Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia

248 pages

Andrew Lambert

King’s College London

As the world grapples with the consequences of Putin’s latest war, the Kremlin resounds to the dull echo of a past distorted into nonsense by identity politics to support current policies. Russia has rewritten the past to sustain a totalitarian regime, and a hideous war, passing laws to enforce conformity. The new ‘history’ focuses on a profoundly sanitised version of the ‘Great Patriotic War’. There is no mention of collusion with ‘Nazis’ in 1939, seizing eastern Poland, no Katyn Forest massacre, no invasions of the Baltic States and Finland, no Gulags, no show trials, only inaccurate or distorted memories of Russian heroism. The war has been sanctified as a central element of Russian identity, accepting the official version has become a test of loyalty, alongside unthinking support for the current conflict. The history whitewash is designed to persuade contemporary Russians that the regime has the moral authority to defeat an existential ‘Nazi’ threat from ‘the West’. It bases Russia’s international status on past achievements, which must not be questioned. The invidious Russian ‘memory wars’ included a cynical invitation for British Arctic Convoy veterans to visit the occupied Crimea in 2015.

The Ukraine conflict emphasises the reality that without access to the past as an endless debate individuals and societies blunder blindly into chaotic failure, unable or unwilling to learn. History is a debate, not a conclusion. Perhaps the greatest weakness of Putin’s version is the complete absence of a sense of humour. The regime banned Armando Iannuci’s film The Death of Stalin, while bombarding the population with propaganda across all state-controlled media.

Contemporary Russia is not the old Empire of the Czars, despite Putin masquerading as Peter the Great, nor is it the Soviet Union – a genuine, if deeply flawed superpower. This chaos of identity can be seen at at sea: the Russian fleet uses names from all periods of Russian history, including Soviet Admiral Kuznetsov, and the Varangian founders of ancient Russia. This excellent study could be extended backwards, because Putin did not invent memory wars. Russian history has always been a battleground, and Peter the Great was master of the art, creating a ‘past’ to validate his radical reforms. Nor is national myth-making the sole preserve of Russian regimes; history has always served powerful organisations and individuals, because they control the evidence, and the funding. China is conducting a similar historical exercise, celebrating Soviet support in 1941-1945, while ignoring continued Russian occupation of the Amur River Basin, forcefully seized in the late 1850s.

History should enable us to understand how we, as individuals, institutions and nations, arrived at the present, and what may have been learnt in the process. It should be open to constant re-interpretation – to remain relevant. The static accounts that autocratic regimes impose on their people are dead histories. Putin’s history is ultimately a test of belonging, of being Russian, part of a long history of aggression, imperialism and discrimination. As McGlynn concludes; “Let the scorched rubble and dismembered bodies scattered across Ukrainian lands stand as testimony to the malevolent power of memory and myth making”.