Translated material
Historical politics: ideologization of society as an attempt to change post-Soviet identity
The politicized version of history finally became the core of the new ideology of the current Russian regime and the disciplinary framework of loyalty to it after the outbreak of the war with Ukraine. The first attempts to introduce an official ideology based on Orthodoxy and traditional values occurred in the mid-2010s and did not imply its obligatory nature and the forced exclusion of groups with different value systems. However, in the second half of the decade, they were replaced by the growing expansion of historical politics, the central narrative of which was the definition of Russian statehood as an alternative to the West, opposing its constant expansion and hostility. In the early 2020s, this version of history was increasingly consolidated as the only true and acceptable one, while alternative versions and associated values were seen as tools of hostile Western influence. As the Russian-Ukrainian war turned into a protracted conflict, its legitimation also increasingly became part of a single historical narrative of opposition to the West, now reinforced by state coercion and repression.
In the perspective of three decades of post-Soviet history, the ideologization of the Russian authoritarian regime replaced the era of ideological opportunism of the 2000s, the main tenets of which were the denial of any ideology and official cynicism, designed to demobilize society and marginalize groups with strong value priorities. The ideological opportunism and eclecticism of the 2000s, in turn, were designed to level out the value baggage and liberal aspirations of the perestroika and post-perestroika era. The current stage of ideological expansion on the part of the state is intended, on the one hand, to finally exclude and “cancel” the liberal part of Russian society, and on the other, to change the identity of that part of it that absorbed the ideological opportunism of the 2000s.
From ideological opportunism to ideological revenge
During the first and partly the second decade of our century, the Russian regime, despite the placement of ideological “markers” in the form of an anthem, coat of arms and flag, could not be called ideological. Indeed, the updated Soviet anthem, the coat of arms of the Russian Empire and the flag used by democratic Russia were intended to unite ideologically different eras of Russian history into a common fabric, which made almost any attempt at an ideological justification for such unity, with the possible exception of broadly interpreted patriotism, eclectic.
Moreover, in practice the regime demonstrated cynicism, constantly reminding observers that public explanations of the reasons for political decisions did not describe their real motives. This was the case, for example, with the “dispute between economic entities” during the closure of media outlets not controlled by the Kremlin, with the ban on the import of Moldovan wines and Georgian mineral water into Russia (formally due to claims from sanitary supervision, but in reality as a reaction to the actions of the leadership of these countries that Moscow did not like), and even with a description of the annexation of Crimea and the role of the Russian armed forces in this. Creating an atmosphere of general mistrust, the slogan “Everyone lies” and promoting the belief that the truth is impossible to find (what would later be called “post-truth”) directly contradicted any attempt to promote an ideology that, on the contrary, required mass trust in a certain picture of the world.
As a result, a vast layer of ideological opportunism formed in society: the rejection of communist ideology was followed by disappointment in liberal values, and the relative economic growth of the 2000s created the illusion of the possibility of “monetizing” any idea. Supporters of communism and adherents of liberalism turned from purveyors of hegemonic discourse into minority groups for whom ideology meant something. It seemed that a turn to the ideologization of society and the state was no longer possible, and the government would use other approaches more characteristic of the poststructuralist era. However, the fatigue of the population and the bureaucratic machine itself from cynicism and the decline in trust in the regime, which was expressed especially strongly during the protests of 2011–2012, forced the Kremlin to rethink the Soviet and post-Soviet experience and again try out ideological techniques for managing society. At first it was a turn towards “traditional values”, which, however, did not immediately take the form of a mandatory ideology: although state propaganda portrayed them as the values of the majority, it left room for supporters of other value systems. Although the Memorial Society, the Sakharov Center, a number of liberal media and human rights organizations began to experience state pressure during this period, they continued their work, remaining the ideological centers of the liberal intelligentsia.
At the same time, some key figures of the regime spoke out loud about the need to create its ideological foundation and a program of “ideological education” for children and youth. The first to enter this field was Vladimir Medinsky, who already in February 2012 outlined his plan for creating a “historical” ideology: “There is a need for the state to have a historical policy. But we don’t have it - everything develops spontaneously, “independently.” Under Stalin there was a historical policy - there was an order for historical films, historical books. For example, the novel “Peter the Great” was written by Tolstoy on the direct orders of Stalin. There were other masterpieces too. Because the man [Stalin] knew a lot about ideology and brainwashing. Now everything is left to chance and the efficiency, naturally, is “below the plinth.” Such activity of Medinsky resulted at this stage in the establishment of the Russian Military Historical Society (RVIO) and brought him the position of Minister of Culture, where he did a lot to shape the ideology of the regime.
In April 2016, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, published an article in which he directly formulated: “It is extremely important to create a concept for the ideological policy of the state. Its basic element could be a national idea that would truly unite a single multinational Russian people. The concept could provide for specific long-term and medium-term measures aimed at the ideological education and enlightenment of our younger generation.” “The battle for minds will become more intense and will cover new areas,” said Sergei Naryshkin, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service and concurrently the head of the Russian Historical Society, in 2017 .
In the first years of the turn towards ideologization, society witnessed repeated conflicts between supporters of different views on the past, promoted by various state or pro-state actors in historical politics. Thus, several initiatives headed by Medinsky RVIO were curtailed as a result of active resistance from other participants in the conservative coalition. Suffice it to recall the installation and subsequent dismantling of the memorial plaque to Marshal Mannerheim in 2016. There, in St. Petersburg, a memorial plaque to Admiral Kolchak was installed in the same year, but already in 2017, by court decision, it was removed. The opening of the monument to “reconciliation” in Sevastopol was delayed for several years, since the current organizations, which consider themselves continuers of the “white” and “red” cause, were not ready for any symbolic reconciliation. In 2021, the authorities interrupted a survey on whether a monument to Alexander Nevsky should be erected at Lubyanka or a monument to Dzerzhinsky should be returned there. It turned out that the survey was splitting the very anti-liberal base on which the regime relies.
During the same period, Russian statesmen increasingly turned to the past to justify modern political decisions and made attempts to subordinate history education to the tasks of propaganda, but until the early 2020s the historical community resisted such initiatives (like the “single history textbook” first proposed by Putin back in 2013). Apparently, it was precisely the resistance to a radical revision of history textbooks that became one of the incentives for the creation (starting in 2017) of a network of multimedia parks “Russia is my history”, which presented a much more conservative, anti-liberal and anti-Western narrative than even the many times edited textbooks. The project “Russia is my history” combined secular requests from the authorities and proposals from the conservative part of the Orthodox clergy, represented first of all by the bishop and then by Metropolitan Tikhon (Shevkunov).
By the end of the second decade of the 21st century, the union of the state and the Russian Orthodox Church had obviously moved from a form of institutional cooperation to the joint development of a new state ideology. One of the symbols of this was the opening of the main temple of the Armed Forces in the Moscow region on May 9, 2020, which caused a sharp reaction even from a noticeable part of the Orthodox community. Shortly before the official ceremony, it became known that the temple contains mosaic images of Joseph Stalin, as well as Vladimir Putin, Sergei Shoigu and Valentina Matvienko. As a result of protests, including those coming from the Russian Church Abroad and the Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church , the image of Stalin was moved from the temple to the museum. In the wake of these protests, Putin also proposed removing the mosaic with his portrait from the church wall (“Someday grateful descendants will appreciate our merits, but now it is too early to do this”), and this part of the image was also dismantled and moved to the museum . Nevertheless, the very creation of the “main temple of the RF Armed Forces” and the expressed intention to include portraits of regime leaders in its decoration recalled the Caesar-papism of Orthodoxy.
Thus, the demand for ideology manifested itself soon after the protests of 2011–2012 and in the first years was expressed only by a part of the political elite around Putin. At the same time, he encountered, on the one hand, competition from various “ideologization” projects, and on the other, resistance “from below”, from professional and human rights communities.
Radical turn and ideologization of history
A sharp turning point occurred at the turn of 2021–2022, when institutions that resisted the introduction of state ideology were broken, after which we can confidently talk about the transition of the regime to a new stage. The center of the new ideological picture of the world is now not so much Orthodox values as a special narrative of domestic and foreign history. An important “setting” document was Vladimir Putin’s article “75 years of the Great Victory: shared responsibility to history and the future,” published in the summer of 2020. It placed responsibility for the outbreak of World War II on the drafters of the Treaty of Versailles, the participants in the Munich Agreement, and even Poland, but not on Stalin’s Soviet Union. The article was a response to the concept of the common guilt of “two totalitarianisms,” Germany and the USSR, in starting the war, which had spread in Europe in the previous decade, and gave the signal for a return to the Soviet line of argumentation.
Although history was used to legitimize the regime virtually from the very beginning of Putin’s rule, its importance in the speeches and articles of the country’s leaders increased throughout the 2010s, and with the transition to military rule, it finally took a central place in state ideology alongside geopolitical discourses about sovereignty, the “decline of the West” and the defense of traditional values. We can name several manifestations of the qualitative change that has taken place in this area:
the introduction in 2020 into the text of the Constitution of a reference to the “protection of historical truth”, which postulated the existence of a final “historical truth” (and not a plurality of narratives), which the state knows and is obliged to protect;
transition to suppression of institutions that developed non-statist versions of national history;
refusal of competition between different lines of history textbooks for schools and the imposition of compulsory textbooks edited by Vladimir Medinsky;
introduction of compulsory historical or quasi-historical programs in the first years of Russian universities, regardless of specialty.
In 2020, Article 67.1 was introduced into the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which spoke about the “thousand-year history” of the Russian Federation, its continuity in relation to the USSR, the “memory of ancestors,” the ideals “transmitted” by them and faith in God. The article also stated that “the Russian Federation honors the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland, ensures the protection of historical truth,” and postulated the need to instill in children “patriotism, citizenship and respect for elders.” After this amendment, officials received constitutional grounds to establish a unified version of the past and to introduce it into the educational process.
Soon after the amendment of the Constitution was followed by the initiative of the Investigative Committee “to establish the facts of genocide of the Soviet people” during the Great Patriotic War. Already in October 2020, the Novgorod Regional Court for the first time recognized the actions of the German army committed on the territory of the Novgorod region as genocide. Following this, similar processes were started in the Leningrad region, St. Petersburg, Stavropol region, Volgograd and Kaluga regions, as well as in Crimea. Following the 45th meeting of the Victory Committee, Vladimir Putin instructed the Ministry of Education to include materials on the genocide of the Soviet people in federal general education programs. The idea of qualifying the actions of Nazi Germany as “genocide of the peoples of the USSR” was supported, in particular, by the same Chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin , as well as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov .
The next step, obviously associated with the decision to launch a “special military operation” against Ukraine, was the transition to the institutional suppression of non-state versions of national history: the closure of the Memorial at the end of 2021 - beginning of 2022 and the destruction of monuments to the repressed and “Last Address” signs (especially those installed in memory of Poles, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians, although not only them) during 2023.
At the end of the summer of 2023, in violation of the education law, which requires the opportunity to choose, it was announced that there would be a transition to a single history textbook for schools (before this, the appearance of competition was supported by three different “lines” of textbooks) - both domestic and universal. The author of all these textbooks was Vladimir Medinsky, who long ago gained an extremely negative reputation in the professional community of historians as a conductor of politicized interpretations and myths, contrary to the opinion of historians and source data. We can say that Medinsky’s name on the cover of the textbook became a kind of symbolic gesture from the authorities, who for 10 years before had been unable to pass a “single textbook” through professional examination.
A detailed analysis of one of the textbooks of the new “line”, undertaken by Konstantin Pakhalyuk, leads the author to the conclusion: “Being a work of state historical policy, the “textbook” of V.R. Medinsky and A.V. Torkunov is aimed at imputing the image of history where the country’s past is reduced to the development of government bodies and the work of people under their leadership. Social institutions as an independent subject of action disappear. Any crime of the state is justified by the authors through reference to an external threat or important state tasks, which constitutes the main ethical message of the manual. “Jingoism” invariably slides into a story about “historical grievances,” injustices and betrayals, fostering a flawed and angry worldview” (→ Konstantin Pakhalyuk: The Russian state and the “single” historical narrative ).
The institutions of liberal memory were destroyed and could not resist the introduction of these textbooks - however, it turned out that the narrative returning assessments of Stalin’s time did not suit not only liberals. In September 2023, the Congress of the Karachay People appealed to the leadership of both chambers of the Federal Assembly with a demand to withdraw the circulation of a textbook on the history of Russia for students in grades 10–11. The reason was a paragraph about the deportations of the Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars and Crimean Tatars, which reported the “facts” of their “collaboration with the occupiers” in 1943–1944, which, according to the authors of the textbook, “explained” the decision to liquidate the state formations of these peoples in the USSR and subject them to collective punishment - forced relocation to the eastern regions. The influential head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, joined in criticizing the textbook, and already in early November, Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov personally flew to Grozny to demonstrate the textbook edited in this section.
In parallel, the introduction of compulsory historical and quasi-historical programs in the first years of universities began - the corresponding quickly created textbooks contained even more overt ideological statements.
Of course, we cannot forget the fact that the justification for the “special military operation” against Ukraine was completely “historical” - both Putin’s article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” and his speech on the beginning of hostilities talked about history.
All these innovations indicated that the regime had finally abandoned the balancing act between the three prominent ideological groups in the country - Orthodox, communists and liberals, taking the liberals outside the boundaries of the society on which it relies.
Russia as anti-West
Ideology has indeed replaced the official cynicism of previous decades. But at the same time, the authorities no longer pose the task of re-educating the middle generation - those who absorbed the ideological opportunism of the “zero” ones. Mobilization (including literal, military mobilization to participate in the “SVO”) among people of this generation takes place on a monetized basis, corresponding to the picture of the world imposed in the first period of the regime’s existence (“There is no truth, but everything can be bought”). The main focus in ideologization is on young people who have not received an inoculation of cynicism and, as studies say, are more sympathetic to liberal values. Hence the focus on school education and textbooks. The new generation is cheaper to mobilize.
What is this ideology or quasi-ideology (since it does not meet all the characteristics of this concept)?
In its main points, it goes back to Putin’s statements in 2007, from his “Munich speech” to speeches about the need for a strong state, an organized and united society with a clear guideline. In content, all these texts are united by a common anti-Western and anti-liberal pathos, equating the country with the state, non-recognition of the subjectivity of either the internal opposition or the elites of neighboring countries, as well as the desire for the ideal of a society without internal contradictions. This ideal was first formulated by Putin back in 2007 in a speech at a forum of his supporters in a negative form, that is, through a description of opponents: “Those who oppose us do not want our plan to be implemented. Because they have completely different tasks and different views of Russia. They need a weak, sick state. They need a disorganized and disoriented society, a divided society - so that they can do their business behind its back, in order to get money at our expense. And, unfortunately, there are still inside the country those who are “jackaling” at foreign embassies, foreign diplomatic missions, counting on the support of foreign funds and governments, and not on the support of their own people.” Here there was already hope for the creation of an “organized society” that had a clear guideline and did not trust foreigners. But if in 2007 this was a long way off, by 2023 the Russian regime has moved far towards creating such a society. True, to do this he had to resort to violence.
In the texts and speeches of Putin and his inner circle, the influence of those views on the past that were embodied in the multimedia exhibitions “Russia is my history” is noticeable. The main elements of these views are anti-Westernism, illiberalism, and the celebration of unity instead of diversity. It was within this ideology that the cult of Alexander Nevsky developed with the motto attributed to him “to be friends with the East and not to trust the West.” The figure of Alexander Nevsky combines the Orthodox and “historical” components of the new ideology of Russia.
In relation to the past, the imposed view considers the modern Russian Federation to be the legitimate successor of the USSR, the Russian Empire, the Muscovite Kingdom and the Grand Duchy of Vladimir, which, in turn, inherited the Kyiv throne. From this follows the validity of claims to direct or indirect control of all territories that have ever been part of these state entities. At the same time, the Russian people have always been victims of the machinations of the insidious West and relied on alliances in the East, although several times they saved the West from the evil born in its depths. The last time this happened was during the Second World War, in which the Soviet people (= Russians) became victims of genocide, but defeated the evil of Nazism and liberated Europe, although they were slandered after that. The Great Patriotic War is, therefore, a pivotal event in Russian history, and its correct interpretation requires state protection, since it is it that legitimizes Russia’s place in the world.
Ukraine in this narrative is a part of the Russian world separated and deceived by the insidious West. The stand at the multimedia exhibition “Russia is my history,” dedicated to Galician Rus', described its history with several points: “oligarchic coup,” “the first execution of sovereigns in Rus',” “the seizure of power in Galich by a protege of foreigners,” and, summing up, “a failed power: in the 14th century, Western Rus' was absorbed by its European neighbors.” The adjacent stand, dedicated to Alexander Nevsky, highlights the following points: “refusal of subordination to the Pope”, “repelling aggression from the West”, “twinning with the Horde Khan Sartak”, “The East as a choice for the preservation of Rus'” and, as a general call, the slogan attributed to Alexander “Strengthen defenses in the West, and look for friends in the East”.
Putin’s article “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” speaks of the intention of the regime’s ideologists to return to the times of national construction of the 19th century, when the project of building a large Russian nation from the Eastern Slavs was alive (however, one cannot help but notice Putin’s complete absence of elements of another project of the same era - pan-Slavism, which sought the political unification of all Slavic peoples).
Threats and opportunities: ideological splits in Russian society and prospects for resistance
In the first months of the “SVO”, we observed how the positions of “pro-communist” (pro-Soviet) groups in the occupied territories and in propaganda strengthened: monuments to Lenin were restored, and for several weeks the “grandmother with a red flag” became a meme. It seems that the “middle strata” of the war-time elite perceived the “SVO” as the restoration of the USSR, but the Kremlin did not encourage the complete identification of Russia with the Soviet Union - on the contrary, in the official interpretation the USSR itself was rather a reincarnation of imperial Russia. This is exactly how one can read the alternative interpretation of the goals of the SVO, which Putin addressed in the summer of 2022. On June 9, at a meeting with young entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists, he compared himself with Peter I: “Peter the Great fought the Northern War for 21 years. It would seem that he was at war with Sweden, he was tearing something away... He didn’t tear anything away, he was returning it!.. Why did he go there? He returned and strengthened - that’s what he did. Apparently, it also fell to our lot to return and strengthen.”
Such a leap from “denazification” to “return of lands” as an explanation for a risky political decision may call into question the existence of a unified and consistent ideology among key representatives of the regime and rather looks like a reflection of its eclecticism. However, in reality there is no contradiction here. The situational selection of suitable elements from a set of various conservative postulates constitutes the ideological basis of the regime. Marlene Laruelle describes the penetration of ideology into Russian society not as a unidirectional “top-down” process, but as a search by the authorities for such elements of belief in society that can be used to construct a picture of the world that is convenient for themselves, and calls the Putin regime an “ideological construction ad hoc.” As tasks change, these elements may change (→ Marlene Laruelle: Ideological Complementarity or Competition? ).
And here we should return to the ideological splits of Russian society and look at whom the regime was able to mobilize and what role its ideological choice played in this. We have no reliable way to determine the share of each of these “ideological groups” in Russian society, but there is reason to assume that each of them is inferior to the share of those people whom we called “ideological opportunists.” One approximation can be seen in a youth survey conducted in November 2022, which showed that 46% of respondents were unable to characterize their political views in any particular way, while 15% (the largest share) designated them as liberal, 14% as social democratic, 9% as conservative, 8% as communist, 4% as nationalist and 4% as anarchist and others (→ Olga Popova, Nikolai Grishin: Political identity of Russian youth ).
Until recently, in its use of history, the regime balanced the views of three large groups of the Russian population: communist supporters, adherents of the Russian Orthodox Church and the liberal public (each of these groups is heterogeneous, so their designations are rather arbitrary), as manifested in the eclectic trinity of the coat of arms, flag and anthem. The exclusion of the liberal group (as by definition anti-war), symbolically indicated by the “purge” of Memorial and the Sakharov Center, left the government with two support groups. The conventionally “secular” conservative core of the regime (familiar to us from Medinsky’s speeches) has maintained an alliance with the “left conservatives” of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (Zyuganov) and Orthodox conservatives (Shevkunov). Despite significant differences in attitude towards many important events of the Russian past, these three positions were united by a common enemy - the liberal worldview.
However, the incident with the history textbook and Ramzan Kadyrov demonstrates that splits also exist within the conservative coalition. Thus, even in an extremely generalized scheme of ideological divisions in Russian society, great heterogeneity is revealed, revealing the potential weakness of the new ideology.
Efforts to ideologize history should be viewed in the unified perspective of three post-Soviet decades. Large propaganda efforts, to which are added practices of state coercion, are undertaken when it is necessary to change the dominant ideas in society, to force people to abandon a previously acquired identity and accept another. At the same time, any ideology, any detailed narrative is a response to some existing belief. It is obvious that in this case we are witnessing an attempt to break Russians’ ideas about themselves - those ideas that developed in previous periods - with the help of the introduced historical ideology. Moving in reverse chronological order from the current ideology, we see that it replaced an era of ideological opportunism, the characteristic feature of which was cynicism. But cynicism in itself is the most powerful means of corroding any beliefs. The authorities needed it to destroy the system of views that had developed among Russians during the period from perestroika to the beginning of this century. However, ideological opportunism makes political mobilization of the masses difficult. The current “ideology” is called upon to put an end not only to the remnants of the optimistic “perestroika” identity, but at the same time to the opportunism of the “zeros.”
Having moved from a balance between several options for looking at the past to a single narrative, confrontational in relation to the outside world and to part of its own society, the regime narrowed its base of support, reduced its own legitimacy, which required enormous state efforts to “reformat” the ideas of the mass of Russians about the world and Russia’s place in it. Therefore, for the first time in the post-Soviet years, structures of ideological control were deployed in the education system and repressions against dissidents began (→ Dmitry Dubrovsky: How the Russian state is introducing a repressive system into education ).
As a result, groups of Russians who have become the main target of attacks by preachers of the new ideologization represent an important resource of resistance, and violent ideologization itself gives rise to protest. In conditions of repression, its scale is impossible to assess, but it can be assumed that those who disagree with the course of ideologization can form their own coalition (or, to put it another way, political forces that risk proclaiming their disagreement can count on the formation of such a coalition), consisting of several parts:
liberals who oppose any forced ideologization of society;
“ideological opportunists” who do not trust any ideology;
some supporters of the conservative coalition who do not agree with the specific form and content of the current ideologization.
It is worth specially noting that younger Russians disagree more than others with the ideology imposed by the regime, which makes even clearer the efforts that the regime focused on the education system (→ Re: Russia: War of Patriotism ).
It is possible to restore the basic elements of the liberals’ identity, which is being destroyed by the creators of the current ideology. These are supporters of a pluralistic, complex society, sympathetic to the West, open to cooperation and not considering the state to be the highest value and the only subject of national life. Contrary to the assurances of today's propagandists, this identity was widespread far beyond the circle of the liberal intelligentsia, as is proven by the current efforts of the authorities.
Ideological opportunists may view power as a source of income, they can be “bribed,” but they are concerned about the introduction of ideology in the schools where their children study ( typical examples of parental resistance have been described in the press ). Finally, the third group includes not only authoritarian regional leaders like Kadyrov. With the approval of a specific ideology, debates about the advantages of one or another view of the past cease. The triumph of the “imperial version” makes communists and supporters of national movements critics of this ideology.
This view of the ongoing “re-ideologization” allows us to see in today’s Russian society pockets of consolidation of its opponents, to whom the regime is trying to impose a new ideology. Resistance to this ideology now relies largely on cynicism, which denies any imposed values, as well as on the resources of supporters of other versions of the conservative narrative. Any system that relies on denial is by definition weak and may succumb to the pressure of a new ideology. However, if a political force appears in the country based on pluralistic values, opposed to the imposed “monistic” ideology, it has a chance to form a coalition that will be much broader than the number of liberals remaining in Russia.