Memoirs: the policy of the past in Putin’s Russia
By Jade McGlynn
Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023
Researchers focused more on the question of the instrumentalization of history, memory policy and the Putin regime in Russia, in particular from the climbing of Russia against Ukraine in February 2022. Putin often used history to explain its vision of the world. His essay “on the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” showed a long obsession with Putin for Ukraine and provided a context to the Russian objectives during climbing. He commented on the history of the Second World War in the Western press. He often underlines how he considers himself a historian, claiming that he crossed the archives himself. It is enough to say that Putin and many Russian political and cultural leaders around him see a value to create a past usable for the gain of Russia.
Jade McGlynn’s first book, Souvenir manufacturersdescribes the importance of creating this past usable for Russia, and Putin’s goals and she explains how they developed it. McGlynn argues that Putin, on his return to the presidency in 2012, turned to history to respond to threats to his reign: the demonstrations concerning the electoral processes of Russia, an injured economy and Western participation in Libya. They have written new textbooks, developed new programs and encouraged Russians to participate in the historic Kremlin memory policy through a variety of approaches accessible to the public.
To illustrate its point, McGlynn uses several case studies to show how Russia used a specific version of history to defend its policies abroad. This includes Ukraine in 2014 and Syria in 2015. Thanks to Ukraine, the Russian government, alongside the state media, propagated a campaign focused on the presumed Nazism of the Ukrainians, highlighting the Ukrainian nationalist collaboration with Nazism during the Second World War, and the current lionization of the Ukrainian Lionists of Ukrainian Speedera and of the organization of the organization of the organization of the organization of the Ukrainian (OUN). Russia reviewed these themes in 2022 with its escalation against Ukraine. In Syria, the Second World War again offered the link with the past, although this time, the emphasis was placed on the Soviet Union, and therefore Russia, participation in the development of an order based on rules thanks to a specific understanding of the Yalta conference of February 1945. Of course, this will seem discordant since Russia seems to be difficult to note that the order today in its climbing of Ukraine. However, internal consistency was not the objective. Instead, Putin used key moments in the Soviet triumph (the defeat of Nazism and the Soviet Union as superpower), dressing them in Russian triumphs to obtain popular support for current Russia policies. Finally, McGlynn also examines how Western sanctions in 2014 were cropped through the objective of Soviet and the 1990s tumultuous to position Putin as Russia to the stability of the Brejnev era. From 2012 to 2021, the period on which the book is mainly concentrated, McGlynn maintains that Putin Russia also highlighted other Russian triumphs, in particular by returning to Kyinvan Rus and the expansion of Imperial Russia. The objective was to instrument history in such a way that the Russians use it to develop a feeling of national pride. This also allowed Putin and his regime to highlight the stability that Putin’s reign had provided Russia since his coming to power.
But this usable past was also something with which the Russians could interact. To do this, the diet has developed a series of activities. The Russians could attend an exhibition of the museum, watch a parade of the Immortal regiment or commemorate past glories. The idea was to develop such a inclusive project so that the Russians engage in the past, in particular a specific past that the government has carefully organized. However, even with this wider past usable, there are events that resonate more than the others, hence the emphasis on the Second World War. However, thanks to its appropriation from the past, the Russian government would develop an organized story. This meant a story that would minimize, if not completely erased, parts of the past that the Russian government did not want to remember, as one of the atrocities committed by the Red Army or the vast collaboration of Russian soldiers with Nazism during the Second World War.
Souvenir manufacturers was released in 2023, giving the work of McGlynn New Emergency and only touched McGlynn that McGlynn on the climbing of Russia in Ukraine after February 2022. If anything, it underlines how Russia continues to do the same. Perhaps because it was especially written before climbing, being largely her doctoral thesis, she tends to have a much more measured analysis than her other recent publication, Russian War (Polity, 2023). McGlynn understands the ideas of many Russian academics and figures, some based on interviews that she herself has carried out, which is largely unthinkable today, which helps to contextualize the way Russian analysts have seen Putin’s efforts, but also how they defend them. On the one hand, February 2022 is the place where the book is in the lead, but at the same time, it is explicitly not written in this way. While later, McGlynn would discuss Russian War The fact that the Russians have accepted this message, hence the need to include the Russian public in which to blame the Russian aggression against Ukraine, McGlynn focuses rather on the processes used by the government, by its instrumentalization of history and its deployment of these stories to cultivate support, both directly and indirect. To this end, Souvenir manufacturers Explain why many Russians buy the stories issued by the regime. They have become familiar and were cultivated over time, but also, the Russian government and the state media deploy them strategically to build this support.
There have been many books, in particular since the climbing of Russia against Ukraine, which have tried to explain the role of history in Russian society, in the Putin regime and in the influence of the way in which the Russians interact with these efforts and the link with Russian aggression or the vision of the Russian world. Souvenir manufacturers should be considered among the best of them and should not be lost in the reshuffle. As mentioned, the book was mainly written before climbing, and therefore, it serves as a basis for what we have seen since 2022, which has seen these processes, as well as the coercion of the Putin regime, pass to Overdrive. McGlynn declares in her introduction that she “hop (s) (her book) will explain why decision -makers and analysts must take” propaganda “and historical obsessions much more seriously and recognize their considerable emotional power.” (p.1) McGlynn certainly succeeds in this goal. The challenge is whether political decision -makers will take into account the arguments presented in this book. Today, Russian aggression cannot be seriously understood without understanding its instrumentalization of history. He submits how the Putin diet sees everything. More importantly, McGlynn maintains that this search for a usable past reflects Russia’s insecurity, given the upheavals and notable trauma of the 20th century. This argument is now increasingly common, but it reflects the broader attraction of Putin’s instrumentalization. Although it was born from a specific moment in his reign, the “ordinary Russians” kissed him to a certain extent and here, McGlynn makes a particularly important point – the level at which they are important; Instead, the objective is to obtain an interaction and to make history a “daily concern” and to encourage people not only to be proud of the Russian past, but to engage in the version of the Kremlin of this past. This memory of the past (McGlynn intelligently differentiates memory and history) also offers a common context that most Russian citizens can buy – it overcomes divisions of religion or ethnicity, focusing on a wider memory and appropriation accessible to most, if not. It can also be checked and can be used. Therefore, the population can buy their conditions, while the diet can use it as they see fit.
Another reason why Souvenir manufacturers should stand out from the others is McGlynn’s attempt, although limited, to reflect the way these processes are not specific to Russia. While there has been a popular desire to try to escape what is happening in Russia as unique to Russia, the reality is that the processes it has used are not unique and can be identified in other countries, including in the West. History and memory are more and more something that can be used for patriotic purposes and although McGlynn can be more direct in some of its discussions here, the opening of the comparative door is welcome and a necessary reminder that memory policy exists in all societies and nations.
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