War of Memory: How the Cult of World War II Fuels Putin's Imperial Ambitions

This contradictory eclectic combination, which Vladimir Putin uses to explain his invasion of Ukraine to both the Russian people and the outside world, for example in the infamous interview with Tucker Carlson, is far from historically accurate. However, the Russian authorities probably consider it sufficient for external and internal mobilisation.

One of the central places in this mythology is occupied by Victory Day. In 2025, a parade in Moscow timed to coincide with this day will be attended by some foreign leaders, thus legitimising the Kremlin's political myth-making and indirectly supporting its aggression against Ukraine.

On the eve of the 80th anniversary of the victories over Nazi Germany, Socportal publishes an article about the origins of the modern Russian imperial ideology and its manifestation in the theme of the "Great Victory".

Why are the Russian authorities obsessed with Ukraine? Two Hundred Years of the Myth of the Triune Nation

In order to understand the foundations of the modern Russian elite's worldview, it is necessary to look to the origins of imperial ideology, which dates back to the 19th century, says Hanna Perekhoda, a researcher at the University of Lausanne who specialises in the topic of nationalism in the context of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.

According to her, the main narrative that the Russian authorities propagate today about Ukraine boils down to three main theses: Ukrainians are an integral part of the Russian nation; Ukrainian identity was artificially created by Russia's Western enemies; their ultimate goal is to “collapse” Russia and prevent it from regaining its proper place among the great imperial states.

In the world picture of the modern Russian elite, only great states have full sovereignty, and in order to confirm this status, Russia must annex Ukraine. The loss of this status means the loss of sovereignty, and eventually of existence itself, because the international order is perceived as a zero-sum game, Hanna notes.

But why does Ukraine occupy such a central place in this worldview? According to the researcher, the Russian Empire entered the circle of great European states rather late - only in the XVIII century, when Europe after the French Revolution was already embracing the ideas of popular sovereignty, and monarchies needed to modernise their political system to retain power.

In maritime empires such as France or Britain, the geographical and symbolic distance between the metropolis and the colonies made it possible to gradually grant political rights to the inhabitants of the metropolis without immediately undermining imperial domination in colonies relegated to a distant - above all racially labelled - space of radical 'otherness'. Russia, however, was a continental empire, with blurred social and geographical boundaries. Each of its subordinate territories was given a separate status, forming a motley, multi-level system of governance. The introduction of a modern centralised system of governance in the spirit of a European-style nation-state would have torn this patchwork and threatened the integrity of the empire," says the researcher.

So, the Russian rulers faced a difficult dilemma: they had to simultaneously protect the monarchy from the ideas of democracy and popular sovereignty, while at the same time adopting Western forms of governance to make the state more modern. That is, to take advantage of the mobilising power of nationalism, but to offset its subversive democratic energy. By the way, the fear of excessive democratization in other countries pushed Russia to take part in suppressing uprisings, which, among other things, earned it the surname "Gendarme of Europe".

Around 1830, Minister of Education Sergei Uvarov formulated the triad "Autocracy, Orthodoxy, Nationality". In other words, the nation is defined from above as a unity between the tsar, the church, and the people. Because one of the three pillars is Orthodoxy, the "Russian" nation is presented primarily as a community of Orthodox Christians loyal to the sovereign. The myth of Kievan Rus' provides a ready-made plot: a "Slavic-Russian" nation uniting the Orthodox Velikorossi, Malorossi and Belorussi. Created by Kiev clerics of the 17th century and repeatedly mobilised and renewed in the struggle against the Poles and set out in the "Kievan Synopsis", this myth in the second half of the 19th century becomes the basis of modern Russian nationalism, Hanna notes.

Assimilation of Ukrainians was seen as a necessary step to preserve the power and competitiveness of the empire, without which the latter would not have the critical mass to dominate. Ukraine's large population, abundant resources and strategic location made it the material basis of nineteenth-century imperial greatness, with grain and coal gaining significant value on international markets.

However, Ukraine also focussed emotions and representations of Russian nationalists, increasing its objective geopolitical value tenfold, says the researcher.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Empire got a closed ideological circle, where it needed to modernise in order to remain a great imperial power. Modernisation envisaged the development of the nation, for this purpose only an ethno-religious model was considered, which required the assimilation of Ukrainians and Belarusians. However, this approach only exacerbated the crisis, and there were no democratic mechanisms to test the validity of the model.

In the end, the empire fell, and the USSR was formed on its ruins. Despite the original idea of internationalism, the principles of governance of the new state gradually reverted to the previous ethno-national tradition.

The "Soviet people" project, which was presented as universal, was in practice directed primarily at Russians, non-Western Ukrainians and Belarusians, effectively reproducing the old Tsarist idea of a triune East Slavic nation. These groups were encouraged to move to peripheral areas that were considered less "reliable" Central Asia, the Baltic states, etc., where they were perceived as "trustworthy". There they considered themselves 'Russians', carriers of civilisation and a symbolic majority, and the state saw them as a bastion of loyalty, an axis that had to support the fragile imperial construct, says Hanna.

She notes that the same approach has been pumped into present-day Russia, when in moments of internal crisis, Russian political elites react in the same way: reinforcing autocracy, blaming the West, and demanding “national unity” from the peoples they see as part of them. And it is precisely these ideological mechanisms that are fuelling Russia's current war against Ukraine.

But this logic is not an immutable principle that meets the objective needs of reality. It is merely a product of the Russian nationalist imagination that has been fabricated for specific political purposes. As long as this narrative remains central, Moscow will perceive the existence of any democratic state in its imagined 'zone of influence' as an existential threat and try to neutralise it by force, Hanna stresses.

She notes that European actors' awareness of this dynamic will allow them to avoid erroneous assertions such as "Russia will go no further" or "compromise with Putin is enough" and to develop strategies that attack the ideological core of the problem in the long term: to reduce the Kremlin's ability to impose its narrative and to offer Russian and post-Soviet society political horizons that are not based on ideas of national greatness and imperial expansion.

So far, however, even some European leaders are ready to play along with Putin's mythology.

How Victory Day turned into a holiday of imperialism and tastelessness

In his pseudo-historical speeches, Putin, in fact, continues a two-hundred-year tradition. However, Georges Mink, a French sociologist and specialist in national memory, believes that the core of Russia's revisionist mobilisation discourse is not the myth of Russia or the confrontation with the collective West, but the memory of the “Great Patriotic War”.

In the early 2000s, especially after the annexation of Crimea, the 'memory offensive' centred around the 'Great Patriotic War' against Nazism in 1941-1945 to the extent that it became a kind of 'mystical cult', the researcher notes.

According to him, in order to restore the empire by military means, Putin needs the support not only of the army, but also of society. And the main mobilisation potential lies in the much more familiar and understandable theme of the “Great Patriotic War”, which Mink calls a “memory deposit”.

It is a deposit of resources that can be recycled again in ongoing political or geopolitical games. Various actors will use this "deposit of territorial or imagined events" as the symbolic material needed to support rivalries. In the case of 'The Great War' it is living historical material. It is based, in Adam Michnik's metaphorical phrase, on the "egoism of pain" associated with the human losses suffered by the Soviet Union and the heightened pride of victorious loyalty. The obstacle to Putin's use of these issues in this way is the controversy over when the Great Patriotic War began and what exactly happened between 1939 and 1941. But Putin does not need to explain his narrative to the Russian people. Using this 'memory deposit' is enough to gain the support of about 80 per cent of the population, says the researcher.

A distinctive feature of Russian myth-making in recent decades has therefore been the fixation on the victory in World War II, the recollection of which has become more emphasised and ostentatious than it was during the Soviet era. In the first years after the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union was cautious about celebrating the Victory; this theme became one of the pillars of the ideological core of the USSR only 20 years later, and the Victory Parade in Moscow was held for the first time only in 1965.

But in Putin's Russia, Victory has become almost a national religion. Intricately intertwined with modern simplistic political-technological approaches and the habits of consumer society, Victory Day celebrations often teeter on the edge of vulgarity.

"Victory madness" has overshadowed serious, thoughtful mnemonic constructs directed towards the future but connected to the past. Instead of long and hard work in this direction, the Kremlin chose the easiest way, relying in general on the peculiarities of the Russian mentality and the expectations of the majority of citizens, Ukrainian historian Oleksandr Lysenko said.

Moreover, according to him, the norms on the “correct” interpretation of World War II history and punishment for the “wrong” one have been stipulated in the Russian legislation since 2014. Also, the efforts of Putin's ideological machine are aimed at blotting out the contribution of the Ukrainian people to the fight against Nazism and fascism.

In 2010, Putin said that Russia would have "managed without Ukraine" in World War II. Russia thus seeks to monopolise the right to shape the World War II commemorative field. This pays little dividends outside its borders, but is effective at home,"the historian said.

A similar approach also extends to education. From September 2023, new history textbooks, developed at the behest of the Kremlin, have been introduced in high schools.

They extol the role of the USSR in the wars of the past, idealise Soviet achievements, and speak contemptuously of today's “enemies of Russia.”

This is a natural continuation of the worldview of imperial logic, in which Ukrainians are not a separate people, and therefore have no right to recognition of their contribution to such a central theme for the modern world order as victory in World War II.

Ukrainian Approach to World War II Commemoration

Over the past 10 years, Ukraine has gradually moved from a tradition of loud celebrations to the practice of honoring and remembering the dead. Starting in 2023, Ukraine has officially declared the Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism. This step emphasizes solidarity with Europe: solemn events are held on May 8, and are celebrated not as a military parade or festive salute, but as a day of mourning for the victims of war. In many EU countries, May 8 is traditionally considered the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation (in Poland, the Baltic countries, and others, minutes of silence are held and the names of the dead are read), and the red poppy has become a symbol of joint remembrance of the fallen. Ukrainians have also adopted this symbol: poppies can now be seen on monuments, on the outfits of participants in memorial events, and in publications dedicated to the heroism and tragedy of those years. One such practice is publishing stories about wartime childhood.

Thus, Ukraine has finally abandoned joyful pathos. The main idea is to remind of the price of Victory and to ensure that the horror of war is not repeated. The most important thing is to preserve the tragic truth: a peaceful life is more precious than any military triumphs. This position contrasts sharply with the cult of victory in modern Russia.

Today's war of Russia against Ukraine forces us to recall the lessons of World War II. The weakness and indecision of the international community in the 1930s allowed Hitler to continue his conquest of Europe, and now repeating such mistakes may again cost the whole world dearly. Just as the West initially underestimated the threat of Hitler, in the 21st century, many initially considered the Ukrainian crisis to be only a local conflict, with sad consequences. Ukraine, which by the will of fate today defends democratic values, needs solidarity and support in the fight against the aggressor.

The text was written within the framework of the project “Social Policy: New Challenges” with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Ukraine.