tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/russian-history-35739/articlesRussian history – The Conversation2024-02-15T15:59:08Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2233652024-02-15T15:59:08Z2024-02-15T15:59:08ZVladimir Putin’s history war where truth is the first casualty<p>The Kremlin’s decision to <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/kremlin-sanctions-russophobic-british-historians-ckkl0dmbv#:%7E:text=The%20Kremlin%20has%20issued%20sanctions,contribution%20to%20London's%20subversive%20work%E2%80%9D.">sanction several UK historians</a> for their allegedly erroneous coverage of Russian history shows the extent to which Vladimir Putin’s regime is doubling down on its view of Ukraine as historically Russian. Putin’s suggestion is so spurious that it requires the silencing of credible historians.</p>
<p>The world got another taste of Putin’s view of history on February 6, when the Russian leader <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOCWBhuDdDo&t=563s">was interviewed</a> by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Putin began this two-hour interview with a lengthy monologue about the medieval history of Russia and Ukraine. The thrust of his argument is that much of modern Ukraine is historically Russian, and that the very idea of Ukraine is nothing more than a Polish invention. </p>
<p>As Putin tells it, in the year 862 the people of the city of Novgorod invited a Viking called Rurik to reign over them. Two decades later, Rurik’s successor, Oleg, established himself in the southern city of Kyiv. Thus, in Putin’s view, Russia was formed in the ninth century, and it incorporated territories stretching from Novgorod, a northerly city in modern-day Russia, to Kyiv, the capital of modern-day Ukraine.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">When Tucker met Vladimir.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Already, alarm bells ring for any historian familiar with the context. First of all, Putin’s story is exactly that, a story. His account of Rurik and Oleg comes from a 12th-century text known as the <a href="https://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/dokumente/a/a011458.pdf">Primary Chronicle</a>. Written by a monk in Kyiv, it celebrated the ruling Rurik dynasty through a series of myths. The Primary Chronicle is as much a work of fiction as a history. It begins with a legend tracing the origins of the Slavic people all the way back to Noah’s Ark. </p>
<p>As far as Putin’s narrative about Rurik goes, modern scholars interpret the people behind Novgorod’s “invitation” as a literary invention. Some have even suggested that Rurik <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/css/52/1/article-p30_2.xml">may have been entirely made up</a>. Putin reeled off this unlikely story from a mythological and deeply biased work of 12th-century literature as historical fact.</p>
<p>More concerning still is Putin’s reference to the existence of Russia in the ninth century. At that time, a kingdom of sorts was emerging that historians often call <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Kyivan-Rus">Kyivan Rus</a>. Kyivan Rus comprised principalities spanning part of what is now modern-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. Those principalities were ruled over by different branches of the Rurik dynasty, who often fought with one another. The most senior member of the dynasty resided in Kyiv, the kingdom’s religious centre.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575941/original/file-20240215-22-v81t2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Map of Kyivan Rus." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575941/original/file-20240215-22-v81t2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575941/original/file-20240215-22-v81t2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575941/original/file-20240215-22-v81t2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575941/original/file-20240215-22-v81t2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575941/original/file-20240215-22-v81t2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575941/original/file-20240215-22-v81t2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575941/original/file-20240215-22-v81t2t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=936&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Kyivan Rus: wrongly described by Russian president Vladimir Putin as Russian.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SeikoEn/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Kyivan Rus was not “Russian”, as <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181">Putin has called it</a>. Kyivan Rus predates Russia, which began to form around Moscow only <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Formation-of-Muscovy-1300---1613-The/Crummey/p/book/9780582491533#:%7E:text=Description,core%20of%20the%20Soviet%20Union.">from the 14th century</a>. The language of Kyivan Rus was <a href="https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/eieol/oruol">Old East Slavic</a> (OES), the language from which modern-day Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian derive.</p>
<p>Medieval texts in OES referred to Kyivan Rus as “the Rus land”. Conveniently for the Kremlin, OES words describing Kyivan Rus are often similar to Russian words describing Russia. For example, in OES “the Rus land” is “<em>ruskaya zemlya</em>”, while in Russian the strikingly similar “<em>russkaya zemlya</em>” means “the Russian land”. </p>
<p>Lexical similarities between OES and Russian allow Putin to present Kyivan Rus as Russia – failing to note that OES and Russian are different languages.</p>
<h2>Blame it on Poland</h2>
<p>Putin then skipped forward a few centuries, suggesting to Carlson that the idea of Ukraine was really invented by the Poles. From the late 16th century, part of what had been Kyivan Rus was incorporated into the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Polish-Lithuanian-Commonwealth">Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth</a>. Although this area would later become Ukraine, Putin implies that it was actually Russian, and that the Poles invented the idea that it was Ukrainian as a way of undermining Russia.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575943/original/file-20240215-30-pe3vzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Statue of Rurik, a ninth-century Viking who allegedly ruled over a portion of what is modern-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine in Novgorod, northwestern Russia." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575943/original/file-20240215-30-pe3vzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/575943/original/file-20240215-30-pe3vzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575943/original/file-20240215-30-pe3vzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575943/original/file-20240215-30-pe3vzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575943/original/file-20240215-30-pe3vzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575943/original/file-20240215-30-pe3vzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/575943/original/file-20240215-30-pe3vzg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Founder of Russia? Rurik, a ninth-century Viking who allegedly ruled over a portion of modern-day Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Дар Ветер/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
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<p>Presenting “Ukrainianness” as a Polish invention overlooks the development of a unique culture that was underway in this area in the 1600s. This culture was unique in its innovation of conservative religious tradition and development of new cultural forms. </p>
<p>For example, in 1646 the Kyivan church leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Petro-Mohyla">Petro Mohyla</a> published a new church book that did away with certain traditions that had been practised in the region since the 11th century, such as <a href="https://www.academia.edu/38069234/Banning_Spiritual_Brotherhoods_and_Establishing_Marital_Chastity_in_Sixteenth_and_Seventeenth_Century_Muscovy_and_Ruthenia">spiritual brotherhood ceremonies</a>. His book also presented <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/815967/summary">western-inspired images</a> that stood in stark contrast to Russia’s Byzantine-style icons, introducing new and provocative ways of envisioning Christ. </p>
<p>Putin painted a picture of this area as fundamentally Russian and its people as passive, shaped by their imperial overlord Poland. In reality, the culture developing there was distinct. Like Russia, it drew on cultural models from Kyivan Rus, but in contrast to Russia, it innovated those models through cultural exchange with Europe. This was thanks to the active efforts of cultural innovators, some of whom are major figures in Ukrainian history.</p>
<p>Putin’s claim that Ukraine is historically Russian is nothing new. Ever since Russia began forming around Moscow from the 14th century, it saw itself as a continuation of Kyivan Rus. That mindset prevailed when modern Russian history was first written in the 19th century. Karamzin’s 1829 <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/jmrh/3/1/article-p1_2.xml">History of the Russian State</a>, still one of Russia’s most celebrated history books, called Kyivan Rus “Russia”. </p>
<p>So, Putin’s early history of Ukraine is part of a Russian imperialist story that has been told for centuries. Only it is exactly that, a story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223365/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Mayhew does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Putin’s argument that Russia has a historic claim to Ukraine stretching back to the Middle Ages relies on some very doubtful sources.Nick Mayhew, Lecturer in Russian, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2225492024-02-01T17:41:08Z2024-02-01T17:41:08ZUkraine recap: Zelensky battles corruption and a major row with his commander-in-chief<p>The Russian winter offensive flagged here a fortnight ago appears to be under way, according to the Institute for the Study of War, which has noted operations in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts resulting in small Russian gains of territory. Ukrainian intelligence reports that the aim is to push towards Kharkiv while occupying the whole administrative areas of Donetsk and Luhansk. </p>
<p>But the feeling is that Russia is unlikely to be able to fulfil this ambition. Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, or GUR, said he expected Russian forces would be “completely exhausted” by spring. As ever, the key will be whether Ukraine can obtain enough ammunition to survive until then. According to a recent report by Bloomberg, the EU is expected to deliver only just over half the 1 million shells it has promised Ukraine by March 1. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, both the EU and US have been struggling to get their aid packages agreed – although it has been reported that Hungarian president Viktor Orbán has bowed to pressure from other EU members and agreed not to obstruct their €50 billion (£42.7 billion) military aid package. But this leaves the US president, Joe Biden, trying to find ways to convince recalcitrant Republican senators to fall into line over his plans to provide Ukraine with US$60 billion (£47.3 billion) of military aid.</p>
<p>It has been reported that Biden has managed to circumvent the senate by giving Greece a large cache of older surplus weapons, with the understanding that Greece then passes on its own surplus weaponry to Ukraine – a variation of what is known as Germany’s <em>Ringtausch</em> (ring transfer) programme, by which it supplied tanks to Ukraine via Slovakia, circumventing its own security policy.</p>
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<span class="caption">The state of the war in Ukraine, January 30 2024.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Institute for the Study of War</span></span>
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<p>But it’s widely hoped that Biden will be able to bring the senate round to his way of thinking. One possible snag is the military corruption scandal that has broken round Volodymyr Zelensky’s ears in recent days. </p>
<p>The Ukrainian president came to power in 2019 on a platform of rooting out corruption and fraud in one of Europe’s most corrupt countries. That this latest episode concerns senior defence officials and managers of an arms supplier allegedly colluding to pocket £31 million that was meant to buy artillery shells will not make it any easier for Biden to persuade sceptical senators to fall into line, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-corruption-scandals-and-high-level-rifts-could-become-an-existential-threat-as-kyiv-asks-for-more-military-aid-222432">write Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko</a>.</p>
<p>Wolff, an expert in international security at the University of Birmingham, and Malyarenko, from the University of Odesa, also highlight a rift between Zelensky and his military commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhny, which has developed since November when Zaluzhny said publicly the war was in a stalemate. None of this will give Kyiv’s western allies a great deal of confidence about the future of their investment.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-corruption-scandals-and-high-level-rifts-could-become-an-existential-threat-as-kyiv-asks-for-more-military-aid-222432">Ukraine war: corruption scandals and high-level rifts could become an existential threat as Kyiv asks for more military aid</a>
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<img alt="Ukraine Recap weekly email newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/ukraine-12-months-at-war-134215?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Ukraine12Months">understand the big issues</a>. You can also <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=Ukraine12Months">subscribe to our fortnightly recap</a> of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.</em></p>
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<p>Ukrainians remain committed to beating Russia, although polling taken in November 2023 revealed that an increasing number would be willing to accept a negotiated deal to end the fighting, which would inevitably involve the loss of territory to Russia.</p>
<p><iframe id="eLnQH" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/eLnQH/6/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Gerard Toal, professor of government and international affairs at Virginia Tech, believes this resolve <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-latest-polling-says-about-the-mood-in-ukraine-and-the-desire-to-remain-optimistic-amid-the-suffering-221559">may be tested</a> once the next round of recruitment, which aims to add as many as 500,000 fresh troops to Ukraine’s armed forces in the field, gets under way.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-latest-polling-says-about-the-mood-in-ukraine-and-the-desire-to-remain-optimistic-amid-the-suffering-221559">What latest polling says about the mood in Ukraine – and the desire to remain optimistic amid the suffering</a>
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<p>Meanwhile Elis Vilasi, who lectures in national security and foreign affairs at the University of Tennessee, <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-western-imposed-peace-deal-in-ukraine-risks-feeding-russias-hunger-for-land-as-it-did-with-serbia-217517">warns against</a> any peace deal which would involve Russia gaining territory. He points to Serbia, which – more than two decades on from the settlement of hostilities in the Balkans – continues to attempt to destabilise the region.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-western-imposed-peace-deal-in-ukraine-risks-feeding-russias-hunger-for-land-as-it-did-with-serbia-217517">A Western-imposed peace deal in Ukraine risks feeding Russia's hunger for land – as it did with Serbia</a>
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<h2>Beating the drum for war</h2>
<p>Increasingly common media coverage in the UK pointing to the likelihood of a major war in Europe has encouraged some commentators and military types to consider the precipitous decline in the UK’s troop numbers, which are forecast to fall below 70,000 within two years.</p>
<p>Mark Lacy, a philosopher at Lancaster University, notes a <a href="https://theconversation.com/new-fortnite-style-recruitment-video-shows-how-uk-armed-forces-are-getting-serious-about-prospects-of-nato-war-with-russia-221890">new recruitment video</a> for the British army which uses a Fortnite-style computer game to target more tech-savvy young people. The nature of war is changing, Lacy believes, so strong tech skills will inevitably be part of most future soldiers’ armoury.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-fortnite-style-recruitment-video-shows-how-uk-armed-forces-are-getting-serious-about-prospects-of-nato-war-with-russia-221890">New Fortnite-style recruitment video shows how UK armed forces are getting serious about prospects of Nato war with Russia</a>
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<p>All this talk of a major impending European – even world – war bears comparison to the years in the lead-up to the second world war. History tells us that most people in Britain realised by the late 1930s that a fresh conflict with Germany was inevitable. </p>
<p>Tim Luckhurst, who researches newspaper history at Durham University, has had a <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-press-warns-of-nato-war-with-russia-newspapers-are-clearly-keen-to-avoid-mistakes-of-wwii-221888">trawl through some of the coverage from 1938</a> when the then-prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, flew to Munich for talks with Adolf Hitler and came back with a “piece of paper” promising “peace in our time”. Liberal and left-leaning papers such as the Daily Mirror and The Guardian decried Chamberlain’s deal for abandoning Czechoslovakia (and of course, with hindsight, we know how disastrous a decision it turned out to be).</p>
<p>The more conservative press, including the Times and the Daily Mail, were four-square behind Chamberlain. The Mail, which in its chequered past featured headlines such as “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” in praise of homegrown fascist Oswald Mosley, appeared to be particularly convinced of Hitler’s bona fides.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-press-warns-of-nato-war-with-russia-newspapers-are-clearly-keen-to-avoid-mistakes-of-wwii-221888">UK press warns of Nato war with Russia – newspapers are clearly keen to avoid mistakes of WWII</a>
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<h2>Meanwhile in Russia …</h2>
<p>In his quest to ensure he retains control over the hearts and minds of as many Russian people as possible, Vladimir Putin has mandated a rewriting of school history textbooks. Among other things, the new books extol the memory of Comrade Joseph Stalin – who we know as a murderous tyrant, but who a new generation of Russians (and Ukrainians in occupied territories) now know to be a kindly old gentleman who did a good deal to make Russia the great nation that Putin aims to restore.</p>
<p>Anya Free, a scholar of Russian and Soviet history at Arizona State University, writes that this is part of a wider move to <a href="https://theconversation.com/back-in-the-ussr-new-high-school-textbooks-in-russia-whitewash-stalins-terror-as-putin-wages-war-on-historical-memory-216255">control memory in Russia</a>, which also involves the creation of a network of “historical memory” centres across Russia and occupied Ukraine. Ukrainian students will, for example, get to read a collection of documents on the “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians” – where they will find out that Comrade Putin was right all along about Ukraine being part of Russia.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/back-in-the-ussr-new-high-school-textbooks-in-russia-whitewash-stalins-terror-as-putin-wages-war-on-historical-memory-216255">Back in the USSR: New high school textbooks in Russia whitewash Stalin's terror as Putin wages war on historical memory</a>
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<p>Of course, a new generation of patriotic young Russians will want to explore the wonders of their country, so Putin also plans to turn his country’s untamed and isolated far east into a new tourism hotspot.</p>
<p>Natasha Kuhrt, a Russia expert at King’s College London, says the region – which has hitherto been a massive centre for the production of energy and raw materials, much of which have been exported to China – will depend on domestic visitors and tourists from China. And there’s no disputing its natural beauty, including 23 national parks.</p>
<p>The problem, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/putin-wants-to-transform-russias-far-east-into-a-tourist-hotspot-but-history-shows-it-wont-be-easy-220953">Kuhrt notes</a>, is that many Chinese visitors to Russia’s “wild east” in the past have engaged in large-scale hunting and poaching of wildlife. This would seem at odds with Putin’s plan to encourage development of the region as a centre for ecotourism.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/putin-wants-to-transform-russias-far-east-into-a-tourist-hotspot-but-history-shows-it-wont-be-easy-220953">Putin wants to transform Russia's far east into a tourist hotspot – but history shows it won't be easy</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
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A selection of our coverage of the war in Ukraine over the past fortnight.Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2061542023-11-30T13:37:35Z2023-11-30T13:37:35ZRussian attempt to control narrative in Ukraine employs age-old tactic of ‘othering’ the enemy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562548/original/file-20231129-22-s5i244.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C7%2C4712%2C3252&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vigil lanterns at the Bitter Memory of Childhood monument commemorating the Ukrainian famine</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/vigil-lanterns-are-left-at-the-bitter-memory-of-childhood-news-photo/1807066068?adppopup=true">Kirill Chubotin / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Controlling the narrative has long been crucial to Russian President Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine.</p>
<p>In the worldview he promulgates, the U.S. is an “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/world/europe/us-putin-nuclear-war-nato.html">empire of lies</a>,” the West is bent on “<a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/putin-says-west-aiming-to-tear-apart-russia-/6890771.html#:%7E:text=Russian%20President%20Vladimir%20Putin%20blasted,historical%20Russia%2C%22%20Putin%20said.">tearing apart Russia</a>,” and Ukraine is a “Nazi-run” country whose <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/world/europe/putin-ukraine.html">statehood is a historical fiction</a>.</p>
<p>Through speeches and propaganda, Putin presents this narrative to his own country and the rest of the world. It is a worldview that is negative, historically and factually false and <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/siege-stalingrad-battle-bucha-vladimir-putin-russia-war-against-west/">relies on provocative rhetorical framing</a>. It is a framing that fits well the Russian phrase that translates in English as “<a href="https://dzen.ru/media/lecture/kto-ne-s-nami-tot-protiv-nas-bolshevistskii-lozung-nashli-v-novom-zavete-5e6f62e46fa17f240b396f40?utm_referer=www.google.com">who is not with us, is against us</a>,” forms of which have been popularized <a href="https://www.prlib.ru/en/node/436187">through czarist</a> and Soviet years and have returned with a vengeance under Putin.</p>
<p>It is also, as I <a href="https://press.umich.edu/Books/C/Communicating-the-Other-across-Cultures3">explore in my new book</a>, a popular form of what is known as “<a href="https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=JBbXEAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP8&dq=khrebtan&ots=iDZYskbvoN&sig=APS4AHRleXga2RmxKiReispjj_o#v=onepage&q=khrebtan&f=false">cultural othering</a>,” which can be used to gain, maintain and exercise power.</p>
<h2>Cultural othering, explained</h2>
<p>Cultural othering is the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/08/us-vs-them-the-sinister-techniques-of-othering-and-how-to-avoid-them">process of defining a group of people</a> – be it a racial, ethnic or national group – as different and then treating them as inferior. This “other” group is assigned negative traits to make them appear lower to the dominant group, and to marginalize them.</p>
<p>Othering has long <a href="https://press.umich.edu/Books/C/Communicating-the-Other-across-Cultures3">been a tool employed to assert authority over marginalized groups</a>, such as by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-colonialism/Partition-of-Africa">European colonizers in Africa</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Western-colonialism/The-Open-Door-Policy">Asia</a>, or by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/video/212505/Shrinking-Native-American-lands-in-the-United-States-indigenous-peoples">settlers in Native American lands</a>.</p>
<p>Putin and the Russian state are <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/power-russian-cultural-othering-ukraine">very skilled at practicing cultural othering</a> and have deployed it against Ukrainian “enemies” as tanks rolled into Ukraine. In the worldview of Putin, their separatist vision was based on Russophobia, <a href="https://ria.ru/20230905/putin-1894346399.html">fascism and neo-Nazism</a>.</p>
<p>Putin’s othering predates the 2022 invasion. It was seen in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-crisis-in-Crimea-and-eastern-Ukraine">2014 illegal annexation of Crimea</a>, the <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-2008-russo-georgian-war-putins-green-light/">2008 conflict in Georgia</a> and the brutal <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/12/1085861999/russias-wars-in-chechnya-offer-a-grim-warning-of-what-could-be-in-ukraine">Chechen wars from 1994 onward</a>. All represented Russian attempts to <a href="https://www.europenowjournal.org/2022/12/07/the-banality-of-world-war-z/">reestablish its control</a> over “others” – Ukrainians, Georgians, Chechens, the Crimean Tatars – that under the Soviet system had been reincorporated into an idea of a “Great Russia.” Their crime, as seen from Moscow, was that they were undermining Putin’s long-held vision for a return to that great Russian empire.</p>
<h2>Soviet brotherhood, revisited</h2>
<p>The curious thing about Putin’s othering is it focuses on national groups that he has simultaneously claimed to be of the same people as Russia.</p>
<p>From Putin’s perspective, these would-be breakaway neighbors are former “<a href="https://tmora.org/online-exhibitions/postage-stamps-messengers-of-the-soviet-future/the-human-project/a-brotherhood-of-nations/">brotherly republics</a>” cleaved from Mother Moscow only by the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s – an event Putin has described as <a href="https://www.rbc.ru/politics/12/12/2021/61b5e7b79a7947689a33f5fe">the biggest geopolitical tragedy of the century</a>. To push this narrative, Putin employs a warped view of history, invoking the “Kyivan Rus” – <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-moscow-has-long-used-the-historic-kyivan-rus-state-to-justify-expansionism-178092">the medieval state</a> that sought to unite the people of a vast land mass – and denouncing Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin as “<a href="https://tass.ru/politika/13791307">the creator and architect of Ukraine</a>” and encouraging nationalist ambitions.</p>
<p>Under Putinism, there are seemingly two options for countries that once formed the Russian, and later Soviet, empire.</p>
<p>The first involves total geopolitical and cultural submission, assimilation and acceptance of pan-Russian sameness, as is seen in <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/belarus-dictator-lukashenka-must-face-justice-for-role-in-russias-ukraine-war/">Belarus under Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko</a>. The second option is to seek national and cultural self-definition, but be subjected to the most extreme forms of cultural othering for doing so. In other words, it is the choice of being a brother or the other.</p>
<p>To Putin, nations that dared to break away from Russian hegemony and, like Ukraine, developed pro-Western ambitions, turned into an enemy.</p>
<h2>Othering in historical context</h2>
<p>Putin’s cultural othering of Ukraine taps into a history of Russia that goes back centuries. It was evident in imperial Russia and reflected in the literature of the time. Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, in his epic “<a href="https://aleksandr-pushkin.su/poemy/poltava/?lang=en&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F">Poltava</a>,” and novelist Leo Tolstoy, in “<a href="https://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2888/">A Prisoner in the Caucasus</a>,” both glorified Russian martyrdom and heroism while employing othering language and devices against different groups of people, including the French, Swedes, Turks, the Circassians, Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians. This othering serves to portray those seeking distance from Moscow as subhuman, or at least sub-Russian.</p>
<p>In the Soviet period, cultural othering took the form of demonizing anyone who balked at or actively fought attempts to force a homogeneous Soviet identity over ethnic and class diversity. The punishment for resistance and disobedience was severe, especially under Josef Stalin; the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Gulag">gulag</a> served as the ultimate destination for those who did not assimilate.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Ukraine paid a terrible price for resistance to assimilation. Stalin’s human-made starvation of Ukrainian peasants from <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/abs/19211923-famine-and-the-holodomor-of-19321933-in-ukraine-common-and-distinctive-features/FF55ABB2A8E9106DCE3386FA7031AD7A">1932 and 1933</a> – which many historians attribute in part to an attempt to suppress or punish Ukrainian aspirations of independence – killed millions of Ukrainians. And here lies an important aspect of cultural othering: Once a people are “othered,” their lives are degraded and dehumanized – making such atrocities more acceptable to the dominant group.</p>
<p>Eventually – to escape repressions and to survive – Ukrainians, Georgians, Crimean Tatars and other “others” reluctantly accepted Soviet brotherhood and political and linguistic submission and cultural assimilation with Russia.</p>
<p>In this way, Russian leaders from emperors to Soviet chiefs have manifested Russian geopolitical and ideological hegemony. Putin is following suit.</p>
<h2>New leader, old strategy</h2>
<p>Since coming to power, Putin has tried to reconstruct Russia’s former territorial and ideological might, while simultaneously positioning the country in opposition to its habitual enemy – the “<a href="https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1905984/">collective West</a>.” When Ukraine chose a pro-European course, Putin saw it as the act of a treacherous enemy.</p>
<p>Putin’s rhetoric has been fusing Ukraine and the West together in one single enemy ever since. Putin often “others” the West – and, by association, Ukraine – by drawing comparisons between Russian traditional values and <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/17/russia-homophobia-and-battle-traditional-values">Western cultural “decadence” with its LGBTQ+ rights</a>, gender-related debates and other identity issues. Since the beginning of the war, Putin has othered Ukraine by making it both “of the West” but also “Nazi.” That has allowed him to frame his war as “<a href="https://www.natcom.org/spectra/shielding-democracy-putins-swords">liberation,” “demilitarization,” and “de-nazification</a>.” Meanwhile, religious leaders in Russia have framed the conflict as a holy war, with the aim of “<a href="https://news.sky.com/story/claims-russian-troops-need-to-de-satanise-ukraine-criticised-as-holy-war-comparisons-made-12731383">de-Satanizing” Ukraine</a>.“</p>
<p>This continued othering of Ukrainians by Putin means that the war is one that goes beyond territory and ideology. Rather, what has been set up is a conflict between two cultural selves that are mutually exclusive. It is, to Putin, the Russian "us” against the Western and Ukrainian “them.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206154/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Putin’s worldview echoes Russian phrase, ‘Who is not with us, is against us.’Julia Khrebtan-Hörhager, Associate Professor of Critical Cultural & International Studies, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2166662023-11-22T18:20:22Z2023-11-22T18:20:22ZRussian rap has long held up a mirror to Russian society – and the current reflection isn’t flattering<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561025/original/file-20231122-19-1dda9k.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C1276%2C839&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Andrey Vladimirovich Menshikov, mostly known by his stage name 'Legalize', but also for his membership in D.O.B and Bad Balance, is used to grating the Kremlin. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ligalize_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%82_%D0%B2_%D0%B11_%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%BC.jpg">KabanDanish/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In retrospect, rap in 1990s Russia was truly free. How so? Look around: the bright post-Soviet future of which Russians caught a glimpse during the 1990s has collapsed, replaced with something much darker, with one of its victims being rap.</p>
<p>In my <a href="https://www.katalog.uu.se/empinfo/?id=N23-773">PhD research on 1990s rap in Russia</a>, I find the era allowed Soviet nostalgia, sexual promiscuity, and self-reflection to live alongside political cooptation, much like in the 1999/2000 song “Beat Battle”, a covert political message in support of centrist electoral candidate <a href="https://www.zvuki.ru/R/P/2423/">Grigory Yavlinsky</a>. The 1996 track <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZA5Zf0jxX0M">“Vote or Lose”</a> by Bachelor Party (in Russian: Malchinik, Мальчишник) is yet another case:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The time has come to decide the fate of a great country. And everyone must do it, you must do it. Think, what do you choose for yourself? Vote, or you will lose.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What you can’t find is censorship. Whatever one thinks of Boris Yeltsin’s embrace of the West, thanks to rap, a strong <a href="https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/hip-off-old-bloc/docview/478059781/se-2">community</a> was created. Come 2023, and censorship has changed that community’s fabric forever.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Beat Battle Concert ft. rock group НАИВ (2000).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Putin and censorship’s creeping reach</h2>
<p>Hip-hop was introduced to Russia in the 1970s through skateboarding, graffiti, breakdancing, and the disco predecessor to rap, MCing. Rap entered the picture in the 1980s with disco-funk groups such as Rush Hour (Tchas Pik/ <a href="https://abrgen.ru/muzika/luchshie_otechest/chas_pik_g_kuibishev/">Час Пик</a>) and Brothers In Mind (Bratya Po Razmu/ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk6SLwcVOB0">Братья По Разуму</a>), influenced by the funk sound of the Barbadian DJ Grandmaster Flash, among others. By the 1990s the rap scene was taking off, with everything from festivals, rap battles, and publications – it was a dream come true. Defined by exploration and precarity, the 1990s empowered the rap community to cultivate an identity, although political exploitation shouldn’t be <a href="https://lenta.ru/articles/2015/12/18/adamov/">ignored</a>. For example, Bad Balance’s participation in <a href="https://dzen.ru/a/Xqn8z37E3W30adrF">“Vote or Lose”</a> as part of Boris Yeltsin’s 1996 political campaign stands out as one of the decade’s more brazen examples.</p>
<p>With Putin’s arrival in 2000, everything changed. By the late 2000s, life was politicised but rap culture kept innovating – 2H Company’s rap ballet <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ring_(ballet)">“The Ring”</a> is a striking example. But so did life, with radical skinheads posing a <a href="https://www.newkaliningrad.ru/news/community/3160-.html">growing threat</a> toward rap’s domestic progress. Despite some groups’ <a href="http://os.colta.ru/music_modern/names/details/894/">omission of politics</a>, by 2010 rap was socially synonymous with Western overreach – it had to be controlled. So in July, rapper Noize MC was detained at a festival for <a href="https://www.gazeta.ru/social/2010/08/11/3406549.shtml">“foul language”</a>, charged with “petty hooliganism” and jailed for <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221227201406/https://www.svoboda.org/a/2128110.html">10 days</a>.</p>
<p>Thus began the saga of rap censorship in Russia, marked by two peaks: 2018, a rise in teen-led violence that led society to deem rap a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/11/28/russian-rap-under-fire">negative influence</a> and 2021, the year of the <a href="https://the-flow.ru/foto/miron-face-vladi">jailing of opposition leader Alexei Navalny</a>, terrorist attacks and conflations of <a href="https://iz.ru/1225611/2021-09-23/advokat-morgenshterna-nazval-napadki-na-repera-popytkoi-politikov-khaipanut">rap and violence</a>. Mizulina, following the September 22 shooting at Perm University, accused the gunman of being a fan of the rapper Morgenshtern. The second peak was marked by the rapper’s move to <a href="https://stars.segodnya.ua/stars/zarubezhnye/grozit-15-let-tyurmy-morgenshtern-pod-pricelom-policii-iz-za-svoih-klipov-1586071.html">Dubai</a>, which came on the heels of his being accused of promoting drug use in his hit, “Pablo”. As of 2023, more than 10 high-profile rappers have left Russia, decimating the domestic scene.</p>
<h2>Death by a thousand cuts</h2>
<p>To some Russian scholars, rap is a <a href="https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/rasprostranenie-kriminalnoy-antikultury-v-molodezhnoy-srede">“criminal anti-culture”</a>, to Vladimir Putin it’s defined as <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46584554">“sex, drugs and protest”</a>, and to the head of the Russia’s Internet Defense League, Ekaterina Mizulina, an <a href="https://www.rap.ru/news/16379">“extremism-making machine”</a>.</p>
<p>How rap is censored in Russia is as diverse as the country itself. It ranges from <a href="https://rifey.ru/news/list/id_119882">fire checks</a> during concerts, lack of <a href="https://www.fontanka.ru/2018/11/29/153/infograph.1.html">security</a>, protest by <a href="https://lenta.ru/news/2018/12/06/againfludd/">local officials</a>, or circulated <a href="https://www.the-village.ru/shorts/mezza-specoper">“blacklists”</a>. These range from official sources, such as Tsargrad’s <a href="https://tsargrad.tv/rusofob">“Russophobes”</a> list, to unofficial like the <a href="https://www.fontanka.ru/2022/07/07/71472080/">“Fontaka blacklist”</a>. “Soft” techniques include denigrations from <a href="https://radiokp.ru/podcast/voyna-i-mir-s-romanom-golovanovym/205176">political officials</a> and club owners calling their <a href="https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5968037">local officials</a>. Where there is a will, there is a way, and nothing is off-limits, not even calls for <a href="https://radiokp.ru/znamenitosti/budesh-molit-o-poschade-milonov-vyzval-na-boy-morgenshterna_nid485156_au47321au">physical violence</a> by politicians against rappers it seems.</p>
<p>In recent months, Mizulina in particular has accused rap of everything from <a href="https://www.fontanka.ru/2023/05/29/72348851/">child endangerment</a>, spread of <a href="https://t.me/ekaterina_mizulina/3480">“destructive content”</a>, <a href="https://vot-tak.tv/novosti/20-09-2023-danya-milohin">Ukrainian support</a> and <a href="https://yarcube.ru/newsletter/deputat-lyubov-surova-vyskazalas-po-povodu-otmeny-kontserta-loqiemean-v-yaroslavle/">“anti-Russian” statements</a>. In so doing, he seeks to reframe rap as a scourge on Russia’s Orthodox soil. When there is tragedy, rap is the first to be connected, regardless of its having any <a href="https://daily.afisha.ru/news/54745-lsp-udalyat-trek-nomera-so-vseh-strimingovyh-ploschadok/">genuine role</a> in the matter.</p>
<p>For some, rap censorship is justified in order to <a href="https://oinfo.ru/news/?id=76233">direct</a> cultural development. Yet to rappers, censorship represents the <a href="https://www.change.org/p/%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B0-%D1%80%D1%84-%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B1%D1%83%D0%B5%D0%BC-%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%82%D1%8C-%D0%B4%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%BD%D0%B0-%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%B7%D1%8B%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2-%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B3%D1%83-%D1%81%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%BE-noize-mc-%D0%B8-%D0%B4%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%85-%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2">destruction of free expression</a>. These conflicting beliefs on rap censorship’s morality accentuates the point that in Russia, much like <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-all-else-fails-to-explain-american-violence-blame-a-rapper-and-hip-hop-music-184373">1990s America</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-politicians-use-french-rap-to-stoke-divisions-165567">contemporary France</a>, and <a href="https://musiciansunion.org.uk/news/why-are-drill-rappers-criminalised-for-making-music">2020s England</a>, rap is intentionally associated with violence, cultural decline, frivolousness, criminality, and extremism.</p>
<h2>Leave or conform</h2>
<p>But in the rare case where rap is taken seriously by the public – such as Russian-British artist Oxxymoron (Оксимиро́н) and Noize MC – it’s not very long and on strict conditions. Peer beneath the surface and you’ll find support is guaranteed only when rappers toe the party line. <a href="https://www.rap.ru/reading/20345">Western career</a> of Timati (Тимати) is effectively finished, and thanks to his <a href="https://dzen.ru/a/Xqn8z37E3W30adrF">2015 track</a>, “My Best Friend”, <a href="https://www.vesti.ru/television/article/2691368">participation</a> in the 2022 “celebration” of Crimea’s annexation, and avoidance of the <a href="https://the-flow.ru/news/timati-gotov-moblizovatysa">draft</a>, his domestic authenticity is over as well.</p>
<p>Such attacks have borne fruit, one example being trap rapper Scally Milano’s recently released track <a href="https://genius.com/Scally-milano-i-dont-want-to-live-in-dubai-lyrics">“I Don’t Want to Live in Dubai”</a>, a sycophant tribute of life in Russia. While other rappers have <a href="https://the-flow.ru/news/morgenshtern-pro-scally-milano">ridiculed him</a>, I fear we may be bearing witness to the death of Russian rap, one song at a time.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">“Sex without a Break” (Bachelor Party/Мальчишник, 1992).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>Censorship in Russia has defined how rap is interpreted and curtailed by the public. By studying the “how” and “why”, much can be learned about where Russian culture is headed and what to expect in the future.</p>
<p>We must be careful, however. It’s not correct to say that rap in Russia is political because it’s censored, nor is it truthful to say all rap in Russia is political based on its stated relationship with the government. Moreover, just because rap has been used at <a href="https://www.4freerussia.org/individuals-participating-in-putins-pro-war-rally-at-luzhniki-stadium-have-to-be-sanctioned/">pro-war rallies</a> doesn’t mean the genre is any more “political” and controversial than American rap. Much like America’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/rap-musics-path-from-pariah-to-pulitzer-95283">celebration of rap</a>, in Russia it has been included in tributes for great poets such as <a href="https://www.vedomosti.ru/society/news/2021/01/14/854037-noize-nc-oxxxymiron-i-agutin-zapisali-pesni-na-stihi-mandelshtama">Osip Mandelstam</a>, helped popularise others like <a href="https://www.ng.ru/person/2023-11-01/10_1198_antipova.html">Vladimir Mayakovsky</a>, and holds clearly educational potential as Russian pedagogues have <a href="https://skillbox.ru/media/education/neobychnaya-praktika-kak-i-zachem-pedagogi-nachali-vklyuchat-na-urokakh-rep/">demonstrated</a>.</p>
<p>So what’s the problem? Why does rap keep falling under the prosecutorial thumb, leading to a desecration of a once thriving culture, replete with Slavophiles, Westerners, and everything in between? It could be said that everything surrounding rap has been politicised, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-russias-indie-musicians-dont-sing-in-english-anymore-139608">language choice</a> which, 33 years ago, meant something completely different than it does now. During the final months of 2018 into 2019, the Duma stepped in and created a competition, <a href="https://ria.ru/20190529/1555081825.html">“Limitless Rap”</a>, ironically won by musicians assisted by artificial intelligence, to give rap a better public image. The attempt failed and in the years following, many rappers would emigrate.</p>
<h2>Russian culture’s long night</h2>
<p>Following the invasion of Ukraine, Soviet-era tactics such as shutting down bars because of supposed <a href="https://the-flow.ru/news/bary-underdog-i-la-virgen-sdelala-zayavlenie-po-povodu-reyda-policii">Ukrainian solidarity</a>, criminalising <a href="https://meduza.io/feature/2023/09/20/mnogim-uehavshim-to-i-delo-nuzhno-vozvraschatsya-v-rossiyu-vot-ischerpyvayuschaya-instruktsiya-meduzy-kotoraya-pomozhet-otsenit-svoi-lichnye-riski-i-snizit-ih">“unapproved beliefs”</a>, and allocating state funding for <a href="https://meduza.io/feature/2023/09/29/prezidentskiy-fond-kulturnyh-initsativ-vydelil-1-6-milliarda-rubley-na-patrioticheskie-proekty">“patriotic projects”</a> are regular parts of everyday Russian life. The threat of <a href="https://polit.ru/news/2023/07/19/makarkin/">“dimensionless extremism”</a> has created a Russian culture devoid of culture. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_tSDJD1Jf8">2010s</a> dead and truly gone.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://daily.afisha.ru/entry/amp/26180/">“death of Russian music”</a> doesn’t look the same for every genre. For rap, it’s rappers <a href="https://the-flow.ru/news/atl-god-bez-koncertov">halting public performances</a>, the end of <a href="https://www.rap.ru/news/16394">satirical critique</a>, a normalisation of <a href="https://the-flow.ru/news/big-baby-tape-zaveli-delo">investigations</a>, and <a href="https://the-flow.ru/news/grot-18-za-mir-r-lubov">broadcasting censorship</a>. What does this all really mean? While rap culture continues to <a href="http://litcult.ru/news2/16700">innovate</a> as it always has, it also continues to eat itself alive mass-media commentators make spurious allegations and urge that rap <a href="https://www.rap.ru/news/16470">simply be banned</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Vandevert est membre de Uppsala University. He a reçu des financements de Uppsala Uinversity. </span></em></p>Vladimir Putin and his KGB men have steadily extinguished the artistic freedom the genre enjoyed in the 1990s, with Ukraine’s invasion adding yet another nail in the coffin.John Vandevert, Ph.D candidate, Uppsala UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2167922023-11-03T18:30:58Z2023-11-03T18:30:58Z‘Pogrom’ in Dagestan: the worrying signs of resurging antisemitism in Russia<p>Dagestan – the “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20593383">land of the mountains</a>” – is a multi-ethnic Russian republic situated in the north Caucasus of eastern Europe, along the Caspian Sea. A place of stunning landscapes, it is a deeply troubled region. </p>
<p>On October 29, a crowd at Makhachkala airport in Dagestan’s capital city reportedly <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/anti-semitic-riot-russias-dagestan-leaves-some-local-jews-shaken-2023-11-02/">went on the rampage</a>. Men dressed in black held Palestinian flags and claimed to be searching for “Jews” that had just arrived on a flight from Tel Aviv. </p>
<p>What followed were chaotic scenes: the crowd looted airport kiosks and chased after a bus. Shots were fired and some men even peered into the turbine of the landed plane, <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4285245-the-pogrom-in-dagestan/">convinced their targets were hidden there</a>. </p>
<p>In fact, there weren’t many Jews on the flight, but a rumour had circulated that the plane’s passengers <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4285245-the-pogrom-in-dagestan/">included children who had received medical treatment in Israel</a>.</p>
<p>This troubling episode would stir any observer of international affairs. But having carried out research on late imperial Russia, I was immediately struck by similarities between the pogrom waves seen in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and this latest event. It’s a comparison drawn by a number of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2023/oct/31/russia-makes-80-arrests-after-antisemitic-rioting-at-dagestan-airport">contemporary commentators</a>. </p>
<p>With the obvious caveat that this is not a like-for-like scenario, some comparative thinking and historical context can help us understand aspects of the latest alarming mob violence, which I argue could be accurately described as an <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/anti-semitic-riot-russias-dagestan-leaves-some-local-jews-shaken-2023-11-02/">attempted pogrom</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dWuNGTHOQWQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Looking at the wider community can provide some answers. <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/pogroms">Pogroms</a> – outbreaks of mass violence directed against a minority religious, ethnic or social group – in Russia’s late imperial period tended to occur in areas with marked social problems, inequalities and inter-ethnic tensions. They were always places where the imperial centre – the tsar and local administrators – did not govern effectively or consistently. </p>
<p>Dagestan’s economy has suffered in the post-Soviet era, and has had its own crisis of power. It is apparent that local administrators have not met the needs of communities in demographically complex areas. There is high unemployment – particularly among the young – and, per person, it is the highest contributing area in the world <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/many-russian-republic-fighting-isis">to Islamic State</a>. </p>
<p>Poverty and unemployment was the background to <a href="https://usrussiarelations.org/2/timeline/first-contact/38">Odesa’s pogrom of 1871</a>, in which a mob stormed Jewish parts of the city targeting Jewish shops and businesses, and to the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1396423">wave of violence from 1903-6</a> that encompassed settlements such as Chişinău (Kishinev) in Bessarabia, and Gomel and Orsha in Belarus. Unstable employment and political instability provided further motivating factors. </p>
<h2>Incitement to violence</h2>
<p>Unemployment alone is certainly not enough to explain such events. One must also consider the wider environment, including the impact of the media. One notable element of the recent violence is that it was reportedly orchestrated on a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/telegram-ban-channels-that-called-anti-semitic-riots-russias-dagestan-founder-2023-10-30/">Telegram channel called “Morning Dagestan”</a>, which is said to have spread rumours about a “Jewish invasion”. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, the impact of the anti-Jewish press was powerful. Newspapers such as Kievlianin (The Kievan) and Novoe vremia (The New Times) stirred up resentment with lurid and fabricated tales of various outrages committed by Russia’s Jews, including tales of the “<a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Blood_Libels_and_Host_Desecration_Accusations">blood libel</a>” – the disgracefully widespread myth about Jewish practices involving the sacrifices of young Christian boys.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young injured girl surrounded by her family and attended to by a red cross nurse." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557483/original/file-20231103-15-l0vgq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/557483/original/file-20231103-15-l0vgq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557483/original/file-20231103-15-l0vgq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557483/original/file-20231103-15-l0vgq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557483/original/file-20231103-15-l0vgq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557483/original/file-20231103-15-l0vgq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/557483/original/file-20231103-15-l0vgq3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A young girl who was beaten during the Białystok pogrom in 1906, when Imperial Russian troops murdered between 80 and 86 Jewish people at Białystok in what is now northeastern Poland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Museum of Jewish Heritage</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Such stories led researchers away from earlier conclusions that the tsarist regime had orchestrated the pogroms, and instead <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/history/european-history-after-1450/pogroms-anti-jewish-violence-modern-russian-history?format=PB&isbn=9780521528511">illuminated their largely spontaneous nature</a>, whipped up by existing prejudice. </p>
<h2>Authorities in disarray</h2>
<p>Another point for comparison is why the authorities failed to stop the violence in Dagestan. One theory <a href="https://english.nv.ua/nation/russian-anti-semitism-fuels-chaos-in-makhachkala-airport-ukraine-reacts-50364361.html">put about by the Ukrainian government</a> is that the internal security services organised the incident – certainly, they were <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/10/30/national-emergency-russian-officials-slam-failure-to-prevent-anti-israeli-riot-in-dagestan-a82936">apparently unable to stop it</a>. </p>
<p>It is clear that the Russian government has been slow to react, with inaction and paralysis from state security services. <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90873">Dagestan chief Sergei Melikov</a> merely reproached “some hotheads” for the incident.</p>
<p>A similarity can be observed in the ambivalent response from tsarist-era administrators in the early 20th century, often slow to prevent or discourage similar violence. </p>
<p>An important distinction is that research has shown how the late Russian empire was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/129259">under-governed</a>. These days, the security services have the authority and the ability to quell any anti-regime demonstrations. The key with the incident in Dagestan is not the ability to quash dissent, but the lack of firm political will to do so. </p>
<p>The regional dimension matters too. Many pogroms in the late Russian empire occurred far away from the centres of Moscow and St Petersburg. The incident in Dagestan also occurred far from the centre – and the national government was either <a href="https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-770930">unwilling or unable to prevent it</a>. </p>
<h2>Living with antisemitism</h2>
<p>One thing we must never overlook is the <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/11/02/russias-chief-rabbi-condemns-propaganda-of-hate-after-anti-israeli-riots-a82975">experience of the Jewish community itself</a>, which has revealed the terror of living in an antisemitic atmosphere with authorities apparently unable to stop such violence. Dagestan’s attempted pogrom is part of a global resurgence of antisemitism, fuelled by recent events in the Middle East. </p>
<p>Not least, there appears to be <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/attempted-airport-pogrom-highlights-rising-antisemitism-in-putins-russia/">rising antisemitism in Russia</a>, underscored by its invasion of Ukraine and hostility to the leadership of Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia appears to be recalibrating away from friendly relations with Israel, <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/politika/90841">towards closer ties with the developing world</a> – including, significantly, organisations such as Hamas. </p>
<p>There is much here that is worrying. In the face of this, the actions and responses from governments, civil society, <a href="https://www.southampton.ac.uk/parkes/index.page">learned institutions</a> and non-governmental bodies that desire a more peaceful world will become even more crucial. This also impresses upon us the need to study the past when we consider our own responses and impulses.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216792/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>George Gilbert is a member of the Parkes Institute for Jewish and non-Jewish relations at the University of Southampton.</span></em></p>The troubling unrest in Dagestan impresses upon us the need to learn from our historyGeorge Gilbert, Lecturer in Modern Russian History, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2152352023-10-18T16:20:52Z2023-10-18T16:20:52ZUkraine: Russia’s losses mount – but self-sacrifice in war is part of the country’s mythology<p>A recent intelligence report published by the UK’s Ministry of Defence about Russia’s attempt to capture the town of Avdiivka in the Donetsk region is the latest illustration of just how much the conflict in Ukraine is becoming a war of attrition. Russia’s push to mount a new offensive in the east has resulted in substantive “<a href="https://twitter.com/DefenceHQ/status/1714161025413509559/photo/1">personnel losses</a>” for its military.</p>
<p>In the west, many assume that every inch of Ukrainian land that is liberated brings Russia closer to military defeat and Europe to peace. But Russia has adapted to both internal and external shocks. As of August, it was estimated that Russia had suffered <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/ukraine-russia-war-casualties.html">“as many as 120,000 deaths”</a>. That number will have risen in recent weeks. And as the death toll climbs, the ability to replace troops becomes as important as military equipment and technology.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1714161025413509559"}"></div></p>
<p>Even though many young men left Russia rather than be sent to the front, the country still has a large pool of young men from which to recruit and has <a href="https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/08/01/russia-is-resorting-to-desperate-measures-to-recruit-soldiers">claimed to have enlisted a large number</a> without resorting to general conscription – although the Kremlin’s figures have been questioned by other sources.</p>
<p>But the question remains as to how many Russian military deaths is too many for Putin to retain the support of the Russian people. And it’s a very difficult question to answer. In Russia, the notion of military sacrifice plays an important role in informing national identity.</p>
<p>Russia’s national story is constituted by loss. It has lived and continues to live a tale of self-induced suffering. Even just considering the past century, military losses during the second world war and in Afghanistan – followed by the loss of a sense of identity after the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991 – have all come to define Russia’s character today. The sense of the “loss of empire” is what has driven Vladimir Putin’s foreign adventurism in Georgia and Ukraine.</p>
<h2>For the motherland</h2>
<p>For the British people, the <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/iraq-war-uk-soldiers-deaths-b2303815.html">death of 179 solidiers</a> in Iraq was traumatic enough for leaders to change course. But military sacrifice has a different meaning in Russia, one that is diametrically opposed to the value the liberal west places on the individual subject. </p>
<p>For Russia, every dead soldier in Ukraine constitutes a step towards victory and reclaiming the great power image of the country’s Soviet past. While the west’s liberal philosophy promulgates the importance of individual rights, Russia is defined by a system of collectivism. Within its value system, the individual subject confers prestige through their self-sacrifice for the collective wellbeing.</p>
<p>In Soviet iconography, tropes of self-sacrifice and fatal injury tend to be closely tied to nationalist ideas of pride and superiority. They pervaded propaganda posters during the “great patriotic war”. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554519/original/file-20231018-29-axyawl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Image of 'For the Motherland' 1942 Russian propaganda poster by Aleksei Kokorekin" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554519/original/file-20231018-29-axyawl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/554519/original/file-20231018-29-axyawl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554519/original/file-20231018-29-axyawl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554519/original/file-20231018-29-axyawl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554519/original/file-20231018-29-axyawl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1262&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554519/original/file-20231018-29-axyawl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1262&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/554519/original/file-20231018-29-axyawl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1262&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russia’s notion of sacrifice: ‘For the Motherland’ (1942).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Take the image For the Motherland! (1942) by Aleksei Kokorekin as an example. It conveyed Soviet resilience through the portrayal of a wounded soldier fighting on bravely and showing no sign of physical weakness despite his injuries.</p>
<p>This juxtaposition between the injured self and national status is telling. Kokorekin’s depiction of Soviet heroism was also indicative of the Soviet mentality on death – where the emphasis on physical suffering became a source of national superiority.</p>
<h2>Spirituality of loss</h2>
<p>This logic permeated the consciousness of subsequent generations and in how they interpreted military sacrifice. For her 1990 study <em>Tsinkovye mal’chiki</em> (translated as <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/zinky-boys/">Zinky Boys</a>) by Nobel prize-winning writer Svetlana Aleksievich, the author interviewed army veterans from the campaign in Afghanistan. She recalled how in one interview an artillery soldier described war as “a spiritual experience”, while referencing the self-sacrifice of the Red Army during the great patriotic war.</p>
<p>This experience of spirituality through war not only reflects how Russians seek to replay and become part of the past, but speaks to the religious dimension of Russia’s discourse on self-sacrifice. This theme emerged strongly in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-orthodox-leader-dying-in-war-a-sacrifice-absolves-sins-2022-9?r=US&IR=T">comments by Patriarch Kirill</a>, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, in September 2022, in which he was encouraging Russian men to join up. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>…if a person dies in the performance of this duty [war], then they have undoubtedly committed an act equivalent to sacrifice. They will have sacrificed themselves for others. And therefore, we believe that this sacrifice washes away all the sins that a person has committed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His statement rationalised the self-sacrifice of the Russian soldier on the basis that it served a transcendental duty – a Christ-like sacrifice – which would ultimately absolve them from sin. The patriarch’s comments speak to a particular historical tradition of religious masochism – the practice of self-induced physical trauma – in Russia, which dates back to “<a href="https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780814774823">the early days of Christian Rus</a>’”. </p>
<h2>Military martyrdom</h2>
<p>Deciphering this internal logic governing the way many Russians deal with loss is imperative to the west’s understanding of the Ukraine war. Putin draws on a language of sacrifice which has its cultural and historical roots in Russian Orthodox thinking and Soviet mythology.</p>
<p>This language reveals something important about Russian psychology when it comes to dealing with news of large-scale casualties on the battlefield. A soldier’s body is a potent mixture of the political and spiritual in the Russian psyche. </p>
<p>The death of that body is for Russia a step towards achieving the fantasy of national prestige. For some Russians (by no means all), the trauma of military loss does not mean that they should stop fighting in Ukraine. On the contrary, it can represent a pathway to martyrdom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Soodavar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Russia’s casualty count in Ukraine is high, but the country has a national mythology built on loss and sacrifice.Ben Soodavar, Researcher, Department of War Studies, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2146672023-10-13T12:33:38Z2023-10-13T12:33:38ZEmpire building has always come at an economic cost for Russia – from the days of the czars to Putin’s Ukraine invasion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/553555/original/file-20231012-15-bte4g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C7276%2C5239&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Russian economy: A Potemkin village?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/women-walk-past-a-military-propaganda-poster-advertising-news-photo/1597113264?adppopup=true">Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has come at huge economic costs. By conservative estimates, the Russian economy has taken a <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/30/how-much-is-russia-spending-on-its-invasion-of-ukraine">US$67 billion</a> annual hit as a result of war expenses and the effects of economic sanctions. In the early stages of the invasion, some analysts put the costs even higher, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/russia-spending-estimated-900-million-day-ukraine-war-1704383">at $900 million per day</a>.</p>
<p>These war costs show no sign of abating. The newly released Russian government budget for 2024 calls for a 70% defense expenditure increase, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/everything-front-russia-allots-third-2024-spending-defence-2023-10-02">an astonishing reallocation</a> of precious resources for a war that some observers <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/10/05/russia-ukraine-putin-cia/">expected to last a week</a> at most.</p>
<p>Despite the toll of war and sanctions, the <a href="https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/09/28/the-costs-of-russias-war-are-about-to-hit-home">Russian economy has not collapsed</a> and seems to have proven somewhat <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3652bbb5-a0f9-4d54-adc6-03b645a44306">resilient against being shut out of global value chains</a>.</p>
<p>Indeed, if you were to tune in to broadcasts of state-run RT television’s <a href="https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/583976-ukraine-support-west-doubt/">“CrossTalk”</a> with American host Peter Lavelle, you’d be reassured that hardly anyone notices “irrelevant” Western sanctions, with even some reputable <a href="https://www.cirsd.org/en/news/prof-sachs-%E2%80%9Csanctions-against-russia-ineffective-and-contrary-to-international-law%E2%80%9D">Western economists</a> claiming that sanctions are harming Europe more than Russia. </p>
<p>Certainly, Muscovite oligarchs can still stroll across Red Square to <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11685551/The-luxury-goods-famous-UK-brands-sale-Moscow.html">Agent Provocateur and the GUM luxury shopping mall</a> to buy lingerie for their wives and perhaps mistresses, too. And almost 8 in 10 Russians <a href="https://globalaffairs.org/research/public-opinion-survey/western-sanctions-have-largely-spared-ordinary-russians">report to pollsters</a> that sanctions have not affected their daily lives.</p>
<p>But from our standpoint as <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=s25Y7l0AAAAJ&hl=en">experts on Russian</a> <a href="https://law.umn.edu/profiles/paul-vaaler">economic history</a>, it looks very much like a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Potemkin-village">Potemkin village</a> – a false facade that belies harsh economic realities, including unsustainable defense spending, a plummeting currency and rising bond yields. Meat and poultry prices in Moscow <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/09/business/economy/russia-economy-ukraine-war.html">continue to rise</a>, <a href="https://www.economicsobservatory.com/sanctions-against-russia-what-have-been-the-effects-so-far#:%7E:text=But%20the%20shock%20of%20the,lowered%20ordinary%20Russians'%20living%20standards.">retail sales across Russia have dropped</a> by nearly 8% since February 2022, and <a href="https://www.airport-technology.com/features/how-have-sanctions-against-russia-impacted-aviation/?cf-view">Russia’s aviation industry has plummeted</a> for lack of spare parts and maintenance. </p>
<p>Such an economic hit was to be expected. As we show in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2309.06885">preprint study</a>, imperial overreach from Russia in territories that are not its own has resulted in long-term damage to the Russian economy for over a century. More importantly, even during czarist times, rebellion in the modern-day lands of Ukraine against Russian rule led to the highest costs for the Russian economy.</p>
<h2>Huge boost in military spending</h2>
<p>Russia’s ability to seemingly absorb massive shocks since February 2022 is due in part to producers becoming accustomed to the milder sanctions that <a href="https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2015/07/13/sanctions-after-crimea-have-they-worked/index.html">began in 2014</a> with the initial invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. </p>
<p>However, a larger driver of performance has been the Russian government taking it upon itself to try to keep the economy afloat by increasing its <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-06/state-role-in-russia-economy-at-whole-new-level-watchdog-says?embedded-checkout=true">involvement in all sectors of the economy</a>, <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/06/15/putin-signs-secret-decree-to-buy-discounted-western-companies-ft-a81510">nationalizing formerly Western-owned businesses</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/31/world/europe/russia-war-economy.html">pumping money from the state budget</a> into the <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100157657">military industrial complex</a>.</p>
<p>This approach has continued with the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/everything-front-russia-allots-third-2024-spending-defence-2023-10-02/">Russian government’s 2024 budget</a>, which is currently on its way to be rubber-stamped in the Russian parliament, the Duma. While <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/09/29/russian-military-says-no-plans-for-new-mobilization-a82602">mobilization of troops</a> for Russia’s growing quagmire is moving in fits and starts, the Kremlin has proceeded with a full-scale economic mobilization. Expenditures on defense are forecast to be 6% of the country’s GDP, making up a full 29% of all Russian government spending, <a href="https://www.bofit.fi/en/monitoring/weekly/2023/vw202339_1/">according to an analysis by the Bank of Finland</a>, and with an additional 9% spent on “national security.” In contrast, social programs are a mere 21% of the budget. Compare this with the United States, where defense spending is 3% of GDP and <a href="https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison">12% of all government expenditures</a>. </p>
<p>Financial markets have reacted poorly to Russia’s most recent imperial adventure. The ruble’s turbulence is well known, once again <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/world/europe/russia-ruble-dollar-economy.html">breaking 100 rubles to the dollar</a> on Oct. 3, 2023, but Russia’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-60672085">inability to service its debt</a> has been more under the radar.</p>
<p>For the first time since the Bolsheviks refused to honor the country’s foreign debt in 1918, <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/russian-debt-default-russia-global-financial-markets">Russia defaulted on its foreign currency payments</a> in June 2022, and major ratings agencies stopped rating Russian government bonds. </p>
<p>At the same time, bond yields on existing Russian government debt – an excellent measure of fiscal risk – have been climbing almost continuously since the first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, rising to nearly 14% in 2014 and recently climbing to over 13%, <a href="https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/government-bond-yield">an 18-month high</a>. </p>
<h2>Ponzi-like scheme</h2>
<p>The combination of military aggression, stretched finances and battlefield stagnation are nothing new for Russia, especially in Ukraine. As our study shows, <a href="https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2309.06885">czarist fiscal management from 1820 to 1914</a> was based on a Ponzi-like scheme that funded land grabs and military expansion with government borrowing through bond issues, taxation of newly acquired territories and bond repayment by a government now overseeing a more geographically extensive state. </p>
<p>By 1914, Czar Nicholas II had bonds worth more than $155 billion in 2022 dollars trading abroad – by comparison, the <a href="https://www.elibrary.imf.org/display/book/9781513511795/ch002.xml">value of British debt in 1914</a> equates to approximately $123 billion today. </p>
<p>Vladimir Putin’s handling of the economy since the early 2000s has been based on a similar pyramid scheme, we would argue. A combination of aggressive foreign borrowing and natural resource exports have financed foreign wars and domestic repression in territories of Russia’s near abroad: These have included <a href="https://ciaotest.cc.columbia.edu/olj/sa/sa_aug00bag01.html">conflicts in Chechnya</a> <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-2008-russo-georgian-war-putins-green-light/">and Georgia</a> in the 2000s; <a href="https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1498.html">Crimea and the Donbas</a> in the 2010s; and the rest of Ukraine in the 2020s. Until this current round of aggression toward Ukraine, the outcome of these conflicts appeared to favor Russia, with its seemingly strong central government, military and economy. </p>
<p>However, Russia may now be at an inflection point. Historically, when Russia’s military was successful, it was able to finance both its war machine and industrialization. </p>
<p>Yet even past military success put the regime on very shaky ground that allowed small setbacks to threaten its foundation. Military reversals such as the stunning <a href="https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1017&context=qb_pubs">loss to Japan in 1905</a> or even the costs associated with pacifying troublesome territories such as <a href="https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/combat-studies-institute/csi-books/LP20_Russian-SovietUnconventionalWars.pdf">in the Caucasus</a> created more difficulties and risk for Russian bond markets and its economy. Indeed, unrest, armed rebellion and serf revolts in the far reaches of the empire raised Russian bond yields by approximately 1%. This risk was much higher than if such unrest occurred even in St. Petersburg or Moscow. </p>
<p>And perhaps most importantly, in Ukraine the cost of empire during czarist times was the largest, with each rebellion or bout of unrest in Ukraine raising Russian yields by between 3% and 3.5%. </p>
<p>With its newest defense budget <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-redirects-russias-economy-to-war-production-1e14265f">going “all in</a>” on its already faltering invasion of Ukraine, Russia appears to have learned none of the lessons of its past. Then as now, Ukraine and Ukrainian defiance constituted a grave threat to Russian territorial ambitions. </p>
<p>In 2024, that defiance just might prove too determined and too costly for an increasingly fragile Russian economy. And as in 1917, the consequences could be far beyond the control of <a href="https://time.com/6218211/vladimir-putin-russian-tsars-imperialism/">the modern-day czar</a> in the Kremlin.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214667/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new study traces how Russia’s empire building, especially in Ukraine, resulted in long-term economic damage and fomented rebellion for over a century.Christopher A. Hartwell, Professor of International Business Policy, ZHAW School of Management and LawPaul Vaaler, Professor of Law and Business, University of MinnesotaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2126382023-08-31T13:46:36Z2023-08-31T13:46:36ZWhy Pope’s message to young Russians not to forget ‘great Russia of Catherine II and Peter I’ has not gone down well in Ukraine<p>Pope Francis’s <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/08/29/europe/pope-francis-russia-ukraine-intl-hnk/index.html">video speech</a> to the All-Russian Meeting of Catholic Youth in St Petersburg, urging them to “not forget their heritage” has caused quite a stir. What struck a bitter chord internationally – and especially in Ukraine – about the remarks he delivered on August 25 was not so much its religious contents, but its tone-deaf praise of the heritage of “Mother Russia”, which he urged his listeners to never give up. </p>
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<p>You are the descendants of great Russia: the great Russia of saints, rulers, the great Russia of Peter I, Catherine II, that empire – educated, great culture and great humanity</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The positive invocation of Russia’s imperial legacies, has been regularly used as a <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-invasion-of-ukraine-attacks-its-distinct-history-and-reveals-his-imperial-instincts-177669">historical justification</a> for the military invasion of Ukraine. So it now feels particularly insensitive – and somewhat unaware of the politicisation of religion in Russia’s imperial and present-day discourses. </p>
<p>The Pope’s speech also worryingly echoes the <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-invasion-of-ukraine-attacks-its-distinct-history-and-reveals-his-imperial-instincts-177669">Kremlin’s official discourse</a> since 2014 which has <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/20603">claimed Kyiv</a> as “the mother of Russian cities” on the back of shared religious heritage. Putin has also used the history of the <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/67828">Russian empire and Soviet Union</a> to assert, on the eve of invasion, that Ukraine was “an inalienable part of our own history, culture and spiritual space”. </p>
<p>The national ideology deployed by the Russian Federation over the past decade is one that glorifies the imperial past, a glorification closely intertwined with Russia’s self-proclaimed role as a religious authority.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-invasion-of-ukraine-attacks-its-distinct-history-and-reveals-his-imperial-instincts-177669">Putin’s invasion of Ukraine attacks its distinct history and reveals his imperial instincts</a>
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<h2>Battle for souls</h2>
<p>But what is the role of religion, and particularly of Christianity, in Russia’s official discourse and how is this discourse related to imperial claims over Ukraine? Orthodox Christianity was introduced to Ukraine during the time of Kyivan Rus’ when <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-33689641">Prince Volodymir of Kyiv chose Orthodoxy</a> in 988-989 over the competing regional influences of Khazar Judaism, Volga Islam and Germanic Catholicism. </p>
<p>Some versions of the myth about the baptism of Prince Volodymyr indicate that the ceremony took place in modern-day Crimea. This has bolstered Russia’s claim over the peninsula – something spearheaded by the conquest and annexation of Crimea by Catherine II (“the Great”) in 1783 and <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-invasion-suggests-putin-is-more-vladimir-the-reactionary-than-peter-the-great-186133">renewed by Vladimir Putin in 2014</a>.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-invasion-suggests-putin-is-more-vladimir-the-reactionary-than-peter-the-great-186133">Ukraine invasion suggests Putin is more Vladimir the Reactionary than Peter the Great</a>
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<p>The late middle ages (1400-1500s) and early modern period (1600-1700s) saw a religious division and distinction emerge between Muscovy (a kingdom centred on the city of Moscow) and the lands that were to become Ukraine. From 1458, the inhabitants of Western Rus’ (Ruthenia) who were then under the rule of Poland-Lithuania selected their own “Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Rus”. </p>
<p>This represented a move away from the authority of the Moscow-based Orthodox patriarchs and initiated a religious and cultural divergence which was made official by the <a href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15130a.htm">Union of Brest (1595)</a>. This placed the Ruthenian Orthodox Church’s (today’s <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/the-church-that-stalin-couldn-t-kill-ukrainian-greek-catholic-church-thrives-seventy-years-after-forced-reunification/">Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church</a>) under the authority of the pope of Rome, with an aim to reconcile Orthodox structures with the Catholic papacy.</p>
<p>Russia’s adverse reaction to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was not just a matter of quenching nationalist ideas – nor was it only linked to the assertion of the primacy of Moscow’s patriarch. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the vision of Moscow as a “<a href="https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acrefore-9780190201098-e-1243?rskey=1wkIfc&result=11">Third Rome</a>” – after Rome and Constantinople – was particularly dominant as an imperial ideology of endless expansion. </p>
<p>This view embraced the idea of Moscow’s duty to protect the “true” Orthodox faith after the fall of the previous centres of Christianity, a religious ideology with strong imperialist overtones.</p>
<h2>Orthodox nationalism as imperial tool</h2>
<p>Claiming Christian Orthodoxy, and with it <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-russian-is-ukraine-clue-not-as-much-as-vladimir-putin-insists-173758">Kyivan origins</a>, was essential to the rise of Muscovy as the territorial and political base for the later Russian Empire. It was particularly important in the aftermath of the Mongol invasion (1237-40), as a convenient method to negate the Tatar (and therefore Muslim) element in Muscovy’s early development and instead create an Orthodox past. </p>
<p>The significance of religion increased after Peter I transformed the tsardom into an imperial state in 1721. He presented the Russian empire as the patron and defender of eastern Christianity – within and beyond its own borders. This declared mission sustained expansion wars under the guise of defending endangered Orthodox Christians. It notably opposed Russia to the neighbouring Ottoman Empire, a conflict which culminated in the 1853-1856 Crimean War that claimed half a million lives, including British. </p>
<p>These military conflicts also led to the Russian Empire’s capture of eastern Ukraine and the northern Black Sea – regions renamed “New Russia” in an <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/joah/4/1-2/article-p58_6.xml">ideological transformation</a> that erased the culture, languages and religion of their pre-colonial past.</p>
<p>As Russia grew into an empire – with autocratic figures such as Peter I, Catherine II, or Nicholas I – the role of the emperor as a divinely appointed despot made religion a tool of political control and conquest. Although the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199591770.001.0001">Russian empire was multi-faith</a> in practice (in 1897, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Empire_census">30%</a> of its subjects belonged to “foreign confession”), its rule was Orthodox. The dominance of Christian orthodoxy as an imperial state ideology meant that other religious groups – from Catholics in Warsaw to Muslims in Samarkand – while tolerated at times, could be demonised and repressed as non-Russian minorities.</p>
<p>When the Pope praised the legacies of “great Russia” in its imperial form, his speech seems to be buttressing decades of ideological radicalisation to <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/joah/4/1-2/article-p28_4.xml">mobilise Russian society</a> behind the mission of the Holy Russian empire.</p>
<p>Legacies of empire – among them territorial conquests, cultural subjugation and religious dogma –- have been reappropriated by the Kremlin to provide the cornerstones for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So the Pope’s decision to call on the heritage of the Russian empire is unfortunate to say the least. It neglects how the history of both the Orthodox church and the Russian empire have been weaponised in Russia to justify its invasion of Ukraine.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212638/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Olivia Durand receives research funding from Freie Universität Berlin, where she is a postdoctoral visting fellow alongside her position at the University of Oxford.</span></em></p>Francis I’s message seemed to unwittingly echo some of Vladimir Putin’s historical justifications for invading Ukraine.Olivia Durand, Postdoctoral Associate in History, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2101312023-07-23T19:58:49Z2023-07-23T19:58:49ZHas Russia contained the Prigozhin threat? Its long history of managing violent mercenaries suggests so<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538650/original/file-20230721-28237-i4fz8a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=278%2C35%2C5712%2C3952&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vasily Deryugin/Kommersant Publishing House/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A month on since pundits declared the imminent start of a new <a href="https://kyivindependent.com/russia-on-the-brink-of-civil-war-how-we-got-here-and-what-comes-next/">Russian civil war</a>, we’re still waiting. Moreover, we still know <a href="https://cgcinternational.co.in/prigozhins-march-of-the-just/">very little</a> about what went on when Wagner leader <a href="https://uifuture.org/publications/how-long-will-yevgeny-prigozhin-last/">Yevgeny Prigozhin</a> launched a brief rebellion against the Kremlin.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/history-sheds-little-light-on-yevgeny-prigozhin-affair/news-story/e4743e2c5b1d67106c3c2a7120775d6c">basic outlines</a> of what happened are as follows: after months of conflict between the various power brokers around Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prigozhin made a move. </p>
<p>The former criminal might have been drunk with his <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/world/europe/there-was-no-plan-an-alternative-theory-of-yevgeny-prigozhin-s-mutiny-20230627-p5djqr.html">support on social media</a>. More importantly, his business interests and political position were threatened by an attempt to bring his Wagner Group under state control. So he set his troops in motion to prompt the removal of his rivals in Moscow. The goal was to elevate his own position within the power structure, not destroy the system which had made him.</p>
<p>As Prigozhin’s troops marched on Moscow, they shot down choppers and a military plane. But then, Putin publicly sided with the regular military by calling Prigozhin a traitor. Prigozhin backed down.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538657/original/file-20230721-18931-x7dgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538657/original/file-20230721-18931-x7dgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538657/original/file-20230721-18931-x7dgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538657/original/file-20230721-18931-x7dgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538657/original/file-20230721-18931-x7dgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538657/original/file-20230721-18931-x7dgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538657/original/file-20230721-18931-x7dgj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An image taken from a video released by the Prigozhin Press Service in May of Yevgeny Prigozhin standing in front of multiple bodies in an unknown location.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prigozhin Press Service/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Since then, the story has become even more bizarre. Having agreed to move to Belarus, he instead <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/06/wagner-boss-yevgeny-prigozhin-russia-alexander-lukashenko-belarus">shuttled</a> between Belarus, Moscow and St. Petersburg, presumably in an attempt to <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/13/prigozhin-linked-companies-win-government-contracts-after-failed-mutinyment-contracts-after-failed-mutiny-a81827">rescue</a> whatever he could of his business empire. This includes a restaurant and catering empire, his military enterprise, a media company and a rather effective internet troll factory, as well as various mining concessions abroad. </p>
<p>He even secured a meeting with Putin, who, according to his <a href="https://tass.com/defense/1644719">spokesman</a>, told the mercenaries what he thought of their actions and their possible futures. </p>
<p>While the Kremlin sent signals the one-time traitor might have been forgiven, the Russian state simultaneously <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/05/putin-takes-on-yevgeny-prigozhin-business-empire">went after his assets</a> and raided his mansion, <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/07/06/russian-state-tv-broadcasts-prigozhin-estate-raid-claims-probe-into-mutiny-ongoing-a81748">revealing</a> his “opulent lifestyle that contrasts with the public image of a crusader against corruption,” as one media outlet put it.</p>
<p>Prigozhin continues to try to contain the fallout of his misjudged adventure. Late <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/19/video-appears-to-show-wagner-chief-yevgeny-prigozhin-addressing-fighters-in-belarus">last week</a>, he was filmed in Belarus addressing his fighters, which suggests the agreement that ended the mutiny has been at least partially implemented. However, it also appears Prigozhin flew in from Russia for the speech and returned there afterwards.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1681664433917943812"}"></div></p>
<h2>Russia’s history of paramilitarism</h2>
<p>What are we to make of all of this? First, while it is true Putin’s position certainly was <a href="https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/prigozhins-putsch-putin-wont-forget-or-forgive/">not strengthened</a> by the rebellion, the destabilisation should not be over-drawn. <a href="https://www.hachette.com.au/mikhail-zygar/all-the-kremlins-men-inside-the-court-of-vladimir-putin">Putin’s dictatorship</a> is “a closed, personalist authoritarian regime, potentially en route to becoming a more totalitarian model,” as one political scientist has <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0163660X.2022.2090760">noted</a>. </p>
<p>It is highly repressive towards the population. But it is not a top-down, military-style operation, where the boss makes decisions and everybody else stands to attention. Putin is frequently indecisive and the power structure around him is dynamic. People and power-clans can move in and out of the inner layers as they compete for power and influence.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538659/original/file-20230721-29-5ogwnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538659/original/file-20230721-29-5ogwnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538659/original/file-20230721-29-5ogwnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538659/original/file-20230721-29-5ogwnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=434&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538659/original/file-20230721-29-5ogwnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538659/original/file-20230721-29-5ogwnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538659/original/file-20230721-29-5ogwnb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=546&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Vladimir Putin, centre, speaking with chief of the general staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, left, and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, in December 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mikhail Klimentyev/Pool Sputnik Kremlin/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Russia is a state with a bureaucracy, army and police forces, but its monopoly of force is eroded by the proliferation of privatised armies. They are misleadingly called “<a href="https://russianpmcs.csis.org/">private military companies</a>”, but are an integral part of a power structure which can be described, using the terminology of historians <a href="https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/vesna.drapac">Vesna Drapac</a> and <a href="https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/gareth.pritchard">Gareth Prichard</a>, as “paramilitarised”.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/resistance-and-collaboration-in-hitlers-empire-9781137385345/">paramilitarised regime</a>, the state can be challenged and undermined, but not completely destroyed, by semi-independent military, paramilitary or criminal organisations. This type of violent regime was observed
in much of central and eastern Europe <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/660364">after the first world war</a>, in many parts of the <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/hitlers-empire-9780141917504">Nazi empire</a> and in the western borderlands of the Soviet Union <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/stalinism-at-war-9781350153516/">after the second world war</a>. </p>
<p>In a civil war or warlordism (like in China after 1916 or <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20749809">Russia</a> after 1917), the state either ceases to exist or becomes one of many violent actors vying over control of bits of territory. By contrast, in a paramilitarised regime, the state gradually loses its ability to control the violence, but is not complete destroyed.</p>
<p>Russia has existed in states of paramilitarisation for quite a long time, and the regime has learned to live with, and to control, the private armies of entrepreneurs. Russia entered the post-Soviet world in 1991 with a fragile democratic regime, barely able to control the wielding of physical force. </p>
<p>Some of the first private military companies emerged in this context, but more important were the violent robber barons politely described as “oligarchs”. They ran their own affairs and their private armies of leather-jacketed thugs enforced their contracts. They acted as if they owned Russia, while the state was there to serve their interests. This was a paramilitarised regime of <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501703287/violent-entrepreneurs/#bookTabs=1">violent entrepreneurs</a>. The main difference to Prigozhin was that war-making was not part of the business model.</p>
<p>Since 2000, <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/putin-9781847923387">Putin</a> has put them all in their place. He did so slowly and methodically. He told the oligarchs what was expected of them (as he did with Prigozhin after the mutiny). </p>
<p>He then took them on, one after the other, like cutting a <a href="https://politicaldictionary.com/words/salami-tactics/">salami</a>, slice by slice, until nothing was left. Those who did not submit to the rebuilt Russian state were eventually exiled, arrested or killed. But this was not a one-day operation. It took years.</p>
<p>Joseph Stalin, one of the heroes of Russia’s <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781784994310/">history-obsessed</a> president, called this approach “dosage”. </p>
<p>Challengers would be undermined gradually: first removed from the inner sanctum around the leader, then pushed from formal positions of power, and eventually arrested, exiled or shot. This whole process was designed, as historian Sheila Fitzpatrick <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/on-stalins-team-hardback">has argued</a>, to bring the other leaders on board who might otherwise side with the victim.</p>
<p>Putin presides over a much more volatile power structure. He has an even greater need for “dosage”: he needs to keep the men (and a few women) around him divided and devoted to himself as the ultimate arbiter. His own power depends on it. </p>
<p>And the stakes have become higher after he allowed some of them partially to privatise the state’s means of violence, undermining his earlier successful efforts to re-establish the state’s monopoly over force.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/wagners-rebellion-may-have-been-thwarted-but-putin-has-never-looked-weaker-and-more-vulnerable-208436">Wagner's rebellion may have been thwarted, but Putin has never looked weaker and more vulnerable</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>New private military companies emerge</h2>
<p>The context of this <a href="https://uifuture.org/publications/russian-pmcs-short-course-history-impact-logic-of-development/">return to paramilitarism</a> in recent years was war: first in Iraq, then in Syria and finally in Ukraine. </p>
<p>In Iraq, the Russian oil companies needed to protect their assets, so they used their private armies to do so. These were <a href="https://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_10699/a9e28227f557dc1e6659c1d88613790bb3dddb5b/">illegal in Russia</a>, but allowed to operate abroad. </p>
<p>Soon, Russian private military companies proliferated. Some of them then broadened their operations to escort ships in the piracy-infested waters off the African coast or security work in Africa itself. The civil war in Syria offered new opportunities.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1682029422256455683"}"></div></p>
<p>However, the Russian state remained wary of the military entrepreneurs, particularly if they tried to establish a presence back home. Two major private military company leaders, of the <a href="https://www.csis.org/blogs/post-soviet-post/band-brothers-wagner-group-and-russian-state">Slavonic Corps</a>, were arrested in 2013 and convicted as mercenaries. </p>
<p>This is where Prigozhin stepped in. Putin’s regime suddenly needed private military companies to help fight the war in eastern Ukraine from 2014 while maintaining plausible deniability: the fighters were all “volunteers” or “locals.” </p>
<p>Hence Prigozhin, a long-time, loyal Putin client, was put in charge of the remnants of Slavonic Corps. The mercenaries were returned to Russia and “curated” by the restaurateur into the Wagner Group, which then fought in Ukraine and Syria. Contracts to secure Russian oil and gas installations in North Africa and Venezuela soon followed. </p>
<p>These contracts were then leveraged to negotiate deals to train special forces in Africa and Latin America. Payment was often in lucrative mining concessions.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-of-yevgeny-prigozhin-how-a-one-time-food-caterer-became-vladimir-putins-biggest-threat-208450">The rise of Yevgeny Prigozhin: how a one-time food caterer became Vladimir Putin's biggest threat</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>From the perspective of the Russian state, these international ventures had several functions: they secured Russian military interests, raised funds and helped Russia gain diplomatic influence at a time when it had become more and more isolated internationally. </p>
<p>Finally, sending the mercenaries abroad removed them as a threat to the Russian state at home. Even during the battle of Bakhmut in Ukraine, Prigozhin’s greatest claim to fame, the core of the Wagner group had “<a href="https://uifuture.org/publications/russian-pmcs-short-course-history-impact-logic-of-development/">remained in Africa</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538661/original/file-20230721-34091-lqoann.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538661/original/file-20230721-34091-lqoann.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538661/original/file-20230721-34091-lqoann.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538661/original/file-20230721-34091-lqoann.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=335&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538661/original/file-20230721-34091-lqoann.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538661/original/file-20230721-34091-lqoann.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538661/original/file-20230721-34091-lqoann.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wagner fighters wave a Russian and Wagner flag atop a damaged building in Bakhmut.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prigozhin Press Service/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Can the threat be contained again?</h2>
<p>This was how the Russian state managed the paramilitary threat and deployed it to its own ends. The Prigozhin rebellion, however, showed how risky this tactic is when the mercenaries are deployed next door, in <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/russias-war-against-ukraine-paperback-softback">Russia’s war against Ukraine</a>. Russia had veered back to paramilitarism – but of a new type, driven by modern-day entrepreneurs of violence rather than the violent entrepreneurs of the 1990s.</p>
<p>A month later, however, it appears this was only temporary. Putin’s regime is in the process of containing the threat. And it uses tactics it has employed before: dosage, public shaming, seizure of assets, the deployment of dangerous mercenaries away from home. </p>
<p>This tactic might work again. One month on, it is still too early to predict the outcome, but it certainly appears that expectations for Russia’s dissolution or the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/26/politics/wagner-putin-us-ukraine-analysis/index.html">collapse</a> of Putin’s regime were premature. </p>
<p>Putin might yet fail in reasserting his authority, but at the moment there is little evidence that he is.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210131/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mark Edele receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Russia has long been a ‘paramilitarised’ regime, where the state can be challenged and undermined, but is not completely destroyed, by paramilitary or criminal groups.Mark Edele, Hansen Professor in History, Deputy Dean, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2085192023-06-27T12:50:14Z2023-06-27T12:50:14ZPutin’s Ukraine war keeps yielding dividends – but not for him<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534181/original/file-20230626-34793-nn2wrh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C22%2C4914%2C3224&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Members of the Wagner Group sit atop a tank in a street in the city of Rostov-on-Don, on June 24, 2023.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-wagner-group-sit-atop-of-a-tank-in-a-street-in-news-photo/1259010459?adppopup=true">Roman Romokhov/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On June 23, 2023, 16 months into Russia’s war with Ukraine, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Russia’s now disbanded potent mercenary fighting force and a protégé of Russian President Vladimir, <a href="https://theconversation.com/wagners-mutiny-punctured-putins-strongman-image-and-exposed-cracks-in-his-rule-208430">turned his troops on the Russian military</a> and, ostensibly, the Kremlin itself.</p>
<p>Within 24 hours, though, Prigozhin had aborted his march to Moscow and turned his troops around. But the damage to Putin’s strongman image and possibly his plans to subjugate Ukraine by force had been done.</p>
<h2>From invasion to mutiny</h2>
<p>The war that Putin launched against Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, was unprovoked. NATO presented no immediate threat to Russia. Yet, Putin and his closest advisers believed that a Western-armed-and-allied Ukraine presented an existential threat to Russia’s <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/600426-tracing-russias-idea-of-great-power/">great power ambitions</a>. And while Ukraine <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/world/europe/ukraine-nato-zelensky.html">was not yet in NATO</a>, Putin felt <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/01/29/1076193616/ukraine-russia-nato-explainer">NATO was already in Ukraine</a>. </p>
<p>As most pundits and analysts in the West repeatedly state, Putin’s adventure failed in its immediate goal – to overthrow the government in Kyiv and establish some form of Russian control of this huge neighbor. </p>
<p>Instead, Putin achieved everything that he did not desire: <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/putins-nato-bungle/">a strong, unified NATO response</a> in defense of Ukraine; a coherent, nationally conscious, fiercely anti-Russian Ukrainian response to the invasion; and the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-casualties-soldiers-killed-ukraine-counteroffensive-putin-war-rcna82380">catastrophic loss of Russian men</a> and material. Were it not for the Wagner Group, led by one-time Putin confidant Prigozhin, Russia likely <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/25/us/politics/wagner-future-ukraine-war.html">would not have even achieved its major 2023 battlefield victory</a> over the city of Bakhmut.</p>
<p>Now, a weekend mutiny by Prigozhin and his mercenary force has further complicated Putin’s pursuit of the war. He looks weaker, and the most competent fighting force in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is no longer in existence to prosecute the war. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534182/original/file-20230626-1803-h9czpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing a green army cap and uniform looks out an open car window at night." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534182/original/file-20230626-1803-h9czpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534182/original/file-20230626-1803-h9czpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534182/original/file-20230626-1803-h9czpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534182/original/file-20230626-1803-h9czpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=523&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534182/original/file-20230626-1803-h9czpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534182/original/file-20230626-1803-h9czpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534182/original/file-20230626-1803-h9czpq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=658&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, leaves the Southern Military District headquarters on June 24, 2023, in Rostov-on-Don, Russia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/head-of-the-wagner-group-yevgeny-prigozhin-left-the-news-photo/1259027097?adppopup=true">Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Putin – Ukraine’s unlikely unifier</h2>
<p>Putin proved to be the greatest contributor to Ukrainian nationalism since the 19th-century Ukrainian bard <a href="https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/taras-shevchenko-great-european-lives/">Taras Shevchenko</a>. And just as the Russian leader has, in important ways, strengthened Ukraine, he has weakened his own country. Soon after he invaded Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Russians from different walks of life <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/02/13/russia-diaspora-war-ukraine/">began to leave Russia</a>. </p>
<p>With the mass exodus, the Kremlin had to <a href="https://apnews.com/article/russia-crackdown-surveillance-censorship-war-ukraine-internet-dab3663774feb666d6d0025bcd082fba">shift from persuasion to censorship</a>, false narratives and greater coercion and repression to keep the public from opposing the war.</p>
<p>The brittle, fractured nature of the Russian state was made starkly evident between June 23 and June 24, 2023, when Prigozhin, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/24/europe/yevgeny-prigozhin-wagner-chief-russia-ukraine-intl/index.html">formerly the Kremlin’s caterer</a>, mutinied and <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/06/25/the-meaning-of-prigozhins-short-lived-mutiny">began a march on Moscow</a> to replace the leadership of the regular Russian army. </p>
<p>In the weeks before the mutiny, Prigozhin had become <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-mercenary-boss-says-his-fighters-have-yet-receive-promised-medals-2023-06-20/">increasingly vocal about his dissatisfaction</a> with Russia’s military leadership and how it was running the war.</p>
<p>The attempted coup fizzled, though, within a day. After a fierce <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-mercenary-boss-prigozhin-move-belarus-under-wagner-deal-kremlin-says-2023-06-24/">speech by Putin</a> calling the mutineers traitors to the fatherland and promising harsh punishment, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russian-mercenary-boss-prigozhin-move-belarus-under-wagner-deal-kremlin-says-2023-06-24/">Prigozhin folded</a> and agreed to go into exile in Belarus. Moscow promised not to retaliate further, and a bloody civil war was avoided.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534183/original/file-20230626-25-69e043.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Men and women stand in a street holding the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag as it blows in the wind." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534183/original/file-20230626-25-69e043.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534183/original/file-20230626-25-69e043.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534183/original/file-20230626-25-69e043.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534183/original/file-20230626-25-69e043.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=438&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534183/original/file-20230626-25-69e043.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534183/original/file-20230626-25-69e043.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534183/original/file-20230626-25-69e043.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=550&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">People from the Ukrainian diaspora, along with activists, gather at the main Market Square in Krakow, Poland, on Saturday, May 20, 2023, to commemorate Ukrainians who defended the city of Mariupol in Ukraine against Russia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/unified-in-solidarity-members-of-the-local-belarusian-and-news-photo/1257036187?adppopup=true">Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Cracks in the Russian state</h2>
<p>Many geopolitical pundits in the West asserted that <a href="https://theconversation.com/wagners-mutiny-punctured-putins-strongman-image-and-exposed-cracks-in-his-rule-208430">Putin had been weakened by the mutiny</a>. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/antony-blinken-russia-cracks-emerge-mercenaries-making-rcna91014">noted the cracks in the Russian state</a> but hesitated to predict what the future held. The U.S. government held back from commenting further, not wanting to be associated with any connection to what had transpired in Russia. But I believe it is also possible that some may see Putin as a shrewd mediator who prevented Russian-against-Russian bloodshed. He cannot be counted out.</p>
<p>In such a murky and fast-moving sequence of coup and collapse, I believe the U.S. government must carefully calculate its own interests and attempt to scope out what might transpire in Russia in the near future. If Putin were no longer in power, the war in Ukraine could end, though probably with the de facto retention of Crimea within Russia because it is a special case. Taken by Catherine the Great from the Ottomans and local Tatars, Crimea was part of Russia until Soviet leader <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/02/27/283481587/crimea-a-gift-to-ukraine-becomes-a-political-flash-point">Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine</a> in 1954. Russians consider this an ancient patrimony of Russia, and any Russian government would be hard put to give the peninsula back to Ukraine.</p>
<p>Although seldom openly stated, U.S. goals have recently consisted of <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-calling-regime-change-russia-this-time-it-isnt-gaffe-1694867">regime change in Moscow</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/25/russia-weakened-lloyd-austin-ukraine-visit/">a weaker Russia</a>, which by its very size and geopolitical location remains a security threat to Europe and former Soviet states. Putin has managed to make <a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-is-being-made-a-pariah-state-just-like-it-and-the-soviet-union-were-for-most-of-the-last-105-years-182028">Russia an international pariah</a>, and it is difficult to imagine a secure international system that would include the current Russian regime.</p>
<h2>US and NATO committed to Ukrainian victory</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/01/20/1150264976/u-s-nato-countries-announce-massive-weapons-package-for-ukraine">United States and NATO are committed</a> to a Ukrainian victory in the war and are willing to <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12040">pay for it materially</a>. Many <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/21/all-nato-members-have-agreed-ukraine-will-eventually-join-says-stoltenberg">leaders in the NATO alliance believe</a> the <a href="https://time.com/6156886/ukrainian-citizens-mobilizing-against-russia/">sacrifices that Ukrainians have made</a> for their independence and sovereignty will be rewarded with a major role in the security structure of the post-war European order. Whether that will mean formal <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/17/biden-nato-ukraine-china-00102527">membership in NATO is yet to be negotiated</a>.</p>
<p>What has to be decided in the strategic calculations for a post-war settlement is how to manage Ukraine’s relationship with Russia. A return to the earlier agreed-upon <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/what-are-minsk-agreements-ukraine-conflict-2022-02-21/">Minsk II agreement</a> – a neutral Ukraine and a federal relationship with the Donbas – seems impossible, though it would probably be acceptable to Moscow, if not to Kyiv.</p>
<p>If <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-retreats-ukraine-what-will-putin-do-military-kremlin-rcna47514">Russia is to retreat</a> from much of its occupied territory in Ukraine, would it then be treated as the loser in the war, which the Kremlin may not accept? Would <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-needs-pay-war-reparations-ukraine-says-polish-climate-minister-2023-03-01/">Russia be forced to pay reparations</a> for the damage it has done to Ukraine? In my view, that would certainly be morally justified but not enforceable without a total defeat of the aggressor. And Russia’s nuclear arsenal certainly complicates any equation. There is no way to know whether a defeated, humiliated Russia <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-says-threat-putin-using-tactical-nuclear-weapons-is-real-2023-06-20/">would be willing to turn to nuclear weapons</a> as a last resort.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534184/original/file-20230626-4425-3bb16k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men, wearing suits, stand with their hands to the sides. To their left, a man in a US marine uniform stands guard holding a rifle that is pointed up." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534184/original/file-20230626-4425-3bb16k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534184/original/file-20230626-4425-3bb16k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534184/original/file-20230626-4425-3bb16k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534184/original/file-20230626-4425-3bb16k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534184/original/file-20230626-4425-3bb16k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534184/original/file-20230626-4425-3bb16k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534184/original/file-20230626-4425-3bb16k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin welcomes NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg during an honor cordon at the Pentagon on Feb. 8, 2023, in Washington. Austin and Stoltenberg met to discuss a range of issues, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/secretary-of-defense-lloyd-austin-welcomes-nato-secretary-news-photo/1464245662?adppopup=true">Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>From mutiny there may be resolution</h2>
<p>From my perspective, there is a utopian solution, sensible if difficult to achieve. </p>
<p>With Russia weakened by the Prigozhin mutiny, Putin may be willing to rethink continuation of the war. An immediate cease-fire could be declared as a first step toward negotiations and a compromise that could end the war. </p>
<p>From Ukraine’s perspective, a possible compromise might include removal of all Russian forces from Ukraine, with the exception of Crimea; reparations by Russia for damage done to the country; and a commitment from the West to help rebuild Ukraine. </p>
<p>Russia may want international guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO, but would be free to become a member of the European Union, and the beginning of talks focusing on a new international security structure. That structure would bring Russia, China and India, as well as other countries, into some form of cooperative system guaranteeing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208519/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ronald Suny does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A historian explains how Russian President Vladimir Putin, weakened by a short-lived mutiny, might find a path to peace with Ukraine.Ronald Suny, Professor of History and Political Science, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2030402023-04-03T20:09:57Z2023-04-03T20:09:57ZInternational Criminal Court has cited Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children a war crime: on Russia’s long history of weaponising deportation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518954/original/file-20230403-26-bhn2vb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C5%2C1933%2C1086&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Deportation of students, painting by Jacek Malczewski, 1884.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On March 17, the International Criminal Court cited Russia’s deportation of Ukrainian children <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-ukraine-icc-judges-issue-arrest-warrants-against-vladimir-vladimirovich-putin-and">as a war crime</a> for which President Vladimir Putin is being held responsible. </p>
<p>By some reports, since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ukraine-war-news-children-taken-to-reeducation-camps-report/">more than 6,000</a> children have been removed from Ukraine into Russia. The UN Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64985009">published evidence</a> of the “illegal transfer of hundreds of Ukrainian children to Russia”. </p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2023/02/22/ysph-research-reveals-relocation-and-re-education-of-ukrainian-children/">Yale School of Public Health report</a> provides evidence of a organised attempt to reeducate abducted Ukrainian children now held in locations stretching from Russian-occupied Crimea to Siberia. </p>
<p>Putin is the first Russian leader to have an arrest warrant issued against him for the deportation of citizens of another country, but the origins of using deportation as a weapon are deeply rooted in Russia’s history.</p>
<p>Centuries before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the expulsion of individuals or even entire nations was used as a targeted instrument of war. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-russias-war-against-ukraine-one-of-the-battlegrounds-is-language-itself-201170">In Russia's war against Ukraine, one of the battlegrounds is language itself</a>
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<h2>A tool of policy</h2>
<p>Deportation as a tool of policy was first seen in Russia’s rapid expansion in the second half of the 16th century.</p>
<p>In 1547, the Grand Duke of Muscovy, <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/kazan-falls-ivan-terrible">Ivan the Terrible</a>, declared himself tsar of all the Russias. He claimed the leadership not only of Moscow and its territories but of all lands of the ancient Kyivan Rus. The name “Russia” replaced “Muscovy” as the name of the new tsardom.</p>
<p>Muscovy’s expansion strategy was directed towards the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the west, coupled with the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4202706">conquest of Siberia</a>, then a vast separate region to the east. Between 1550 and 1700, the tsardom expanded by 35,000 square kilometres per year. </p>
<p>In 1569, Lithuania had joined Poland to form the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Poland/The-Commonwealth">Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth</a>. The Commonwealth, in which power was shared between the king and the parliament, became one of the largest countries in Europe, covering <a href="https://youtu.be/TJTdvtKJIZI">almost a million square kilometres</a> in the early 1600s.</p>
<p>Muscovy’s expansion to the west at the expense of Lithuania from the early 1500s encountered opposition. Earlier, Lithuania’s rulers united “all the Russias” (including the territory of modern Ukraine) within its multi-ethnic and multi-confessional monarchy. </p>
<p>Influenced by the <a href="https://huri.harvard.edu/news/timothy-snyder-kyivs-ancient-normality-redux">Orthodox religion and language</a> of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27">Kyivan Rus</a> – an amalgam of principalities in eastern and northern Europe – the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gediminas">Lithuanian dynasty</a> did not want to relinquish its control of the sprawling territories bordering Muscovy. The union with Poland was perhaps one of the strategies to defend itself against Russia’s encroachment. </p>
<p>In the early 17th century, the wars between Russia and Poland-Lithuania resulted in the deportations of soldiers, including Adam Kamieński (c.1635-c.1676). Kamieński was detained in 1666 and deported to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakutsk">Yakutsk</a>, a settlement built on continuous permafrost about 450km south of the Arctic Circle.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518952/original/file-20230403-22-ryky79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white plate image." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518952/original/file-20230403-22-ryky79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518952/original/file-20230403-22-ryky79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518952/original/file-20230403-22-ryky79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518952/original/file-20230403-22-ryky79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518952/original/file-20230403-22-ryky79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518952/original/file-20230403-22-ryky79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518952/original/file-20230403-22-ryky79.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Russian soldiers capturing Polish children in Warsaw, 1831.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>Between the 1760s and 1795, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40105447">conflict between Russia and Poland-Lithuania</a> entered its acute phase. Its ultimate outcome was the end of independence for Poland-Lithuania. </p>
<p>In 1767, Russian Ambassador Nicholas Repin ordered kidnapping and deportation to Kaluga of a group of Polish-Lithuanian parliamentarians who opposed Russian-sponsored legislation.</p>
<p>Between 1771 and 1795, more than 50,000 citizens of Poland-Lithuania were deported to various locations in the Russian Empire. Among that number were about 20,000 who supported or served in the Polish-Lithuanian army under <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/polish-patriot-who-helped-americans-beat-british-180962430/">Tadeusz Kościuszko</a>. </p>
<p>Kościuszko’s revolt from March to November 1794 aimed to prevent division of Poland-Lithuania’s territory between Russia, Prussia and Austria. The Russians <a href="https://theconversation.com/mount-kosciuszko-how-australias-highest-peak-came-to-be-named-for-a-freedom-fighter-against-russian-aggression-180578">deported</a> Kościuszko to Saint Petersburg in October 1794. </p>
<p>In January 1795, the Russian military removed <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/book-review-elected-king-provides-bones-of-contention-the-last-king-of-poland-adam-zamoyski-cape-25-pounds-1498996.html">King Stanisław August</a>, the last monarch of Poland-Lithuania, from Warsaw. He died in Saint Petersburg <a href="https://culture.pl/en/article/in-defence-of-stanislaw-the-last-king-of-poland">in 1798</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/mount-kosciuszko-how-australias-highest-peak-came-to-be-named-for-a-freedom-fighter-against-russian-aggression-180578">Mount Kosciuszko: how Australia’s highest peak came to be named for a freedom fighter against Russian aggression</a>
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<h2>The 20th century</h2>
<p>The former citizens of Poland-Lithuania <a href="https://www.bsb-muenchen.de/mikro/lit497.pdf">rebelled against Russia</a> again in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/November-Insurrection">1830</a> and 1863. After the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4202527">suppression of the uprising of 1830</a>, about 30,000 of its participants were deported to Russia. Another 27,000 soldiers were forced into compulsory military service in the Russian army. </p>
<p>On March 23 1831, Emperor Nicholas ordered children of Polish-Lithuanian military personnel to be deported to Russia to join special imperial army units.</p>
<p>After 1863, Russia deported <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/650026">at least 25,000</a> of those who fought for the independence of Poland-Lithuania. The majority were deported to Tobolsk, Irkutsk, Akatuy and Tunka, deep in the Siberian hinterland. Most never returned home.</p>
<p>In the 20th century, Soviet Russia <a href="https://commons.princeton.edu/mg/deportations-from-the-soviet-union/">perpetrated deportation</a> against its own people. Affluent farmers known as <em>kulaks</em> were branded as “class enemies”, and ethnic <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/24455386">Koreans</a>, Germans and Tatars were also targeted. These deportations were described by the state as “population transfers”, with the authorities deporting “anti-Soviet” “enemies of the people” to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3804532">cleanse specific territories</a>. </p>
<p>During the second world war, <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/publications/refugeemag/3b5555124/unhcr-publication-cis-conference-displacement-cis-punished-peoples-mass.html">366,000 Volga Germans</a>, who were settled in Russia at the time, were deported to Siberia. </p>
<p>Soviet Russia’s invasion of Poland in 1939 resulted in deportation of <a href="https://doi.org/10.5406/polishreview.59.2.0019">more than a million people</a>. About <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23488338">350,000 died</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/soviet-massive-deportations-chronology.html">entire Tatar population</a> of Crimea, numbering around 200,000, were deported and resettled mainly in Uzbekistan, where a significant percentage died. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518953/original/file-20230403-14-1dhaqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white drawing." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518953/original/file-20230403-14-1dhaqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/518953/original/file-20230403-14-1dhaqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518953/original/file-20230403-14-1dhaqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518953/original/file-20230403-14-1dhaqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518953/original/file-20230403-14-1dhaqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518953/original/file-20230403-14-1dhaqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/518953/original/file-20230403-14-1dhaqe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=601&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Corpses of victims of the winter 1918 Red Terror.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
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<p>In 2015, Ukraine recognised this deportation of <a href="https://crimea.suspilne.media/en/articles/71">Crimean Tatars as genocide</a>, and marked May 18 as a day of remembrance. </p>
<p>Between 1940 and 1953, more than 200,000 people are estimated to have been deported from <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/43212604">Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia</a> – 10% of the entire adult population.</p>
<p>It is estimated that between 1936 and 1952, at least <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/publications/refugeemag/3b5555124/unhcr-publication-cis-conference-displacement-cis-punished-peoples-mass.html">three million people</a> were deported across the western territories of Soviet Russia and <a href="https://ehne.fr/en/encyclopedia/themes/wars-and-memories/movement-in-times-war/repressed-peoples-in-soviet-union">transported thousands of kilometres away</a> to Siberia and Central Asia. </p>
<p>In 2023, the world is witnessing deportation again being used as a weapon by Russia. Will the children taken away from Ukraine ever find their way home?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203040/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darius von Guttner Sporzynski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Centuries before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the expulsion of individuals or even entire nations was used as a targeted instrument of war.Darius von Guttner Sporzynski, Historian, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1934232022-10-27T18:04:19Z2022-10-27T18:04:19ZUkraine recap: the approach of ‘General Winter’ and what it means for the conflict<p>The next couple of weeks is likely to see Ukraine’s weather taking a turn for the worse, bringing first rain and then, as temperatures plummet, increasingly heavy snowfalls. “General Winter” has always had an important part to play in armed conflicts in this part of the world – something that Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolph Hitler both learned to their cost (Hitler was clearly an imperfect student of military history, given he appears not to have factored the catastrophic 1812 retreat from Moscow into his Operation Barbarossa invasion plans).</p>
<p>Once the snow sets in, it’s generally there until April. Frank Ledwidge, a military strategist at the University of Portsmouth, has spent a lot of time in these conditions and describes it as being like walking out of your well-heated apartment and into a freezer. Not that Russia’s troops will be bivouacked in apartments, of course. This time round, it’ll be Russians suffering the privations that Hitler and Napoloeon’s military experienced. Far from home and with uncertain supplies of food and cold weather equipment, morale will be difficult to maintain.</p>
<p>This, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-general-winter-is-about-to-arrive-this-time-its-not-good-news-for-the-russian-army-193247">writes Ledwidge</a>, is one reason for the attacks on Ukraine’s power plants. Vladimir Putin is only too aware of the onset of winter and wants the Ukrainian population to suffer as well. On the battlefield, the swift offensives of recent weeks are likely to move at a slower pace as first mud, then ice underfoot make rapid manoeuvring more difficult. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-general-winter-is-about-to-arrive-this-time-its-not-good-news-for-the-russian-army-193247">Ukraine war: 'General Winter' is about to arrive – this time it's not good news for the Russian army</a>
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<p>Meanwhile reports from the front continue to focus on Ukrainian advances in the south and east, particularly around the city of Kherson, where civilians have been ordered to evacuate to the eastern side of the Dnipro River in anticipation of bitter urban fighting. </p>
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<p>There is also continuing speculation about the prospect of a Putin escalation – and the form that escalation might take. Regular unsubtle hints about the possibility of resorting to the use of nuclear weapons continue to emerge from the Kremlin, but Stefan Wolff and David Dunn, experts in international security at the University of Birmingham, believe that Putin has several other non-nuclear options he can employ first. </p>
<p>They write that the recent targeting of Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure – like the aforementioned power stations, is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-putin-escalates-with-sabotage-and-false-flag-operations-leaving-the-west-struggling-to-find-a-response-193043">integral part of Putin’s war strategy</a>. And Kremlin claims (which Kyiv vehemently denies) that Ukraine has mined and is preparing to destroy the vast Kakhovka dam near Kherson would seem to indicate that this is something that Russia could well be contemplating with the warning simply a “false flag” to sow confusion. These sort of deniable attacks are an integral part of Russia’s military playbook. Meanwhile, the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines and more recent cyberattacks that have disrupted German rail systems and US airports are designed to get Kyiv’s western allies worrying about their own defences instead of just Ukraine’s.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-putin-escalates-with-sabotage-and-false-flag-operations-leaving-the-west-struggling-to-find-a-response-193043">Ukraine war: Putin escalates with sabotage and 'false flag' operations leaving the west struggling to find a response</a>
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<p><strong><em>This is our weekly recap of expert analysis of the Ukraine conflict.</em></strong>
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<p>Another likely false flag was the round of calls from Russia’s minister of defence, Sergei Shoigu, to various of his opposite numbers warning that Ukraine was planning to detonate a “dirty bomb”, arguably less heinous as a weapon of mass destruction than a tactical nuclear warhead, but still something that would sow misery and confusion across a large area of Ukraine. The west has dismissed Shoigu’s warning, instead taking it as a hint that Russia is planning something similar. Christoph Bluth, an international security expert at the University of Bradford, walks us through what <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-are-dirty-bombs-and-why-is-russia-suddenly-talking-about-them-193250">dirty bombs are</a>, whether they’ve ever been used before and what their potential use might mean for this conflict.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-are-dirty-bombs-and-why-is-russia-suddenly-talking-about-them-193250">Ukraine war: what are 'dirty bombs' and why is Russia suddenly talking about them?</a>
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<h2>Putin futures</h2>
<p>All the while Kremlin watchers are anxiously looking for signs that Putin’s authority might be crumbling – something most observers believe is the best prospect for an expeditious end to the conflict. But Nick James, an expert in Russian politics at the University of Oxford, believes that Putin’s longevity will depend on the outcomes of the war, rather than the other way around. James gives us <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-if-any-are-the-chances-of-toppling-putin-and-who-might-take-over-193348">three possible scenarios</a> for the future of Putin’s leadership given different outcomes of his Ukraine conflict.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-what-if-any-are-the-chances-of-toppling-putin-and-who-might-take-over-193348">Ukraine war: what, if any, are the chances of toppling Putin and who might take over?</a>
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<p>We also have this fascinating parallel insight into the different between <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-populist-and-a-dictator-the-ancient-greeks-have-answers-191719">populist leaders and tyrannical dictators</a>, with a bit of help from the philosophers and historians of Ancient Greece.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-populist-and-a-dictator-the-ancient-greeks-have-answers-191719">What is the difference between a populist and a dictator? The ancient Greeks have answers</a>
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<p>Putin has attempted to justify this invasion in several ways and for different audiences. His appeal to Russians has been based on either the country’s imperial past and the idea that somehow Ukraine has no separate existence from Greater Russia, or the idea that this “special military operation” has always been about rescuing Ukraine’s pro-Russian populations from the “Nazi gang” in power in Kyiv. Russia has also run the line that this is all actually a defensive fight against aggression by an expansionist Nato. </p>
<p>But, as historian Ronald Suny of the University of Michigan writes, none of these justifications <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ukraine-conflict-is-a-war-of-narratives-and-putins-is-crumbling-192811">stand up to any serious scrutiny</a>. In the eyes of most of the world – and, given the growing anti-war protests in Russia itself – Putin’s narratives are crumbling in the face of reality.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-ukraine-conflict-is-a-war-of-narratives-and-putins-is-crumbling-192811">The Ukraine conflict is a war of narratives – and Putin's is crumbling</a>
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<h2>Bigotry of war</h2>
<p>In neighbouring Belarus, meanwhile, Alexander Lukashenko – one of Putin’s staunchest allies – clings to power despite his enduring unpopularity. Many people there look to reports that their country may be dragged into the conflict on Russia’s side, but there seems little or no public appetite for this eventuality. And many Belarusians feel as if their president’s friendship with Russia leaves them out in the cold. </p>
<p>As political scientists David Roger Marples of the University of Alberta and Katsiaryna Lozka of Ghent University report, Belarusians visiting other countries for work – or even those who have fled Lukashenko’s repressive regime – are <a href="https://theconversation.com/belarusians-are-facing-discrimination-and-blame-for-russias-war-in-ukraine-192828">encountering discrimination on all sides</a>. Even those who have aligned themselves with the exiled opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, are being shunned or worse.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/belarusians-are-facing-discrimination-and-blame-for-russias-war-in-ukraine-192828">Belarusians are facing discrimination and blame for Russia's war in Ukraine</a>
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<p>While we’re on the subject of discrimination, the Russian state’s deep homophobia has been well known for many years. But since the war began, Russia’s exploitation of this bogus threat to justify its political aims has sunk to new lows. Announcing his invasion in February, Putin denounced the west’s “aggressively imposing … attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.”</p>
<p>Richard Foltz, a professor of religion and culture at Concordia University in Canada, presents some of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/homophobia-as-a-wartime-marketing-tool-some-russians-fear-the-west-will-make-them-gay-192826">more bizarre manifestations</a> of this extreme prejudice – including from Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, whose contention is that the promotion of LGBTQ+ rights by many western countries is the “forcible imposition of a sin condemned by divine law” and that the invasion of Ukraine is a holy war against Nato turning Russian boys gay, something that would be almost laughable if it wasn’t so dangerously unpleasant.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/homophobia-as-a-wartime-marketing-tool-some-russians-fear-the-west-will-make-them-gay-192826">Homophobia as a wartime marketing tool: Some Russians fear the West will make them gay</a>
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<p><em>Ukraine Recap is available as a weekly email newsletter. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+Newsletter+Ukraine+Recap+2022+Mar&utm_content=WeeklyRecapBottom">Click here to get our recaps directly in your inbox.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/193423/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Some of the key articles from our coverage of the war in Ukraine over the past week.Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1914832022-10-03T12:08:13Z2022-10-03T12:08:13ZRussia has mobilized for war many times before – sometimes it unified the nation, other times it ended in disaster<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487582/original/file-20221001-18-a9do3r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C73%2C5455%2C3563&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A Russian citizen being called up for duty.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-citizens-are-being-sent-to-their-units-after-news-photo/1243596949?adppopup=true">Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Vladimir Putin’s <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/what-does-russias-partial-mobilization-mean">mobilization of 300,000</a> additional Russian soldiers to fight in Ukraine has gotten off to a rocky start.</p>
<p>Nominally aimed at calling up reserve forces with prior combat experience, early reports suggest a broader dragnet and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/world/europe/russia-draft-ukraine-putin.html">widespread resistance</a> against the call-up. Recruitment offices have <a href="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/09/26/russian-enlistment-officer-shot-recruitment-centers-torched-as-kremlin-admits-mobilization-errors-a78886">been torched</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/world/europe/protests-putin-russia-war.html">protests against the action</a> have dotted Russian cities, and droves of men have reportedly <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/russia-turkey-partial-mobilization-ukraine/">fled the country</a> to avoid being enlisted.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.american.edu/cas/faculty/elohr.cfm">scholar of Russian history</a>, I see this latest move by Putin in the context of past mass mobilizations undertaken by Russia throughout its history. Sometimes it has worked, bolstering a force while legitimizing conflict in the eyes of the public and instilling national unity. But it can also backfire, as the Russian president may find to his cost.</p>
<h2>Turning the fortunes of war</h2>
<p>Putin most often uses World War II <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/putin-speech-ukraine-invasion-soviet-union/629825/">as his historical reference point</a>. The Soviet Union suffered <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war">tremendous losses</a> during the Nazi invasion but countered by conducting the <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/operation-barbarossa">most extensive mobilization</a> that the world had ever seen and probably will ever see. </p>
<p>As well as mobilizing the entire economy for wartime production and putting women to work in factories in unprecedented numbers, the Soviet Union also mobilized 34 million soldiers, building one of the largest armies ever assembled. This total mobilization led Nazi Germany to suffer four-fifths of its total wartime casualties on the Soviet front and was the <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/stalinism-at-war-9781350153516/">single most important reason Germany was defeated</a>.</p>
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<img alt="A poster shows a woman in a red dress gesticulating in front of pointed bayonets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/487584/original/file-20221001-12-g9syux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A World War II Soviet military recruitment poster.</span>
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<p>It also served to turn the fortunes of a Soviet state that had entered the war weakened by Josef Stalin’s campaign to force farmers into <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1929-2/collectivization/">state-run collective farms</a>, a <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/red-famine-anne-applebaum-ukraine-soviet-union/542610/">deadly famine that resulted</a> and waves of police repression that had <a href="https://news.stanford.edu/2010/09/23/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310/">killed millions of citizens</a>.</p>
<p>Victory gave the Soviet Union a new legitimacy at home and abroad that helped it survive and even thrive as a great power for 45 more years. The powerful Red Army that was assembled swept through half of Europe and brought the Russian Empire’s borders further west than any tsar had done.</p>
<h2>A legitimizing, unifying force</h2>
<p>The success of this mobilization and the great Soviet victory have been <a href="https://iupress.org/9780253057624/the-future-of-the-soviet-past/">central to Putin’s worldview</a>. He decreed <a href="https://www.state.gov/disarming-disinformation/vladimir-putins-historical-disinformation/">draconian penalties</a> for any attempt to question Soviet conduct in World War II, like the brutal annexation of the Baltic states, mistakes by Stalin and his generals, or occupation policies in Eastern Europe. Putin also obsessed about Ukrainian nationalist partisans who fought against Stalin during the war, conflating them with contemporary Ukrainians who simply desire sovereignty.</p>
<p>Putin seems to have hoped to recreate the unifying, legitimizing results of the great World War II effort.</p>
<p>Indeed, mass mobilizations have periodically unified the nation at other times. In 1612, a <a href="https://www.rbth.com/multimedia/romanovs/2017/08/18/the-1612-battle-for-moscow-how-the-russian-state-prevailed_824862">mass rising led to a successful war</a> to expel Catholic Polish invaders, ending a period of internal strife and leading to broad unity in favor of the new Romanov dynasty and its autocratic rule. </p>
<p>Two hundred years later, in 1812, Russia mobilized against a foreign invader, Napoleon, and <a href="https://evergreen.noblenet.org/eg/opac/record/3766810?locg=1">won a decisive victory</a> that brought Russian troops to Paris and made Russia a great power in Europe. It also ended Tsar Alexander I’s dalliance with liberal reforms. Russia <a href="https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/84/2/503/55936?redirectedFrom=fulltext">became known as the “gendarme of Europe</a>,” the active enforcer of an international alliance against constitutional liberalism.</p>
<h2>Resentment and military disaster</h2>
<p>But while these mobilizations for war unified the country and brought legitimacy to the regime, others did the opposite. </p>
<p>From 1768 to 1774, Catherine II, Russia’s greatest conqueror, launched a <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/702542/pdf">massive war against the Ottoman Empire</a> that led to the conquest of much of modern southern Ukraine and Crimea.</p>
<p>But to win, Cossacks – irregular military groups living in Russia’s borderlands – and peasants bore the brunt. Formerly relatively free to choose the conditions of their service to the tsar, Cossacks were locked into the regular Russian army and sent to the front in large numbers. Peasants felt the twin burdens of ever tightening bonds of serfdom and wartime conscription.</p>
<p>The two groups joined together in a revolt that so seriously threatened the state that Catherine had to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/autocratic-politics-in-a-national-crisis-the-imperial-russian-government-and-pugachevs-revolt-17731775-by-john-t-alexander-russian-and-east-european-series-vol-38-bloomington-and-london-indiana-university-press-for-the-international-affairs-center-1969-xii-346-pp-850-paper/7271B685CC256EF6117A35221F447147">rush a peace settlement with the Ottoman Empire</a> to bring the army home to crush the rebels.</p>
<p>In 1904, Russia underestimated the rising power of Japan and <a href="https://guides.loc.gov/chronicling-america-russo-japanese-war">stumbled into a war with that country</a>. A subsequent call-up of university students and young men for a very unpopular war proved to be a major cause of the revolution that ensued in 1905. Only when the tsar withdrew from the war and conceded a parliament and constitution was order restored. </p>
<p>Despite an effective <a href="https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/422972?journalCode=jmh">mobilization of millions of soldiers</a> at the beginning of World War I, Russia incurred massive losses as Germany and Austria-Hungary drove deep into Russian territory. Street protests against food shortages in February 1917 spurred a broad coalition of elected members of parliament and military commanders to overthrow the tsar. They thought a legitimate, popular government would inspire more fighting spirit among the troops.</p>
<p>The leaders of the new government doubled down on the war effort, ordering a <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/1917-revolution-as-demobilization-and-state-collapse/E9C85596FBF6C8E74ED87ABDAEC7563E">major new mobilization of troops</a>, calling up people who had been previously exempt, such as heads of households, older men and ethnic minorities. There were even orders to send to the front soldiers who had previously been kept in reserve garrisons because of suspect loyalties or subpar fighting qualities. </p>
<p>On paper, the Russian army swelled to 10 million men, the largest it had been through the entire war to date. With more troops and more weapons than the enemy and newfound legitimacy, the government overestimated popular support for the war and launched an offensive. But after a couple weeks of advances, the unreliable recent recruits were the first to desert, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/slavic-review/article/1917-revolution-as-demobilization-and-state-collapse/E9C85596FBF6C8E74ED87ABDAEC7563E">starting an avalanche of 2 million desertions</a> that both destroyed the army and, as armed soldiers went back to their villages, started the agrarian revolution when peasants drove noble landlords out of the countryside and seized the land for themselves. </p>
<p>Fearing counterrevolution, the new government disbanded much of the police force but was unable to create a new one to replace it. The army was pinned down at the front and losing numbers fast as soldiers went home to claim land. It could not protect the state from the small Bolshevik faction of the communist movement, which conducted a successful armed coup in October 1917. The summer offensive has gone down in history as one of the worst military gambles ever.</p>
<h2>Putin’s great gamble?</h2>
<p>Putin appears to look toward World War II, missing the lessons of the earlier Great War.</p>
<p>The mobilization to fight World War I drew support from national representatives and from a relatively free press. While the population was weary of war by 1917, few questioned the legitimate need to defend the country against the German invaders.</p>
<p>Putin’s war in Ukraine is very different. It is widely seen as unnecessary, <a href="https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russian-public-opinion-ukraine-war-putin-approval-rating-by-andrei-kolesnikov-and-denis-volkov-2022-09">public support is tepid</a>, and there is no free press or freely elected representatives to give it legitimate support.</p>
<p>The mobilization of 1917 provides a stark lesson that larger armies are not necessarily stronger ones, and adding large numbers of unreliable soldiers to an army can be an enormous gamble.</p>
<p>The usually cautious military observer <a href="https://twitter.com/DAlperovitch/status/1572782241624854528">Michael Kofman</a> responded to Putin’s mobilization by declaring that Putin now has staked his regime on the outcome of the war. It is already clear that this war will not be a unifying, legitimizing event like World War II. But it remains to be seen whether this mobilization will go down the 1917 road to military dysfunction and revolution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/191483/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Lohr has received funding from the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research Fellowship (2012) and the Kennan Institute for Russian studies fellowship (2005). He has served as director of American University's Carmel Institute for Russian History and Culture (2011-12; 2019-20), an organization that provided scholarships for students to study Russian language and previously included film screenings and cultural events at the Russian Embassy. This past activity in no way influences his scholarship or political views.</span></em></p>A historian looks back at the success – and failure – of mass mobilization efforts by Russia and the Soviet Union.Eric Lohr, Professor of Russian History, American UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1897272022-08-31T19:28:29Z2022-08-31T19:28:29ZMikhail Gorbachev’s legacy: sadly, history will judge this good man harshly<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482139/original/file-20220831-20-1mnn2n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C1992%2C1235&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">h</span> </figcaption></figure><p>No other person but the final leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev – who has died aged 91 – could bring to life the eternal debate on the role of the individual in history. Does real change happen because of impersonal structural factors, or because of individual choice by influential people?</p>
<p>For many years I thought that the end of the USSR was inevitable. But the more I’ve been reading and thinking about it, the less inevitable it seems to me. And so the role of Gorbachev becomes ever more significant for the two epochal events: the end of the cold war and the disintegration of the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>Historians still intensely <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1060586X.1992.10641355?journalCode=rpsa20">debate</a> the Soviet collapse. Some point to the long-term structural problems in the USSR from a lack of popular legitimacy of the Soviet rule and the simmering ethnic tensions, to the chronic inability of the Soviet planned economy to satisfy growing consumer demands and keep up the growth with the west.</p>
<p>But equally when Gorbachev came to power there still was a reasonably robust system in place which kept dissent at bay and maintained military parity with the west. In March 1985, when the general secretary came to power, there was nothing to <a href="https://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/armageddon-averted-soviet-collapse-1970-2000">suggest</a> the collapse of the whole system was inevitable in six years.</p>
<p>Gorbachev wanted to reform the Soviet system, not destroy it. He started his economic reforms by investing huge amounts in heavy industry alongside partial liberalisation of small trade, while controversially cracking down on alcohol consumption. But all of these, apart from the hugely <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-gorbachev-admits-botching-anti-alcohol-campaign/27018247.html">unpopular anti-drinking campaign</a>, were half measures. All of them only made things worse.</p>
<p>Gorbachev’s economic reforms undermined the command economy discipline. The retention of price controls by the state and ban on private property meant what was left of the old state system functioned worse than before – while the new market one couldn’t take off either. The <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674836808&content=toc">origins of vast illicit wealth</a>, legalised under Boris Yeltsin, was thanks to <em>perestroika</em>, his restructuring of the economic system.</p>
<p>Running into severe economic difficulties, which were exacerbated by collapsing oil prices, Gorbachev decided to switch his focus on to political reform. The aim was to give the Soviet system more legitimacy through partial democratisation. Gorbachev always thought that his reforms faced danger from the conservatives within the Soviet apparatus. Yet, it was the democrats, led by Yelstin, who destroyed him. </p>
<p>Gorbachev ended up falling between two stools. His reforms were too much for the conservatives, but too little for the democrats. He created the office of president to preserve his power as the Communist Party’s authority was increasingly undermined through public debates, revelations about the Soviet past and the growth of national movements in ethnic republics. But he never dared to face a popular election and, as a result, always lacked popular legitimacy, which was ironic as this was the aim of his political reforms. </p>
<p>Instead, Yeltsin got a popular <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-03-27-mn-430-story.html">mandate</a> with more than 80% of votes in the 1989 Russian elections. He emerged as an alternative centre of power with a mission to destroy Gorbachev – even if it meant dissolution of the USSR to boot.</p>
<p>In retrospect, it seems that Gorbachev simply didn’t understand how the Soviet system worked. He sincerely believed that it could be saved if he removed some elements such as the fear of repression and the command economy. But they turned out to be essential for its survival. Having removed them, the system unravelled as well. </p>
<p>Gorbachev emerged as the general secretary at a bifurcation point when the Soviet system was a crossroads. And he unintentionally tipped the balance towards its collapse. Judging on his own terms, he was a failure in the key task he set out for himself. He wanted to reform and improve the Soviet system, and instead he led it to its total disintegration.</p>
<h2>The end of the cold war</h2>
<p>The same sense of failure hangs over his foreign policy as well, which is where there is a huge gap in the western and Russian perceptions of his time in office. In the early 1980s, there was a huge build up of nuclear weapons in Europe with new intermediate missiles deployed by both the USSR and the US. Ronald Reagan’s “<a href="https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reagan-evil-empire-speech-text/">evil empire</a>” reference to the Soviet Union was a reflection of the tensions and little room for compromise.</p>
<p>Gorbachev changed all that. Instead of a zero sum nuclear standoff, he wanted a new security based on shared interests and common values. Instead of security based on mutually assured destruction, Gorbachev offered one built on mutual trust. Just like in domestic reforms, the aim was not to give up Soviet power but to secure it on a new basis.</p>
<p>Key arms reduction treaties were negotiated with the US, including the <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-gorbachevs-1987-inf-missile-treaty-has-limited-the-arsenal-available-to-putin-189750?notice=Article+has+been+updated.">1987 INF treaty</a> getting rid of all intermediate range missiles, and the START 1 treaty which drastically reduced US and Soviet nuclear arsenals signed in 1990. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-how-gorbachevs-1987-inf-missile-treaty-has-limited-the-arsenal-available-to-putin-189750">Ukraine war: how Gorbachev's 1987 INF missile treaty has limited the arsenal available to Putin</a>
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<p>In 1988, Gorbachev even <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/%20116224%20.pdf">announced</a> a unilateral cut of 500,000 Soviet troops based in Europe.
In eastern Europe, the Soviet leader favoured a “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinatra_Doctrine">Sinatra Doctrine</a>”, named after the famous song, allowing the Soviet satellites to do it reforms their way and refusing to back Communist regimes with Soviet force if they didn’t reform.</p>
<p>Again, Gorbachev expected reformed socialist governments to survive with a new bout of legitimacy. But that was a gross misunderstanding of the nature of those regimes, which were maintained by Soviet forces and enjoyed little local support.</p>
<p>The collapse of the Berlin Wall and German unification which followed were the final nail in the cold war’s coffin. It is this legacy which continues to irk the Russian leaders from Yeltsin to Putin. </p>
<p>Gorbachev enjoyed significant leverage through Soviet legal rights in Germany and the troops stationed there. The Germans needed Soviet cooperation for unification to happen and were willing to give a lot in return, including promises of “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300268034/not-one-inch/">not one inch east</a>” for Nato after the reunification. But Gorbachev utterly failed to use his leverage and extract any legally binding guarantees over future military expansion. The Russian leaders who succeeded him – and Gorbachev himself in his memoirs – accused the west of betrayal. </p>
<p>But it was his own inability to get any official guarantees that lies at the heart of Russian complaints. The naked truth is that Gorbachev’s idealism in foreign policy, with his emphasis on mutual interests and common values, only works if both sides equally subscribe to those views.</p>
<p>Unlike his western counterparts who knew exactly what they wanted (a reunification of Germany on their terms, nuclear and conventional arms cuts while retaining the freedom to expand Nato further east), Gorbachev simply didn’t know what he wanted beyond a grand vision of world peace. In the end, he simply stalled for time and kept asking the Germans and Americans for more money while hoping multiple problems would somehow solve themselves.</p>
<p>Not surprisingly, the end of the cold war is seen in the west as its victory as was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/29/us/state-union-transcript-president-bush-s-address-state-union.html">proclaimed</a> by George Bush in January 1992. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">George Bush proclaims the end of the cold war, January 1992.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Gorbachev wanted a new <a href="https://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/which-way-out-of-ukraine-versailles-yalta-or-vienna">security</a> based on mutual interests and common values, but ended the cold war as essentially a politely wrapped up defeat of the country he once led.</p>
<h2>Gorbachev’s legacy</h2>
<p>It’s difficult to know how to assess Gorbachev given most of the things he set out to do didn’t actually work. Should he be given credit for the unintended consequences of his reforms? </p>
<p>There were many who benefited from Gorbachev’s policies - above all the former eastern bloc countries who were finally able to rejoin their natural place in the west, the EU and Nato.</p>
<p>Many people in the former USSR – myself included – also benefited from the new freedom and opportunities offered by <em>perestroika</em> and Soviet collapse. But for many more people the dislocation of the late 1980s and the 1990s was a huge hardship.</p>
<p>The Russians still have wide economic and personal freedoms that were unimaginable under the USSR, but are also ruled by a new, still actually popular, authoritarian <a href="https://theconversation.com/putin-is-sure-to-win-so-whats-the-point-of-elections-in-russia-93170">regime</a> with ever decreasing political freedoms. Could the same have been achieved without the trauma of the collapse and the 1990s transition? Probably not, but many will disagree.</p>
<p>International security has been enhanced from the west’s point of view as now the Russians are fighting on the Dnieper in Ukraine instead of holding the line on the Elbe in Germany. But the chances of escalation into a direct war between Russia and Nato are much greater now than in the whole of the cold war: the “red lines” are blurred while there’s essentially an uncontrollable military escalation spiral in Ukraine.</p>
<p>And any direct conflict with Nato would most likely involve – given Russia’s inferiority in conventional arms – tactical nuclear weapons. All this after huge nuclear arms cuts in the late 1980s, which should really be Gorbachev’s central legacy.</p>
<p>Not entirely surprising, that Gorbachev’s current successor in the Kremlin only believes in raw power as the ultimate argument in international relations. This is a real tragedy too.</p>
<p>Domestically, Putin’s <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20419058221108783">attitude</a> is shaped by Gorbachev’s perceived mistakes. Reform and liberalisation can lead to state collapse. This happened twice in 20th-century Russia: in 1917 and 1991. So, in no small measure thanks to Gorbachev, Putin believes that not letting go of control is key to the state and regime’s survival.</p>
<p>Gorbachev is still a puzzle for me – not least of all because of the contrast between the astuteness with which he climbed to the top, and his utter naivety when he got there about the Soviet system as a whole and power in international relations. Yet, Gorbachev was the individual who brought down the USSR and without whom the cold war would not have ended.</p>
<p>The best summing up of Gorbachev’s legacy came from one his closest aides: Gorbachev was good as messiah but lost as a politician.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189727/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Titov does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Gorbachev failed in his two main aims: to hold togteher a reformed Soviet Union and cement its place in a new world order.Alexander Titov, Lecturer in Modern European History, Queen's University BelfastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1879542022-08-11T12:14:50Z2022-08-11T12:14:50ZRussia’s threats to shut down Jewish Agency raise alarm bells for those who remember the past<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477976/original/file-20220808-68796-8pl6q9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C9%2C2101%2C1400&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">During the Cold War, Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union was tightly restricted. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/male-hand-holds-israeli-and-russian-international-royalty-free-image/1389932182?adppopup=true">Dzurag/iStock via Getty Images Plus</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Russia’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-russia-invade-ukraine-178512">invasion of Ukraine</a> in February 2022 sparked a surge of refugees fleeing the war zone, but political repression and economic uncertainty have also prompted <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/14/russians-flee-putins-regime-after-ukraine-war-in-second-wave-of-migration.html">emigration from Russia itself</a>. Among the emigrants are Russian Jews, 16,000 of whom <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/26/russia-closure-israel-migration-jewish-agency-ukraine">have left for Israel</a> in the nearly six months since the war’s start.</p>
<p>Now, Russia’s Justice Ministry is threatening the organization that helps the emigrants leave. A Moscow court held <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/29/russia-jewish-agency-israel-ukraine/">a preliminary hearing</a> on July 28, 2022, about the ministry’s application to dissolve the Russian branch of <a href="https://www.jewishagency.org/">the Jewish Agency for Israel</a>.</p>
<p>The Jewish Agency, a nonprofit with government ties that is older than the country itself, helps Jews around the world who want to immigrate to Israel. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/29/russia-jewish-agency-israel-ukraine/">move to shut down</a> its <a href="https://www.jewishagency.org/ru/">operations in Russia</a> has <a href="https://www.thejc.com/news/world/get-out-now-soviet-refusenik-natan-sharansky's-warning-to-russia's-jews-as-crackdown-fears-grow-5VS51v8pkfWI9EkwdYv0wO">raised alarm</a> – particularly among people who see it as turning back the clock to a time, not so long ago, when Soviet Russia forced Jews to endure state-sponsored antisemitism while <a href="https://www.harpercollins.com/products/when-they-come-for-us-well-be-gone-gal-beckerman?variant=39934628429858">trampling on their right to emigrate</a>.</p>
<h2>Soviet antisemitism</h2>
<p>On paper, the Soviet Union vowed to create an egalitarian society. In reality, it <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/713677598">denied rights to minority populations</a>, including Jews. </p>
<p>The government <a href="http://www.bu.edu/law/journals-archive/international/volume23n1/documents/159-176.pdf">closed down Jewish schools and cultural institutions</a>, criminalized the <a href="https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/05/06/Soviets-arrest-Hebrew-teacher/1764421041600/">teaching</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1985/02/05/world/soviet-said-to-sentence-popular-hebrew-teacher-to-labor-camp.html">of</a> <a href="https://www.jta.org/archive/jewish-section-blamed-for-the-hebrew-language-persecutions-in-russia">Hebrew</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110820805.485">murdered</a> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/14/theater/a-jew-stalin-killed-now-symbolizes-rebirth.html">Jewish leaders</a>, orchestrated <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/doctors_plot">anti-Jewish campaigns</a> in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13501677208577110">press</a> and in the <a href="https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Economic_Trials">courts</a> and created glass ceilings that blocked Jews’ ability to advance at <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/001312457801000206">school</a> and in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13501678508577476">workplace</a>. In 1966, during a telephone address to Jewish Americans, <a href="https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE1094744">Martin Luther King Jr. called it “a kind of spiritual and cultural genocide</a>.”</p>
<p>Cold War politics made the predicament worse. The Soviet government’s domestic persecutions of Jews were bound up in its <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/13501677808577276">foreign policy toward Israel</a>. When the country declared independence in 1948, the U.S. and USSR each raced to secure its allegiance. After Israel aligned with the West, however, the Soviet Union became patron of the Arab states and <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/the-soviet-union-and-the-six-day-war-revelations-the-polish-archives">broke diplomatic ties</a> with Israel in 1967.</p>
<p>During the string of Arab-Israeli wars from the 1950s to 1970s, the USSR accompanied military support for Egypt and Syria with anti-Jewish campaigns at home. Using “<a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/soviet-anti-semitic-cartoons">anti-Zionism” as a dog whistle</a>, Soviet propaganda <a href="https://fathomjournal.org/soviet-anti-zionism-and-contemporary-left-antisemitism/">resurrected classic antisemitic stereotypes</a> of <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion">Jewish conspiracies for global domination</a>.</p>
<h2>International pressure</h2>
<p>In the 1960s, Soviet Jews began trying to escape their predicament by applying for exit permits to emigrate. A movement for emigration rights sprang up among Jews in the USSR, led by activists who sought to go to Israel. <a href="https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights">Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights</a> gives all people the right to leave their country, but the Soviet government refused the applications for emigration permits and heaped more troubles on those who had dared to ask.</p>
<p>Stuck in the Soviet Union, these “<a href="https://refusenikproject.org/history/#historical-overview">refuseniks</a>,” as they came to be known, lost their jobs and housing and were harassed by the secret police. Leaders of the emigration rights movement – including <a href="http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19780724,00.html">Natan Sharansky</a>, who went on to become <a href="https://archive.jewishagency.org/executive-members/natan-sharansky-honorary-member">chairman of the Jewish Agency</a> and deputy prime minister of Israel – were arrested and sent to prison camps or Siberian exile.</p>
<p>As Soviet Jews fought to emigrate, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40207022">a global human rights campaign</a> mobilized on their behalf – a movement I have <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429201127-6/foreign-tourists-domestic-encounters-shaul-kelner">written</a> <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/685280">about</a> as <a href="https://as.vanderbilt.edu//jewishstudies/people/faculty/shaul-kelner/">a scholar of modern Judaism</a>. Marching under slogans like “Let them live as Jews, or let them leave” and “<a href="https://mjhnyc.org/events/let-my-people-go-lessons-we-learned-from-the-soviet-jewry-movement/">Let my people go</a>,” political leaders, clergy, civil rights activists, labor unions and <a href="https://blog.nli.org.il/en/ingrid_bergman_35/">celebrities</a> joined Jewish people in embracing the cause.</p>
<p>On a congressional delegation to Russia in 1979, then-Sen. <a href="https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.1979.09.21.001/8">Joe Biden</a> <a href="https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.1979.09.21.001/8">visited Leningrad’s synagogue</a> to meet Soviet Jewish emigration-rights activists. In December 1987, at the start of the summit between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, a quarter-million Americans gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to demand freedom for Soviet Jewry. Republican Vice President <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5026758/user-clip-vp-george-hw-bush-addressing-1987-freedom-rally-soviet-jews">George H.W. Bush</a> and Democratic U.S. Rep. <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4893792/user-clip-rep-john-lewis-addresses-freedom-rally-soviet-jewry-washington-dc-december-7-1987">John Lewis</a> shared the podium.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows a closely packed crowd at a protest, with a large sign that says 'Their fight is our fight.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478133/original/file-20220808-20-un4tsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/478133/original/file-20220808-20-un4tsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478133/original/file-20220808-20-un4tsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478133/original/file-20220808-20-un4tsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478133/original/file-20220808-20-un4tsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478133/original/file-20220808-20-un4tsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/478133/original/file-20220808-20-un4tsx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tens of thousands of people gather in front of the United Nations in New York in 1975 to call for more rights for Jewish people in the Soviet Union.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/these-are-some-of-the-estimated-100-000-persons-who-news-photo/515296322?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A trickle, then a flood</h2>
<p>The human rights campaign succeeded, but not all at once. In 1964, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Let-My-People-Go-The-Transnational-Politics-of-Soviet-Jewish-Emigration/Peretz/p/book/9780367598266">the USSR let only 537 Jews emigrate</a>. In the 1970s, it let around <a href="https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/files/2021-04/Tolts%20M.%20A%20Half%20Century%20of%20Jewish%20Emigration%20from%20the%20Former%20Soviet%20Union%20-%20Harvard4%20_0.pdf">25,000 out on average each year</a>, bending to the international outcry and hoping to advance détente with the West. But in the early 1980s, the Cold War chilled, and the Soviet Union closed the gates again.</p>
<p>With Gorbachev’s liberalizing reforms in the late 1980s, however, the USSR walked back its anti-Jewish policies, <a href="https://tass.com/politics/1112015">reestablished ties with Israel</a> and opened the gates to unrestricted Jewish emigration.</p>
<p>Once Jews were free to leave, most chose to go. About 400,000 left in 1990 and 1991, when the USSR collapsed, and the flow continued afterward. All told, between 1970 and 2022, <a href="https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/files/2021-04/Tolts%20M.%20A%20Half%20Century%20of%20Jewish%20Emigration%20from%20the%20Former%20Soviet%20Union%20-%20Harvard4%20_0.pdf">almost 2 million Jews emigrated</a> – mostly to Israel, but also in the hundreds of thousands to the U.S., Canada and Germany. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A man in a suit smiles and holds a young girl in a white jacket, who waves at the camera." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477977/original/file-20220808-23-p87hi4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/477977/original/file-20220808-23-p87hi4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477977/original/file-20220808-23-p87hi4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477977/original/file-20220808-23-p87hi4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477977/original/file-20220808-23-p87hi4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477977/original/file-20220808-23-p87hi4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/477977/original/file-20220808-23-p87hi4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Soviet refusenik Yuri Balovlenkov, who had to wait nearly a decade for an exit visa to leave the USSR, holds his daughter after arriving in the U.S. in 1987.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/soviet-refusenik-yuri-balovlenkov-with-his-daughter-and-news-photo/50682904?adppopup=true">Cynthia Johnson/The Chronicle Collection via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Emigration has ticked upward since the Ukraine war began. Fewer than <a href="https://www.jewishdatabank.org/content/upload/bjdb/2019_World_Jewish_Population_(AJYB,_DellaPergola)_DataBank_Final2.pdf">150,000</a> Jewish people remain in Russia today. <a href="https://www.thejc.com/news/world/get-out-now-soviet-refusenik-natan-sharansky%27s-warning-to-russia%27s-jews-as-crackdown-fears-grow-5VS51v8pkfWI9EkwdYv0wO">Another 450,000 or so</a> who do not necessarily consider themselves Jewish but have Jewish ancestry are also <a href="https://archive.jewishagency.org/first-steps/program/5131">eligible for immediate Israeli citizenship</a>.</p>
<h2>Political dance</h2>
<p>Throughout all these decades, the Jewish Agency for Israel has been the main organization helping Russian Jews emigrate – working in Russia itself since 1989, and before then, when Israel and the USSR did not maintain diplomatic ties, from transit stations in <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/camp-tale">Austria</a> and <a href="https://cis.org/Report/Refugee-Resettlement-and-Freedom-Choice-Case-Soviet-Jewry">Italy</a>.</p>
<p>For most of the post-Soviet period, Israel and Russia have maintained cautiously friendly ties, and the Jewish Agency’s work has proceeded smoothly. This, and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-11/israel-says-u-s-not-in-syrian-game-as-russia-seen-dominant#xj4y7vzkg">Russia’s military presence</a> <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/coping-the-russian-challenge-the-middle-east-us-israeli-perspectives-and-opportunities-for">in Syria</a>, along Israel’s northern border, have <a href="https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-712561">muted the Israeli response</a> to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, the war has <a href="https://www.jpost.com/international/article-705688">stoked tensions</a> between Moscow and Jerusalem. Increasingly isolated, Russia has also <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/20/putin-meeting-iran-turkey-russia-middle-east-syria-ukraine/">drawn closer to Iran</a>. As a result, a new relationship between Russia and Israel may be taking shape.</p>
<h2>An old technique, made new?</h2>
<p>Russia’s Justice Ministry claims that the Jewish Agency’s collection of data about Russian citizens <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/2022-07-05/ty-article/.premium/russia-threatens-to-bar-jewish-agency-operations-in-the-country-cites-law-violations/00000181-cf10-d982-abb3-efb726380000">violates Russian law</a> and denies the case is political. The next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 19, 2022.</p>
<p>Outlawing the Jewish Agency is unlikely to end Jewish emigration, since people are still able to leave the country. The gates are still open, for now. Passing through them may become a bit harder. </p>
<p>During the Cold War, the Soviet Union knew that Jewish emigration symbolized something important to the West. It used that to its advantage, <a href="https://jewishstudies.ysu.edu/?page_id=733">treating Jews as “pawns</a>,” in the words of historian <a href="https://en.jewish-history.huji.ac.il/people/jonathan-dekel-chen">Jonathan Dekel-Chen</a>. The Kremlin <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/putin-russia-jewish-agency-emigration-israel/670948/">let them go or held them back</a> as a way of telegraphing its interest or lack thereof in good relations with the West. </p>
<p>Now, it seems Vladimir Putin’s Russia has found the old telegraph from the Cold War attic, dusted it off, and discovered that it still works for tapping out signals today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187954/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shaul Kelner has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Brandeis-Genesis Institute for Russian Jewry. He has consulted and contributed writings to research and education projects supported by the Jewish Agency for Israel.</span></em></p>During the Cold War, Russia’s refusal to allow Jews to leave the country reflected its political aims. The same is likely true today, a Jewish studies scholar explains.Shaul Kelner, Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1878972022-07-28T18:03:52Z2022-07-28T18:03:52ZUkraine Recap: who is winning this war? Both sides, if you believe the claims<p>We’re now five months into the war in Ukraine and the effects of Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” are spreading their sinister tentacles far beyond eastern Europe in a manner that is affecting life for just about everyone. </p>
<p>Grain shortages are being caused by the blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Energy prices are spiralling thanks to Russia’s decision to limit gas supplies to western Europe. And, of course, millions of innocent families have been forced to flee their homeland to try to rebuild their lives in a new country.</p>
<p>All of which leads us inexorably to the nub: can either Russia or Ukraine be said to be winning this war? Both are, of course, claiming to have the upper hand. Russia has made significant gains in the east and has linked its two breakway republics in Donetsk and Luhansk with Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014. </p>
<p>If, as Putin now seems to be insisting, his military operation was always just about de-Nazifying Ukraine and protecting the pro-Russian minorities in the Donbas region, he could mount the argument that it is largely mission accomplished.</p>
<p>In that sense, writes Alexander Hill, a professor of military history at the University of Calgary in Canada, claiming victory will be <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-either-russia-or-ukraine-reasonably-claim-to-be-winning-the-war-in-ukraine-187248">easier for Putin</a> than for the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has always said nothing less than pushing Russian troops off Ukrainian soil will do.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/can-either-russia-or-ukraine-reasonably-claim-to-be-winning-the-war-in-ukraine-187248">Can either Russia or Ukraine reasonably claim to be 'winning' the war in Ukraine?</a>
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<img alt="Ukraine Recap weekly email newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449743/original/file-20220303-4351-1xhaozt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This is our weekly recap of expert analysis of the Ukraine conflict.</em></strong>
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<p>But as George W. Bush will tell you, those are dangerous words for a wartime leader to utter. Ukraine, for its part, has announced that its artillery, particularly the new long-range missile systems from the US and elsewhere, has successfully taken out multiple targets around Kherson in the country’s south, where a major Ukrainian offensive is now taking shape.</p>
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<p>For Anicée Van Engeland, a military and security specialist who has advised the Ukraine government about defence matters, it’s the weapons supplied by the west that are <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-hopes-to-retake-territory-as-new-weapons-give-firepower-to-push-back-russians-187884">making the difference</a>. Their greater accuracy and longer range gives Ukraine’s defenders the opportunity to go on the offensive. Success in the Kherson region would be a major boost for Ukrainian morale, as well as being a key strategic victory.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-hopes-to-retake-territory-as-new-weapons-give-firepower-to-push-back-russians-187884">Ukraine hopes to retake territory as new weapons give firepower to push back Russians</a>
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<h2>Grain deal</h2>
<p>There was at least one bit of good news this week, when Russia and Ukraine appeared to have agreed a deal to open up Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, an agreement brokered by the United Nations and Turkey. This was promptly undermined a few hours later when Russia launched airstrikes against Odesa, one of the main ports through which Ukraine’s grain and other exports would be expected to pass.</p>
<p>Maritime power expert Basil Germond of Lancaster University believes Russia has more invested in the deal as a public relations exercise than a burning desire to feed the world’s poorest countries. Any relaxation of sanctions in return for opening up the Black Sea ports would be a welcome development for Moscow. In any case, the local waters would need to be cleared of mines before the trade routes are fully operational, which could take some weeks. In the meantime, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-black-sea-grain-deal-exposes-moscows-long-term-diplomatic-game-187544">cautions Germond</a>, Russia will need to be watched very carefully.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-black-sea-grain-deal-exposes-moscows-long-term-diplomatic-game-187544">Ukraine war: Black Sea grain deal exposes Moscow's long-term diplomatic game</a>
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<p>Speaking of sanctions, to what extent are they biting Russia after four months? And – given that sanctions are so often a double-edged sword – how has that affected the countries doing the sanctioning? Cecilia Bellora, Kevin Lefebvre and Malte Thie, economists at Centre d'Études Prospectives et d'Information in France, <a href="https://theconversation.com/sanctions-against-russia-taking-stock-four-months-after-the-start-of-the-war-185528">talk us through</a> the escalation in sanctions since February and the effect they are having on both sides.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/sanctions-against-russia-taking-stock-four-months-after-the-start-of-the-war-185528">Sanctions against Russia: taking stock four months after the start of the war</a>
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<p>Another area of international cooperation that has been affected by the war in Ukraine and Russia’s estrangement from the west, has been international space exploration and research. Russia announced this week it would pull out of the International Space Station after 2024, bringing to an end 23 years of unprecedented cooperation, principally between Russia and the US, but also between partners in Europe, Canada and Japan. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476558/original/file-20220728-14976-lllsmu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three people holding a teal, blue and red flag aboard the ISS." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476558/original/file-20220728-14976-lllsmu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/476558/original/file-20220728-14976-lllsmu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476558/original/file-20220728-14976-lllsmu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476558/original/file-20220728-14976-lllsmu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476558/original/file-20220728-14976-lllsmu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476558/original/file-20220728-14976-lllsmu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/476558/original/file-20220728-14976-lllsmu.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">NASA accused Russia of staging an anti-Ukrainian propaganda photo on the ISS after Russia’s space agency posted this photo of three cosmonauts holding a flag of the Luhansk People’s Republic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Roscosmos via Telegram</span></span>
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<p>Wendy Whitman Cobb, a professor of strategy and security studies at Air University in the US, says Russia’s involvement in the ISS has been crucial to its operation and believes <a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-withdrawal-from-the-international-space-station-could-mean-the-early-demise-of-the-orbital-lab-and-sever-another-russian-link-with-the-west-187754">it is unclear</a> whether the programme can continue without it. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/russias-withdrawal-from-the-international-space-station-could-mean-the-early-demise-of-the-orbital-lab-and-sever-another-russian-link-with-the-west-187754">Russia’s withdrawal from the International Space Station could mean the early demise of the orbital lab – and sever another Russian link with the West</a>
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<h2>Rewriting history</h2>
<p>And all for what? Five months in, Russia’s initial casus belli – that Nato’s expansion in former Soviet satellites would inevitably lead to bases in its neighbour Ukraine, which – by the way – is being run by a pack of Nazi thugs intent on doing harm to innocent pro-Russian civilians in eastern Ukraine, have looked increasingly threadbare as the conflict has continued.</p>
<p>Dariusz Gafijczuk, a specialist in the philosophy of history at the University of Newcastle, has <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-russias-invasion-is-an-attempt-to-rewrite-its-own-history-179917">probed another possible reason</a> for Russian hostility towards Kyiv, reasons buried deep in the country’s history and its psyche. For Russians like Putin, Gafijczuk reasons, the failure of communism has left Russia without a unifying idea of itself. In a country prone to reinventing its own history – a people who dress their children up as tanks to celebrate victory in the “Great Patriotic War” (the second world war to you and I) – he says Russia is trying to rewrite its history on the battlefields of Ukraine.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-russias-invasion-is-an-attempt-to-rewrite-its-own-history-179917">Ukraine war: Russia's invasion is an attempt to rewrite its own history</a>
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<p><em>Ukraine Recap is available as a weekly email newsletter. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/ukraine-recap-114?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+Newsletter+Ukraine+Recap+2022+Mar&utm_content=WeeklyRecapBottom">Click here to get our recaps directly in your inbox.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Russia has secured gains in the east but Ukraine is pushing back in the south.Jonathan Este, Senior International Affairs Editor, Associate EditorLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1799172022-07-27T13:47:34Z2022-07-27T13:47:34ZUkraine war: Russia’s invasion is an attempt to rewrite its own history<p>Vladimir Putin’s justifications for his country’s invasion of Ukraine – that is, legitimate anxiety at the erosion of Russia’s <a href="https://euideas.eui.eu/2022/07/11/john-mearsheimers-lecture-on-ukraine-why-he-is-wrong-and-what-are-the-consequences/">geopolitical security</a> triggered by Nato’s expansion into eastern Europe – are looking increasingly wayward as the war enters its sixth month. </p>
<p>So it’s worth examining other factors that might be motivating the Russian president and his advisors. One of these was neatly summed up by historian <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/293950/lost-kingdom-by-plokhy-serhii/9780141983134">Serhii Plokhy</a> in his 2018 study, Lost Kingdom, A History of Russian Nationalism from Ivan the Great to Vladimir Putin:</p>
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<p>Russia today has enormous difficulty in reconciling the mental maps of Russian ethnicity, culture, and identity with the political map of Russian Federation. </p>
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<p>Most countries’ sense of collective consciousness depends on a certain degree of undisputed mythology that becomes widely accepted by the population as part of national history. But Russia, in its institutions and collective memories, is searching for that sense of certainty in its past, given it has lost the last great unifying idea of Soviet communism.</p>
<p>The consequences of this loss pose a direct challenge, feeding Russia’s existential insecurities that it has not been able to reconcile since the late Soviet and especially the post-Soviet times – a story about <a href="https://aeon.co/essays/the-soviet-union-never-really-solved-russian-nationalism?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB">Russian victimisation</a> and loss of national patrimony.</p>
<p>This is why Putin’s vision of Russia’s past clings to the idea of a ninth-century political entity known as the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-moscow-has-long-used-the-historic-kyivan-rus-state-to-justify-expansionism-178092">Kyivan Rus’</a>, used by the president and his ideological allies as the anchor point for Russia’s nationhood. </p>
<p>Without it, Russia becomes a relatively young state, going back only as far as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_III_of_Russia">Ivan III</a>, who came to the throne in the 1460s as the first monarch to assume the title of tsar (or emperor – even though this was never officially recognised). He was also the first to successfully challenge the nomadic Mongol Empire, under whose domination the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duchy_of_Moscow">Grand Duchy of Muscovy</a> had found itself over the previous two centuries. </p>
<p>As such, Russia’s story – to counteract its political origins as a vassal state of the Golden Horde – must be retold through an encounter with another entity, Kyiv. But as we know, Kyiv is the capital of another state, Ukraine, which has its own history, collective trauma and national consciousness.</p>
<p>The net effect of this is historical incoherence, where multiple timelines and pasts compete for legitimacy – something the Kremlin has become masterful at exploiting. Hence, many of the most important historical memories – such as what is known in Russia as the “great patriotic war” (the second world war), are currently being marched out as some of the more outlandish justifications for the invasion of Ukraine. Once again, goes the Kremlin’s official line, Russia is fighting a new wave of fascism. </p>
<p>During the transition period of the post-Soviet years in the 1990s, there was still hope, that Russia would become more closely synchronised with modern, western liberal societies through free markets and investment. This was the soft power approach of “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/03/germany-putin-ukraine-invasion/623322/"><em>Wandel durch Handel</em></a>” (change through trade) championed for two decades by the then German chancellor, Angela Merkel. But that change, or convergence never arrived.</p>
<p>How divergent the worldviews between the east and west have once again become was clearly visible in Russia’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-victory-day-2022-and-why-commemoration-of-the-end-of-wwii-matters-today-182107">Victory Day celebrations</a> in May. This year, five year-old children were dressed up as tanks with the now infamous pro-war <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-z-to-q-when-letters-become-political-symbols-179424">Z symbol</a> painted on the front. They were chaperoned by their teachers who wore second world war-era uniforms.</p>
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<img alt="Photo from Twitter showing Russian child dressed as a tank for Victory Day in May 2022." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475428/original/file-20220721-10397-gzxs2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/475428/original/file-20220721-10397-gzxs2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475428/original/file-20220721-10397-gzxs2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475428/original/file-20220721-10397-gzxs2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475428/original/file-20220721-10397-gzxs2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475428/original/file-20220721-10397-gzxs2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/475428/original/file-20220721-10397-gzxs2p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">On Victory Day in Moscow, children were dressed up as tanks to show support for the invasion of Ukraine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span>
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<p>Russia, as Kevin Platt, a specialist in Russia and eastern Europe, writes in the 2020 book, <a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7208/9780226706016-017/pdf">Power and Time</a>, has an uncanny “ability to reach past boundaries of the present to lay claim to any element of the historical record”. This is how post-Soviet nostalgia is now mixed up with the rehabilitation of the Stalin era and his apparently single-handed defeat of Nazism. This is underpinned by the sacred mission of Russia as the heir of Kyivan Rus’, and through it the whole Byzantine, Orthodox Christian civilisation. </p>
<h2>History’s ‘false form’</h2>
<p>Two years into Putin’s first presidency, Russian director Aleksander Sokurov introduced the world to the cinematic version of Russia’s sense of history in the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0318034/">Russian Ark</a>. The film is a continuous 90-minute one-take shot with no cuts or edits, recorded on a single day in the famous Hermitage art gallery. </p>
<p>The key to understanding Russia is this sense of curated continuity that persists by joining together various foreign elements – like an art exhibit that keeps travelling through time. “Our past hasn’t become past yet,” mused Sokurov in an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/features/featurepages/0,4120,923919,00.html">interview</a> about the project. “The main problem of this country is that we don’t know when it will become past.”</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Russian Ark (2002)</span></figcaption>
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<p>Russia is trying to forge a new past for itself on the battlefield in Ukraine. This is something akin to the process of what in mineralogy is known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomorph">pseudomorphosis</a> – a false form – as was already observed in the 1920s in connection with Russia by German philosopher <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Oswald-Spengler">Oswald Spengler</a>. Pseudomorphosis is where new contents fill out the old frames, forming entities “whose inner structure contradicts their external shape”, as Spengler writes in the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/801754.The_Decline_of_the_West">Decline of the West</a>:</p>
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<p>I call historical pseudomorphosis those cases where an older alien culture lies so massively over the land that a young culture, born in this land, cannot get its breath and fails not only to achieve pure and specific expression-forms, but even to develop fully its own self-consciousness.</p>
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<p>You would be hard pressed to find a better description of the current situation in Ukraine, where Russia is trying to impose its reading of the past on to another country’s present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179917/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dariusz Gafijczuk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Russia’s national history and origin story remain unclear.Dariusz Gafijczuk, Lecturer in Sociology, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1823922022-06-14T12:29:07Z2022-06-14T12:29:07ZWhere the witches were men: A historian explains what magic looked like in early modern Russia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468478/original/file-20220613-28309-z8kxki.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1022%2C628&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'A Sorcerer Comes to a Peasant Wedding,' a 19th-century painting by Russian artist Vassily Maximov.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maksimov_A_Sorcerer_comes_to_a_peasant_wedding_1875_gtg_ed.jpg">Tretyakov Gallery/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The word “witches” makes many Americans think of <a href="https://theconversation.com/most-witches-are-women-because-witch-hunts-were-all-about-persecuting-the-powerless-125427">women working in league with the devil</a>. But that hasn’t always been the face of sorcery. </p>
<p>Most of Catholic and Protestant Europe embraced the idea of magic as a satanic craft <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-evolution-of-the-medieval-witch-and-why-shes-usually-a-woman-104861">practiced by women</a>, and strong, independent women were kept in line through such accusations. In Orthodox Russia, however, accusers overwhelmingly blamed men for bewitching them and held different ideas of where the power of “magic” came from. </p>
<p>Evidence about Russians’ belief in witchcraft <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Witchcraft_Casebook.html?id=bpWroAEACAAJ">survives in all kinds of documents</a> from the 12th to the 18th centuries: sermons; historical chronicles and tales; stories of saints’ lives; laws and decrees; manuals of herbal healing and spell books; and court records. These documents provide insights into the lives of ordinary people otherwise lost to history: in peasant homes and military regiments, on serf-owning estates and on barges on the Volga River. Verbatim testimonies in trial records show fraught, often abusive relationships between husbands and wives, masters and servants, patrons and clients. </p>
<p>This history – the focus of three of books I’ve written <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/history/people/faculty/vkivelso.html">as a scholar of medieval and early modern Russia</a> – shakes up understandings of who “witches” were. Here, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801469374/desperate-magic/">men were the usual suspects</a>, for reasons that highlight the frighteningly capricious ways power and hierarchy structured everyday life.</p>
<h2>A typical trial</h2>
<p>Three out of four Russians <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801469374/desperate-magic/">accused of witchcraft</a> were men. Most were accused of acting alone or with one or two associates, and almost all faced charges for everyday, practical kinds of magic.</p>
<p>Whereas trials in Western European involved lurid visions of <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781461639886/Magic-and-Superstition-in-Europe-A-Concise-History-from-Antiquity-to-the-Present">satanic witchcraft</a> – black sabbaths where naked witches flew on brooms to cannibalistic feasts and diabolical orgies – <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01966-2.html">Russian witches</a> were thought to deploy magic toward more immediate, worldly ends, such as healing wounds or hurting a competitor’s business.</p>
<p>Witches employed spells and simple potions made mainly of herbs and roots, throwing in the occasional eagle’s wing, eye torn from a live chicken or dirt from a grave. Their magic called on the forces of nature and the beauty of poetic diction. <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/witchcraft-and-magic-in-russian-and-ukrainian-lands-before-1900/">They drew on the force of analogy</a> – “as this, so that” – to activate their spells and curses: For example, “as a log burns and withers in the fire, so may my master’s heart burn and wither.”</p>
<p>Some spells invoked supernatural beings, from Jesus Christ and Mary to nature spirits and mythic <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Russian-Folk-Belief/Ivanits/p/book/9780873328890">figures from Russian legends</a>, such as a golden fish or a wingless bird. Occasionally spells called on Satan and “his many little satans,” or invoked saints and satans at once.</p>
<h2>Everyday magic</h2>
<p>While some of the accusations were clearly false, lodged out of malice, surviving records make it equally clear that many of the accused did enact the kinds of rituals and spells that their accusers charged.</p>
<p>Practitioners <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Power_of_Words/PXPIAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=a.+l.+toporkov&pg=PA71&printsec=frontcover">used their craft</a> in efforts to heal the sick, help the lovelorn, locate lost people and objects, protect people from guns or arrows and guard livestock. At the same time, records show some practitioners had darker motives: to curse, inflict illness, possess others, cause impotence, extinguish love or kill. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="In a painting, a sad-looking woman in a yellow shirt and blue skirt sits outside as an old man opens the door to exit a home." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=540&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/468476/original/file-20220613-35158-4colz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=678&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘For the Love Potion,’ a late-19th-century painting by Russian artist Mikhail Nesterov.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mikhail_Nesterov_-_For_the_love_potion.jpg">Radishchev Art Museum/Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a society without trained medical providers, folk healing offered the only option for the sick other than prayer. Many people consulted both priests and healers who used magic, and saw no contradiction between the two. Fear that witches had a tendency to bewitch newlyweds made it common to invite sorcerers to protect the bride and groom during weddings and to pay them well in vodka for their service. Everyone from <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/ruhi/40/3-4/article-p297_3.xml">the czar’s wife</a> to the lowliest serf might turn to magic at some juncture in their lives.</p>
<p>Perhaps most revealing are what were usually called “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583535_10">love spells</a>” – which by their very nature were coercive, intended to subordinate the will of their target to that of the spellcaster.</p>
<p>Love spells used by men were usually sex spells. <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501750656/witchcraft-in-russia-and-ukraine-10001900/">Surviving examples</a> are both beautiful and terrifying, with the spellcaster wishing agony on his beloved whenever she is away from him:</p>
<p>“As a fire burns for a year and half a year and a day and half a day and an hour and half an hour, so may that [woman] burn for me, with her white body, her ardent heart, her black liver, her stormy head and brains, her clear eyes, black brows, and sugary lips. May she suffer as much misery and bitterness as a fish without water. May that [woman] suffer as much bitterness for me for a day and half a day, for an hour and half an hour, for a year and half a year, for all the years, and thus let it be.”</p>
<p>In the minority of cases where <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801469374/desperate-magic/">women were accused of witchcraft</a>, their “love spells” usually aimed to calm their husbands’ anger, avert their fists and make them “be kind.”</p>
<p>When a woman attempted to turn the tables and dominate her husband or master, however, that threatened to <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801469374/desperate-magic/">invert the patriarchal social order</a> – and hence the punishment was especially harsh, including some executions.</p>
<h2>‘Spells to power’</h2>
<p>Beyond love spells, a broader category called “spells to power” <a href="https://brill.com/view/journals/ruhi/40/3-4/article-p532_16.xml">challenged the social order</a>. I see these spells, which aimed to win the love of one’s social superiors, as an important reason that so many men were accused.</p>
<p>While women were often stuck at home or on estates, men of all ranks, even serfs, were relatively mobile. During their outings, they might run up against the arbitrary authority of a master, a judge, an official, a military officer, a nobleman or a bishop. In any of these situations, being armed with a protective written spell was simply good planning.</p>
<p>A spell book from 1763, for instance, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52903-9_7">includes the following</a>:</p>
<p>“… Like the sun rises, and the moon, by the will of the highest, and like tsars and princes, and kings, and generals, and governors, and all people, so may I, slave of God, appear with the beauty of the sun and the moon in their eyes. … As tsars and kings, and knights, and governors, and generals, and rulers love any precious stone, and may all people love me, slave of God.”</p>
<p>In a fiercely hierarchical society, where everyone except the czar was under the absolute and arbitrary authority of someone higher on the social ladder, belief in magic offered a sense of protection – a way to exercise a tiny bit of power in a world stacked against the subordinate. </p>
<p>And since belief in magic was universal, elites and common folk alike saw its possibilities and dangers. Magic threatened to arm the underling and to subvert the accepted social order. Although women participated in these practices, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3879463">it was men</a> who were more likely to bump up against authorities, to come under suspicion and to be discovered with a scrap of paper with a “spell to power” tucked into a hat or a shoe.</p>
<p>Ideas about witchcraft in Orthodox Russia may have been less sensational than those in Catholic and Protestant Europe, but it was seen as equally threatening to a social, religious and political order built on unquestioned hierarchies.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182392/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Valerie Kivelson receives funding from NEH, ACLS</span></em></p>The idea of a ‘witch’ was usually female in Western Europe, but not so in Orthodox Russia – partly because of the period’s rigid social hierarchies.Valerie Kivelson, Professor of History, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1825412022-05-05T16:30:46Z2022-05-05T16:30:46ZKaliningrad: Russia’s ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ deep in Nato territory<p>The Russian Baltic Fleet has announced that it carried out a series of <a href="https://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12419904">simulated missile strikes</a> of its nuclear-capable Iskander system. This is not the first time that the Russian exclave – roughly the size of Northern Ireland and wedged between Nato and EU members Poland and Lithuania – has made the headlines as part of Russia’s sabre-rattling.</p>
<p>The Iskander missile system was first introduced to the region <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37597075">in 2016</a> and then upgraded <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nato-missiles/russia-deploys-iskander-nuclear-capable-missiles-to-kaliningrad-ria-idUSKBN1FP21Y">in 2018</a>, as part of a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-37600426">Russian strategy</a> to counter Nato’s deployment of an anti-ballistic missile defence shield in Europe. There have also been regular military exercises involving Russia’s Baltic fleet, which is headquartered in Kaliningrad, including <a href="https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russia%E2%80%99s-zapad-2021-exercise">Zapad-21</a> in the autumn of 2021 and a series of <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-stages-war-games-kaliningrad-enclave-ifax-says-2022-04-09/">war games</a> since the invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>Kaliningrad is one of currently 46 <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/what-is-an-oblast.html"><em>oblasts</em></a> (administrative regions) of Russia, but the only one that does not have a land border with another part of the country. The roots of the territory reach far back in history and are closely connected to the fate of East Prussia and its capital of Koenigsberg. Founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1255, it is often associated with German militarism. But it’s equally famous for the philosophers Immanuel Kant, who lived his entire live in Koenigsberg, and Hannah Arendt, who spent part of her childhood there. </p>
<p>Like most territories in this part of Europe, wars – and the peace settlements that ended them – shaped their ethnic composition and political boundaries. East Prussia became detached from Germany after the first world war, with the creation of the “free city” of Danzig and the establishment of the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20720529#:%7E:text=called%20Polish%20Corridor%2C%20was%20one,to%20the%20Second%20World%20War.">Polish corridor</a>. It remained part of Germany, however, until the end of the second world war, when it was conquered by the Soviet Red Army in early 1945. Its partition between Poland and the Soviet Union was agreed at the Yalta conference and formalised at the final formal meeting of the big three (Russia, the US and Britain) at Postdam in 1945. </p>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.nato.int/ebookshop/video/declassified/doc_files/Potsdam%20Agreement.pdf">city of Koenigsberg and the area adjacent to it</a>” (approximately one-third of East Prussia at the time) fell to Stalin. The Russian leader renamed it in 1946 in honour of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mikhail-Ivanovich-Kalinin">Mikhail Kalinin</a>, who had been chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet – the head of state of the Soviet Union – at the time of his death in 1946.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461614/original/file-20220505-22-tz9glm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Locator map of Kaliningrad Oblast." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461614/original/file-20220505-22-tz9glm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/461614/original/file-20220505-22-tz9glm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461614/original/file-20220505-22-tz9glm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461614/original/file-20220505-22-tz9glm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461614/original/file-20220505-22-tz9glm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461614/original/file-20220505-22-tz9glm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/461614/original/file-20220505-22-tz9glm.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kaliningrad has no land border with Russia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Peter Hermes Furian via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Once a highly inter-mixed area with a population of Germans, Poles, Lithunanians and Jews, it was ethnically cleansed of most of its German population by Stalin. This was followed by a systematic campaign of <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/building-soviet-city-the-transformation-konigsberg">russification</a> which sought to erase all traces of German heritage.</p>
<h2>Post cold war</h2>
<p>The region recovered from its Soviet legacy after the fall of communism, benefiting from the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18284828">special economic status</a> it was granted by the Russian government in 1996 and from <a href="https://www.iss.europa.eu/content/future-kaliningrad">improving links</a> with the EU in the years afterwards. </p>
<p>In recent years, Kaliningrad has also seen its economic value grow as one of the nodes in the <a href="https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2020/12/29/russias-kaliningrad-emerges-as-a-major-china-europe-multi-modal-sea-port/">multimodal trade networks</a> connecting Xi'an in central China through Central Asia and Russia to the European market <a href="https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cj/2021/09-15/9565804.shtml">along the</a> New Eurasian Land Bridge corridor of the Belt and Road Initiative. At the same time, this has made the region <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russian-invasion-kaliningrad-economy-sanctions/31732543.html">more vulnerable</a> in the context of the war in Ukraine and western sanctions imposed on Russia.</p>
<p>For Russia, however, Kaliningrad’s main significance is military as an “<a href="https://www.eurasiareview.com/15042022-kaliningrad-once-again-russias-unsinkable-aircraft-carrier-on-the-baltic-oped/">unsinkable aircraft carrier</a>”. As a military base, the region adds significantly to Russia’s strategic depth and is a critical asset for Moscow in its anti-access area denial (A2AD) capabilities in the Baltic Sea, potentially undermining Nato’s freedom of manoeuvre across the <a href="https://inews.co.uk/news/world/lithuania-kaliningrad-cut-off-ukraine-war-nato-territory-1516337">Baltic states</a> and parts of Poland. </p>
<p>Moreover, if there was a further escalation of the war – potentially involving Russian moves against Estonia and Latvia with their relatively large ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking communities – Kaliningrad would be an important launchpad for Russian operations. So Russian military exercises in Kaliningrad are a signal of Russian capabilities and a way of exerting more pressure on the west – just as the EU was agreeing its <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_22_2785">sixth package of sanctions</a>.</p>
<p>In light of Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, this signal should not only be read as one of defensive intent on Moscow’s part but also as a potential sign of things to come: the next missile launch from Kaliningrad may not be a simulation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182541/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stefan Wolff receives funding from the United States Institute of Peace. He is a past recipient of grants from the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU's Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Senior Research Fellow of the Foreign Policy Centre in London and Co-Coordinator of the OSCE Network of Think Tanks and Academic Institutions.</span></em></p>Russia’s test of ‘nuclear-capable’ missiles in Kaliningrad is intended to send a message to Nato.Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1821072022-04-29T11:37:23Z2022-04-29T11:37:23ZRussia: Victory Day 2022 and why commemoration of the end of WWII matters today<p>Even in the darkest days of the pandemic in 2020 Russia didn’t cancel <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53152725">Victory Day</a>, its anniversary of the end of the second world war – it was just postponed. This year, the Kremlin <a href="https://rg.ru/2022/04/27/kak-v-rossii-i-mire-provedut-9-maia.html?ysclid=l2i3kuqer3">promises a parade</a> on May 9 with 11,000 servicemen and women plus 62 airplanes and 15 helicopters. Eight MiG-29s will form the letter Z, the symbol adopted by supporters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. </p>
<p>For the 2022 ceremony in Moscow’s Red Square the Kremlin is desperate to have a victory from the Ukraine war to announce. <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/3270471-what-is-russias-victory-day-and-what-might-it-mean-for-ukraine/">Commentators suggest</a> that the recent military reorientation towards Ukraine’s Donbas region was driven by a May 9 deadline. More worrying, <a href="https://static.rusi.org/special-report-202204-operation-z-web.pdf">some fear that</a> if that victory proves elusive, the day might instead be used as a “<a href="https://static.rusi.org/special-report-202204-operation-z-web.pdf">fulcrum</a>” for a wider mobilisation of forces. </p>
<p>But why is this anniversary such a powerful force in Russian politics? During the worst days of the second world war, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was conspicuously absent from his country’s media. The cult that had been constructed around him in the 1930s seemed to have been abandoned. But then came victory in Europe, celebrated on May 9, a day after VE Day (fighting stopped a day <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/victory-in-europe">later in Russia</a>). On a radio broadcast on May 9 1945 Stalin announced: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Glory to our heroic Red Army, which upheld the independence of our Motherland and won victory over the enemy! Glory to our great people, the people victorious! Eternal glory to the heroes who fell in the struggle against the enemy and gave their <a href="https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1945/05/09v.htm">lives for</a> the freedom and happiness of our people!</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the weeks that followed, the first demobilised soldiers returned home. In cities across the Soviet Union, activists organised <a href="https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/162595">receptions</a>: banners, flowers, portraits of Stalin, throngs of happy citizens celebrating the end of war, and paying tribute to the soldiers.</p>
<p>The story of how those war veterans were treated – and their war commemorated – has been rather complex. In 1945, with the economy in ruins, and the Soviet people injured, grieving and traumatised, remembering the war was <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1947-2/veterans-return/">painful and potentially divisive</a>. It took at least two decades for war remembrance to emerge as a core component of Soviet – and later Russian – patriotism. </p>
<p>After the happy homecomings, life was often hard for <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199237562.001.0001/acprof-9780199237562-chapter-3">veterans in the late 1940s</a>. Promises were <a href="https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1947-2/veterans-return/demobilization-order/">made to them</a> – a free ticket home, a job waiting, a new suit of clothing and footwear, monetary recompense for their service, financial help building or repairing homes – but the reality fell drastically short. Many veterans, especially those who had been injured in the war, found themselves homeless and jobless. Veterans became buskers, fortune tellers and beggars. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-recap-donbas-braces-for-a-knife-fight-181370">Ukraine recap: Donbas braces for a 'knife fight'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>One group of workers wrote directly to Stalin to complain about the state’s failure to provide for the veterans. <a href="https://lib.memo.ru/book/3695?">They told him</a>: “We don’t want to see our heroes – our victorious warriors – standing in queues, trading at the market, living from hand to mouth, but instead fully provided for materially, well-dressed (preferably in a special uniform), living in light apartments and with the highest weekly allowances and privileges that our possibly [sic] in our great Soviet country.” In December 1947, only two years after it was launched, May 9 was downgraded: no longer a state holiday, it became a regular working day again.</p>
<p>Under Stalin, victory in the war was celebrated primarily in terms of his own genius as leader. The 1949 film <a href="https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/padenie-berlina">Fall of Berlin</a> conceived as a gift to Stalin for his 70th birthday was the climax of this post-war leader cult. In a tremendous finale Stalin, clad all in white arrives in Berlin to oversee the soldiers’ joyous celebrations; the hero-soldier and his love interest are reunited, but almost immediately she turns to Stalin and asks <em>him</em> for a kiss, gushing gratitude for all he had done for the people. </p>
<p>After Stalin died in 1953, his successor Nikita Khrushchev began to dismantle many aspects of the <a href="https://digital.library.pitt.edu/collection/stalinka-digital-library-staliniana">Stalin cult</a>, including his reputation as a great military leader. In his famous “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/26/russia.theobserver">secret speech</a>” of 1956, Khrushchev <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/khrushchev/1956/02/24.htm">ridiculed Stalin</a> and his leadership. Films made in this period of political and cultural thaw turned the spotlight away from Stalin and began to probe the experiences of a generation that suffered so much. Soviet filmmaker<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001789/"> Andrei Tarkovsky</a>’s 1962 <a href="https://sovietmoviesonline.com/drama/ivanovo-detstvo">Ivan’s Childhood</a> is perhaps the most powerful of these.</p>
<p>It was not until the mid-1960s that the Soviet Union began to actively celebrate the second world war once more. In 1965, May 9 became a national holiday again. Two years later a new tomb of the unknown soldier was unveiled by the Soviet leader <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/resource/cold-war-history/leonid-illyich-brezhnev">Leonid Brezhnev</a>. The desperate poverty people had experienced in the immediate aftermath of war had eased, and the veterans – now moving into middle and old age – were made into heroes. Each May 9, veterans would visit local schools, recount their experiences, and be presented with bouquets of flowers. Historian <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Dead-Rise-World-Russia/dp/0465071597/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34JLH5OZ8B97A&keywords=nina+tumarkin+living+dead&qid=1651232784&sprefix=nina+tumarkin+living+dead%2Caps%2C44&sr=8-1">Nina Tumarkin</a> writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“From 1965 on, the Great Patriotic War continued its transformation from a national trauma of monumental proportions into a sacrosanct cluster of heroic exploits that had once and for all proven the superiority of communism over capitalism.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What would happen to this patriotic celebration of the war once communism fell was not at all clear. In the 1990s, it seemed as if Russia’s memory politics might go in a number of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-8306.00303?casa_token=712gS3jQiSAAAAAA:H1ncKk0SucqZW0MR6MEFXfvIu7Df_GrIAG3GTBmL53SRnqHfu6rn48o60TuoUnqY0knHTc3KTIoOlg">different directions</a>. What kind of national identity would post-Soviet Russia embrace, and how would history be used in its construction? Since 2000, Putin has developed a clear direction: his brand of Russian nationalism is primarily an imperial one and he has called the disintegration of the Soviet Union a “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-rues-soviet-collapse-demise-historical-russia-2021-12-12/">major humanitarian tragedy</a>”. </p>
<p>For Putin, not all of Soviet history is attractive, however. The violent regime change of 1917 was not a centenary he was inclined to celebrate, for example. In contrast, the end of the second world war continues to serve him well. The year 1945 can be commemorated as the moment when Moscow’s global reach was at its greatest, while the veterans – few of whom are still alive – can be celebrated for their patriotic self-sacrifice and discipline. Another young generation are now being asked to do the same.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/182107/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Miriam J Dobson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Russia’s annual Victory Day parade is being seen as a symbol of how well the Ukraine war is going.Miriam J Dobson, Reader in Modern History, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1789252022-03-22T13:34:04Z2022-03-22T13:34:04ZUkraine war: people are fighting and dying for Vladimir Putin’s flawed version of history<p>Vladimir Putin invoked history to justify his country’s invasion of Ukraine. To cement that message at home, his regime is <a href="https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2022/03/wave-warmongering-gushing-over-russian-youth">feeding domestic audiences propaganda</a> insisting that the Russian army fights “against Nazism” across the globe. </p>
<p>In a bid to ensure this message takes root among the country’s youth, Russia’s Ministry of Education recently announced its intent to <a href="https://www.vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2022/03/16/913837-minobrnauki-obyazatelnii-kurs">create a unified single history course</a> to “correct the presentation of history in universities”. The course, which will be compulsory for all students, aims to “instil in a young person pride in our history, involvement in more than a thousand-year-old culture, awareness of the inheritance of the deeds and accomplishments of their ancestors”.</p>
<p>But the Russian president’s tendentious use of history relies on a highly selective reading. In speeches delivered before the invasion, <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181">Putin claimed</a> that Ukraine is “an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space”. This theme, developed politically in Russia over the past two decades, emphasises the common heritage of the so-called “Russian world”. This imagined cultural-historical space is centred on the holy trinity of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, all of which trace their roots back to the ancient principality of <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-moscow-has-long-used-the-historic-kyivan-rus-state-to-justify-expansionism-178092">Kyivan Rus’</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-moscow-has-long-used-the-historic-kyivan-rus-state-to-justify-expansionism-178092">How Moscow has long used the historic Kyivan Rus state to justify expansionism</a>
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<p>Putin also contends that Lenin and the Bolsheviks promised Ukrainians their own state simply to consolidate power. Indeed, he criticises Soviet policies towards Ukraine and the USSR’s other titular republics by asking why it was necessary “to make such generous gifts, the kind that even the most zealous nationalists never dreamed of before”. Such allegations, however, ignore the reality that the development of a Ukrainian national identity and political consciousness <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-invasion-of-ukraine-attacks-its-distinct-history-and-reveals-his-imperial-instincts-177669">significantly predates</a> the formation of the Soviet Union.</p>
<p>To bolster Russia’s claims as champions of the fight against fascism, <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/DDoS02/ee19d0b5/events/president/news/67843">Putin has likewise emphasised</a> the “sacred” sacrifices made by Soviet people to vanquish Nazism and the need for similar sacrifices today: “Your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers did not fight the Nazi occupiers and did not defend our common motherland so that today’s neo-Nazis could seize power in Ukraine.”</p>
<p>By invading Ukraine, he is also rejecting the legacy of the 1991 <a href="https://www.prlib.ru/en/history/619792">Belovezha Accords</a> between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, which brought about the demise of the Soviet Union and demarcated the borders of the post-Soviet states. This is something Putin <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057">has referred to as</a> the “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the last century. The aim of Putin’s historical revisionism is to challenge the “humiliating” loss of great power status that resulted from the Soviet Union’s dissolution.</p>
<p>Finally, Putin insists that after acquiring independence Ukrainian authorities took advantage of Russia economically while “building their statehood by negating everything that unites us, by trying to destroy the mentality and historical memory of millions of people, of entire generations living in Ukraine”. Anyone familiar with the fractious politics of post-Soviet Ukraine, where power has routinely shifted between regionally based interests both more and less amenable to rapport with Moscow, will understand the perfidy of the latter claim.</p>
<h2>Putin’s use of history</h2>
<p>Putin’s historical distortions are chaotic and jumbled. The crisis in Ukraine is concurrently presented as “the fault” of the west – or Lenin, or Ukrainian nationalists. But never Russia. If anything, these claims underline just how deep Putin’s ambition is to restore Russia to its “rightful” place in the pantheon of nations. Nonetheless, the Russian president appears ready to use any historical reference necessary to justify his cynical policies.</p>
<p>Now Putin wants these messages embedded in Russia’s educational curriculum. But, as <a href="https://www.zois-berlin.de/publikationen/world-war-ii-for-young-russians-the-production-and-reception-of-history">our research</a> has shown, the extent to which such narratives actually take hold in society remains uncertain. Our <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-and-russia-two-countries-whose-memories-of-a-shared-past-could-not-be-more-different-175570">survey from 2021</a> revealed that a diversity of historical viewpoints continue to persist in Russia.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraine-and-russia-two-countries-whose-memories-of-a-shared-past-could-not-be-more-different-175570">Ukraine and Russia: two countries whose memories of a 'shared' past could not be more different</a>
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<p>But questioning the official historical narrative in Russia today may lead to severe consequences. Already in 2014, a law <a href="https://verfassungsblog.de/memory-laws-historical-evidence-in-support-of-the-slippery-slope-argument/">made it illegal</a> to criticise the Red Army’s actions in the second world war. Echoing this injunction, a law <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-introduce-jail-terms-spreading-fake-information-about-army-2022-03-04/">passed in early March</a> 2022 threatens to punish criticism of the Russian military’s actions in Ukraine with up to 15 years of imprisonment.</p>
<h2>History wars</h2>
<p>The obsession of Russian elites with history is part of the war in Ukraine. Over the course of the past few weeks it has become clear just how diametrically opposed the two countries’ prevailing historical narratives are and how much they are being manipulated. Indeed, Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, recently announced an “<a href="https://www.rt.com/russia/551003-russia-plans-anti-fascist-congress/">international antifascist conference</a>” would be held in Russia this August to “unite the efforts of the international community in the fight against Nazi ideology and neo-Nazism in all its manifestations in the modern world”.</p>
<p>Dialogue over how to interpret the legacies of the Soviet era was still possible before the invasion of Ukraine. But Kremlin war rhetoric, which pushes the line about “genocide” being enacted against Russian speakers in the east of Ukraine and the need for “denazification” of Ukrainian politics has severely damaged the prospects of historical reconciliation between the two societies.</p>
<p>Referencing past legacies as a justification for present-day political decisions is often effective – such appeals trigger emotional reflexes and contribute to thinking about politics in terms of rivalry and defence. The irony within the tragedy of the current situation is that Putin will assuredly go down in history as the figure that did more to unite the Ukrainian people (albeit against Russia) than any other in recent memory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178925/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ukraine war: Vladimir Putin is struggling to convince people why history is on his side – both internationally and at home.Félix Krawatzek, Senior Researcher at the Centre for East European and International Studies and Associate Member of Nuffield College, University of OxfordGeorge Soroka, Lecturer on Government and Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies, Harvard UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1787322022-03-21T12:14:28Z2022-03-21T12:14:28ZWhy is Russia’s church backing Putin’s war? Church-state history gives a clue<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452660/original/file-20220317-8391-1u02rvd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=45%2C15%2C3362%2C2253&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Vladimir Putin speaks to Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill (center) in Samolva, Russia, on Sept. 11, 2021. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaAlexanderNevskyAnniversary/a30706870b2a41d78af9b1ec5104e1f7/photo?Query=kirill&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=3534&currentItemNo=274">Alexei Druzhinin/Pool Photo via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Since <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-did-russia-invade-ukraine-178512">Russia’s invasion of Ukraine</a>, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church has defended Russia’s actions and blamed the conflict <a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/response-by-hh-patriarch-kirill-of-moscow-to-rev-prof-dr-ioan-sauca-english-translation">on the West</a>.</p>
<p>Patriarch Kirill’s support for the invasion of a country where millions of people belong to his own church has led critics to conclude that Orthodox leadership has become little more than an arm of the state – and that this is the role it usually plays.</p>
<p>The reality is much more complicated. The relationship between Russian church and state has undergone <a href="https://www.fortresspress.com/store/product/9781451472509/Understanding-World-Christianity">profound historical transformations</a>, not least in the past century – a focus of my work as <a href="https://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/centers/havighurst/about-center/staff-faculty/kenworthy-faculty-page/index.html">a scholar of Eastern Orthodoxy</a>. The church’s current support for the Kremlin is not inevitable or predestined, but a deliberate decision that needs to be understood. </p>
<h2>Soviet shifts</h2>
<p>For centuries, leaders in Byzantium and Russia prized the idea of church and state <a href="https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/the-eastern-orthodox-church-john-anthony-mcguckin-review-rowan-williams/">working harmoniously together in “symphony</a>” – unlike their more competitive relationships in some Western countries.</p>
<p>In the early 1700s, however, Czar Peter the Great instituted reforms for greater control of the church – part of <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/book/78295">his attempts to make Russia more like Protestant Europe</a>.</p>
<p>Churchmen grew to resent the state’s interference. They did not defend the monarchy in its final hour during <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118620878.ch22">the February Revolution of 1917</a>, hoping it would lead to a “free church in a free state.”</p>
<p>The Bolsheviks who seized power, however, embraced <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691174273/a-sacred-space-is-never-empty">a militant atheism</a> that sought to secularize society completely. They regarded the church as a threat because of its ties to the old regime. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09546545.2018.1480893">Attacks on the church</a> proceeded from legal measures like confiscating property to executing clergy suspected of supporting the counterrevolution.</p>
<p>Patriarch Tikhon, head of the Church during the Revolution, criticized Bolshevik assaults on the Church, but his successor, Metropolitan Bishop Sergy, made <a href="https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/rss/34-1_051.pdf">a declaration of loyalty</a> to the Soviet Union in 1927. Persecution of religion only intensified, however, with repression reaching a peak during the Great Terror of 1937-1938, when <a href="http://ebookiriran.ru/index.php?id=137&section=8&view=article">tens of thousands</a> of clergy and ordinary believers were simply executed or sent to the Gulag. By the end of the 1930s, the Russian Orthodox Church had nearly been destroyed.</p>
<p>The Nazi invasion brought a dramatic reversal. Josef Stalin needed popular support to defeat Germany and <a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Russian-Orthodox-Church-1917-1948-From-Decline-to-Resurrection/Kalkandjieva/p/book/9781138577992">allowed churches to reopen</a>. But his successor, Nikita Khrushchev, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2753/RSH1061-1983500304">reinvigorated the anti-religious campaign</a> at the end of the 1950s, and for the rest of the Soviet period, the church was tightly controlled and marginalized.</p>
<h2>Kirill’s campaigns</h2>
<p>The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought yet another complete reversal. The church was suddenly free, yet facing enormous challenges after decades of suppression. With the collapse of Soviet ideology, Russian society <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/book/russia-search-itself">seemed set adrift</a>. Church leaders sought to reclaim it, but faced stiff competition from new forces, especially Western consumer culture and American <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.emory.edu/cslr-books/77/">evangelical missionaries</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A priest offers Communion to a woman wearing a kerchief." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452688/original/file-20220317-8461-1wk6fbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452688/original/file-20220317-8461-1wk6fbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452688/original/file-20220317-8461-1wk6fbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452688/original/file-20220317-8461-1wk6fbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452688/original/file-20220317-8461-1wk6fbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452688/original/file-20220317-8461-1wk6fbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452688/original/file-20220317-8461-1wk6fbr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A Russian Orthodox Church priest leads a service at the Church of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin in Sokolniki in Moscow on Feb. 15, 2022.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaPresentationoftheLord/a5330f6f17204ca99a17a924931d0397/photo?Query=%22russian%20orthodox%22&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=2601&currentItemNo=5">AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko</a></span>
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<p>The first post-Soviet head of the church, Patriarch Aleksy II, maintained his distance from politicians. Initially, they were not very responsive to the church’s goals – including Vladimir Putin in his first two terms between 2000 and 2008. Yet in more recent years, the president has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S1755048320000620">embraced Russian Orthodoxy</a> as a cornerstone of post-Soviet identity, and relations between church and state leadership have changed significantly since Kirill became patriarch in 2009. He quickly <a href="https://doi.org/10.2753/RUP1061-1940490100">succeeded in securing</a> the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/24/world/europe/24iht-moscow.html">return of church property</a> from the state, religious instruction in public schools and military chaplains in the armed forces. </p>
<p>Kirill has also promoted an influential critique of Western liberalism, consumerism and individualism, contrasted with Russian “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09637494.2016.1272893">traditional values</a>.” This idea argues that <a href="https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/31336">human rights</a> are not universal, but a product of Western culture, especially when extended to LGBTQ people. The patriarch also helped develop the idea of the “<a href="https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/727">Russian world</a>”: a soft power ideology that promotes Russian civilization, ties to Russian-speakers around the world, and greater Russian influence on Ukraine and Belarus.</p>
<p>Although 70%-75% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox, <a href="https://www.pewforum.org/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but-not-to-church/">only a small percentage</a> are active in church life. Kirill has sought to “re-church” society by asserting that Russian Orthodoxy is central to Russian identity, patriotism and cohesion – and a strong Russian state. He has also created a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Russian-Church-in-the-Digital-Era-Mediatization-of-Orthodoxy/Stahle/p/book/9780367410407">highly centralized church</a> bureaucracy that mirrors Putin’s and stifles dissenting voices.</p>
<h2>Growing closer</h2>
<p>A key turning point came in 2011-2012, starting with massive protests against electoral fraud and Putin’s decision to run for a third term.</p>
<p>Kirill <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia_patriarch_kirill_urges_government_to_listen_protests_correct_course/24444845.html">initially called</a> for the government to dialogue with protesters, but later offered unqualified support for Putin and referred to stability and prosperity during his first two terms as a “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-russia-putin-religion-idUKTRE81722Y20120208">miracle of God</a>,” in contrast to the tumultuous 1990s.</p>
<p>In 2012, Pussy Riot, a feminist punk group, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/11/what-pussy-riots-punk-prayer-really-said/264562/">staged a protest</a> in a Moscow cathedral to criticize Kirill’s support for Putin – yet the episode actually pushed church and state closer together. Putin portrayed Pussy Riot and the opposition as aligned with decadent Western values, and himself as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00905992.2014.917075">the defender of Russian morality</a>, including Orthodoxy. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/russia-law-banning-gay-propaganda">A 2013 law</a> banning dissemination of gay “propaganda” to minors, which was supported by the church, was part of this campaign to marginalize dissent. </p>
<p>Putin successfully won reelection, and Kirill’s ideology has been <a href="https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/142-blittboyd33upajintll3632011pdf">linked to Putin’s</a> ever since.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three women behind a glass panel look out at a courtroom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452835/original/file-20220317-25-1knfva1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452835/original/file-20220317-25-1knfva1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452835/original/file-20220317-25-1knfva1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452835/original/file-20220317-25-1knfva1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452835/original/file-20220317-25-1knfva1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452835/original/file-20220317-25-1knfva1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452835/original/file-20220317-25-1knfva1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot sit in a glass cage at a courtroom in Moscow in 2012. The women were charged with hooliganism connected to religious hatred.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/RussiaUnderPutin/605274096ba046d1bf817af231b98a25/photo?Query=pussy%20riot&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1156&currentItemNo=177">AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel</a></span>
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<p>Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the eruption of conflict in the Donbas in 2014 also had an enormous impact on the Russian Orthodox Church.</p>
<p>Ukraine’s Orthodox churches remained under the Moscow Patriarchate’s authority after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Indeed, about 30% of the Russian Orthodox Church’s parishes <a href="https://ecfr.eu/publication/defender_of_the_faith_how_ukraines_orthodox_split_threatens_russia/">were actually in Ukraine</a>.</p>
<p>The conflict in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, however, intensified Ukrainians’ calls for an independent Orthodox church. Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of Orthodox Christianity, granted that independence <a href="https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/pdfs/RAD231.pdf">in 2019</a>. Moscow not only refused to recognize the new church, but also <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/russian-orthodox-church-breaks-with-constantinople/">severed relations with Constantinople</a>, threatening a broader schism.</p>
<p>Orthodox Christians in Ukraine <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-church-conflict-in-ukraine-reflects-historic-russian-ukrainian-tensions-175818">were divided over which church to follow,</a> deepening Russia’s cultural anxieties about “losing” Ukraine to the West.</p>
<h2>High-stakes gamble</h2>
<p>Kirill’s close alliance with the Putin regime has had some clear payoffs. Orthodoxy has become one of the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2012/10/25/the-new-putinism-nationalism-fused-with-conservative-christianity/">central pillars</a> of Putin’s image of national identity. Moreover, the “culture wars” discourse of “traditional values” has attracted <a href="https://www.uibk.ac.at/projects/postsecular-conflicts/postsecular-conflicts-research-group/the-moralist-international/">international supporters</a>, including <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12121036">conservative evangelicals</a> in the United States.</p>
<p>But Kirill does not represent the entirety of the Russian Orthodox Church any more than Putin represents the entirety of Russia. The patriarch’s positions have alienated <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1yOGuXjdFQ1A3BQaEEQr744cwDzmSQ1qePaaBi4z6q3w/viewform?edit_requested=true">some of his own flock</a>, and his support for the invasion of Ukraine will likely split some of his support <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/13/russian-orthodox-church-in-amsterdam-announces-split-with-moscow">abroad</a>. <a href="https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/letter-to-his-holiness-kirill-patriarch-of-moscow-and-all-russia-russian-orthodox-church">Christian leaders</a> around the world are calling upon Kirill to <a href="https://religionnews.com/2022/03/11/more-than-100-us-christian-leaders-ask-kirill-to-help-stop-invasion-of-ukraine/">pressure</a> the government to stop the war.</p>
<p>The patriarch has <a href="https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/split-from-kirill-is-coming-say-ukrainian?s=r">alienated the Ukrainian flock</a> that remained loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate. <a href="https://news.church.ua/2022/02/27/appeal-beatitude-metropolitan-kyiv-ukraine-onufriy-faithful-citizens-ukraine/?lang=en">Leaders of that church</a> have <a href="https://news.church.ua/2022/02/28/obrashhenie-svyashhennogo-sinoda-ukrainskoj-pravoslavnoj-cerkvi-ot-28-fevralya-2022-goda/?lang=ru">condemned Russia’s attack</a> and appealed to Kirill to intervene with Putin. </p>
<p>A broader rift is clearly brewing: A number of Ukrainian Orthodox bishops have already <a href="https://spzh.news/en/news/86823-ryad-jeparkhij-upc-prekrashhajut-pominovenije-patriarkha-kirilla">stopped commemorating Kirill</a> during their services. If Kirill supported Russia’s actions as a way to preserve the unity of the church, the opposite outcome seems likely.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178732/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Kenworthy has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Kennan Institute, Fulbright, the International Researches and Exchanges Board and the Social Science Research Council.</span></em></p>The war in Ukraine is just the latest chapter in a long, tangled relationship between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church.Scott Kenworthy, Professor of Comparative Religion, Miami UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1764382022-03-18T14:32:48Z2022-03-18T14:32:48ZPutin’s war on history is another form of domestic repression<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452271/original/file-20220315-13-163bbtm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C5335%2C3538&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian traditional wooden matryoshka dolls showing Russian President Vladimir Putin and former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin on sale in a street souvenir shop in Moscow.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe width="100%" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Di0iabauNqQ" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is part of series that also includes live interviews with some of Canada’s top social sciences and humanities academics. <a href="https://www.meetview.ca/sshrc20220324/">Click here to register for this free event</a>, on March 24 at 1 p.m. EDT, co-sponsored by The Conversation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</em></p>
<p>Vladimir Putin’s military aims, whether based on an attempt to restore the imperial grandeur of Russia or traditional Russian territorial paranoia, have resulted in the human tragedy of war unfolding before the world in Ukraine. </p>
<p>Putin’s desires to reclaim what he sees as lost Russian territory have also extended to the realm of history, most recently with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/putins-claim-to-rid-ukraine-of-nazis-is-especially-absurd-given-its-history-177959">most absurd and inaccurate claims about Ukraine’s history and statehood</a>. </p>
<p>Although Putin’s historical revisionism has been most intense around issues surrounding the Second World War and the supposed historical justification for “reunion” with Ukraine, it has also had a profound effect on another aspect of Russian history that hasn’t received as much attention — the study of Stalinist repression in the Soviet Union. </p>
<p>Last December, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/28/russia-rights-memorial-liquidated/">Russia’s Supreme Court liquidated the International Memorial Society</a>. Known as Memorial, it was founded in the late 1980s and was dedicated to the preservation of the memory of the victims of former Soviet premier Josef Stalin’s vicious reign of terror who were sent to the Gulag prison camps in the 1930s. </p>
<p>The Supreme Court justified its decision by reference to <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Fact%20Sheet_0.pdf">the “foreign agents” law of 2012 that sought to penalize any Russian organization that received financial assistance from abroad</a>.</p>
<h2>A vast archive on the Gulag</h2>
<p>As it evolved, Memorial became both a vast archive of Gulag documentation as well as an important human rights organization. The liquidation of Memorial, which holds the world’s largest archive on Stalinist repression and the Gulag, is only one of the more egregious examples of Putin’s revisionism. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451993/original/file-20220314-130208-9ltj3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451993/original/file-20220314-130208-9ltj3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/451993/original/file-20220314-130208-9ltj3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451993/original/file-20220314-130208-9ltj3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451993/original/file-20220314-130208-9ltj3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451993/original/file-20220314-130208-9ltj3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451993/original/file-20220314-130208-9ltj3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/451993/original/file-20220314-130208-9ltj3b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Author Lynne Viola will discuss her research into Soviet-era persecution during a live event on March 24 co-sponsored by The Conversation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The closure of Memorial was accompanied <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/13/russia-repression-escalates">by a wave of arrests of dissident voices in Russia</a> at the same time Russia was readying its forces for the invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>Putin’s war on the history of his own country is many years in the making.</p>
<p>Almost as soon as Putin came into power in 1999 — and well before the rest of the world had any notion of how his regime would evolve — the FSB (Russia’s main intelligence service and the successor to the KGB) made visits to at least four central archives in Moscow, frightening the staff and putting people on notice that the “golden age” of open Russian archives was nearing its end. </p>
<p>Although the archives did not close, some documents were reclassified and it became more difficult for foreign researchers to collaborate with their Russian colleagues in archival projects. <a href="https://portal.ehri-project.eu/institutions/ru-003198">The FSB archive</a>, along with the highly secretive “Kremlin” or <a href="https://abb.eastview.com/rep/C-1.tab1.php?b=C.php%23C-1">“Presidential” archive</a>, remained largely closed — and absolutely closed to foreigners.</p>
<h2>When foreign historians were welcome</h2>
<p>In the 1990s, no one could have predicted this offensive against history. On the contrary, the 1990s were a time when the archives were opening and Russian and foreign historians began to work together for the first time. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="An official portrait of Stalin from the 1930s, showing him holding a pipe." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452273/original/file-20220315-25-1r5g721.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452273/original/file-20220315-25-1r5g721.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452273/original/file-20220315-25-1r5g721.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452273/original/file-20220315-25-1r5g721.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=898&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452273/original/file-20220315-25-1r5g721.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452273/original/file-20220315-25-1r5g721.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452273/original/file-20220315-25-1r5g721.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1129&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Putin’s government has made it more difficult for historians to delve into Russian state archives about the actions of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For more than 30 years, <a href="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/results-resultats/prizes-prix/2021/gold_viola-eng.aspx">I have been researching the political and social history of Russia</a>, including violence in the era of Stalin. I remember those heady days when I would go into the Russian State Economic Archives to work and end up drinking tea all day as historian after historian arrived to meet me.</p>
<p>Soon, a group of older and very distinguished historians of the Soviet peasantry took me under their wing, inviting me to participate in an international collaborative project dedicated to the research, declassification and publication of key documents on the Soviet countryside between 1927 and 1939. This group even secured access to the FSB archives, which proved to be a very rich source of research. </p>
<p>Together, <a href="https://www.amazon.ca/Tragediia-Sovetskoi-Derevni-Kollektivizatsiia-Raskulachivanie/dp/5824302251">we published six volumes of documents</a>. We documented the repression of the Soviet peasantry, discovering a vast peasant rebellion to <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/peasant-rebels-under-stalin-9780195131048?cc=us&lang=en&">the Soviet state during agricultural collectivization </a> — a key Stalin initiative to control agriculture and the peasantry.</p>
<h2>Unearthed key documents</h2>
<p>We also unearthed key documents on the 1932-33 famine — <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor">known as the Holodomar</a> — that killed millions of people in Ukraine and other Soviet regions. And other documents were found that revised history’s understanding of <a href="http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1936-2/the-great-terror/">Stalin’s Great Terror at the end of the 1930s</a>. </p>
<p>For my Russian colleagues, this project was a labour of immense importance. </p>
<p>Most of the group had been born and raised in peasant villages, had served on the front during the Second World War and had begun writing history and publishing documents during the relatively liberal years of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-russia/khrushchev-period-19531964/E318D7123BCC443E7C831A532D3BE700">the Khrushchev period</a> from the mid-1950s to the mid-‘60s. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236801549_Viktor_Petrovich_Danilov_1925-2004">V.P. Danilov</a>, the most distinguished of the group, was forced into silence when <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-history-of-russia/brezhnev-era/FF97FAA55F0AC11532836A2440EFA40E">Leonid Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev in 1964</a>, at one point expecting to be arrested. </p>
<p>When I met Danilov in the 1990s, he communicated to me the urgency of publishing archival documents, arguing that “anything could happen” in the following years. An authoritarian government could return and silence historians, he said, so our goal was to place these documents in the public domain. </p>
<p>At the time, I only half believed him. As it turns out, Danilov’s warnings were prescient — and continue to be so.</p>
<h2>Access more difficult</h2>
<p>As I continued my work in the archives into the 21st century, it slowly became clear that access was becoming more difficult.</p>
<p>In 2007, I returned for archival work to the northern Russian city of Arkhangel’sk, where I had twice worked earlier in the 2000s. I was denied access to the archives there despite the letter of the law that should have allowed me to work in the state archives.</p>
<p>I was told that I needed an FSB security clearance, something that shocked me at the time. My colleagues in Moscow were also surprised and suggested that the head of the archives may have been looking for a bribe, something that on principle I would never offer.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A portrait of a victim of the Great Terror is in the foreground on a tree while a woman walks in the snow in the background" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452274/original/file-20220315-27-1qsxuss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/452274/original/file-20220315-27-1qsxuss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452274/original/file-20220315-27-1qsxuss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452274/original/file-20220315-27-1qsxuss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452274/original/file-20220315-27-1qsxuss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452274/original/file-20220315-27-1qsxuss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/452274/original/file-20220315-27-1qsxuss.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woman at a cemetery near St.Petersburg, Russia, walks past a portrait of a victim of Soviet repressions during the Great Terror under the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At that point, I thought my work had become impossible. That was until the <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2022/02/20/maidan-revolution-ukrainians-mark-anniversary-of-2014-protests-that-ousted-pro-russian-lea">Euromaidan Revolution in 2014</a> that saw the end of Ukraine’s pro-Russian government. After that, I turned my attention to the Ukrainian archives. I was working on the topic of perpetrators of the Great Terror and, along with a German colleague, decided to try my luck at the SBU (formerly KGB) archives in Kyiv. </p>
<p>Unlike the situation in Russia, those in charge of the Ukraine archives generously opened their doors to foreign researchers. Based on my research at the archives, I published <a href="https://www.history.utoronto.ca/publications/stalinist-perpetrators-trial"><em>Stalinist Perpetrators on Trial: Scenes from the Great Terror in Soviet Ukraine</em></a>. </p>
<p>I also continued to follow Danilov’s advice and, with the help of a large team of Ukrainian and Russian historians, <a href="https://www.labirint.ru/books/625101/">published five volumes of documents on Soviet perpetrators</a> who were responsible for the deaths or incarcerations of hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine and other Soviet regions ruled by Stalin.</p>
<h2>Placing documents in the public domain</h2>
<p>I am no longer so sanguine about the course of history and its impact on the former Soviet archives. Like the earlier volumes on the Soviet countryside, documents unearthed by our research are now in the public domain, safe from Putin’s imperial pretensions in Ukraine.</p>
<p>Fortunately, many of Ukraine’s archival institutions wisely followed extensive plans to digitalize their resources, though it is not yet clear what proportion of documents have been safely copied.</p>
<p>It is, perhaps, not coincidental that a recent directive from Putin ordered <a href="https://www.geopolitical.report/shelling-hits-sbu-building-in-chernihiv/">the destruction of the buildings of the SBU</a>, including its archives, in Kyiv. The destruction of the archive would be a terrible loss to historians of Ukraine and, indeed, of the former Soviet Union. </p>
<p>History always served as a weapon in the former Soviet Union, a way to control the narrative and deny the truth of the past. Putin is now attempting to control this narrative through war and domestic repression.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynne Viola receives funding from SSHRC, ACLS, and other academic funding agencies.</span></em></p>History always served as a weapon in the former Soviet Union, a way to control the narrative and deny the truth of the past. Vladimir Putin is now attempting to control this narrative through war.Lynne Viola, Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1782472022-03-09T13:18:16Z2022-03-09T13:18:16ZLong before shots were fired, a linguistic power struggle was playing out in Ukraine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450226/original/file-20220306-51485-95days.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A woman holds a placard with the words 'language is a weapon' written in Ukrainian during a 2020 protest of a bill that sought to widen the use of Russian in Ukrainian public education.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrator-holds-a-placard-the-language-is-a-weapon-news-photo/1227662693?adppopup=true">Evgen Kotenko/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>What does the Russian invasion of Ukraine have to do with language?</p>
<p>If you ask Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian governmental policies promoting the use of the Ukrainian language are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/world/europe/putin-ukraine-genocide.html">evidence of the “genocide” of ethnic Russians</a> in the Russian-speaking east, and thus provide part of the rationale for invasion. </p>
<p>Propaganda like that aside, something else links war to language: power.</p>
<p>Long before shots were fired, a power struggle has played out in the region around language – specifically, whether or not Ukrainian is a language.
Neither professional linguists nor Ukrainians have any problem thinking of Ukrainian as a separate language – it’s probably about as different from Russian as Spanish is from Portuguese. Yet Russian nationalists long sought to classify it as a dialect of Russian.</p>
<h2>Russia’s status as a power language</h2>
<p>It turns out that classifying a given language variety as “a language” is less clear than you might think, and popular understandings of “language” versus “dialect” are usually based more on political criteria than linguistic ones. As sociolinguist Max Weinreich succinctly <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/difference-between-language-dialect/424704/">put it</a>, “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.ethnologue.com/language/rus">Russian</a>, the language of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, is one of the world’s handful of power languages. Alongside languages such as Mandarin, Spanish and English, Russian is deeply intertwined with global politics, business and pop culture.</p>
<p>Of Russian’s <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/russian-speaking-countries.html">260 million speakers</a>, roughly 40% – 103 million – speak it as a second language, a sign that people see value in learning it. It’s a lingua franca across Central Asia and the Caucasus, and is widely spoken in the Baltics. In Ukraine – Russia’s largest European neighbor – Russian is used by about one-third of the population, which is around 13 million people. “Number of speakers” isn’t the defining feature of a power language, however – <a href="https://www.ethnologue.com/language/ben">Bengali</a>, for example, has 265 million speakers – more than Russian – but for the most part people aren’t clamoring to learn it. </p>
<p>Russian, on the other hand, is unique among the Slavic languages in that it is taught in the most <a href="https://slavic.fas.harvard.edu/pages/russian-language-program">prestigious universities</a> across Europe, Asia and the United States. With all those speakers, all that clout, and all that cultural production, Russian’s status as a power language looks as natural as beets in borscht. </p>
<p>But it’s not. </p>
<p>Power languages derive their status not from anything inherent to the linguistic system, <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Languages+In+The+World%3A+How+History%2C+Culture%2C+and+Politics+Shape+Language+-p-9781118531280">but instead from the historical arrangements of power</a> that give their speakers – and culture – perceived status and value.</p>
<p>Russian picked up speakers – and knocked out other languages – through its remarkable <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/02/20/russia-s-global-ambitions-in-perspective-pub-78067">history of expansionism</a>: The Muscovites, inhabitants of the Grand Duchy of Moscow that predated the Russian Empire, moved to the east and the north, taking over Kazan and Siberia during the 16th century. By the end of the 19th century, the Russians had conquered Central Asia, all the way to the border of China. Following World War II, the Soviet Union extended its sphere of influence into Eastern Europe.</p>
<p>Ukraine became a part of the Soviet Union in 1922. In 1991, it gained its independence, when the Soviet Union broke apart. </p>
<p>Although nobody knows for certain, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/world/europe/putin-macron-call.html">it appears Putin is seeking</a> to make all or portions of Ukraine once again part of Russia.</p>
<h2>Two twigs on the same linguistic branch</h2>
<p>So if Russian is a “power language,” what is Ukrainian? </p>
<p>If you ask some Russian nationalists, Ukrainian isn’t a language at all. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.2007.11092432">In 1863</a>, Russian Minister of the Interior Pyotr Valuev <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/disarming-putins-history-weapon/">declared</a> that “a separate Ukrainian language (‘Little Russian’) has never existed, does not exist, and shall not exist.” Per another quote – attributed to Tsar Nicholas II – “There is no Ukrainian language, just illiterate peasants speaking <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/03/15/the-long-war-over-ukrainian-language/HXlLbK9wVnhwGShNVPKIUP/story.html">Little Russian</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Lone man walks in field with armed forces in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450223/original/file-20220306-21-jinyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450223/original/file-20220306-21-jinyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450223/original/file-20220306-21-jinyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450223/original/file-20220306-21-jinyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450223/original/file-20220306-21-jinyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450223/original/file-20220306-21-jinyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450223/original/file-20220306-21-jinyy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tsar Nicholas II reportedly once referred to the Ukrainian language as ‘Little Russian.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nicholas-ii-the-last-tsar-of-russia-circa-1917-news-photo/51081510?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But as a matter of linguistic history, Ukrainian and Russian <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukrainian-and-russian-how-similar-are-the-two-languages-178456">emerged as distinct languages</a> from a common source language spoken around A.D. 500 that linguists refer to as “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Proto-Slavic-language">proto-Slavic</a>.”</p>
<p>The Slavic languages share more than grammatical and phonological linguistic similarities. They also have a common homeland, and that homeland was, most likely, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Slavic-languages">western Ukraine</a>. </p>
<p>For reasons that linguists, archaeologists and other scholars still debate, speakers of proto-Slavic fanned out from their homeland, moving northward, westward and southward. </p>
<p>As they moved, proto-Slavic gradually gave rise to the language varieties that would eventually become the contemporary Slavic languages, which include Polish, Serbian, Russian and Ukrainian. By the 9th century, some Slavs who stayed close to home linked with the Rus – a group who were either Slavs themselves or assimilated Scandinavians – and created the first noteworthy East Slavic federation known as <a href="https://www.worldhistory.org/Kievan_Rus/">Kyivan Rus</a>, situated, as the name suggests, in Kyiv. Kyivan Rus can be thought of as the predecessor to the modern Ukrainian, Belorussian and Russian nations.</p>
<h2>Resisting Russian</h2>
<p>Since language has become so key to national identity, it’s no wonder that reframing Ukrainian as a dialect of Russian is integral to Putin’s discursive campaign, just as it was for Tsar Nicholas II 200 years ago. Part of holding power, it turns out, is the ability to frame the discourse, and the title of Putin’s essay, “<a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181">On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians</a>,” which he published in July 2021, leaves little doubt as to his position. If all things Ukrainian – including the language – are simply derivatives of all things Russian, the invasion looks less like an act of aggression and more like reintegration.</p>
<p>Ukrainians, of course, bristle with this characterization, not because there is no Russian being spoken in Ukraine - Volodymyr Zelenskyy is himself a Russian speaker - but because for many, Ukrainian identity involves bilingualism. Many Ukrainians speak both Ukrainian and Russian and even mix them in a form people call “<a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/surzhyk-the-sociopolitical-significance-ukrainian-russian-mixed-language">surzhyk</a>” – the Eastern Slavic version of “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2012/08/10/158570815/puedes-believe-it-spanglish-gets-in-el-dictionary">Spanglish</a>.” </p>
<p>In Ukrainian public life, fears over the primacy of Russian or Ukrainian have led to conflict before. In 2020 <a href="https://foreignbrief.com/daily-news/ukrainian-policymakers-to-debate-controversial-language-law/">there were heated debates and protests</a> over a bill that would have repealed a stipulation requiring that 80% of schooling occur in Ukrainian. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/europe/ukraine-parliament-debate-over-language-escalates-into-a-brawl.html">There was a brawl</a> in 2012 in the Ukrainian Parliament over a bill that would have made Russian an official language, alongside Ukrainian, in parts of the country.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men in suits attack one another." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450225/original/file-20220306-21-fiqosl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/450225/original/file-20220306-21-fiqosl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450225/original/file-20220306-21-fiqosl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450225/original/file-20220306-21-fiqosl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=418&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450225/original/file-20220306-21-fiqosl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450225/original/file-20220306-21-fiqosl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/450225/original/file-20220306-21-fiqosl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=525&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A brawl breaks out in the Ukrainian Parliament in May 2012 over a bill that would have adopted Russian as an official language in parts of the country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/UkrainePolitics/48a39756a8ed43f2bbe5e9977e5e355c/photo?Query=ukrainian%20parliament%20fight%202012&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=33&currentItemNo=32">AP Photo/Maks Levin</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/08/ukraine-russia-language-putin/">reports show</a> that in eastern Ukraine, some Russian-speaking Ukrainians are abandoning Russian to avoid using “the language of the occupier.”</p>
<p>Of course, speakers all over the world give up their mother tongues in favor of languages they perceive to be more valuable all the time, but usually this happens gradually, and in the direction of power languages. Except under circumstances of extreme duress – an outside invader or forced submission by a dominant group – it’s somewhat unusual for speakers to abandon their mother tongue overnight. </p>
<p>[<em>The Conversation’s Politics + Society editors pick need-to-know stories.</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?nl=politics&source=inline-politics-need-to-know">Sign up for Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<p>In El Salvador, speakers of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/story/why-do-languages-die">Lenca and Cacapoera</a> did this in the 1930s to avoid being killed by Spanish-speaking Salvadoran troops. But in Ukraine, some speakers aren’t adopting the language of the invader; they’re giving it up. </p>
<p>Putin’s attack will almost certainly accelerate that trend. While Russian’s status as a power language probably will not be affected, it may start to shed speakers. And with all the attention on Ukraine, perhaps the world will come to appreciate it as the Slavic homeland where people seem to prefer to speak Ukrainian – not Russian.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178247/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phillip M. Carter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>To Russian nationalists, if the Ukrainian language is classified as a derivative of the Russian language, the invasion looks less like an act of aggression and more like reintegration.Phillip M. Carter, Associate Professor of Linguistics, Florida International UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1783512022-03-03T17:05:04Z2022-03-03T17:05:04ZDeep-rooted Russian fear of the West has fuelled Putin’s invasion of Ukraine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449666/original/file-20220302-27-19yt7gp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C464%2C3536%2C2223&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sit far apart during talks in the Kremlin in Moscow a week before Russia invaded Ukraine.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If Russia were a human being, then it would have an almost pathological fear of threats to its person. As is often the case with fear, it has a kernel of grounding in reality, but has grown completely out of proportion under President Vladimir Putin. </p>
<p>Few people, including me, regard these fears as anything close to sufficient justification for Putin’s <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60582327">invasion of Ukraine</a>. The West has not presented even an abstract military threat to Russia since the end of the Cold War. </p>
<p>There is no doubt, however, that the expansion of western influence eastwards through NATO and the European Union does present an existential threat of sorts to Putin’s notion of Russia.</p>
<p>Russia’s relationship with the West has a rocky history. Russia has for much of its existence feared military threats from the West — a fear that has gone hand-in-hand with suspicion of western norms and ideas such as liberal democracy.</p>
<h2>Russia repelled Napoleon</h2>
<p>Russia defeated <a href="https://library.brown.edu/cds/napoleon/time6.html">Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of 1812</a> even though Napoleon’s forces reached Moscow. By 1814, Russian troops were in Paris, an important element in the coalition against Napoleon. Russia under Czar <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-I-emperor-of-Russia/The-defeat-of-Napoleon">Alexander I</a> was at the height of its power and influence.</p>
<p>While the defeat of Napoleon brought Russia some military security, it didn’t bring psychological security for the czars. Russian soldiers had seen some of the rest of Europe, and were thought by Russian conservatives to be bringing back dangerous western ideas that might undermine the status quo in Russia.</p>
<p>Indeed, <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Decembrist_Revolt">an uprising in 1825 against the new czar, Nicholas I, by the so-called Decembrists</a> was seen as having been influenced by western ideas that had been brought back from the war against Napoleon.</p>
<p>For much of the remainder of the 19th and early 20th century, Russian czars fought a battle to preserve a Russian way of life they believed was under threat from foreign ideas.</p>
<p>At times, the foreign threat was again a military one, as in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Crimean-War">Crimean War</a> of 1854-55. Before long, <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z6rjy9q/revision/7">repressive measures against previously content national minorities</a> within the Russian empire, <a href="https://www.historyfiles.co.uk/FeaturesEurope/ScandinaviaFinland.htm">such as the Finns</a>, exacerbated internal problems. </p>
<h2>Bolshevik Revolution</h2>
<p>All of this in many ways culminated with the <a href="https://www.bl.uk/russian-revolution/articles/timeline-of-the-russian-revolution">Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917</a> — made possible thanks to Russian weaknesses during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Russian-Empire/World-War-I">First World War</a>. The Russian economy just wasn’t up to fighting a modern industrial war, and the czarist regime had managed to alienate itself from almost every major segment of the Russian population.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black-and-white photo shows bodies lying in the streets." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449677/original/file-20220303-21-1e18cqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449677/original/file-20220303-21-1e18cqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449677/original/file-20220303-21-1e18cqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449677/original/file-20220303-21-1e18cqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449677/original/file-20220303-21-1e18cqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449677/original/file-20220303-21-1e18cqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449677/original/file-20220303-21-1e18cqp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this July 1917 photo, bodies are seen on the main street in Petrograd (now St. Petersburg), as government forces open fire. Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II, had recently abdicated his throne, and Vladimir Lenin and his Bolshevik Party would seize power from a short-lived provisional government only months later.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Bolsheviks, however, were soon faced with — and became obsessed about — foreign threat. During <a href="https://historiana.eu/case-study/cold-war/western-intervention-during-russian-civil-war">the Russian Civil War</a> that lasted until 1921, western powers — primarily Great Britain, the United States, France <a href="https://www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/battles-and-fighting/land-battles/siberian-expeditionary-force/#:%7E:text=As%20part%20of%20an%20Allied,against%20the%20revolutionary%20%E2%80%9CReds.%E2%80%9D">and Canada</a> — united against the new Bolshevik regime and <a href="https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/spotlights/allies.htm">sent troops to Russia</a>. </p>
<p>Although the Bolsheviks were able to consolidate their power by 1921 and formed the Soviet Union at the end of the following year, there remained an obsession with the threat of being surrounded by hostile foreign powers.</p>
<p>Soviet fears of the West’s military strength and other threats lasted for most of the history of the Soviet Union. Nazi Germany’s ultimately unsuccessful invasion in June 1941 took place at a time when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-soviet-pact">were supposed to be allies</a>, and the German aggression enhanced Russian mistrust of foreign promises.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white photo shows German soldiers in tattered uniforms walking in the snow." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449684/original/file-20220303-23-1lr8m65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449684/original/file-20220303-23-1lr8m65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449684/original/file-20220303-23-1lr8m65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449684/original/file-20220303-23-1lr8m65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449684/original/file-20220303-23-1lr8m65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449684/original/file-20220303-23-1lr8m65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449684/original/file-20220303-23-1lr8m65.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this early 1943 photo, captured German soldiers, their uniforms tattered from the battle, make their way in the bitter cold through the ruins of Stalingrad, Russia after the Axis surrender there.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo, File)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By 1944, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/world-war-ii-in-eastern-europe-1942-1945">the Soviet Red Army had recovered Soviet territory</a> from Germany and her <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Axis-Powers">Axis alliance</a> partners, and was in a position to sweep across eastern Europe. In doing so, the Red Army was helped by its temporary <a href="https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/big-three">American and British allies</a> who were both fighting in the West and providing the Soviet Union with material assistance. </p>
<p>That alliance did not last long after the Second World War as differences between the Soviet outlook on the world and that of its allies resurfaced as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War#ref284221">what is known as the Cold War</a>. </p>
<h2>The Warsaw Pact</h2>
<p>Josef Stalin at least now had a cordon of “friendly” countries in eastern Europe — including Poland and Czechoslovakia — as a buffer between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR) and the West. Those countries would become members of the <a href="https://www.nato.int/cps/us/natohq/declassified_138294.htm">Warsaw Pact</a>.</p>
<p>Throughout all of this, the Russian empire — then the Soviet Union — had a territorial core that was largely unbreakable. Although Ukraine had <a href="http://soviethistory.msu.edu/1954-2/the-gift-of-crimea/the-gift-of-crimea-texts/ukrainian-declaration-of-independence/">been very briefly independent during the revolutionary period</a>, it had been forcibly brought back into the fold. </p>
<p>The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was a key member of the Soviet Union, alongside Belorussia. Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians, along with the Soviet peoples of the Caucasus, Central Asia and even some from the recently incorporated Baltic republics, fought together to rid the Soviet Union of the Nazi invaders. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An elderly man in a military uniform holds the Soviet flag in a large gathering." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449679/original/file-20220303-15-13ymsvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449679/original/file-20220303-15-13ymsvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449679/original/file-20220303-15-13ymsvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449679/original/file-20220303-15-13ymsvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449679/original/file-20220303-15-13ymsvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449679/original/file-20220303-15-13ymsvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449679/original/file-20220303-15-13ymsvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An unidentified officer in a former Soviet army uniform holds a red flag during a rally on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Kyiv in November 1995.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After the Second World War, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3600771">many citizens of the USSR viewed themselves as Soviet along with their specific national cultural identity</a> — something that lives on even today in the wartime generation born and raised during the Stalinist period.</p>
<p>Apparent Soviet strength in the aftermath of the Second World War was not enough, however, to suppress Soviet insecurities. Stalin had a deep fear of foreign influence stemming from contacts with the West during the war. In the late 1940s, <a href="https://www.rbth.com/history/327399-stalin-versus-soviet-jews">Stalin singled out and attacked Jews as “rootless cosmopolitans”</a> and suspected pro-westerners.</p>
<h2>Fears of being undermined</h2>
<p>For much of the remainder of the Cold War, Soviet leaders were fearful of western influence and <a href="https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000499825.pdf">technological superiority</a>. Both the experience of western intervention during the Russian Civil War and the perfidious Nazi invasion gave the Soviet Union something of a complex about being undermined by the West — via military might or otherwise.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057">collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 is considered a disaster by many Russians — including Putin</a>. Events since 1991 have seen a steady erosion of Russian influence in its own backyard and an expansion of not only western ideas but also the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/28/nato-expansion-war-russia-ukraine">NATO military alliance</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Men in suits sit at a table and sign documents in an ornate hall." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449689/original/file-20220303-21-ctmfeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/449689/original/file-20220303-21-ctmfeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449689/original/file-20220303-21-ctmfeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449689/original/file-20220303-21-ctmfeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=420&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449689/original/file-20220303-21-ctmfeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449689/original/file-20220303-21-ctmfeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/449689/original/file-20220303-21-ctmfeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=528&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Leaders of the Soviet republics, including Boris Yeltsin, second from right, sign an agreement terminating the Soviet Union and declaring the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Belarus in 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Yuri Ivanov)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-is-vladimir-putin-right-a-bf318d2c-7aeb-4b59-8d5f-1d8c94e1964d">Western promises that NATO would not expand beyond Germany were broken</a>, and now Putin sees Russia as under siege. </p>
<p>His invasion of Ukraine is a last-ditch attempt to stave off western influence over territories that Russia has historically dominated. </p>
<p>Putin’s Russia — and Putin himself — is like a cornered animal apt to lash out. The West needs to be exceedingly careful about how it pokes that animal given Russia’s nuclear capabilities. Putin’s Russian government has a long memory of resentment towards what it sees as its western assailant, and is no longer acting with the restraint it was showing a decade ago.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178351/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexander Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just because deep-rooted Russian fears might not seem reasonable doesn’t mean they aren’t real in Vladimir Putin’s mind.Alexander Hill, Professor of Military History, University of CalgaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.