Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Derecho Público "Dr. Humberto J. La Roche"
de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas de la Universidad del Zulia
Maracaibo, Venezuela
Esta publicación cientíca en formato digital es continuidad de la revista impresa
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Vol.39 N° 69
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Diciembre
2021
Recibido el 16/03/2021 Aceptado el 02/06/2021
ISSN 0798- 1406 ~ De pó si to le gal pp 198502ZU132
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avan ces o re sul ta dos de in ves ti ga ción en las áreas de Cien cia Po lí ti ca y De re cho Pú bli-
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Vol. 39, Nº 69 (Julio - Diciembre) 2021, 407-423
IEPDP-Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas - LUZ
Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building
and Politics of Memory: Scientic and
Public Discourse
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46398/cuestpol.3969.26
Svetlana Akhundovna Tatunts *
Anastasia Mikhailovna Ponamareva **
Abstract
The aim of the study was to examine the positions of various
social groups, reecting the controversial and contradictory
aspects of the process of identity construction in post-Soviet
Russia and the factor of memory politics. The article reveals the
characteristics of the post-Soviet identity-building process and
the related politics of memory under the century-end systemic
transformation that has launched a new existential project in
Russia. Collective identity is formed in a new social space: the
global dichotomy of globalization and localization. Methodologically, it is
a documentary research close to the analysis of discourse. The process of
transition from the Soviet Union to post-Soviet space and the construction
of the new state on the ruins of the socialist empire will keep the problems
of a new identity and the politics of memory relevant soon. It is concluded
that thirty years after the liquidation of the socialist project, the crisis of
collective identity in Russia and the «battle for history» and a new Russian
national unity are not over. However, persistent social atomization and
conict-triggering narratives of various socio-cultural communities and
ideological groups persist.
Keywords: post-Soviet identity; instrumentalism; constructivism;
historical narrative; World War II.
* Doctor of Sociology, Ph. D. in Historical Sciences, Full Professor, World Politics Faculty, Lomonosov
Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0697-0847.
Email: tatunts.s.a@mail.ru
** Assistant Professor of International Security Department, World Politics Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow
State University, Moscow, Russia. Senior Researcher, Department of European Security, Center for
Scientic Information Studies of Global and Regional Problems INION RAS, Moscow, Russia. ORCID
ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8370-3622. Email: ponamareva.a.m@mail.ru
408
Svetlana Akhundovna Tatunts y Anastasia Mikhailovna Ponamareva
Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building and Politics of Memory: Scientic and Public Discourse
Construcción de la identidad rusa postsoviética y
política de la memoria: discurso cientíco y público
Resumen
El objetivo del estudio fue examinar las posiciones de varios grupos
sociales, reejando los aspectos controvertidos y contradictorios del
proceso de construcción de identidad en la Rusia postsoviética y el factor
de la política de la memoria. El artículo revela las características del proceso
de construcción de identidad postsoviética y las políticas relacionadas de
la memoria bajo la transformación sistémica de n de siglo que ha lanzado
un nuevo proyecto existencial en Rusia. La identidad colectiva se forma en
un nuevo espacio social: la dicotomía global de globalización y localización.
En lo metodológico se trata de una investigación documental próxima
al análisis del discurso. El proceso de transición de la Unión Soviética al
espacio postsoviético y la construcción del nuevo estado sobre las ruinas
del imperio socialista mantendrá la relevancia de los problemas de una
nueva identidad y la política de memoria en un futuro próximo. Se concluye
que treinta años después de la liquidación del proyecto socialista, la crisis
de identidad colectiva en Rusia y la “batalla por la historia” y una nueva
unidad nacional rusa no han terminado. Sin embargo, la atomización social
persistente y las narrativas desencadenantes de conictos de diversas
comunidades socioculturales y grupos ideológicos persisten.
Palabras clave: identidad postsoviética; instrumentalismo;
constructivismo; narrativa histórica; segunda Guerra
Mundial.
Introduction
The collective self-identication of a nation is a multidimensional
phenomenon, the study of which requires an interdisciplinary approach,
without which it is impossible to come to empirically signicant conclusions.
An important element in the formation of national identity is historical
politics, which we understand as the purposeful construction of images of
the past by state and near state institutions. Globalization as a “new type
of sociality” (Albrow, 1996) did not lead to the establishment of a universal
historical metanarrative. “Wars of memory” accompany the formation
of new states and the development of old ones, and the more clearly the
prematurity of conclusions about the “death of an ethnos and nations” and
the inevitability of political and cultural unication in the 21st century is
highlighted.
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Vol. 39 Nº 69 (Julio - Diciembre 2021): 407-423
In this context, a researcher should consider the problem of collective
self-identication of a nation taking into account such an essential feature
of modern international relations as a combination of two opposite trends
of globalization and localization, i.e., taking into account “globalization”, in
terms of R. Robertson (1992).
The issue of building national identity, as expected, acquired special
relevance in Russia at the turn of the 20
th
and 21
st
centuries under the
inuence of those tectonic shifts that took place in the country, which until
1917 constituted the core of the Russian Empire, and then, until 1991, the
Soviet Union. As V. Yadov (1994), one of the founders of Russian and Soviet
sociology, wrote, post-Soviet Russia had to rethink its national identity
and nd in its historical past new “places of memory” capable of uniting a
multiethnic society undergoing socio-political transformations and the loss
of ideological orientations.
The purpose of this article is to preserve the “spirit of liberated
independent research” (Goman, 1959: 17), to highlight the key ideas of
Russian academic discourse on the problem of the formation of a new post-
Soviet Russian identity, and also to analyze the specics of state historical
policy during the reign of V. Putin, as the longest-ruling leader of modern
Russia.
1. Materials and methods
The source base of the study consists of articles by Russian experts on
the issues of national identity, speeches by President V. Putin and certain
normative legal acts of the Russian Federation.
The theoretical framework of the article is based on the works of
domestic and foreign scientists who have made the greatest contribution to
the development of the issue of identity and memory. Since the introduction
of the concept of “identication” into science by S. Freud (1993) to explain
the mechanism of emotional self-identication of an individual with a
group, the problem eld of identity research has signicantly expanded
and now has a stable interdisciplinary nature. This was facilitated by the
development of the social psychologist E. Erikson (1968), the founder of
the theory of small social groups C. Cooley, the American anthropologists
R. Benedict, M. Mead and many others.
A signicant element of the research toolkit was the concept of “collective
representations” – collective feelings and ideas that ensure the unity and
cohesion of the group – by the founder of structural functionalism, E.
Durkheim. For the classicist of French sociology, who saw the dening trend
in the development of society in the movement towards social solidarity,
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Svetlana Akhundovna Tatunts y Anastasia Mikhailovna Ponamareva
Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building and Politics of Memory: Scientic and Public Discourse
the unity of collective ideas and normative attitudes was the basis of a new
structural independence (Durkheim, 1991). This idea is extremely relevant
in the conditions of post-Soviet Russia, fragmented, highly stratied,
where, as paradoxical as it may sound, the westernized power elite is trying
to convince citizens separated from decision-making that they need to
preserve their traditional spiritual and moral values.
Another semantic category of research is the concept of the “frame”
by E. Goman (1974: 40-43) as a kind of framework, an instrument for
cognizing social reality, which helps individuals to gain social experience.
The social environment forms social roles and social statuses, which E.
Goman calls masks. Frames, masks, symbolic interactions are extremely
important for “closed” societies. E. Goman (1963) is also the author of the
theory of stigmatization, from which we borrow the idea of considering the
relationship between virtual and real identity, taking into account the role
of stigma in the process of socialization of an individual, and the connection
between personal and social identity.
In fact, relying on E. Durkheim and following E. Goman, the authors of
the article avoid excessive psychologism, which is counterproductive for the
purposes of this study. At the same time, the question of the role of “total
institutions” in building social identity is raised tangentially.
“Total institutions” are represented as closed spaces, within which there
is an individual with imposed social roles, belonging to certain reference
groups. This “depersonalized man”, as in the concept of M. Heidegger
(1967) “das “Man” in everyday life, in the process of the formation of a
person and society, acts and thinks “as it is accepted” – he is involved in
this anonymous collective identity ... “A depersonalized man” is an object of
inuence of “total institutions”, he is in the focus of state policy, including
historical politics. It is included in the “participation” of Lucien Levy-Bruhl
(1999: 20), who describes this process as “the imposition of collective
identities of individuals,” as a result of which they become “the product not
of reasoning, but of faith”.
Studies of Russian authors in all their ideological diversity seem to be
relevant for this work. The traditions of Russian public discourse on the
problem of identity were laid down by the Russian thinkers P. Chaadayev,
N. Danilevsky, N. Berdyaev back in the tsarist period of history. On the basis
of the dichotomous analysis West-East, Europe-Russia, the foundations
of the concept of a special, almost super-original Russian identity and
Eurasianism were formed (Danilevsky, 2008).
In Soviet historiography, the prevailing ideas and theories substantiated
the formation of a new Soviet socialist identity, common for all peoples
of the Soviet Union. The research methodology was rmly based on the
ideas of the class approach in the spirit of K. Marx, V. Lenin and I. Stalin,
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therefore the identity could be either “proletarian” or “bourgeois”.
Throughout the Soviet period, this methodology was rigorously observed
in scientic literature. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of
authors, when considering the problems of national identity, adhered to
either sociobiological or cultural-historical primordialism (Bromley, 1977).
A signicant break in the methodology of Russian research was noted
at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, when fundamental
changes took place in the country and the Soviet Union collapsed. The
opportunities of Russian scientists to get acquainted with the achievements
of science in the eld of studying the problems of identity and the politics of
memory in Western countries have expanded. Despite the fact that Russian
researchers have ceased to bypass the problems of conicts, contradictions in
relations between various ethnic and cultural groups, in the theoretical and
methodological context, Russian science has not been enriched by heuristic
achievements over many decades, and, in general, these developments are
secondary (in relation to the results of Western scientists).
The analysis of the main body of post-Soviet scientic literature allows
us to conclude that the majority of authors of the old Soviet school are
committed to the cultural and historical direction of primordialism. It
is gratifying that the works, sustained in the spirit of sociobiological
primordialism, occupy a marginal position in Russian science. More and
more authors share the constructivist concepts of identity and historical
memory developed in Western science. The works of such Russian authors as
I.S. Semenenko, L.M. Drobizheva, V.A. Tishkov, A.R. Dyukov, S.V. Akopov,
V.I. Pantin, K.G. Kholodkovsky, A.A. Fadeeva are of particular interest. The
results of research conducted by the Russian academic centers, such as
the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, the Institute
of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Semenenko, 2017), are
signicant for achieving the goals of the article.
The research methodology is based on a polyparadigmatic approach to
the development of this issue, which allows us to comprehensively cover the
diversity of identity politics and historical memory in the context of post-
Soviet Russia, both in the academic eld and in the public consciousness.
Based on the phenomenological ideas of E. Husserl (1913), the connection
between the present of post-Soviet Russia and its past in various models of
discourse is shown.
2. Research results
“Third Rome” or “province”
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Svetlana Akhundovna Tatunts y Anastasia Mikhailovna Ponamareva
Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building and Politics of Memory: Scientic and Public Discourse
The range of assessments when discussing the problem of the collective
identity of post-Soviet Russia is so wide that a comprehensive coverage of
the topic within the framework of one article seems dicult. The research
focused on academic discourse, including its comparison with public
discourse, since they can be in opposition to each other.
At one pole of the discourse space, there is the thesis that in the modern
world “Russia is a second echelon country. It is the last frontier that turns
into a province” (Pigrov, 2018: 44). On the other, there is the idea, formed
back in the era of Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible (16th century): “Russia is the
third Rome, there will not be a fourth one,” i.e. the savior of the whole
world, the spiritual center of humanity.
Some, for the purpose of national consolidation, talk about the need to
enforce the rationalism, characteristic of Western society, and criticism
of the past. Others want self-identication based on tradition and sacred
values.
It is noteworthy that for a part of society it is important to feel like heirs
of Orthodox traditions, for others – Islamic ones. And these positions are
trying to reconcile the supporters of the idea of Eurasianism.
3. Permanent transformation of collective identity
An attempt to present national identity as something objective, tangible
and static is counterproductive. Changes occur in all dimensions of identity:
narrative, cultural, religious, political and geographical. They have their
own history and specicity of transformations.
Russia has repeatedly experienced stages of a crisis of collective identity,
and the 20th century is especially rich in this experience. At the end of the
twentieth century representatives of the party and state apparatus declared
themselves liberals and democrats and rushed to implement the project
of a new Russia. Millions of people accepted the ideas of perestroika and
democracy, but became disillusioned with reformers, who turned into
oligarchs and businessmen with large accounts in oshore zones and
found themselves in a state of social disorientation. In some regions of the
country, social ties and structures have been so disrupted that this has led
to the spread of ethnocentrism, racism and xenophobia. At the center of
the ideological struggle there were the questions: “Who are we? Russians,
Tatars, Christians, Muslims, former Soviet people?”
The intensity and goal-setting of the manifestation of collective identity
have changed if we compare the post-Soviet and Soviet periods.
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In some regions of Russia, followers of Islam (both representatives of
autochthonous peoples and labor immigrants from Muslim countries)
explicate and deliberately emphasize their cultural and confessional
specics. Increasingly, as a result of re-Islamization (after decades of
atheistic Soviet propaganda), religious rituals and traditions of these groups
(Tatars, Bashkirs, Azerbaijanis and Uzbeks from among labor immigrants)
are perceived as integral elements of culture, family history and clan. The
scale of re-Islamization is such that in 2013, at the anniversary of the Central
Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia, President V. Putin declared
that “Islam is a bright element of the Russian cultural code” (NEWS.ru,
2013).
The national identity and the politics of memory (based on a negative
attitude towards the Soviet past and designed by the elites in the 1990s)
did not lead to the strengthening of social cohesion. Those citizens who
in the last decades of the existence of the USSR demanded “changes” and
“new turns” came to existential horror, faced with socio-economic reforms
that accompanied political transformations. The process of transition from
“homo post-Sovieticus” to a new collective identity lasted for decades; it
was accompanied by manifestations of centrifugal processes in national
republics, armed conicts, social chaos and exacerbation of local “wars of
memory”.
4. Who Constructs Identity?
Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in 2013, President V. Putin
acknowledged that the state and society are still in search of a new formula
for post-Soviet identity, very productive for overcoming the Soviet past
and remembering this experience, as was hoped for in the 1990s. Neither
free elections, nor democracy, nor progress have freed society from the
old structures of consciousness. The concept of post-Soviet identity is not
articulated by the state, and the modern Russian nation is postulated as
a “multiracial people” in the preamble to the Constitution of the Russian
Federation, adopted in 1993 and edited in 2020 (Constitution of the
Russian Federation, 2020: 2). The constituent parts of a large palette of sub-
identities – ethnic, regional, religious, and we understand that “identity, a
national idea cannot be imposed from above” (Speech by Vladimir Putin,
2013).
It is obvious that the emancipating possibilities of the new bourgeois
economic system were not sucient – the once “united Soviet people” in
the new Russia are still in a state of dierentiation and fragmentation,
which shows the incompleteness of the country’s transit.
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Svetlana Akhundovna Tatunts y Anastasia Mikhailovna Ponamareva
Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building and Politics of Memory: Scientic and Public Discourse
So far, the political eld of constructing a new collective identity
is dominated only by the authorities, which are increasingly using
commemorative practices as a tool for uniting society, exploiting the
narrative nature of memory.
In the context of the still confrontational dichotomy of “ethnic – national
identity”, deep socio-economic polarization of society, wars of memory and
social atomization, the state in the process of its self-identication faces a
whole continuum of obstacles.
5. Discussion
With all the abundance of approaches to dening belonging to the
“collective body” of a nation, the academic community proceeds from the
idea that self-identication ‘is a matter of personal choice” – the thesis
enshrined in the 32 Copenhagen Document of the Council on Security and
Cooperation in Europe of 1990 (OSCE Copenhagen Commission, 1990: 20).
This interpretation allows us not to fall into the sin of vulgar primordialism
when discussing the problems of national identity.
An important mechanism for ensuring this self-identication, available
to the power elites, is working with historical memory. The discourse of
identity and memory in the Russian Federation has a high degree of
emotional tension and reects the state of the national dialogue between
society and the state.
Following the concept of the social framework of memory by M.
Halbwachs (2007), the authors believe that the “memorial boom” in post-
Soviet Russia was determined by the crisis of national identity due to the
trauma of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reconstruction of the past and
working with memory occur in the country in the most plural modes.
Despite the fact that the article by E. Pain (2013), the head of the Center
for the Study of Xenophobia and Extremism Prevention at the Institute
of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, dedicated to historical
fatalism in an era of timelessness (published in 2013), the author recorded
the infection of Russian society with “déjà vu disease”, which is expressed
in the explanation of modern problems of the Fatherland mainly through
the prism of the theory of “path dependency”, has not disappeared to
this day. The idea of a cultural predetermination of the Russian path is
defended by two groups with fundamentally opposite ideological attitudes
– the “guardians” and the “desperate”. If the former substantiates the
inadmissibility of political modernization as threatening the true national
values, the latter would readily break out of the “Russian bureaucratic
matrix”, but consider this a priori impossible.
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The substantive aspects of the confrontation between the “guardians”
and the “desperate” have remained unchanged over the past centuries.
It is noteworthy that, guided by fundamentally opposite motives, both
ideological groups ultimately contribute to the preservation of the existing
political regime.
The authors can agree with E. Pain that when explaining the stability of
elements of authoritarianism in Russia, Russian experts clearly exaggerate
the role of traditions. Modern comparative studies show low rates of almost
all forms of traditional group self-identication. We are not dealing with a
continuous “social relay race” of values and norms, but with innovations
disguised as traditions, i.e., with a phenomenon that the British theorist
of nationalism Eric Hobsbawm (1992) called invented traditions. The
inuence of historical culture in Russia “is determined not so much by
traditions as by their absence”. At the same time, the importance of the
resource economy factor (in which some scholars see the main source of
cyclicality in the history of Russia) is secondary in relation to political factors
and, above all, to the construction of the political system (Pain, 2013: 9-12).
Research facility of E. Pain is close to the position of A. Akhiezer, I.
Klyamkin and I. Yakovenko. These experts explain the uctuations between
reforms and counter-reforms characteristic of Russia not by the specics of
the resource economy or the peculiarities of the national mentality, but by
the direct and purposeful eorts of the political establishment to preserve
itself.
E. Pain (2013: 13) criticizes the Russian ruling forces for their methods
of cleaning up the information space in order to stabilize their own political
monopoly. Accusing the Russian authorities of “spreading anti-Western
hysteria”, he represents what is happening as a kind of ocial Moscow
initiative. However, today, as we observe an even greater increase in
tensions in the same Russian-American relations, it becomes obvious that
the restrictive measures taken by both sides reect the complex opposition
of rivalry and interdependence of the two powers. It seems that the
consideration of the legislative and administrative initiatives of the Kremlin
criticized by E. Pain without involving a broad foreign policy context turns
into one-sided interpretations.
Recognizing the fact that Russian society is divided into ideological
groups as accomplished and quite positive (in terms of avoiding the
domination of the “amorphous mass of Soviet people”), E. Pain states the
“poverty” of the set of political identications that have been manifested.
A team of experts, led by E. Pain, has compiled a political and ideological
portrait of modern Russia in the course of analyzing the Runet. There were
four recognizable “faces”: liberal, leftist, nationalist and pro-government.
Despite all the dierences between these “faces”, there are several signs that
are common to all four currents: the prevalence of negative consolidation
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Svetlana Akhundovna Tatunts y Anastasia Mikhailovna Ponamareva
Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building and Politics of Memory: Scientic and Public Discourse
according to the principle “we are not them”; dissatisfaction with the current
state of aairs; skepticism about the possibility of changing the situation for
the better (Pain, 2013: 19). And the authors of the article nd it extremely
alarming that, in practice, xenophobia is the only platform for the potential
unication of the mass audience of each of the four groups.
It should be noted that, given the increasing risk of new radical non-
systemic forces exploiting mass stereotypes on the political eld, those
in power should realize the depth of their personal responsibility for the
decisions they make and stop blaming imperfections of the system of
regulating socio-economic development on historically inherent structural
restrictions.
Ethnopolitical scientist V. Achkasov (2015) states the lack of a positive
program for the formation of national identity in the Russian Federation.
Following the logic of the German historian of religion and culture Jan
Assman (2004), he denotes the rootedness of identity, both ethnic and
national, in historical memory, emphasizing that “manipulation of historical
memory for political purposes, which is the essence of historical politics, is
at the same time manipulations with group identity” (Achkasov, 2015: 182).
However, the historical policy of the modern Russian state is defensive and
reactive, and the power elites reveal a complete unpreparedness for a critical
study of the past from the position of recognizing common responsibility
for the tragic episodes of history.
The desire to avoid certainty in the assessments of historical gures
and processes that cause heated debates in society, limits the repertoire
of the “politically suitable” past available to state structures. Criticizing
the instrumental approach of the authorities to the “collective past,” V.
Achkasov (2015: 189) points out that in the Russian Federation it is not a
raw material for conducting a purposeful and methodical historical policy,
but an object of situational use serving the purposes of legitimizing current
decisions and actions of the elites. The total dependence on the current
political environment explains the internal contradiction and eclecticism
of the historical concept of modern Russian power, in which statism and
nationalism are fancifully combined with elements of liberalism, and
restoration pathos – with the idea of modernization.
Consolidation of the nation is carried out mainly on a negative basis,
through the use of the image of the enemy, which, in principle, seems to
be typical for all states of the post-Soviet space. V. Achkasov argues that
more than twenty years after the collapse of the USSR, Russia still has not
succeeded in forming a concept of national history that would meet the
challenges of constructing its new collective identity. The key to a successful
solution is not in an apophatic approach to dening the essence of the
national, not in a strategy of silence, but in the formation of an environment
in which discussions on controversial issues of common history and
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competing interpretations of historical events and facts would be allowed.
As noted by the American economist P. Katzenstein:
(..). while we adhere only to national nationalist history and until we succeed
in combining dierent types of history, we remain prisoners of the past. After all,
only a common understanding of the past can create the basis for a common sense
of the future (Dutkevich and Sakwa, 2014: 285, 284).
In view of the above, V. Titov’s analysis of the key theoretical and
practical aspects of the implementation of the “policy of memory” in Russia
in relation to solving the problem of forming a cohesive nation deserves
detailed consideration (Titov, 2017). Using the potential of constructivist
and macro-political approaches, V. Titov formulates his own vision of
national-state identity, presenting it as a political phenomenon that reveals
itself in the synthesis of cognitive, temporal, emotional, and symbolic elds.
The eectiveness of the state “policy of memory” in the context of national-
state identity is determined through an assessment of its elasticity: the
ability to rely on ideas and stereotypes already established in society and to
take into account the existing emotional climate. It is especially emphasized
that the policy of modern states, aimed at the formation of national-state
identity, is carried out in the context of global information and sociocultural
competition, in a situation of the large-scale political “market of identities”,
within which a wide range of alternative social and political identities of
local, regional, and transnational level (Titov, 2017: 12–41).
V. Titov identies four stages of the institutional evolution of the
state policy of memory in the period from 1990 to 2010s: “anti-Soviet”
(1992–1994); “Late Yeltsin” (1995–2000); “Early Putin” (2001–2008);
“Medvedev–Putin” (since 2009), as the passage of which increases the
intensity of turning to history in order to build the geopolitical and
sociocultural foundations of the all-Russian national and state identity.
Nevertheless, his demarcation is nothing more than a methodological
technique and it does not negate the need to build continuity of the memory
policy in post-Soviet Russia, including in the context of assessments of the
Soviet experience (Titov, 2017: 59–105).
V.V. Titov attributes the disadvantages of the memory policy
implemented in the country today to the cognitive weakness of the image
of the past in the “matrix” of the Russian national and state identity;
amorphousness of mass perceptions of the past; attempts to build them
“like a chessboard”, mechanically combining “black” and “white”. This
approach avoids conicts, but a priori dooms the image of Russian history
to fragmentation.
However, the modern historical policy of the Russian authorities
from outside is seen as much more rational and thoughtful. It would
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Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building and Politics of Memory: Scientic and Public Discourse
be appropriate to compare V. Titov’s conclusion with observations of
the German historian M. Edele, who analyzed the “wars of memory” of
President V. Putin. He drew attention to the fact that the cornerstone of
state historical policy under Putin was the work with the narrative about
World War II (Edele, 2017).
This conclusion is also conrmed by domestic experts. As I. Kurilla
noted, in the Russian Federation:
(…) the history of the Great Patriotic War has become ... a universal language
of conversation about politics and the only eective “bond”... It is the narrative of
the war that the Kremlin seeks to control rst and foremost from the point of view
of the interests of the regime (Kurilla, 2018: 39).
The World War II narrative in the modern Russian Federation is based
on several strong points. First, the USSR seems to be the unambiguous
victim in this story. Secondly, the “Patriotic war of liberation against the
fascist enslavers” is positioned as a battle for the liberation of the entire
world from National Socialism.
It is important to emphasize that for the citizens of the USSR, as well as
for Russia, this Second World War has always been, rst of all, the Great
Patriotic War. It determines the discrepancy between Russian and foreign
historiography in determining the starting date of World War II. For most
Russians, this is June 22, 1941, when the troops of Nazi Germany “without
a declaration of war, suddenly attacked the entire western border of the
Soviet Union and inicted bombing air strikes on Soviet cities and military
formations”. Few people remember the Japanese invasion of Central China
in 1937. The date of September 1, 1939, which has become established in
European social science, is widely regarded by many as imposed from the
outside by those who seek to prove that the USSR is guilty of inciting war to
the same extent as Nazi Germany.
Working with collective memory helps the authorities in the confrontation
with opponents both at home and abroad. The “Russian” version of World
War II has been turned into the cornerstone of a positive national narrative.
In this context, the toughening of memorial legislation should be viewed as
an element of immunization of Russian society against the virus of “velvet
revolutions”.
The Western media did not immediately realize the full political
signicance of the law signed by the President of the Russian Federation
on May 5, 2014, criminalizing the rehabilitation of Nazism. Namely: for
public denial of the facts established by the verdict of the International
Military Tribunal for the trial and punishment of the main war criminals
of the European Axis countries; approval of the crimes established by
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the verdict, as well as the dissemination of deliberately false information
about the activities of the USSR during the Second World War, committed
publicly. For these acts, a ne of up to 300 thousand rubles is provided or
in the amount of the convicted person’s income for a period of up to two
years, or forced labor for up to three years, or imprisonment for the same
period (Federal Law of the Russian Federation, 2014). With the adoption
of this law, a kind of criminalization of freedom of expression occurred in
the Russian Federation, which does not coincide with the state ideological
narrative.
During his second presidential term, V. Putin spoke out on a number of
controversial and potentially divisive issues of history that he had previously
deliberately avoided addressing. He admitted that the apparent cruelty of
the Stalinist system can be considered historically justied, because the
defeat of the USSR in World War II (possible under a more liberal regime)
would lead to catastrophic consequences for the whole world (Edele, 2017).
By 2015, V. Putin had developed a clear scenario for presenting the
Great Patriotic War as part of the heroic history of modern Russia. The
key components of this “myth” were the following statements: the USSR
victoriously ended the war against fascism; Russia played a key role in
World War II; all negative “moments” were due to historical necessity,
normal in the context of that time and insignicant in comparison with the
cruelty of other states; Russia can be proud of its past, and anyone who does
not share this opinion is a foreign agent or an accomplice of foreign agents.
Armed with this basic narrative, Russia began a series of commemorative
events dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II and the
victory over Nazi Germany.
The interpretation of World War II, chosen by V. Putin, is in many
ways more complex and complex than the one that the former leaders of
the state adhered to. The current President of the Russian Federation does
not deny the obvious facts, but emphasizes the speculative and incorrect
unambiguous division into “black” and “white”. So, for example, having
subjected the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to moderate criticism, V. Putin
called on the international community not to consider it the only trigger
of World War II, pointing out that the Munich Agreement of 1938 played
a similar role. As I. Torbakov (2014) noted, the prevalence of a certain
attitude to history in the Russian Federation cannot be inscribed in the
primitive formula “The Kremlin is washing the brain of a defenseless
population”. Rather, we nd “a convergence of the vision of the managers
and the governed in Eurasia”.
V. Putin’s initiatives can be considered as a counterattack in the space
of the international “battle for the past”, where in recent years Russia has
been always assigned the role of a defending side. In 2009, such a step was
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Post-Soviet Russian Identity Building and Politics of Memory: Scientic and Public Discourse
the establishment of the Commission under the President of the Russian
Federation to counteract attempts to falsify history to the detriment of
Russia’s interests, which existed until 2012. But this Institute remained
rather “toothless”: its functions were limited to the synthesis and analysis
of relevant information, as well as the development of recommendations.
The 2014 Memorial Law certainly has great potential for impact.
V. Putin and his team believe that for a better future, the country needs a
monolithic, heroic narrative. In the space of historical memory, democratic
and authoritarian political projects collide, and society is polarized.
Conclusion
Summing up, we note that in the historical series of ontological issues
that torment the minds of Russians for at least two centuries, to the
textbook – “What is to be done?” and “Who is to blame?” – added the
question “Who are we?” If in the denition of the Great Patriotic War as the
most important “assemblage point” of the nation, there is a consensus of
the power elites, then there is no such agreement regarding the ideological
foundations and the vector of the future development of the state. Citizens
in their attempts at self-determination sometimes slip into confrontational
modes. The scientic community is split in its assessments of the past and
the future. All this testies to the crisis state of the collective identities of
post-Soviet Russia, to the fact that a way out of the ideological impasse has
not yet been found. The civic self-identication of Russians has a shaky
cognitive basis in terms of the ability to rely on a set of consistent ideas
about the country’s identity and past.
Despite the fact that the academic community of this or that platform
raises the question of the need for a holistic structuring of the narrative
about the past, while the authorities interpret this task in a utilitarian
instrumental key: more as a measure of counteraction to attempts to falsify
Russian history, both from domestic and foreign opponents. How long
this symbolic resource will be sucient for the construction of a solidary
national identity in the long term, only time will give the answer.
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Esta revista fue editada en formato digital y publicada
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