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Russia-Ukraine War - Inside the Kremlin's Narratives - Jade McGlynn
221 Plays1 year ago
Ep 028 – Nonfiction. Why aren't ordinary Russians more outraged by Putin's invasion of Ukraine? Jade McGlynn joins me to discuss why & to talk about her fascinating new book, "Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin's Russia."
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Transcript
Telegram's Role in Russian Propaganda
00:00:00
Speaker
40% of Russians, so I guess about 55, 60 million Russians every single day use Telegram. Telegram is like a kind of news app as well as a messaging app. And on Telegram, you can access anything you like, any information you like, and yet of the 30 most popular political channels, 24 are pro-war. So the issue isn't if only Russians knew the truth,
00:00:27
Speaker
The issue is that Russians, for different reasons, not because they're like inherently or innately bad people, but for many different complex reasons, do not want to hear that truth. They want to hear something else. And that's something that I think, you know, policymakers need to battle with because this is not, and that's why I call this the book, sort of the first book, Russia's War, because not because I'm saying all Russians are guilty. I don't believe that. I think you're guilty for what you do as an individual.
00:00:53
Speaker
But because this is not a case where you get rid of Putin and then everyone's like, yay, let's, you know, we can, maybe we can join the European Union. That's not going to happen.
Introduction to Jade McGlynn and Her Work
00:01:08
Speaker
Hi, everyone. This is AJ Woodhams, host of the War Books podcast, where I interview today's best authors writing about war related topics.
00:01:22
Speaker
Today, I am really excited to have on Jade McGlynn for her new book, Memory Makers, the Politics of the Past in Putin's Russia. Jade McGlynn is a researcher in the War Studies Department at King's College London. She's the author of the book, Russia's War, and editor of two volumes on memory, politics, and history in Eastern Europe. She holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and her research focuses on national identity, memory, media, and popular culture in Russia and Ukraine.
00:01:52
Speaker
She is a frequent contributor to international media, including the BBC, CNN, DW foreign policy, the Times, the Telegraph, and the Spectator. Jade, how are you today? I'm well, thank you. How are you? I'm really great. And this is a first for my podcast. So you're in Kyiv right now. I am. Yeah. And so you'll be the first person on the War Books podcast.
Life in Kyiv During Wartime
00:02:17
Speaker
talking to me from an actual war zone, which is incredible. First, what are things like in Kiev? What are you seeing? How are things there? It's summer 2023 right now. What are things like there? People are, of course, very defiant, but I was here at the end of April as well, and there was a real happiness then because that survived a really difficult winter.
00:02:44
Speaker
and spring was coming. But I think right now there's a lot of people have been through a lot. To put it mildly, people aren't getting to sleep. You know, there are air sirens. I mean, most people don't go to the shelters. I mean, I go, but it's normally me and some Americans right in the shelter. But I think people are going through a lot, but absolutely defiant.
00:03:15
Speaker
the main, well, maybe not the main threat, but what I hear in Kiev that is especially threatening are drones. Is that correct? Yes and no. So there are a lot of drones, for example, not last night, but the night before we had an attack of drones and they shot them all down. But actually a lot of people, a lot of Ukrainians or Kievans don't go to the shelter if it's drones because
00:03:44
Speaker
but I don't know why they have their reasons. But when it's missiles, so we then later in the early hours of the morning around rush hour, there was an attack of free cruise missiles, Calibri missiles. And for them, they even say on the messaging, do go to the shelter. And that time there were more Ukrainians because it's more dangerous, I guess. Sure. Wow.
Russia's Historical Narratives and Propaganda
00:04:14
Speaker
you know, doubly grateful that we're able to do this interview and that you're there on the ground, you know, seeing things and continuing your good work. So your book, Memory Makers,
00:04:27
Speaker
very fascinating topic to me. Propaganda itself to me is just very interesting. I'm not exactly sure why. I think a lot of people are like that. Maybe it's just understanding how other people think. So I used to, when Russia invaded Ukraine initially, I remember I used to flip on RT here in the US, which has since been banned.
00:04:52
Speaker
I think in most English language countries, it's been banned actually. Just to hear what, because at the time it seemed like such a surprise, but just to hear what the Russian line is.
00:05:06
Speaker
We've even here in Washington DC, there's a radio station called Radio Sputnik, which I think might be around the world globally. And it's still like a Russian propaganda station. But it's so fascinating because I got the sense in your book too that while
00:05:23
Speaker
the invasion seemed like a surprise at first. If you think about how Russia has treated history and how they talk about history and how their propaganda works, maybe it wasn't such a surprise that this invasion happened. So your book, right up my alley, would you mind just first off here saying what is your book about for everybody listening? So Memory Makers looks at the last 10 years before the start of
00:05:53
Speaker
of the big war, of the full scale invasion in 2022. And it looks at how the Kremlin tried to impose a certain vision of history, but also to make it something that was really part of people's everyday lives. And it looks at the way that actually society went along with it.
00:06:14
Speaker
in lots of ways. And one of the reasons why they did is because it appealed, because at its heart, there's a message about what it means to be Russian, which to be honest, after the fall of the Soviet Union was not, there was no clear answer to that question. And so after 2012 in particular, doing it for longer, but really intensive since 2012, it was a real effort to create this coherent narrative of why should Russia be? Is, you know, what makes Russia a nation? What makes them belong together?
00:06:42
Speaker
And a lot of that was focused around a very, around certain historical events, in particular what they call the Great Patriotic War. So the Soviet fight against Nazism from 1941 to 1945.
Cultural Justifications for War
00:06:57
Speaker
and the collapse of the Soviet Union and this playing on triumphs and traumas that people felt, you know, it was really effective and it was used to give people, I suppose, a sense of meaning and a sense of unifying narrative. And for that reason, it's very powerful. So I guess the big question in your book
00:07:21
Speaker
The big question is why aren't ordinary Russians more outraged by Putin's invasion of Ukraine? So I'll ask why. Partly for the reasons we've sort of started to discuss there because it fits within
00:07:41
Speaker
their understanding that they've had, you know, for eight years before the full scale invasion of what is happening in Ukraine. And it makes sense. So you started talking about propaganda and of course it is propaganda. But I think often people talking about disinformation, they like to find sort of, you know, troll factories and they like to add up how many words about this bioweapon pigeon or this, you know, whatever they're called militarized mosquitoes, I think is the latest one. But that doesn't really tell us a lot.
00:08:10
Speaker
That just tells us about one kind of drop in the ocean tale. What we need to look at much more is what's in popular culture and what are the core narratives because narratives aren't really about facts. They're about making meaning. And I think that's one of the areas where there's a real lack of understanding of why Russians justify, why ordinary Russians justify the war.
00:08:36
Speaker
And that's because the stories that the Kremlin tells, and it's not just the Kremlin, you know, also, you know, there are certain media actors, the media actors depend on advertising, people want to watch this for a certain, to a certain extent. It fits, it fits with what they want to hear, and it plays on their feelings of humiliation from the collapse of the Soviet Union, from when they couldn't feed their families, when they lost status, when they lost a whole ideological framework and way of seeing the world.
00:09:05
Speaker
And, you know, the 90s were a difficult time for Russia. And it also deals with that sense of triumph, that sense of, you know what, not only are Russians a nation, but they are really special because it was they who won the Great Patriotic War. And now look, you have countries like Ukraine or in their view, or the Baltic States or the West who are dismissing that or worse, trying to destroy the memory. And again, I mean, the war in Ukraine started in 2014.
00:09:34
Speaker
And how it was depicted was always as this is just like the Great Patriotic War. We, Russians, and who they saw as good Ukrainians, who supported Russia, must defend the memory of the Great Patriotic War, which those fascists, i.e. Ukrainians who wanted to live in a democratic state, you know, with some accountability for wild nepotism.
00:09:57
Speaker
They are actually just fascists who were backed by the West. They have no agency. The West has put Nazis in power. And for me, I mean, even when I speak to people, because of course, this is my second book, but in many ways it's the prequel towards my first book to my first book, because I wrote Memory Makers first. And in Russia's war, I look at why Russians support or justify or go along with the war, the big full scale war.
00:10:24
Speaker
In many ways, you just can't really separate them because the two books, to me, certainly, of course, I can't separate them. But I speak to people who don't support the war as well, Russians, and they will still say things like, they were idiots for letting fascists and Nazis take power.
Manipulation of Soviet History in Propaganda
00:10:45
Speaker
It's really, really very powerful. And it gives you lots of, it's almost like a menu and you pick the bits that allow you to come to terms with
00:10:55
Speaker
bluntly, the crimes, the awfulness, the horror that your country is committing, or to dismiss it completely.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, well, let's dive into some history behind, especially with Nazism. And then I want to kind of come back to how Russians feel today. You know, obviously Nazism is in all of the propaganda that the, I think that's fair to say in all the propaganda or all of the, first of all, I want to make sure I'm using the right term. Is it fair to say propaganda? Can we call it like the Russian?
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's propaganda. I think sometimes I avoid that word because it makes people think that then you don't have to take it seriously. That's certainly what I found before the full scale invasion, but ultimately it is propaganda.
00:11:43
Speaker
You know, I normally say narratives just because otherwise people think, well, propaganda, nobody believes in it. It's just what's said. And that's not true. Sad. Sure. That's an excellent point. Well, the Russian narrative is is often packed with references to Nazism.
00:11:58
Speaker
And you talked about winning the Great War, but maybe if you could just start from there with how at the time the Soviet Union has made history fit this struggle against Nazism and how that's being used today. Well, I think in many ways, it also comes back to how Russia today generally remembers the Soviet Union, which is in a really de-ideologized way. It celebrates the Soviet Union, not Lenin. Lenin's bad.
00:12:28
Speaker
celebrates the rest of it because it sees Soviet Union as a great power, as still containing that historic essence of Russia. And just like some of the SARS did as well during the Imperial period. But first of all, the Great Patriotic War is not well brought to. The Great Patriotic War is just focused on the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
00:12:55
Speaker
So 1941 to 1945. Exactly. And that's important because then you don't have to deal with the Molotov-Rippentrop Act, which is awkward to say the least for the narrative. Though they do address it sometimes, they find ways of justifying it. But this is a narrative where basically what you have when you strip it all back is the West invades Russia, because often the Soviet Union is conflated with just Russia, and Russia
00:13:23
Speaker
fights back and it has help, you know, from some of its, from some of the other national Soviet republics. And those people are good. But it also has sort of nationalists who betray, who betray Russia. It doesn't talk about its own collaborators, just about other peoples. And within this, there's a real focus. So you said earlier about how prominent the Nazi narrative is. And it's true, but that is mainly in propaganda for the West.
00:13:52
Speaker
It is still there in domestic propaganda, but it often will call Ukrainians Bandeirovsky. And this is a reference to a man called Stepan Bandeiro, who himself actually spent most of the Great Pejor Tovor in Auschwitz, but was the leader of a nationalist.
00:14:13
Speaker
of a particularly radical wing of the nationalists who some of whose followers took part in the Holocaust and in massacres against Poles who lived in Ukraine. And this has been a core element, not just since 2014 actually, but much sooner to dismiss Ukrainian identity as something that is just reduced to these particularly extreme nationalists
00:14:39
Speaker
who lived during a bluntly very horrific time following the Holodomor, following World War II on Ukraine, which was not like the World War II Britain or America experienced, and to reduce people who essentially really just want accountability or to take part in what they see as kind of European democratic values.
Post-1991 Russian National Identity
00:15:00
Speaker
to reduce them to make it as if there's something wrong, there's something diseased with Ukrainian identity is just extremist and neo-nationalist. And the only legitimate Ukrainian identity is that of people who understand they're just Russians, little brothers, and that they should be in unity and kind of subjugated really to Russian needs. And that's where this element is important, but a key role that's played here is so-called memory wars. So for example,
00:15:30
Speaker
the taking down of statues to, sometimes to Russian writers, sometimes to people who were Soviet war heroes, but also had careers after the, after 1945, you know, where maybe, for example, in Prague with Marshal Konev, where they took him down, not because he was a Soviet war hero, but because of his involvement in the Prague Spring, which to me seems entirely legitimate, but that's not how it's, you know, reflected back in, back in Russia,
00:15:58
Speaker
And there's this idea that Ukraine is trying to sort of destroy the memory of the Great Patriotic War, and that's just further proof. And it sort of makes sense when you come back to the de-ideologization of the Soviet Union, because really what you have is, if there's no essence where it's an anti-fascist struggle against Nazi Germany, really what Russia means when it says we need to restore
00:16:25
Speaker
the post world order, we need to restore the primacy of the memory of World War II, is it means it wants to go back to a Yalta world order. The world order decided at Yalta where essentially it controlled what happened in most of Eastern Europe. It had the right to sort of do what it wanted. So in a very weird roundabout, well, in a weird to Western audiences roundabout way, what you have is Nazis are simply people who do not like Russia.
00:16:55
Speaker
Nazis are people who do not want Russia to control Ukraine or the Baltic States or any other country because they are people who are challenging the post-World War II order that Russia won through the blood of its citizens liberating Europe. And actually, when you look at it that way, you can start to see, not that it's correct, it isn't, but you can start to see why it appeals to normal people because the memory of the Great Patriotic War, it touched an awful lot of people.
00:17:21
Speaker
I mean, proportionally more in Ukraine and Belarus, but still it touched an awful lot of Russians and it's very there. And as I was saying, and as I kind of detail in the book, the Kremlin has done a lot to make it in people's everyday life. So whether or not that's because your son goes to an after school camp where he recreates the battles, whether or not it's because your daughter goes to a summer camp where she learns how to conduct historical information campaigns to protect against those who would discredit
00:17:50
Speaker
the Russian narrative of World War II, whether or not it's the murals on your apartment block, all of these different ways, all of these different elements, they all contribute to making World War II, first of all, part of your everyday life, but also that sense that it's under attack. Your most sacred memory is under attack from the West, from Ukrainians who were supposed to be your brothers in their view.
00:18:18
Speaker
And it creates this sense of you are the victim and anything you are doing, you violently or aggressively, that some other people may see it. Well, they're wrong because actually what you're doing is you are defending not only yourself, but what is right, because who disagrees with defeating Nazi Germany, right?
Perception of Ukrainians in Russia
00:18:36
Speaker
You don't disagree. I don't disagree. So it's actually very clever and it works on that level. And I think people have been very dismissive of it because it's something that really resonates.
00:18:46
Speaker
Yeah, well, on those lines, I'm curious about how during the Soviet Union, how Ukrainians were perceived by Russians. Let's say in like 1950, if you were to ask a normal Russian, what do you think of Ukraine? What would this person most likely say?
00:19:11
Speaker
Let's go for later after Stalin instead. I'm going to skip forward a few years because then some interesting things happen that give us a bit more insight. But because they probably wouldn't have said anything, you know, particularly terrifying. They would have reported you. Right. Gathered around the dinner table. Yeah. Yeah. So after the the death of Stalin and of course, during Khrushchev gives the secret speech where essentially he denounces the the the cult of personality around Stalin.
00:19:41
Speaker
in 1956. But another part of that speech is he also sort of talks about the deportation of nations of different nationalities. And because this happened, for example, the Kalmyks who are a sort of Buddhist nation, they originally came with the Mongols. A few Kalmyks collaborated with the Nazis during the German occupation.
00:20:10
Speaker
of their region, and so the entire nation, including heroes of the Soviet Union, were deported and their autonomous republic, or their republic rather, was destroyed. And Khrushchev made a joke, he himself having many links, of course, and routes in Ukraine, that if we'd applied it equally, this rule would have had to deport half of Ukraine. And so there was always this sense that some Ukrainians had betrayed
00:20:40
Speaker
the Soviet Union, but of course it's problematic because what that forgets, because it forgets the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact, is that half of Ukraine was only bought into the Soviet Union after 1939. So of course they're not, I mean, I wouldn't use the word traitors about anybody anyway in this particular case, but they weren't really even sort of Soviet citizens and they did tend to have more national consciousness.
00:21:09
Speaker
And, you know, whilst some of the more extreme Ukrainian nationalists certainly did participate in the Holocaust and certainly committed grave, grave crimes that that's not representative of all of the Ukrainian nationalists. Many of them just fought against the Soviets. And I think after the Holodomor in which between four to eight million Ukrainians died, I think it's reasonable to understand why they may have resisted that rule. But what you have immediately is this sense of
00:21:37
Speaker
within Russian thinking that there are two Ukrainians. You have your bad Ukrainians who are nationalists. They speak Ukrainian. Maybe they wear vishivanki, like the sort of national embroidered, beautiful national embroidered shirts. They essentially embrace their Ukrainianness. And then you have good Ukrainians who are essentially little Russians. That's actually a word, Malarosyanya. And they understand, they speak Russian. Maybe they have a few funny words of dialect. Maybe they pronounce this letter a bit differently.
00:22:06
Speaker
But they understand that they're Russian and that's that. And this idea is, I mean, it always kind of existed, but it becomes quite embedded. And what you see is if we skip forward then to 1991, this comes up again. And within sort of Soviet Ukrainian press, as the Soviet Union is collapsing, this idea that Ukrainian, we like Ukraine, Ukrainians are our brothers, they're basically us.
00:22:34
Speaker
If they become sovereign, this is, if they become independent, this is just the victory of those mad Ukrainian nationalists. And you see it again in 2004 and you then of course see it again in 2014 and clearly we see it now. And so it's this idea that Ukraine has betrayed Russia and historically as well, because there's of course, the, as well, the battle of Poltava where Mazepa switches sides, who was the head of the sort of, who was the Hetman.
00:23:00
Speaker
and he, of the sort of Cossacks, and he switched sides stupidly for him as it turned out and supported King Charles of Sweden. And so this comes up a lot. And even now, I was just reading an article the other day in RT in Russian talking about Mazepa and that you have Mazepa's Ukraine versus, I can't remember, but it was some other sort of Ukrainian who was deemed appropriate. So most Russians, if they talk about Ukrainians,
00:23:28
Speaker
certainly before 2022, even though it was, you know, we, of course, we like Ukrainians, they're us, they're our family, you don't understand as a Westerner, you know, I have family here, you know, my granddad was from Ukraine, et cetera, but it's very complicated. In many ways, it reminds me, as somebody who has Irish family, but it's clearly English, it reminds me of the interlinkages between Ireland and England, but most English people understand that Irish people are not English.
00:23:56
Speaker
At least now we do, anyway. It took a while. Well, let's jump ahead a little bit to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Putin's Use of Historical Narratives
00:24:08
Speaker
And I'm curious about how the memory politics machine kind of gets going as it relates to Ukraine.
00:24:17
Speaker
So maybe you could just walk us through, like, for, you know, since 1991, how have feelings from Russia, the Russian government, how have things changed and how have they shaped history to fit a more these are Nazis type of narrative? Well, I think as well a key part, I think also another key part, bear in mind, is that nostalgia for the Soviet Union because they're very interlinked and this idea of kind of restoring.
00:24:46
Speaker
So in 1991, what you have is Yeltsin really trying to kind of create a post Soviet Russian identity where there really isn't one because, you know, Russia is is quite it's quite difficult to Russia has really been a nation state. There's the sort of famous quote that, you know, Britain has an empire or had Britain has an empire. Russia is an empire. And that sort of sums up sums it up. So it's it's it was quite difficult. But Yeltsin tried to
00:25:14
Speaker
almost externalized the Soviet so that Russia did not, you know, Russia was not equated with the Soviet Union. And he failed at that. He failed because people did still, you know, relate to the Soviet Union and in particular, you know, when it came to the Great Patriotic War.
00:25:36
Speaker
And so when Putin comes in, he almost immediately restores the Soviet national anthem that Yeltsin had got rid of, obviously with some new words, but essentially it's the same thing. And certainly from 2005 as well, he starts to really go quite heavy on the Victory Day Parade, which is celebrated on 9th of May, but under Putin, actually to a certain extent under Yeltsin as well, but less so, you know, become a really big thing. And you know, George Bush is there, Tony Blair is there, which, you know, fills in
00:26:06
Speaker
insane to think of now, you know, UK, but watching Russian tanks on display. But there they were. And then and so it's already kind of getting started. And then in 2008, under Dmitry Medvedev, when he became president, you know, before before he drank so much as he does now, perhaps he, you know, there was a there was a commission set up against the falsification of history.
00:26:29
Speaker
And this is sparked by riots in Tallinn in 2007 by Russians, by Russian speakers in Estonia, because they were upset that the monument was going to be, there's a monument to this unknown Soviet soldier, which was not popular to put it mildly among Estonians, that they wanted the city authorities were moving to a local cemetery. You know, so it wouldn't be in the center of the city, but it's not like they were going to destroy it or something.
00:26:57
Speaker
And there were riots, there were cyber attacks, which is why now Estonia is like a crazy cyber powerhouse within this. Yeah, it's really great as cyber security. I didn't, I didn't, I didn't realize that. So it's all there. And then when Putin comes back in in 2012, of course, he's very unnerved because there are a lot of protests against
00:27:19
Speaker
falsified elections to the Duma, to the Russian parliament, but also falsified presidential elections. And so what we see then is he needs more legitimacy and the economic legitimacy that he previously had, because things were a lot better under him than they were in the 90s, that's running out because the economy isn't doing well. So it turns more to a sort of, well, I'm going to restore Russian great power. And of course, the pinnacle of this is Crimea.
00:27:44
Speaker
annexation of Crimea. I was in Russia, I lived in Russia during this sort of whole period and there were so many parties just like Krim Nash, like Crimea's hours, Crimea's hours, just three days of just absolute just getting drunk to be honest and people yeah and there was also a real popular demand for the annexation of Donetsk and Luhansk as well at that time but for different reasons the Russian government decided it wasn't in their interest
00:28:11
Speaker
Is this mostly mostly staged or are poor people at the time? It's completely including among people who, let's say my friends who sort of from the gay community who did not like Putin, but they were like, historical justice has been restored. Crimea is Russian. It should be ours. And this issue comes up as well in the 90s, but it's sort of resolved in different ways. But, you know, and bluntly, I mean, the people of Crimea, they did they did vote to be part of an independent Ukraine.
00:28:41
Speaker
So as well, I think sometimes it's complicated.
Complexities of Ukrainian Identity
00:28:45
Speaker
Is there a real difference in Ukraine between people who are in the West and people who are in the East? It sounds like no. Certainly not now.
00:28:56
Speaker
I think the differences have been overstated anyway. I think the problem is, is people often think, oh, Russian speakers versus Ukrainian speakers. And it's really, the minute somebody brings that up, I know that they don't know anything about Ukraine. Because for example, I just use an anecdote from yesterday. So I was at a barbecue with people who are ethnic Russians. Their first languages, you know, they are Russian in that sense. And they all see themselves still as ethnic Russians.
00:29:26
Speaker
absolutely hate the Russian Federation. They have, you know, four, you know, some of them are of different ages, so it's different things that's sort of appropriate. But, you know, they've been, some of them had been at the front line fighting the idea that they would become part of the Russian Federation, it was completely just despicable to them. It was horrific. And the idea that Russian Federation that people from Russia would come and try to enforce
00:29:51
Speaker
their way of life or that everybody speaks Russian on them. It was insane. And, you know, they'd spoken to many of their relatives back in Russia and said, what on, you know, on the 24th of February, 25th of February, what are you doing? And they said, oh, well, don't worry, just wait a week. Sit there quietly, wait a week and you'll be liberated. It's like, liberated from who? I'm Russian. I speak Russian. I don't have any problem with that. You know, and these people often lived, you know, in the West, not far, far West, but let's say like, you know, like
00:30:20
Speaker
Rivne or Chtome, these sorts of areas. And, you know, it's like, well, who are you liberating? Oh, the Nazis. Like, what Nazis are you talking about? You know, then I'm a Nazi if I, because I want to live just in Ukraine, just to live my life. Who, who are we? And that's the big thing. I mean, if, if it was an issue of liberating Russian speakers, Kharkiv city is probably 99% Russian speaking. It's, you know, and well, they fought off the Russians.
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah, well was it so it sounds like then maybe and perhaps this is because of memory politics that everybody in the world was surprised about the invasion except for Russians.
00:31:03
Speaker
I mean, first, do you think that's a fair statement? And if it's not maybe that extreme, then why, you know, talk about some of the ways maybe that Russians might not have been surprised as opposed to Ukrainians. I think that Russians were surprised, definitely. I think they were in shock, to be honest. And there was not the elation that you saw in 2014 of like, yeah, we've got Crimea back. It was different. People worried. But
00:31:27
Speaker
There also weren't that many, there were some very, very brave people, but, you know, the protest levels were not high compared to previous protests, let's say a year before when we can kind of compare the repressive sort of measures, you know, that exists in Russia. But the issue is, is that it sort of made sense to people because it made sense of everything they've been learning sort of through this kind of these historical narratives that were used to kind of
00:31:56
Speaker
as an analogy, as the only way to understand the present, which was that Russia used to be great until the West destroyed it. It put Nazis in power in Ukraine as part of destroying Russia because Ukraine is part of Russia. It's rightfully that ours, Russian. And so Putin
00:32:17
Speaker
He took Russia and he got Russia up off its knees. That's a very popular phrase. He got Russia up off its knees after the West humiliated it, started doing, you know, colour revolutions, imposing its will on Russia's, you know, spheres of interest, Russia's, you know, innate natural allies. And now we are restoring justice, not restoring the full Soviet Union. Nobody wants Tajikistan.
00:32:40
Speaker
to put it bluntly, but restoring that core of what they see as historic Russia. So basically the ideal, I guess, would be like a unified kind of federation between Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, or at least most of central and eastern Ukraine. And normally they argue that Lviv and those places, they can just go to Poland, which is good of them. So,
00:33:07
Speaker
It's that idea of restoration, because there's no vision for the future in Russia.
Russian Media and Public Justifications for War
00:33:11
Speaker
So there's just a vision of restoring the past and certain elements of the past that were unfairly taken. And that's kind of the best it can get, which is why the historical narratives are so important, because it's about looking through the past, seeing where things went wrong, and then almost fixing them. And it's actually a very popular book genre as well in Russia, which is called Papadnichistva.
00:33:34
Speaker
And these books are essentially about going back into the past and fixing some kind of historical moment. You know, whether or not it's going back into World War II, but you go back and you've got a super weapon and then you're able to kill Hitler or you're able to stop all the losses of the Soviet Union. And I mean, they're really very popular. And it's that sense that something went wrong and we need to kind of go back and fix it and we need to relive it and get back to where we should be, what's rightfully ours.
00:34:03
Speaker
Do you think most Russians believe that – do you think they drink their own Kool-Aid, I guess, if you want to call it that way? Do most people have a grounded in reality kind of understanding of what's going on in Ukraine? Or do you think that the media is so controlled that if you repeat something enough times, then it becomes true in mind?
00:34:25
Speaker
Are most people, do you think, in their living rooms, like, yeah, that's what they're saying on TV, but there's no way that that's true? Or do you think most people actually believe a lot of these narratives? I think people, I think the question of belief or not belief is always difficult for an analyst. I think what's more important is that these narratives resonate. They make sense in a way that, for example, if I were to turn up in Moscow tomorrow, or let's say somewhere else like Baronezh, or somewhere more regional, and say,
00:34:55
Speaker
Oh, you guys, you know, you've been doing all these terrible things in Ukraine. Have you not thought like, wouldn't democracy be great? And, you know, like having a fairer form of capitalism, that would just be, it would become, no, it would have no resonance with people's life experience, right? I mean, that would be a good thing to turn up and say in like Britain or somewhere. But I do want to make one point which is that, yes, I think that many people do believe those core, those core narratives, not necessarily because they're mobilizing,
00:35:22
Speaker
but because it gives them an excuse or a justification because bluntly, if you did know or fought, let's say you just as a human being, somebody tells you, right, your country, where it's pretty difficult and scary, right, to protest or to kind of publicly go against. Your country is committing heinous war crimes. And you hear that and you kind of feel that probably that's true. You know, in that sense, and you hear something, you don't want it to be true, but you know it's true.
00:35:50
Speaker
At the same point, pretty much all of the media and everyone around you is either completely silent about the war crimes at best or saying it's a lie. You know, people are just trying to pin it on Russia like they always do. They've always hated us. At that point where you kind of need to decide which narrative path to take, it's pretty clear to understand why you would take, you know, the second one, because what are you going to do with that knowledge, the knowledge that your country is committing war crimes in Ukraine? Are you a hero? Are you going to go? And we've seen Russians who are.
00:36:21
Speaker
Most people aren't heroes in any country. In Ukraine, actually, most people are heroes, but in most countries, people are not. And okay, you could just sit with that knowledge. That's very difficult on a cognitive, psychological level to just sit there with that knowledge and go along with, oh, yeah, let's send this and that to Russian soldiers in Ukraine. So there's that kind of pressure and also the kind of corrosive nature of fear, which I think it adds to.
00:36:51
Speaker
In terms of the control of the media, I just want to pick up on that quickly, because yes, the television is very controlled, but as I referenced earlier, apart from one channel, Rasi Adim, which is state-owned, the channels rely on advertising revenue. When the propaganda stopped, when people stopped watching the propaganda around September, October last year, like the political discussion shows, they replaced it. They replaced it with TV series.
00:37:14
Speaker
and the amount of propaganda on the daily TV schedules also went down. People stopped watching. Why did people stop watching those shows? Because it was too much. They just got bored of it. And then another point to note is that 40% of Russians, so I guess about 55, 60 million Russians every single day use Telegram. Telegram is like a kind of news app as well as a messaging app. And on Telegram, you can access anything you like.
00:37:41
Speaker
any information you like. And yet of the 30 most popular political channels, 24 are pro-war. So the issue isn't if only Russians knew the truth. The issue is that Russians, for different reasons, not because they're like inherently or innately bad people, but for many different complex reasons, do not want to hear that truth. They want to hear something else. And that's something that I think, you know, policymakers need to battle with because this is not, and that's why I call this the book, sort of the first
00:38:11
Speaker
first book, Russia's War, not because I'm saying all Russians are guilty, I don't believe that. I think you're guilty for what you do as an individual, but because this is not a case where you get rid of Putin and then everyone's like, yay, maybe we can join the European Union. That's not going to happen.
Education and Patriotic Indoctrination in Russia
00:38:29
Speaker
Well, I'm curious about specifically in schools right now. How is history being taught in schools right now and how is that being used to further the war effort?
00:38:39
Speaker
I mean, scores is actually quite an interesting one, where it goes against what you would think would be happening. So because in scores, they are bringing in more lessons, it's like, everything about the most important is like this new lesson, it's not a great translation. And there they explain why this
00:39:02
Speaker
so-called special military operation, as they call it, is happening, the historical reasons for it, et cetera, et cetera. There are also efforts to introduce a unified historical textbook, you know, just one textbook where you would teach. However, they've been saying they're going to do that since 2008, and they haven't quite done that yet. And so what you have are several textbooks that are used in Russian schools. You can use kind of different ones. It's the same issue in the UK. I don't know about the US education system, but they're different ones. And look, none of them kind of
00:39:32
Speaker
in any way like massively challenging the official narrative, but they kind of agree with it and disagree with it in different ways. So maybe they focus less on the Gulag, you know, or maybe they focus a little bit more on it. But so there is difference and it's interesting because there was a recent, there's a recent poll done. Maybe it was done just before the war actually, the full-scale invasion.
00:39:58
Speaker
And it showed that Russians very much support the government sort of patriotic history line, but they don't feel that it should be taught in schools or not as many feel that it should be taught in schools in that way. They do feel there should be a bit more critical engagement with history because that's like an academic setting. And broadly, the government has kind of gone, gone along with that. Like I say, it does appear to be changing. But the interesting thing is, whilst that's true for schools, it's kind of a little bit more nuanced picture.
00:40:26
Speaker
When you look at extracurricular activities, and many, many Russian children do extracurricular activities, for example, Yoon Armia, Young Army, where you have a million young Russians, and then it used to be for sort of slightly older ages, and now it starts from, I guess, the equivalent of like first grade in the US, they've now expanded it. And that mean the history they learned there, I mean, these are essentially fascistic organizations.
00:40:50
Speaker
They are about mobilizing children, about bringing them up on these kind of historical grievances and threats. You also have military history clubs where children go and they wear the uniforms of the Red Army soldiers. They bring all of this equipment out from museums and then they make them go on marches like their forefathers went on marches. And there are many, many sort of extracurricular projects, including
00:41:18
Speaker
as well. I mean, there's a lot of films like blockbuster films about history because bluntly, most people in most countries learn more about history from TV series and films and maybe kind of, you know, different elements like this than they do from their history textbook. And I think the Kremlin has understood that. So it doesn't, you know, the history textbooks, they're almost kind of not the place to look because they give us a bit of information. What's more interesting are the different kind of
00:41:48
Speaker
these sort of multimedia exhibitions about history, these kind of like flash mobs about this or that, you know, these afterschool clubs that are really often quite fun. You know, people have like little uniforms, their summer camps, you know, these are bonding memories for people that they're going to grow up and remember when they all recreated, I don't know, like, you know, the battle of wherever. And I think, I think, again, like this sort of popular culture element, it's really hard to measure, right, which is often why people don't want to talk about it.
00:42:18
Speaker
But it's there, it's been there since 2012, especially since 2014. There was a directive from Putin at a meeting in 2012 to create living forms of patriotism when you're speaking to youth organizations like the heads of different youth organizations. And then they've gone off and they've done it. And these have been around for a while. And I think it's gonna be really hard to dislodge because they're now part of people's childhood. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting that you bring that up. I interviewed an author
00:42:49
Speaker
a while ago and she wrote a book. Now I know it's like the Nazi comparisons, Nazi Germany is a different time than we're in now and that's important to recognize. She wrote a book about her father who was forced to be a soldier in Hitler's army. He was in Hitler Youth. And her book, she talks about how her father starting in grade school in the 1930s,
00:43:17
Speaker
There was, I forget the exact name of the organization. I don't think it was actually the Hitler Youth. It was like a precursor to that. But it was basically just like Boy Scouts, where you would go, you would build like campfires, you would go do outdoor adventure stuff, except it was also kind of tinged with, you know, leaders in these groups who are like, okay, now this is all possible because of like, because Hitler, the leader of our country has like made us all great and empowered us to, to, you know, live on the land and stuff like that.
00:43:48
Speaker
And I'm, as you're talking, I'm reminded of that conversation I had because the similarities are really striking. I agree. And I think it's that really, it's okay. This is not like a sentence I say all the time, or maybe that people hear all the time, but I speak.
Comparing Historical Narratives Across Nations
00:44:02
Speaker
I was speaking to Himmler's great niece a couple of months ago. Yes, never heard that. No. And she was saying about how, because you're talking about sort of my book and obviously, you know, there are similarities, you know, it's not clearly, it's a problematic analogy on many levels, but she was talking about how she finds it really fascinating because of course everybody wants to ask about her great uncle, but to her the more, you know, Heinrich, obviously Heinrich Himmler.
00:44:30
Speaker
But to her, the person who's more interesting is her nun, who actually, you know, at home was, sorry, her great, sorry, her great aunt. Because at home, she was quite a liberal person in terms of how she brought up her kids, you know, it was kind of like easygoing. She didn't ever really talk about all of these elements. And yet she was married to Heinrich Himmler. And it was just that element of like, what happens to ordinary people? And I think, you know, that's,
00:44:56
Speaker
We often like to almost like pathologize certain things and the idea that if you don't make them kind of totally pathological, like what happened to the German people and what differently, but, you know, maybe happened to Japanese people or what happened to, I mean, kind of what happened to those processes and how they came to justify such horrors.
00:45:17
Speaker
And similarly, what's happening to Russia, there's an attempt to be like, oh, well, that's there's something completely wrong with them. And they're not like human beings. But that's, that's not, you know, that's not how we would act. That's not how, you know, this is something specific to their culture. You know, people try to find all these kind of historical determinism, which makes me laugh because it's quite similar to Putin, you know, trying to find this historical essence.
00:45:40
Speaker
But of course, I mean, it's broadly nonsense, that approach, in the sense that, yes, there are clearly sociocultural kind of impacts that certain histories and learn behaviours have. But broadly, I mean, when I was looking at memory, when I was writing Memory Makers, I'm sorry, but I saw many, many similar patterns in Britain, in the US, pretty much in every single country. It was just the extremity. And that's not to dismiss the importance of something
00:46:10
Speaker
of the extremity, but you see a lot of these practices everywhere. And I understand why people don't want to see themselves in Russians, particularly right now, but I kind of think we have to.
00:46:24
Speaker
because I'm always not going to understand how they got there. You know, people say to me like, oh, how do people, you know, believe, you know, oh, all of this like World War Two stuff, do they believe it? And I think, let's say Britain says it's been like, okay, but quite a lot of Britons, you know, let's say during Brexit or leaving the European Union, reacted quite angrily when let's say Germans would criticise them, because they would say things like, oh, well, my
00:46:48
Speaker
you know, my grandfather never gave in to the Germans. And it's pretty obvious what they're referencing. They're obviously referencing World War II. You know, we're like, oh, well, we stood alone in 1940. We can stand alone again and all of this. And it resonated with people. It doesn't matter whether or not the history, that interpretation of history is a fair one. It doesn't matter whether or not it's appropriate to apply it as an analogy. I mean, maybe it does, but what's interesting to me is that it resonated with people and it kind of confirmed them in a certain political view.
00:47:17
Speaker
I'm so glad actually you brought that up because I thought a lot reading your book. So I grew up in a very conservative small town in America during the Iraq war invasion. And again, these are similarities. It's not the same situation, but just thinking about how when I was growing up, people were
00:47:44
Speaker
normal people who are like, yeah, like I'm a patriot, so I support our troops and I support them being over there and I want them to be protected. But it's a very kind of murky thing because does that mean that they believe in what we were doing? So I thought a lot about that actually when I was reading your book. I think it's really important because it's that sense of my country rights are wrong a lot. I think it makes sense to a lot of people and perhaps I think Americans, you know, or maybe
00:48:12
Speaker
Things are changing now in terms of the political landscape, but Americans, you know, generally are quite patriotic. I think the idea of sort of my country right or wrong, that's something that resonates there. And I mean, another one is in Russia is sort of, well, now we've started, we have to finish. It's a sense of, look, I wouldn't have started this war, but since we started it, if we don't finish, if we don't win, then we'll have to pay reparations, you know, like we'll be seen as kind of, we'll be stigmatized, you know, it will be a nightmare.
Patriotic Narratives and State Stability
00:48:39
Speaker
you know, even from people who maybe didn't support the invasion at first, they kind of now are like, well, I'm Russian, I'm stuck with this country, it's my country, and so what happens? But yeah, and also that sense of, I mean, I've spoken particularly with some more prominent analysts where you can see that they know that the invasion is just a total disaster for their country's national interest, for Russia's national interest, but they kind of, it's also a way of allowing yourself not to think through those hard questions, right?
00:49:09
Speaker
that are big questions of, okay, like, should my country be doing this? How could I be using my platform or, you know, my own kind of, my individual responsibility to stop them doing this? Because you just say, do you know what, my country's at war, I'm a patriot, I support my country. You almost kind of allow yourself the right to not ask these questions. But again, I mean, as
00:49:32
Speaker
As disastrous and as wrong as I think the Iraq War was, I don't think that there is a comparison with what's happening now beyond some of the attitudes and some of the ways that people's minds work.
00:49:47
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. A question I've actually got for you that's a little bit more recent in the news with Russian Ukraine is the Progosion mutiny. I listened to the speech that Vladimir Putin gave, I think he gave too, but the first one he gave. We've been talking a lot about World War II, but I thought it was very curious that he actually invoked World War I in his speech. Yes, in 1917.
00:50:14
Speaker
Yes. And I'm curious, as somebody who has written a book about politics of the past, first, what is the Russian view of World War I now? And how true is what Putin was saying? Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on his reference in that speech.
00:50:35
Speaker
Sure. So World War One is very interesting because generally it's been completely forgotten because it comes, you know, like you have the revolutions in 1917, and then you have like this horrific civil war that lasts until sort of nice 21, nice 22. So it's often kind of submerged just within all of that. And when Putin came to power, one of the first things he tried to do was almost to bring together like the
00:51:01
Speaker
the whites and the reds, if you can call it that. So he went and he unified the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, set up by white emigres, so those who fought against the communists, and he unified it with the Russian Orthodox Church at home. And that was a real priority for him. And in 2012, he gave this speech about how
00:51:22
Speaker
Russia is a country that needs a lot of cultural therapy where the wounds of the civil war still loom large. So on one level, this is something that matters to him, this idea of kind of being the unifier of the divisions within Russia. But those references to the civil war, to World War I as well, and to 1917, they also come back to this point where Russia is essentially not its people, it's its state. And the state must be protected. The people protect the state, right? Not the other way around.
00:51:53
Speaker
And that's an important kind of political lens, but also, and this is where this is more my interpretation, my kind of analysis of it based on reading a lot of these historical texts and speeches over the years. The reference is to 1917. They were also designed to play on Russian fear of state collapse because Russians had, in the last century, Russian state collapsed three times. That's a lot of times for the state to collapse. And there's a real fear.
00:52:21
Speaker
So it's like, oh, just at least don't let it be worse. And that's a real like Trump card that Putin has. Because first of all, I found it really weird. He was saying these things because normally he says, oh, look, you have stability with me. So I was like, why is he bringing up 1917? Because I mean, the Wagner threat, it wasn't as serious as like 1917, right? Or times of troubles, you know, when the Poles invaded, you know, in sort of the 1600s.
00:52:47
Speaker
But actually, the more I think about it, the more it really does make sense because he's invoking that fear in the same way that he invokes certain traumas like of the 1990s of the Soviet collapse, as this is what happens if you don't support me, if you don't support the state. And that is a very powerful emotion because most people just don't want it to get worse.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah, and, well, I wonder, you know, for, I actually read before our interview, a piece, an interview you did with CNN, talking about the mutiny.
00:53:23
Speaker
Since it just happened, I'm curious, how do you think things, we just talked about World War I, but post this mutiny, how do you think memory politics are going to change in Russia? Do you think World War I is going to get invoked more often? Do you think that history might be looked at differently because now people are rising up against, well, if you want to call them people.
00:53:49
Speaker
I mean, they are people, but what I'm saying is like there's not like, you know, there's not like a popular movement. It seems like there's not a popular movement rising up right now against Putin. There is the leader of a mercenary group. But how do you think things are going to change in Russia after this point?
00:54:11
Speaker
I'd be surprised if they change dramatically because I think pretty much all of Putin's history of politics and use of history comes down to three things, which is the Russian state must be strong. Russia is a great power, you know, with this role like in the world, you know, to project its power. And Russia has a separate kind of civilizational path from that of the West.
00:54:34
Speaker
So I think those core points, when you kind of boil them all down, will still be there, but I think we'll increasingly see much more focus on state collapse and on the threat of kind of historic state collapses and why Putin is such a great leader, because unlike Nicholas II or unlike Gorbachev or whoever, he won't allow that to happen.
Media Portrayals of Leadership
00:54:52
Speaker
And we're already starting to see that narrative emerge, like on the Sunday talk shows, for example, and the news discussion shows that
00:55:00
Speaker
you know, if Putin had been there in 1917, then none of this would have happened. So again, that kind of that invocation of trauma to suggest that Putin is almost healing it.
00:55:11
Speaker
I think... Is that generally how television programs speak about Vladimir Putin as kind of the fixer of all things? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes. It's funny just because it's slightly off topic, but it's just because I'm in Kiev and I used to travel between Moscow and Kiev quite a fair bit, often by a Minsk, right? Because you couldn't fly directly after 2014.
00:55:35
Speaker
And I remember, like, I would obviously watch Russian TV in Russia, watch Ukrainian TV, you know, in Kiev. I remember coming back to Kiev from Moscow, and I'd so used to how Russian TV spoke about the president, you know, in these kind of, like, these tones, like his absolute Saar, and, you know, everything's like, Putin did this for the people, you know, Putin has allowed this time, thanks to Putin we got XYZ, you know, all of this.
00:56:00
Speaker
I came back to Kiev, I can't see either, some political satire as Poroshenko's president, and they had a picture of Poroshenko's head on some kind of mad dog, and they were completely satirizing him. And I was really shocked.
Jade's Research and Future Projects
00:56:12
Speaker
I was like, oh, wow, you can speak about your president in that way. And I was like, this is good. This is amazing. That's how you should be able to speak. That says a lot about not just your attitude towards power, but also your attitude towards yourself as a citizen.
00:56:27
Speaker
And yeah, to me that kind of crystallized differences that I'd already noted, but you know, really. Yeah. Well, with, with Memory Makers, what are you hoping that readers take away after reading Memory Makers? I think there are a couple of points. One of which we kind of already touched upon, which is that, okay, maybe three points. So the first one we've already touched upon, which is that like Russia, this isn't something pathological about Russia. This is something that happens in all countries.
00:56:55
Speaker
and unfortunately is an increasing tendency towards this sort of historical narcissism. And we should look at Russia as an example of where it leads. If you start to mistake your identity.
00:57:06
Speaker
with a certain view of history and restoring that kind of historical grievance because it doesn't need anywhere happy. Secondly, I would say that it matters. This is not just kind of some propaganda line, as many people used to try to convince me when I was doing my PhD on it. And I was like, no, you don't understand, like this resonates, this works for people. And I think that that kind of sort of historic mindedness in the same way that we study kind of other people, other countries, sorry, doctrines,
00:57:36
Speaker
I think we need to study other countries' understandings of the past, particularly past wars and past events, you know, much more in order to understand how they view things because, you know, World War II is not the great patriotic war.
00:57:48
Speaker
the collapse of the Soviet Union is not that in Russia. Instead, it's when America destroyed the Soviet Union. And that's important in terms of how they then formulate their relations, their view of the world. And then thirdly, I think, and maybe this is a slightly more academic point to please forgive me, but I think this argument I make around cultural consciousness, that sense that Russia has this unique access to historical truth because it's more in touch with its traditions, with its kind of innate values and
00:58:18
Speaker
And with its history, it pays more attention to its history, unlike the kind of godless West, which has been culturally colonized by, and this is, I mean, I'm quoting the national security strategy from 2021. So this isn't some kind of niche media thing, culturally colonized by America and is now trying to destroy Russian culture. Because I think that narrative, I think that narrative has, or that way of viewing the world, I think it has legs to be honest with you. And I think it could be appealing beyond, well, I think it is appealing beyond just Russia.
00:58:49
Speaker
So again, I think not seeing this as Russia is the extreme example from which we should learn. And I guess I suppose in an era of kind of identity politics is perhaps inevitable that the history would start to take on this kind of ideological role almost. Yeah. Well, Jade, this has been such a fantastic interview.
00:59:17
Speaker
I've learned so much. I hope everybody else learned so much. What are you working on next? You seem to have a pretty prolific output here. What's around the corner for you in terms of your writing? I mean, I think it's just because I always kind of worked on this and then everybody was like, why are you working on something so niche? And then obviously in 2022, people were like, oh, okay, it's not niche. I was like, yeah, I did.
00:59:46
Speaker
I mean, it's a tragedy, I think, when one's research becomes this relevant, unfortunately. But in terms of next, at the moment, I'm doing a six year research project on Russia's use of history in its foreign policy narratives towards, you know, countries in like Africa, countries in Europe, so not towards those countries who used to be part of the Soviet Union. And I'm also working on a book about
01:00:06
Speaker
Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm not allowed to say. Oh, okay. Well, we can, we can keep it as a cliffhanger for, um, uh, for, for the audience. Um, well, if folks want to follow you, if they want to stay in touch with your work, uh, are you on social media? How can people stay in touch with what you're doing? Yeah, I have Twitter. It's app. If Twitter still exists by the time this comes out, it's app Dr. Jade McGlynn. So all one word. Wonderful.
01:00:35
Speaker
Well, Jade McGlynn, Memory Makers of the Politics of the Past in Putin's Russia, go buy a copy, go check it out from your library. What a fascinating book. And Jade, thank you so much. Thank you.