Politics
Putin's politics of memory:
The sovereignty of the past over the present
The sovereignty of the past over the present
December 12, 2022
Ilya Budraitskis
Political and social theorist, previously based in Moscow, now nonresidential visiting fellow at GW's Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies
Ilya Budraitskis writes that the "unbroken history" of the Russian state has been proclaimed as the foundation of an incontestable official ideology. This means that the past now poses an actual danger to the prevailing order and is under attack.
The original text in Russian was published by Holod.media and is republished here with their permission.
On November 7, just a few days before the retreat of Russian troops from Kherson, Red Square was turned into a kind of huge theater stage. Hundreds of people dressed as soldiers, generals and Stalinist NKVD officers desperately tried to "recreate the historical atmosphere" of the 1941 October Revolution Parade. Source: VK
On November 7, just a few days before the retreat of Russian troops from Kherson, Red Square was turned into a kind of huge theater stage. Hundreds of people dressed as soldiers, generals and Stalinist NKVD officers desperately tried to "recreate the historical atmosphere" of the 1941 October Revolution Parade. The role of Stalin, whose appearance at the podium at that time demonstrated the determination of the Soviet leadership to defend Moscow to the last, was implicitly assigned to Vladimir Putin, who visited the exhibition. As envisioned by its stagers, Muscovites, who passively observed the reconstruction, were supposed to relive the atmosphere of patriotic unity between the people and the government, as it were. The two parts of this equation are the leader and his people, with the former continuing to make history and the latter called upon to recognize its own past in the present.
Putin as incarnation of all Russia’s rulers
In the last decade of Putin's rule, history has basically turned into the main rationale for state policy. Back in February 2012, Putin quoted Lermontov’s Borodino at a pro-government rally in Luzhniki, clearly identifying the decisive battle against Napoleon with the upcoming presidential election, where voters, like the soldiers in 1812, would have to keep their “oath of loyalty.”
In his 2014 speech about the “return of Crimea,” Putin referred to the baptism of Grand Prince Vladimir, after which the peninsula was said to have acquired a sacred meaning. In 2016, when unveiling a monstrous monument to Vladimir on Borovitskaya Square in Moscow, the president stated that the prince had “laid the moral foundations that define our lives to this day.”
One of the amendments to the Constitution adopted in June 2020 proclaimed that “Russia is united by a thousand-year history”, while a week after the “nationwide vote,” Putin unveiled a new monument to Alexander III in the Gatchina Palace, remarking that the emperor’s reign was characterized by “a harmonious combination of technological transformations and devotion to [Russia’s] distinctive origins.” This summer, Putin compared himself to Peter the Great, who “returned and strengthened” the territories of the empire. Meanwhile, in his September speech about “the incorporation of new regions into Russia,” he recalled Suvorov and Catherine II.
Putin as incarnation of all Russia’s rulers
In the last decade of Putin's rule, history has basically turned into the main rationale for state policy. Back in February 2012, Putin quoted Lermontov’s Borodino at a pro-government rally in Luzhniki, clearly identifying the decisive battle against Napoleon with the upcoming presidential election, where voters, like the soldiers in 1812, would have to keep their “oath of loyalty.”
In his 2014 speech about the “return of Crimea,” Putin referred to the baptism of Grand Prince Vladimir, after which the peninsula was said to have acquired a sacred meaning. In 2016, when unveiling a monstrous monument to Vladimir on Borovitskaya Square in Moscow, the president stated that the prince had “laid the moral foundations that define our lives to this day.”
One of the amendments to the Constitution adopted in June 2020 proclaimed that “Russia is united by a thousand-year history”, while a week after the “nationwide vote,” Putin unveiled a new monument to Alexander III in the Gatchina Palace, remarking that the emperor’s reign was characterized by “a harmonious combination of technological transformations and devotion to [Russia’s] distinctive origins.” This summer, Putin compared himself to Peter the Great, who “returned and strengthened” the territories of the empire. Meanwhile, in his September speech about “the incorporation of new regions into Russia,” he recalled Suvorov and Catherine II.
"Putin has sought to delegate responsibility for all his political decisions, as it were, to Russian history and present himself as the incarnation of this or that ruler."
His actions aren’t driven by the conditions of the present but rather reproduce the same immutable state principle.
Paradoxically, in this sense the cult of great rulers combines with an impersonal and cyclical notion of history, which has supposedly been repeating for centuries as an unconscious archetype: the unchanging Russia is always opposed by the unchanging West. The names of that enemy are constantly changing – from the Crusaders and Napoleon to Hitler and Biden – though its essence remains unchanged. The content of the ideas that the archetypal enemy offers – be it Roman Catholicism, racial theory or liberal democracy – does not matter, as its goal of destroying Russia remains the same.
The path of history is supposedly determined not by the desires of people or ideological struggle, but by the clash of eternal forms, civilizations frozen in time. This battle continues both in the present and in the past, which the enemy is also constantly trying to attack and rethink. "Falsification of history" is officially recognized as a key threat to national security, and, as Putin never tires of repeating, "the shaking up of states and peoples” starts with "distorting history.”
The sovereignty of the present thus stands on the foundation of the sovereignty of the past, any attempt to challenge the coherent nature of which is tantamount to a state crime. By and large, this was the crime of the historian Yuri Dmitriev and the organization Memorial. In fact, the prosecutor explicitly accused Memorial in court of "distorting historical memory.”
Russia’s institutions of "cold memory"
The memory of repressions, like that of popular uprisings or the suppression of national minorities, undermines state history, which is conceived as a story about the eternal, harmonious unity of the people and state in confronting external threats. The danger of this state-defying memory is that it constantly presents material evidence: forgotten mass graves, personal testimonies and interrogation records.
Since the early 2010s, a powerful infrastructure for the state’s “history policy” has been created, including hundreds of monuments and exhibitions. One of the main contractors for the state orders, the Russian Military-Historical Society, headed by Vladimir Medinsky, was established jointly by the culture and defense ministries, vividly illustrating the connection between history and "national security.”
Another important player in this arena is the My History Foundation, which is close to the Patriarchate and has already created a huge network of so-called "historical parks,” offering in an accessible form the official concept about the continuity of all iterations of the Russian state – from ancient Rus' to the Stalinist USSR.
A distinctive feature of these expositions is the complete dematerialization of the historical process – it is not a museum where the story of epochs is built around authentic objects and documents, but rather an endless series of banners and produced videos. Invited to "learn about their history," visitors find only a thousand-year-long series of glorious victories won thanks to wise rulers.
Paradoxically, in this sense the cult of great rulers combines with an impersonal and cyclical notion of history, which has supposedly been repeating for centuries as an unconscious archetype: the unchanging Russia is always opposed by the unchanging West. The names of that enemy are constantly changing – from the Crusaders and Napoleon to Hitler and Biden – though its essence remains unchanged. The content of the ideas that the archetypal enemy offers – be it Roman Catholicism, racial theory or liberal democracy – does not matter, as its goal of destroying Russia remains the same.
The path of history is supposedly determined not by the desires of people or ideological struggle, but by the clash of eternal forms, civilizations frozen in time. This battle continues both in the present and in the past, which the enemy is also constantly trying to attack and rethink. "Falsification of history" is officially recognized as a key threat to national security, and, as Putin never tires of repeating, "the shaking up of states and peoples” starts with "distorting history.”
The sovereignty of the present thus stands on the foundation of the sovereignty of the past, any attempt to challenge the coherent nature of which is tantamount to a state crime. By and large, this was the crime of the historian Yuri Dmitriev and the organization Memorial. In fact, the prosecutor explicitly accused Memorial in court of "distorting historical memory.”
Russia’s institutions of "cold memory"
The memory of repressions, like that of popular uprisings or the suppression of national minorities, undermines state history, which is conceived as a story about the eternal, harmonious unity of the people and state in confronting external threats. The danger of this state-defying memory is that it constantly presents material evidence: forgotten mass graves, personal testimonies and interrogation records.
Since the early 2010s, a powerful infrastructure for the state’s “history policy” has been created, including hundreds of monuments and exhibitions. One of the main contractors for the state orders, the Russian Military-Historical Society, headed by Vladimir Medinsky, was established jointly by the culture and defense ministries, vividly illustrating the connection between history and "national security.”
Another important player in this arena is the My History Foundation, which is close to the Patriarchate and has already created a huge network of so-called "historical parks,” offering in an accessible form the official concept about the continuity of all iterations of the Russian state – from ancient Rus' to the Stalinist USSR.
A distinctive feature of these expositions is the complete dematerialization of the historical process – it is not a museum where the story of epochs is built around authentic objects and documents, but rather an endless series of banners and produced videos. Invited to "learn about their history," visitors find only a thousand-year-long series of glorious victories won thanks to wise rulers.
"Just like today, the population of this 'historical Russia' plays the role of silent material from which the structure of the state is built."
A week after the “nationwide vote" on the constitutional amendments, Putin unveiled a new monument to Alexander III in the Gatchina Palace, remarking that the emperor’s reign was characterized by “a harmonious combination of technological transformations and devotion to [Russia’s] distinctive origins.” Source: VK
Currently, My History is presenting a new exhibition, "Ukraine at the Turning Point of Epochs" ("Ukraina na Perelome Epokh"), which tells of the dualistic struggle of two paths throughout the centuries: a true one where Ukraine has always remained part of a single state and "spiritual" space with Russia, as well as a false one characterized by attempts to tear it away from Moscow.
The theorist of history Jan Assmann defines two types of cultural memory, "cold" and "hot.” The former is created exclusively from above, by the state and elites. Expressed in institutions, monuments and temples, it teaches subjects how and what they should remember. This type of collective memory is not based on lived experience by social and national groups, families or individuals; rather, it suppresses that experience so as not to undermine the coherent version of history in line with the interests of the state. "Hot" memory, on the contrary, tries to rethink the past and give it a different content through activity in the present. In other words, it is constantly striving to revive history and reopen questions that cold memory institutions want to close once and for all.
After the outbreak of the war and the destruction of what remained of public politics, any form of "hot" memory has been outlawed in Russia. Using the politics of history to justify the present has definitively turned into state policy, while the "unbroken history" of the Russian state has been proclaimed the foundation of an incontestable official ideology. This means that history associated with dissent, uprisings, anti-war resistance and imperial suppression of small peoples now poses an actual danger to the prevailing order and is therefore under attack. After all, as the philosopher Herbert Marcuse once rightly observed: “Remembrance breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror and the hope that passed. Both come to life again, but whereas in reality, the former recurs in ever new forms, the latter remains hope.”
The theorist of history Jan Assmann defines two types of cultural memory, "cold" and "hot.” The former is created exclusively from above, by the state and elites. Expressed in institutions, monuments and temples, it teaches subjects how and what they should remember. This type of collective memory is not based on lived experience by social and national groups, families or individuals; rather, it suppresses that experience so as not to undermine the coherent version of history in line with the interests of the state. "Hot" memory, on the contrary, tries to rethink the past and give it a different content through activity in the present. In other words, it is constantly striving to revive history and reopen questions that cold memory institutions want to close once and for all.
After the outbreak of the war and the destruction of what remained of public politics, any form of "hot" memory has been outlawed in Russia. Using the politics of history to justify the present has definitively turned into state policy, while the "unbroken history" of the Russian state has been proclaimed the foundation of an incontestable official ideology. This means that history associated with dissent, uprisings, anti-war resistance and imperial suppression of small peoples now poses an actual danger to the prevailing order and is therefore under attack. After all, as the philosopher Herbert Marcuse once rightly observed: “Remembrance breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror and the hope that passed. Both come to life again, but whereas in reality, the former recurs in ever new forms, the latter remains hope.”
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