Oleksii Polegkyi
The celebrations of Victory
Day in Russia each year are increasingly pompous and spectacular. Over the last
few years, the cult of the “Great Victory” has become a quasi-religion and the
main narrative in uniting Russian society.
The victory of the Soviet
Union in the Second World War has become a cornerstone of Russia’s national
identity formation, especially during Vladimir Putin’s time in office and has
been actively exploited to mobilise support for the current political regime in
Russia. The heritage of the victory has been used to present Russia as a great
power and justify its claims for a special status in Europe. Any objection to
the myth of the Second World War victory is seen as a threat to Russia’s
domination in the post-Soviet space or a direct challenge to the very existence
of the Russian state.
To maintain power and mobilise
support of the Russian population, Putin is aiming to rebuild a kind of
neo-Soviet empire and in doing so he is trying to promote an alternative to the
western model. Putin’s regime has sought to build an ideology around the
concept of the “special path”, mixing Stalinism and neo-Eurasianism with conservative
Christian Orthodox views and Russian nationalism. History and the past are seen
as symbolic resources and have become important instruments in achieving
political objectives and preserving power.
The cult of the “Great
Victory”
The cult of the victory in the
“Great Patriotic War” (Velikaya Otechestvennaya Voinya)
emerged in the Brezhnev era. May 9th – known as Victory Day – was not even a
public holiday before 1965. At the time, the victory was used to legitimise the
communist system in the Soviet Union and the May 9th commemorations necessarily
included a reference to the leading role of the Communist Party in the victory
over Nazism.
“Today we can say that the
Great Patriotic War, and our victory in it, has been the central event of not
only Soviet but also Russian history,” said Andrej Fursov. “Between 1941 and 1945 the
Russian people, using the Soviet regime and the Stalinist system as a shield
and sword, defended its right not only to make history but to show our
greatness,” he added.
After the collapse of the
Soviet Union, Russia began to exploit the concept of the Great Patriotic War to
bind together the post-Soviet space. Putin’s regime has been particularly active
in promoting the heritage of the common memory of the citizens of the former
Soviet Union. On the one hand Russia has shared the ownership of the victory in
the war with the neighbouring countries, yet on the other, the status of the
main victor over fascism has been reserved for Russia. Recently Russian
narratives about the Great Patriotic War have been based on three myths: power,
suffering and liberation.
The myth of power
The myth of power seeks to
represent Russia and its leaders as powerful actors and evoke a feeling of
glory deriving from the “Great Country” (Velikaya Derzhava)
narrative. The concept of power is extremely important for the public
imagination in Russia and helps the rulers justify and legitimise their
actions. The power itself has a sacred meaning in the Russian perception. From
the very beginning of his time in office, Putin has tried to forge an image of
Russia as a superpower. He began to formulate his own version of Russian
history, emphasising the need to modernise the country and reclaim its status
as a great power, both of which required a “firm hand”.
Among the Russians feeling
nostalgic about the Soviet Union, the main reason why they regretted the
collapse of the country was that “people no longer feel they belong to a great
power”. In 2012, 51 per cent of respondents chose this answer according to the Levada Center (29 per cent in 1999).
This phenomenon has been closely connected with feelings of disorientation and
humiliation in the 1990s and a drive to rebuild Russia’s greatness which has
been widespread among Russians. That is why one of the main pillars of Putin’s
ideology has been the theme of Russia “getting up off its knees” (vstavanie s kolen).
The myth of suffering
Suffering is another dimension
in the myth of power and a constitutive element of the myth of the Great
Patriotic War. According to this narrative, the Russian society had to pay a
big price for the “Great Victory”. The myth of suffering implicitly justified
the need for victims. The main arguments in this myth focus on defending Joseph
Stalin; who won the war and rebuilt the country (which would have been
impossible without victims). Over the last several years the number of people
who believe that repressions can be politically necessary and historically
justified has increased in Russia, while the number of those who think that
Stalinist repressions were unjustified political crimes has declined.
For the majority of Russians
the most important issue in evaluating Stalin’s role in Russian history has
been the fact that under his leadership Russia was victorious in the Second
World War. In 2012 nearly 60 per cent of the population (66 per cent in 2008)
agreed with the statement that regardless of any mistakes or flaws attributed
to Stalin, he led the Soviet Union to victory. At the same time 66 per cent (68
in 2008) agreed that Stalin was a cruel and ruthless tyrant, guilty of the killing
of millions of innocent people. According to a survey conducted by the Levada
Center in December 2015, 28 per cent of respondents believed that the Stalinist
period brought Russia “more good than bad”; 45 per cent thought that the period
was both good and bad; while only 16 per cent answered that Stalin’s rule
brought “more bad than good”.
The results of the public
opinion surveys reflect not only the post-Soviet sentiment characteristic for a
large part of the Russian society, but also the sacred place of power and state
in the mass consciousness. Stalin has become a symbol of a powerful state and a
system in which an individual means nothing and state interests prevail over
human life.
The myth of liberation
Since the beginning of the
2000s Russia has sought to play a greater role in international politics. The
symbolic capital of the victory over the Nazis in 1945 has thus been actively
used by the political elite of the country to strengthen Russia's position in
Europe and to restore its control over the “near abroad”. According to Nikolaj Koposov the rehabilitation of
the cult of the authoritarian state needed the myth of a “soldier-liberator”
and the reanimation of the narrative of saving the world from fascism.
Over the last few years
Russian authorities have also tried to rehabilitate the
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. As a result of the secret part of the
pact Eastern Europe was divided into spheres of influence between the Nazi
Germany and the Soviet Union, however, the Soviet, and later Russian,
historiography has tried to dissemble or justify the Soviet-German
co-operation.
To the question: “Do you know that in
September 1939 the Red Army invaded Poland and soon after the defeat of Poland
a joint parade of Soviet and German troops took place in Brest?” few
respondents answered “yes”. In 2014 only 19 per cent heard about it (21 per
cent in 2010) and 63 per cent did not (as opposed to 56 per cent in 2010). In
addition, the Russian population does not generally think of the Soviet Union
as an aggressive and expansionist state. To the question: “Can we say that in
1940, before the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic
States?” only 20 per cent of respondents answered “yes” and 53 per cent answered
“no”.
Implications for Russian
foreign policy
The memories of the Second
World War have been exploited by the Kremlin in order to legitimise the regime
and its foreign policy. Russian propaganda has actively used the Soviet
mythology and narratives of the Cold War to frame the discussion about the
current events in Ukraine. Putin justified the occupation of Crimea with the
need to protect Russians from “neo-Nazis” and “anti-Semites”. “What worries us
most? We see the rampancy of neo-Nazis, nationalists, antisemites in some parts
of Ukraine, including in Kyiv” Putin told journalists on March 4th 2014.
The return of the myths and
historical narratives of the Soviet Union has not been accidental. What is
happening in Russia is primarily a manifestation of a national identity crisis.
During the Soviet times the dominant identity of the majority of Russians was
that of the “Soviet people” and the founding myth of the country was the “Great
October Revolution”. Similarly, the victory in the “Great Patriotic War” has
later become the founding myth of the Russian nation. The search for a glorious
past to unify the nation, especially in light of trauma and disappointment
associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union, is understandable. The
idealisation of the Soviet past, identified with such figures as Stalin and
Brezhnev, has become the answer to the mass frustration of the 1990s while the
victory in the Great Patriotic War is one of the few historical events of which
the majority of Russians can be proud.
Oleksii Polegkyi is a research fellow at
the Institute of International Studies at Wrocław University and the Political
Communication Research Unit at the University of Antwerp. He received an MA in
Philosophy from the National Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University in Ukraine and
was a recipient of the L. Kirkland Fellowship Program and an Open Society
Foundation Fellowship. Polegkyi published articles concerning the
post-communist transformations in Eastern Europe, European integration and
identity building in the post-Soviet space.
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