Naming the War and Framing the Nation in Russian Public Discussion (Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue canadienne des slavistes Vol. LIV, Nos. 3–4, September-December 2012 / septembre-décembre 2012, pp. 377-400) (original) (raw)
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Naming the War and Framing the Nation in Russian Public Discussion
Canadian Slavonic Papers, 2012
War have led to a new competition of hegemonic interpretations of history and national memory. In particular this has happened in the former socialist Eastern European countries (notably in the Baltic States, Poland, and Western Ukraine) where there has been a big demand to establish a new state identity distancing these countries from the socialist past. For the Russian socio-cultural and political environment the given identity political demand has created a challenging terrain in which symbolic, and irrevocably political, resources for national identity are forced to be calibrated in line with domestic and its ramifications has been the most notable manifestation, which exhibits the political significance of history in these identity debates. In order to grasp the manifestations of this significance, this article (Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina T Vtoraia mirovaia voina, VMV) in the Russian mainstream media over the course of the last ten years. For this purpose the Integrum databases (Russian-language media corpus of more than 400 million documents) provide a productive tool for specified queries related to VOV and VMV allowing the examination of major themes that these two terms activate in the Russian public discourse. We argue that whereas canonized framework for discussing the war within society, it is the VMV which figures discussion. In relation to broader identity political context, the study expands the question of how the era of the Second World War is treated in Russia, and the potential limits of this discussion.
Youth and Memory in Europe
Russia's 'single stream history' for a nation united Since 2012, the field of memory studies of post-Soviet Russia has become increasingly crowded, in part because of the Russian government's creation of a Great Patriotic War cult. The Great Patriotic War has become an integral element of the Russian state's definition of patriotism. Politicians and state-aligned media alike have helped to compensate for the diminishing memory of the war as a lived experience by introducing policies designed to inculcate the population with respect for the war legacy, by codifying official historical narratives in legislation, and by excessively using historical analogies. Politicians and the media have invoked the Great Patriotic War as a lens through which to understand more recent crises spanning the war in Ukraine to worsening relations with the USA and EU. Citing the tragedies and triumphs of 1941-1945 as if they were innate Russian characteristics, Russian politicians' mnemonic discourse recalls Bernhard Giesen's (2004) theory that triumph and tragedy/trauma function as the two extremes against which national identity is discursively constructed. As the successor state to the USSR, Russia's great power status is, perhaps, even dependent on the legacy of the Great Victory of 1945. Consequently, any challenges to Russia's status as victor and liberator in World War II threaten to damage Russia's sense of identity and its geopolitical ambitions (Torbakov 2011). This fragility has led to what Elena Rozhdestvenskaya has described as "the hyper-exploitation of the past Victory" of 1945, which involves "the constant making present of the war experience" (2015). While the Great Patriotic War plays the most prominent role in Russia's standard cultural historical narrative, the "making present" of historical episodes extends beyond the Great Victory. Depending on the political needs of the moment, politicians and the media also try to "make present" periods from the Cold War, the Brezhnev-era, and the immediate postwar years. Indeed, the "making present" of selected episodes of Russian and world history is an integral part of ensuring the government's own political legitimacy and disseminating its approach to patriotism.
The Post-Trauma of the Great Patriotic War in Russia A
2018
Collective memory often functions as embeddedness for a narrative that can have profound legitimation consequences. In order to make a population ‘buy’ a narrative, memory entrepreneurs can manipulate traumatic memories in a population to justify the subversion of democratic processes, which is particularly dangerous. The ‘Great Patriotic War’, as World War II is known in Russia, commemorates not just the defeat of fascism, but also the survival of the nation in the face of extinction. It is also the most important heroic and unifying event in recent Russian history and is now actively used in nation-building efforts. The main argument of this essay is that due to the very traumatic nature of the collective memory of the Great Patriotic War in Russia, its citizens are bound to react in an emotional way to the issues that are discursively connected to the war.
The Post-Trauma of the Great Patriotic War in Russia
Collective memory often functions as embeddedness for a narrative that can have profound legitimation consequences. In order to make a population 'buy' a narrative, memory entrepreneurs can manipulate traumatic memories in a population to justify the subversion of democratic processes, which is particularly dangerous. The 'Great Patriotic War', as World War II is known in Russia, commemorates not just the defeat of fascism, but also the survival of the nation in the face of extinction. It is also the most important heroic and unifying event in recent Russian history and is now actively used in nation-building efforts. The main argument of this essay is that due to the very traumatic nature of the collective memory of the Great Patriotic War in Russia, its citizens are bound to react in an emotional way to the issues that are discursively connected to the war.
National History and New Nationalism in 20th Century: A Global Comparison, ed. by Thomas Maissen, 2021
By discussing the making of memory in Russia, the non-offcial, grassroots practices of commemoration should not be ignored. Through the example of combined, mixed forms of commemoration of the Second World War, one can see that remembrance is rather a state dialogue than a monologue. While there is a war memory, one can hardly speak of the existence of ‘collective memory’ in contemporary Russia: there are different perspectives on how to deal with the Russian past before and after the 1917 Revolution in society. However, the political establishment tries to establish ‘our common memory’ and use it as a tool of national consolidation. With this aim, the Soviet past has been integrated into the ‘usable’ narrative in a positive sense. But by speaking about patriotism, the government has to deal with the legacy of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. What is the Russian nation? Neither in political, societal, nor historiographical spheres is there an answer to the question as to whether the Russian nation already exists. Russian (professional) historiography remains pluralistic, as with regard to the definition of ‘nation’. The understanding and interpretation of the empire and the nation in current debates concerning the definition of ‘Russian borders’, the place of Russia in the world and the Russian–Ukrainian relations are more pressing than ever.
Maria Domańska: The myth of the Great Patriotic War as a tool of the Kremlin’s great power policy, 2019
The sacralised Soviet victory over Nazism is a central element of the politics of memory, as utilised by the Russian state today. It constitutes an important theme in the Kremlin’s ideological offensive that is intended to legitimise Russia’s great-power ambitions. The messianic myth of saving the world from absolute evil is supposed to cover up the darker chapters of Soviet history and to legitimise all subsequent Soviet or Russian wars and military interventions, starting with Hungary, through Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan and ending with Ukraine and Syria. According to the current neo-Soviet interpretation, all these military actions were purely defensive and justified by external circumstances. The glorification of the “Yalta order” and the justification of the use of force in foreign policy is intended to legitimise Moscow’s pursuit of its current strategic aims, first and foremost of these being hegemony in the post-Soviet area and revision of the European security architecture. The war mythology and Russia’s great-power ambitions continue to resonate with the wider Russian public; thus contributing to legitimisation of the authoritarian regime in the eyes of a large swathe of society and offsetting the effect of growing socio-economic problems. The myth of a wartime ‘brotherhood of arms’ has a smaller impact on other post-Soviet states, which have increasingly been distancing themselves – especially since 2014 – from Moscow’s neo-imperial historical narrative. The use of historical myths as a form of soft power finds even less resonance in Europe and the US. Nevertheless, low susceptibility in the West to Russian historical propaganda does not diminish the gravity of the challenge posed by Russian information-psychological warfare, resorting to historical falsehoods and specious analogies between the current international situation and political-military tensions of the 1930s.