On May 18th, as part of an open seminar, the Department of History hosted a lecture by Georgii Kasyanov. Kasyanov is a professor of history at Kyiv Mohyla Academy, head of the Department of Modern History at the Institute of History of Ukraine at the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, and president of the International Association for the Humanities.
The lecture was devoted to the politics of history—the utilitarian use of history (historical memory, in particular) for political interests, in juridical practice, lawmaking, and domestic and foreign policy. The aim of historical politics is to promote and impose a particular vision (interpretation) of the past on society in the interests of a politically active group interested in maintaining, redistributing, or seizing power. Kasyanov has studied this topic for more than ten years, and is preparing to publish a comparative monograph on the historical politics of Russia and Ukraine. The manipulation of the past has a long history, and the nationalist epoch of the 19th century provides the first examples of historical politics. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, however, historical politics acquired a number of nuances making its current state radically different from prior experience. The study of the representations of the past has intensified in relationship to events of recent years. Thus, the use of symbols of Ukrainian nationalism on one side of the Donbass conflict and Soviet collective memory on the other influenced the choice of path to violent confrontation and the willingness of participants on both sides to kill and die for certain symbols and identities. Kasyanov uses Eric Hobsbawm’s term “the age of extremes” in relation to post-Soviet space, when the functioning of historical politics is fraught with danger.
The number of subjects of historical politics (politically active groups) is limited when the involvement of all of society is being an object. Their interaction is not fixed, but rather presents itself as an action leading to the achievement of political history’s previously mentioned goal—access to power. Kasyanov underpins his thesis with the words of Jacques Le Goff: “Whoever controls memory controls power.”
To understand the importance of historical politics over the last thirty years, we should understand the contexts in which it has developed.
First of all, there has been a reinvention of national identities due to cultural globalization. One part of the world has turned to the principles of classical ethnic nationalism thus opposing to the aggression of global, transnational cultural forms.
Secondly, the nationalisms of various ethnicities compete against one another, appealing to the protection of their own identities and confronting the nationalisms of their neighbors (i.e. Russia vs. Ukraine, Armenia vs. Azerbaijan, the Baltic states vs. Russia).
Thirdly, nationalism in the former Soviet territories is associated with a real or imagined struggle against communism. Similar processes took place in Eastern Europe. For the countries that constituted the “Eastern bloc” prior to 1991, the metaphor of the “return of kidnapped Europe” (Milan Kundera’s phrase) was important in relationship to their communist heritage. Certain segments of the elite of former Soviet republics use elements of Soviet historical memory for their own positioning. According to Kasyanov, communism and nationalism are alike in terms of creating historical schemes: both worldviews are teleological and include the idea of determinism. They understand conflicts (between classes or nationality) as the driving forces of history. The transformation of the communist elite into a nationalist elite did not present a difficulty for them.
Fourthly, the collapse of communism as a system has led to the disappearance of a bipolar world. Different centers arose aspiring to fill the vacuum left by the empty “pole,” including its relationship to the past.
The expansion of the European Union in the east in 2004, 2007 and 2013 resulted in underlying its new members’ belonging to a conditional west: the words “Eastern Europe” were replaced with other geographical definitions such as “Balkan.” For countries located between Russia and the European Union, a crisis of identity arose—an “inferiority complex” before “old” Europe. Historical arguments put forth by countries in this region within the framework of historical politics are reduced to compensatory (explaining a position perceived as backwardness) and affirmative (evidence of commonality with a new unified Europe). Hence Ukraine calls itself the “bloody land” because it was occupied by two totalitarian regimes during the Second World War, but also draws parallels between its own “thousand-year” history and European history.
The accessibility of new media and increased possibilities for disseminating information has made information wars more intense. Beginning from 2007, Russia and Ukraine have been struggling for media space, creating a virtual reality through the introduction of third-order simulacra (Jean Baudrillard’s term): phenomena which images are first constructed and then embodied in the form of events that take place at the behest of the perceived simulacrum’s creators.
It’s interesting that if in Russia in the early 2000s there was no change to the ruling elite but rather to historical politics, then in Ukraine power has been held in turn by several groups representing different interests, but the general course of historical politics has remained the same. The professional community of historians also has influence over this process. New to this area of study is the participation of NGOs in historical politics: “The Association of Researchers of Holodomor and Genocide” conducted research of the events of the 1930s-1940s in Soviet Ukraine and introduced the concept of “Holodomor” into political and legal discourse.
The practices of historical memory in Ukraine have endured change. Hence the possibility for the transformation of places of memory: a combination of national and Soviet discourses in the Museum of the Great Patriotic War in Kiev, the replacement of Lenin’s monuments with those of Bandera, or their painting in yellow and blue, the opening of state-funded museums of “Soviet occupation.” Media campaigns are carried out with the goal of influencing people’s consciousness in order to achieve certain reactions (including active movements). Illegal and legal regulation of the situation is closely linked to historical politics: the adoption of law on de-Sovietization occurred after mass dismantling of Lenin’s monuments by Maidan supporters (“Leninfall”).
The historical-political discourses of the parties leading the information war use one and the same thesis, but with opposite assessments. A combination of increased confrontation on one issue and arriving at a consensus on others is important if societal conflict goes too far. Thus the governments of Poland and Ukraine were forced to negotiate and formulate common opinion on the question of their relationship to the tragic massacre in Volyn in order to keep confrontation at the level of debate among radical nationalists.
Russia and Ukraine’s conduct of an information war since 2007 has resulted in real military clashes in the Donbass after the “revolution of dignity.” The image of the future war was created in the “virtual reality” of both countries and embodied by partisans in conflict—Ukrainian authorities and unrecognized republics—both in the form of action and at the level of the symbols attached to them.
Mikhail Pitatelev
