Remembering in Russia is increasingly performative and actualised, as shown by the Russian government and media's conflation of the Ukraine Crisis with the Great Patriotic War. By presenting the Great Patriotic War as a frame though which to understand events in Ukraine, the media and government guide domestic political perceptions of the contemporary crisis and encourage participative shared remembering as a bulwark against threats to Russian national identity and historical legacies. Across several sources, similarities in the frame's thematic content, sequencing, and presentation demonstrate a concerted and sophisticated effort to exploit the Ukraine Crisis for political positioning and identity construction. As part of these attempts, the media and government present patriotic models for emulation, appropriating cultural memory in order to merge respect for the past with allegiance to government policy.
During Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, the Russian government and media’s rhetorical embrace of illiberalism, patriotism, and chauvinism was accompanied and partly facilitated by the invocation of historical precedent and “correct” historical understanding. Politicians stressed the importance of a shared historical memory to Russian national identity, rendering the interpretation of history a question of patriotism. The government and state-supportive media then used “patriotic” historical memories to legitimize government policies. Through framing analysis of three significant episodes—namely, the Ukraine Crisis, imposition of sanctions, and Russian intervention in Syria—I outline how the government and state-supportive media conflated these events with supposed historical precedents. This conflation made “patriotic” (or government-approved) history an everyday topic of discussion, but it also confused supporting government policy with celebrating historical triumph (or condemning historical tragedy). In this way, the government co-opted the emotional power of the history they invoked for the purposes of legitimizing their policies. This was compounded by the government and state-supportive media using and citing images and descriptions of ordinary people performing their patriotism in a manner that simultaneously demonstrated awareness of Russian history and support for the government.
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