citizens (Brandenberger and Platt 2006). It seems Putin may be using Stalin’s notion of reshaping historical figures, specifically glorifying Stalin himself, in order to rationalize current polices in the same way the USSR did in the 1930s. The use of heroes is not the only way the Soviets attempted to control the memory regime of Russia.
History of revisionism: Example of Gulag
From 1917 to 1989, there are countless instances of attempts to obscure political repression in Russian society. Policies of secrecy under the Soviet Union clearly impacted the collective memory of mass violence. One such example is the case of the Gulag. This Soviet concentration-camp system was largely kept hidden from the public eye through what Anstett referred to as the “geography of secrecy,” where camps were spread out across inaccessible or prohibited areas and only addressed with post office boxes (2011). Prisoners were rarely allowed to communicate with their families. In rare cases where they were allowed to write letters, the Soviets prevented them from discussing the location or types of activities taking place at these camps (Anstett 2011). The fact that the Soviets kept the location of these camps secret along with not discussing the hard labor activities taking place and the names of the staff of these concentration camp systems made the acquisition of material traces of this violence very difficult and inaccessible to its citizens, especially while it was occurring (Anstett 2011). It’s also important to note that the Russian state did not officially recognize the Soviet commission of mass violence against its own citizens until 1991, and even then the state did not prosecute perpetrators or make any real effort to reflect on this horrendous event; it simply acknowledged that it happened (Anstett 2011).
This leads into the third issue Anstett pointed out, which is the lack of federal policy to target this legacy of mass violence, specifically in education and public commemoration. There are no national museums sponsored by the Russian federation to commemorate the fifteen million victims of the Gulag, compared to the massive amount of holocaust memorials located throughout the world (Anstett 2011). The federal government has not enacted any policies in the field of education to recognize this collective, traumatic experience of Russia’s past; it instead focuses on the victory of World War II, which effectively sweeps the discussion of Soviet work camps under the rug (Anstett 2011). Through secrecy and lack of institutional acknowledgement, the collective memory of the oppression of millions of Russian citizens and others under the USSR was replaced with a narrative that glorifies the Soviet era and is now currently used to influence the Russian people. Along with the revision of history, the Soviets also attempted to white wash negative events from the collective memory of citizens.
Blank Spots
Soviet history is also riddled with James Wertsch refers to as “blank spots,” where evidence, such as photographs, was deliberately destroyed by the Soviets, effectively removing access to information and preventing public acknowledgement of certain atrocities (2008). Over recent decades, many people have argued that filling in these “blank spots” with accurate information would be the first step in returning control of collective memory to the people. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, where Hitler and Stalin established secret protocols to divide Eastern Europe, is one the biggest blank spots in Soviet history. Essentially, Soviet leaders, including President Gorbachev, denied the existence of secret protocols that led to the forced annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in 1940 (Wertsch 2008). Citizens of the Baltic region formerly under Soviet control collectively remember the violence and forced takeover, but Russian political memory differs substantially. The Soviets did not even acknowledge the protocols existed; the official narrative focused more on a Marxist idea of a peasant uprising in countries that wanted to join the USSR (Wertsch 2008).
In the late 1980’s, it was no longer possible for the Soviets to deny the secret protocols; Gorbachev was forced to admit this had in fact occurred in 1989 (Wertsch 2008). The official narrative of the “Marxist-Leninist story of class struggle” for these Baltic nations would no longer suffice. In 1989, terminology about class struggle was removed from Russian high school history books and replaced with some criticism on mistakes made by the USSR(Wertsch 2008). While this seems to be a step towards the truth, it still attempted to downplay the entire situation. The narrative on the annexation of the Baltic States was presented “as a result of complex processes of international and internal development, Soviet power was established,” which is a vague misdirection of what actually happened during the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Wertsch 2008). Even though it was no longer possible for the Soviets to deny that these events had ever transpired, officials still attempted to avoid the entire truth in order to maintain the misperception that the Soviet Union was flawless.
Putin’s Glorification of Stalin
Ever since Putin came into power in 2000, he has continually glorified Russia’s Soviet past. In 2014, Putin suggested Volograd be renamed to “Stalingrad,” which was its former name until the condemnation of Stalin’s crimes during the Khrushchev period (Khodnev 2014). Through the campaign to promote ideology compatible with Russia returning to its status as a great state, Stalin has mistakenly been elevated to being viewed as a positive figure in Russian history, despite the fact that he killed millions of his own citizens. A Levada Center survey from march of 2013 on Russian citizens’ perception of Stalin found that around half of the respondents beleived Stalin’s role in history to be more positive than negative and only 30 percent found his role in history to be completely negative (Khodnev 2014). This survey indicates the propaganda that the Putin regime has intermixed with Russian history has effectively altered the collective memory of a significant portion of the population.
State controlled Education
Following the trends mentioned above, such as the fact that Soviet history was not even up for discussion in academia until the 70s and the alteration of textbooks in the 90’s, the Russian ministry of education under President Putin decreased the amount of high school textbooks available and worked to standardize the content of these historical accounts. In 2007, Alexander Filippov’s book entitled “The Modern History of Russia 1945-2006” was promoted by the Kremlin as the primary history book for high school age students (Sherlock 2011). The book actually promotes Stalinism, presenting the national terror campaign as “essential to the country’s rapid modernization in the face of growing German and Japanese military threats and amid the inaction or duplicity of the Western democracies” (Sherlock 2011). This book justifies the institutionalized violence propagated by the Stalinist regime where millions of Soviet citizens were killed or sent to the Gulag and simply equates Stalinism as “primarily a consequence of the hard international environment” (Sherlock 2011). The new textbook attempts to make excuses for Stalin’s crimes instead of condemning the killing of millions of people. Again, there is a clear trend in the Putin regime attempting to reshape the collective memory of Russia to justify policy decisions and provide a false historical legitimacy to the modern Russian federation. According to Nikolayenko’s survey mentioned above, he has been successful. Along with textbooks, the state has also employed media in its attempt to alter history.
Popular Culture
The use of popular culture to influence national consciousness has continued from the Soviet era into present day Russia under President Putin. Marielle Wijermars outlined trends in Russian television and cinema from 2000 to 2012, which are “one of the principal means through which people learn about history” and the “basis on which they shape their understanding of its contemporary political relevance (2016). Wijermars demonstrated that these mediums are utilized to construct a legitimation of power through providing a historical foundation for modern Russian policies and framing political opposition as foreign enemies (Wijermars 2016). An example is the increasing prevalence of documentaries and television shows portraying Stolypin and Stalin as “great reformers” in Russia’s history, some of which were accompanied by the erection of statues in Moscow to commemorate these individuals (Wijermars 2016). The most prevalent narrative prevented that television and news media focus on concerns World War II.
The “Great Patriotic War”
Russian perspectives on World War II are another instance of the historical alteration of collective memory. The “Great Patriotic War,” as the Soviets referred to it, glorified the role of Stalin. He was referred to him as the “great leader,” and all of the atrocities the USSR committed under his rule seemed to be swept under the rug. In a comparison of essays written by Russian citizens of various ages with similar educational backgrounds, Professor Wertsch found that older respondents who grew up during the Soviet era represented the state sponsored narrative of WWII, as opposed to the younger respondents demonstrating a “loss of centralized state control over collective memory” (Wertsch 2008). For example, the older respondents focused on “mid-level” events, which focus more on events that fall between what would be classified “concrete” and “abstract” events. These respondents also neglected to mention events such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and D-Day and focused more on the Battle of Stalingrad and the Kursk Salient as pivotal points in the war (Wertsch 2008). This demonstrates the difference in the historical narrative between the state-controlled Soviet texts and the West. On the opposing end, younger respondents focused more on concrete events and openly criticized the state, demonstrating that the narrative they were familiar with was less controlled by the official Soviet narrative (Wertsch 2008). Professor Wertsch expanded on this case study with the introduction of “schematic narrative templates,” which refer to generalized patterns in narrative organization that impact the collective memory of a society (Wertsch 2008). In the case of Russia, it’s interesting that even after the Soviet state lost power, they did not lose control of the general narrative of collective Russian history that has fueled nationalism to the present day.
The state-controlled narrative of the Second World War became a common denominator to unite Russia throughout the post-war period and played an extremely crucial role in forging the modern Russian identity and institutionalizing nationalism. A study conducted in 2014 found that around 86% of Russians believe the victory of the Great Patriotic War is the most important day in Russian history (Prus 2015). The Soviets twisted the victory over the Germans into a victory over the West and used this glorified narrative of history as a means of self-assertion and a “demonstration of power and a source of Russia’s moral right to dictate its will to others” (Prus 2015). Putin has used this mythologized version of a “defensive war” recently as justification for increasingly aggressive foreign policy advances, specifically in the case of Ukraine.
The Ukraine Case Study
The state controlled narrative of World War II has been used to legitimize the recent annexation of Crimea. The Russians view Sevastopol and Crimea as “places of Soviet military glory and victories during the war,” therefore justifying its right to the territory (Prus 2015). Regardless of the fact that the 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine followed USSR law, the Russians claim that the transfer was illegal and framed the 2014 annexation of Crimea as a quest for “historical justice” (Prus 2015). Russia also claims that it is fighting fascism in Ukraine, despite the fact that it has openly supported far right and neo-Nazi parties across Europe in order to influence EU countries (Prus 2015). Putin has made efforts to frame the Ukrainian conflict as a continuation of the Great Patriotic War, perpetuating this propaganda through Russian media coverage and television shows (Prus 2015). In short, Russia has used the altered collective memory of World War II to justify and gain support for the illegal annexation of Crimea and return to the former expansionistic policies of the Soviet Union under the guise of a war against Nazis and fascists. The ongoing conflict with Ukraine stems from several key discrepancies between each country’s collective memory.
Andreas Kappeler demonstrated the concept of a “war on memories” between Russia and Ukraine. The Russians view the history of both states as a common, merged narrative whereas the Ukrainians see its history as independent from Russia (2014). Kappeler then provides four examples of the conflicting historical narratives between these two countries, further demonstrating the imperial legacy Russia emphasizes to legitimize its modern political behavior.
The first major discrepancy concerns the medieval Eastern-Slavic territory of Kievan Rus; with the Ukrainians claiming its heritage is exclusively Ukrainian and the Russians claiming it is at least partially Russian (Kappeler 2014). In 2013, Putin declared the Kievan Rus was the “nucleus of the Russian empire” and attempted to present the narrative as a means to unite both countries under a common heritage and culture (Kappeler 2014). Ukraine disagreed, viewing this statement as another attempt to perpetuate the false narrative that Russian has been a thousand-year-old empire. Another major source of historical discrepancy between these two nations is the memory of Hetman Mazepa, a Russian defector from 1708 who joined King Charles XII in Sweden (Kappeler 2014). Russian views him as a traitor while Ukraine frames him as a national hero fighting for Ukrainian independence (Kappeler 2014). In 2009, President Putin attempted to hold a joint celebration with Ukraine of the 300th anniversary of the Battle of Poltava, which Ukrainian President Yushchenko denied due to ongoing debates over the memory of Mazepa (Kappeler 2014).
The third major disagreement in collective memory concerns the Holdomor, a famine in 1932 caused by the Soviet Union that resulted in the death of five million people, over half of which were Ukrainian (Kappeler 2014). The war of memories becomes even more prevalent as the Ukrainians view this event as an act of genocide by the Soviets and the Russians frame it as a tragic disaster that affected all of Eastern Europe (Kappeler 2014). Russian and Ukrainian media opened argued over the context of this event in 2008 (Kappeler 2014). The final event is the historical narrative of World War II, where Russia perceives it as the Great Patriotic War but the Ukrainian narrative focuses more on a war of liberation against the USSR (Kappeler 2014). The irony is the Russian media criticize the Ukrainian reinterpretation of WWII even though Russia revised and reconstructed its own narrative of the same event.
By examining the current memory regimes of Russia and Ukraine, it is evident that Ukraine has attempted to distance itself from Russia and establish its historical narrative as independent of Tsarist and Soviet Russia. On the opposing end, Russia has attempted to spin the historical narrative to find common ground with this neighboring country in order to continue to justify its modern imperialistic foreign policy. By convincing the citizens of both countries that Ukraine and Russia have always been joined at the hip, Russia is attempting to legitimize Putin’s modern quest to re-acquire the territorial strength of the USSR.
Conclusion
Revisionism is not a new concept in Russia. It is evident that the Soviets revised history to shape public opinion and gain support during a time when millions of citizens across Eastern Europe were being negatively impacted by the USSR. Russia’s Tsarist legacy was glorified by Stalin as justification for its imperialist and oppressive policies throughout the twentieth century. Along with rewriting history, unfavorable events to the state, such as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, were effectively whitewashed in Russian historical narratives. Even once these events were acknowledged, the Russian elite elected to downplay and disregard the severity of these events in order to preserve the collective memory regime that remained prominent throughout the twentieth century. This most evident in the historical narrative of World War II, which has arguably been the most defining and proud historical memory of Russia’s past.
Ever since the turn of the century, President Putin has continued the Soviet trend of altering the memory regime to establish political legitimation of Russia’s continually aggressive foreign policy. State sponsored education and media outlets have aided in this glorification of the Soviet era; a time period where Russia may have been powerful but at the cost of oppression of millions of people inside and outside its borders. The Russian-Ukrainian case study clearly demonstrates the manipulation of collective memory in action. The comparison of conflicting memories over historical events in both countries, some as recent as the second World War and others as far back as the ninth century, demonstrates the ongoing “war on memory” where each country desires a narrative more conducive to making itself look powerful. The Russian justification over the 2014 annexation of Crimea is a clear example of reinventing events to justify what appears to be a return to Soviet expansionist policies. As demonstrated by the various surveys previously presented, it is evident that Putin has been successful in transforming the average Russian citizen’s memory of the 20th century and their perspective on Russia’s place in the world.
Collective memory can be crucial to a nation’s unification, self-worth, and overall perspective on geopolitics. Although history is by its very nature a matter of perspective, nations that continually reinvent history, whitewash negative events, and deceive their own citizens in order to obtain popular support should be observed with caution by other nations. Knowledge and education are powerful tools to limit the power of government and protect its citizens. Therefore, a state that controls the memory regime of its citizens becomes extremely dangerous in the global arena due to the forceful acquisition of unlimited power from its own people. The Russian State has effectively become a wolf leading sheep. Efforts need to be made to provide citizens with unpervaded accounts of history and remove control of the collective memory regime from the state to the people. Only then will Russians begin to learn from their past and acquire the necessary tools to prevent a repeat of large scale oppression under a modern Soviet style state. As Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it sometimes rhymes.”