McGlynn argues that it is a mistake to dismiss this policing of the past as mere propaganda or brainwashing. She argues that the regime uses history to “develop cognitive filters” that create comfortable spaces for framing the present.
Key themes include the insistence that Ukraine has always been an extension of Russia, never a nation in its own right, and that the Russian state has played a key role in protecting the Russian people from the persistent existential dangers that lurk outside the country’s borders.
Forever war: Russian soldiers dressed in Red Army World War II uniforms march in Red Square in Moscow, Russia.Credit: AP
The Russian state has used a heavy hand to enforce its view of the past, firing or imprisoning many of those who disagree with it. But as McGlynn shows in Russia’s War, the most effective methods are much more subtle.
What she describes as “agitainment” [political agitation mixed with entertainment] in television news and a tightly controlled internet blur the line between fact and fiction.
Popular literature and entertaining feature films, many of them funded by the state or developed by influential figures including the media star Vladimir Solovyov and the former culture minister Vladimir Medinsky, promote “correct” historical themes such as Russian heroism and sacrifice.
Multiple generations have internalised these narratives through school curriculums laden with tales of Western perfidy and historically grounded messianic narratives from the Russian Orthodox Church.
History made Russia do it: A resident looks for belongings in an apartment building during fighting in Borodyanka, Ukraine.Credit: AP
This framing resonates with ordinary Russians, in part because it offers a heroic past to a people whose present and future are so precarious.
It also offers a neat and tidy explanation (namely, the consistent enmity of the West) for Russia’s numerous shortcomings.
As McGlynn points out in Memory Makers, when history is rooted in an aberrant view of the past, the present is turned on its head.
The Russian “heroes” fighting in Ukraine today are marching in the footsteps of the heroes of past generations and restoring Russia to the greatness that is – because of its glorious history – its true birthright.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Unknown Soldier’s Grave in the Alexander Garden during the national celebrations of the “Defender of the Fatherland Day” in Moscow, Russia.Credit: AP
Russia becomes David, fighting the Goliath of Ukrainian Nazism masterminded by an all-powerful and incurably Russophobic West. History “proves” that the West is in terminal decline, while Russia is on a path to return to its natural position of global leadership.
Russian soldiers are not agents of aggression and mass murder; rather, they are heroically defending Russians everywhere from a genocidal Ukrainian regime intent on killing them with bioweapons provided by the CIA.
Taken to its illogical extreme, Russia is liberating Ukrainians from the degenerate Westerners tricking them into turning against their Russian brothers.
The war in Ukraine that McGlynn ruefully describes is therefore “Russia’s war,” not just Putin’s war.
A boy and Russian soldiers mark the ninth anniversary of the Crimea annexation from Ukraine in Yalta, Crimea, last month.Credit: AP
The Russian people, like those she came to know during her many years of studying Russia and living there, either support the war or at least identify with the historical justifications underpinning it. In the end, however, public support does not really matter.
Unlike the West, where democratically elected leaders seek the support of the people they lead into war, Putin needs only their apathy or political neutrality.
Their agreement with a common narrative of events is a more-than-adequate substitute for their active support.
In a tightly controlled dictatorship like Putin’s Russia, there is no possibility for an independent civil society to present alternative viewpoints, engage citizens in free discussion or search for sources to assess the government’s messaging.
The result is not history as debate, but history as a performative act of patriotism and a weaponised justification for an unprovoked war against a neighbour.
As if to prove McGlynn’s point, historically based justifications for Russian policy and alleged plots by the West form terrifyingly explicit parts of Russia’s most recent National Security Strategy.
Her insightful and creative analysis suggests that we are in for a long conflict, not just over the fate of Ukraine, but also over how differing memories of the past will continue to shape the future.
Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia and Russia’s War by Jade McGlynn
Washington Post
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