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In Russia, the role of history is increasingly important to politics. This particularly applies to the interpretation of victory in World War II. The past is the only unit between generations and strata.
On May 9, 1945, lights and fireworks in the sky above Moscow’s Red Square marked the end of the war.
“Moschem powtorit” – “We can (repeat)” – some Russians write in their cars in the days and weeks before May 9. What is meant is the Soviet victory in World War II, which is most exuberantly celebrated on May 9, “Victory Day.”
Victory is at the heart of these celebrations, triumph over the worst of all enemies, and not war with its millions of victims between soldiers and civilians, atrocities, contradictions and immeasurable suffering. Reinterpreted as all-encompassing heroism, suffering and victory merge.
Herein lies the power of integration for Russian society today, in all generations, strata and even political fields. Victory in World War II is the largest capital of state power, from which a kind of surrogate ideology can be derived.
Putin – the best historian
Bigger and more impressive than ever, the 75th anniversary of this historic event in Moscow and across Russia should have been celebrated on May 9. The spread of the new coronavirus destroyed these plans.
In mid-April, President Vladimir Putin had to postpone the military parade on Red Square, the relocation of the “Immortal Regiment” and all festivities across the country to a later date with a big heart. The grandeur of the celebrations will not disappear if they are compensated. But the symbolism of May 9 cannot be projected on another date naturally.
Putin had enacted fame and memory throughout the year. At least since last fall, when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the start of World War II celebrated their eighth anniversary, he had always taken the opportunity to get involved in the history debate.
Putin has become Russia’s leading historian, writes Andrei Kolesnikow of the Carnegie Moscow Center in a study on the politicization of memory in Russia. In December, Putin defended Soviet policy on the eve of the start of the war and before senior generals before the assembled heads of state of the former Soviet republics.
Ten years earlier, Putin had condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the secret protocol, which the Soviet Union had denied for decades and which foresaw the division of Eastern Europe under Hitler and Stalin.
Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov signed the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact on August 23, 1939 in the Kremlin. Behind him are Joachim von Ribbentrop (left) and Josef Stalin (center).
Now he justified it in terms of self-defense, noting that, after all, the Soviet Union was the last European state to negotiate with the “Third Reich.” He denied Poland the role of the victim by emphasizing his participation in the Munich Agreement and his own appetite for Czechoslovak territory.
Also, the way he did it caused serious discomfort with Warsaw. The fact that the European Parliament passed a resolution last September that put the crimes of National Socialism and Communism on the same level and made Germany and the Soviet Union equally responsible for the outbreak of World War II had prompted him to “defend the historical Truth »to make the highest priority.
“Arch war”
Putin in the role of “state historian” cemented the opinion that prevailed far beyond politics and administration in Russia that there is a historical truth and that any questioning of official historical positions is immoral.
This has even been incorporated into the renewed constitution. No junior official would disagree with the President. In order to confirm the apparently immovable historical events, previously locked archival materials are released. Kolesnikow speaks of a “war of the archives”.
At the same time, historians and the state media are not afraid to question scientifically long-established processes, such as the shooting of Polish generals in Katyn in western Russia in 1940 by the Soviet secret service NKVD.
The Katyn massacre, carried out by the Soviet NKVD, claimed the lives of thousands of Polish prisoners of war. The image shows the exhumation of the bodies in 1943.
This seems paradoxical, but it has an internal logic: in light of the immeasurable and indisputable suffering that the World War brought to the Soviet Union, any reference to Soviet war crimes and Stalin’s misconduct is understood as a blackening and, in Ultimately, the relativization of victims and victory. This makes scientifically sound discussion impossible.
Putin is assisted by several officials: the president of the official Russian historical society, Sergei Naryshkin, former head of the presidential administration, president of the State Duma and currently head of the foreign secret service SWR. Then Putin’s longtime partner Sergei Ivanov, also a man from the secret service, and finally presidential adviser and former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinski. All emerge as authors of historical treatises.
Joy instead of mourning
In an online discussion hosted by the Carnegie Moscow Center, historian and journalist Nikolai Swanidse recently noted that, with the exception of scientifically incredible Medinski, none of these state interpreters of history are actually historians.
Even under Stalin, historians trained for official history were responsible, he said. History professor Ivan Kurilla, who teaches at the European University in St. Petersburg, saw this as a sign of the weakness of national history policy, which professional scientists cannot earn.
However, the Kremlin is more assertive than any other through history lessons in schools and the transmission of a politicized image of history over the course of World War II and the victory on television and media channels. Still ubiquitous state-controlled forms.
Worship around “Victory Day” is the central and ideal starting point for this. All generations can be found in it. Nothing unites them so much in the family as the solemn annual memory of the “grandparents” who had won this victory.
Everything that could understandably conceal it initially renounces individual commemoration: the abominations of the front, the sacrifice of women, mothers, and children at home and on evacuation, disappointment at the failure of the “new” Soviet Union after return from the War, the price of wrong strategies and brutal repression.
The publicist and university lecturer Sergei Medvedev remembers, however, that in the 1970s and 1980s, May 9 was celebrated “with tears in his eyes” and almost exclusively individually; It was only in the mid-1990s that Boris Yeltsin started victory day for the big event. He will soon be out on vacation.
Need for more intimate memory.
Under Putin, he became the pacemaker for the progressive militarization of society and the hub of an alternative ideology that also serves its own legitimation. The youth mobilization shows how great the attraction and timeliness of victory is, for example in the Kremlin organization “Victory Volunteers”.
Felix Krawatzek and Nina Friess of the Center for Eastern European and International Studies (ZOiS) in Berlin examined the importance of May 9 and the commemoration of the war among young Russians and discovered that “Victory Day” was the point of Central reference for the Second World War is, as a symbol of “freedom”, “live” and as a basis for the country that still exists today.
Most younger people deliberately ignore the history of suffering associated with war. The person of Stalin is also not the focus: in memory of the Great Patriotic War, which began with the German attack on June 22, 1941, military heroism and reconstruction after they dominated. In about half of the respondents, Stalin’s evaluation exceeds the positive. Repression and atrocities recede behind heroism.
However, the younger Russians are highly critical of the official May 9 celebrations. Many said in the study that they were inappropriate in their pomp of the event.
The processions originally created by the population under the name “Immortal Regiment”, with photos of family members, satisfy the need for a more intimate individual commemoration. Meanwhile, however, the state has also seized the scepter, which some perceive as income.
Vladimir Putin in the “Immortal Regiment” movement at the end of World War II. The image is from 2019. This year’s march was postponed due to the crown pandemic.
On May 9, the authors of the ZOiS study write, it has integrating power. For those who had most of their childhood in the Soviet Union, victory is a priority as a joint achievement of the Soviet multi-ethnic state and all social classes. The associated “national unity” and social cohesion are places of longing for today’s generations.
Orientation to the past.
The fight against the common external enemy can also be used for today’s political purposes, both internally and externally. Disagreement with the West in the wake of events in Ukraine in 2014 gave a new impetus to the instrumentalization of memory and the “only historical truth”.
The fact that the Russian leadership derives an important part of its legitimacy and its power of social integration from the celebration and heroization of the past speaks volumes about the present and the belief in the future in today’s Russia. There is a lack of positive identification with the current state and confidence for the future.
Recent years have been characterized by economic and political stagnation, which, although a vague desire for change, also created a lack of prospects. The orientation towards the glorious past, the victory and the associated size and importance of the country itself is particularly attractive.
The current crisis, which, with the shock of oil prices and the economic and social consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, overshadows the memory of victory 75 years ago, distracts from past heroism, but also makes it even more desirable.
“Moschem powtorit”: with all the skepticism towards the West, this is not the dreadful war, but the total joint success. Also for the Kremlin: The world order associated with the end of World War II with the five equal veto powers in the UN Security Council as the backbone is attractive to Putin even after 75 years and fundamental global changes.
