“In Russia, monuments to people responsible for mass killings and other Soviet-era crimes are springing up like mushrooms after an autumn rain,” Jaroslaw Kuisz recently wrote.
As statues commemorating figures from Joseph Stalin to the founder of the Bolshevik secret police are erected across the country, many Russians have responded with little more than a shrug. One person told a BBC reporter that Stalin is “unfairly hated”; another said that “Stalin is our history,” adding that “nobody’s perfect.”
Of course, history is never fixed, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has used this to his advantage. His regime has embarked on a major project to recast the past (and especially the Soviet era) to legitimize its rule, justify the invasion of Ukraine, and market itself as an anti-colonial power to the global south.
The essays below explore the Kremlin’s use of memory politics—and its counterpart, “memory diplomacy”—and consider how memory can still survive in today’s Russia.
A commuter pauses in front of a newly unveiled monument depicting Joseph Stalin inside Taganskaya metro station in Moscow on May 15. Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images
The Kremlin’s Factory of Resentment
A new history of the Cold War unwittingly exposes Russian distortions of the past, Jaroslaw Kuisz writes.
An eternal flame burns in front of a World War II monument depicting Soviet soldiers at a military historical museum in the village of Lenino, outside Moscow, on Feb. 15, 2020. DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
Moscow Is Using Memory Diplomacy to Export Its Narrative to the World
Putin is pushing Russian revisionist history to bolster the Kremlin’s influence abroad and its legitimacy at home, Jade McGlynn writes.
People attend the ceremony for the installation of commemorative plaques to the victims of Soviet repression on the wall of their former house in central Moscow on Dec. 10, 2014. Yuri Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images
How Memory Survives in Putin’s Russia
Russia’s dictator controls its past, Tanya Paperny writes. But can history that avoids politics live on?
People wave Russian flags as they gather to mark the eighth anniversary of Russia’s annexation of Crimea during an event at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on March 18, 2022.Ramil Sitdikov/AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine Isn’t Putin’s War—It’s Russia’s War
Jade McGlynn’s books paint an unsettling picture of ordinary Russians’ support for the invasion and occupation of Ukraine, Keir Giles writes.
Foreign Policy Illustration
How Russia Invaded Wikipedia
The Kremlin is weaponizing an alternative version of the website—and rewriting the facts of Putin’s war against Ukraine, Olga Boichak writes.