Ukraine as an artifact, created by Russia and owed eternal gratitude: this is the story Vladimir Putin wants the world to believe. A version of the past driven by a thirst for vengeance and the idea of imperial greatness – and serving a self-serving purpose.
Before Vladimir Putin declared the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk independent last Monday, effectively taking the east of the country from Ukraine, the world public got a history lesson. A demonstration of a distorted understanding of history, says historian Nikita Petrov. But behind the paraphrase is a clear purpose: maintaining power by manipulating the masses.
star: Mr. Petrov, the world enjoyed a one-hour history lesson on Monday evening. Vladimir Putin presented his very own view of world affairs over the past 100 years before declaring the independence of the separatist areas in Ukraine. What do you think of Putin’s version of history?
Petrov: For me, the performance shows one thing above all: Russia is still living in its past and is committing the same crimes as the Soviet Union once did. His account of history is no longer merely obscure. It follows a criminal logic driven by the thirst for revenge and the idea of imperial greatness.
Putin distorts all of history and perverts its meaning, including that of Soviet history. The Soviet Union was built on different principles than the Russian Tsarist Empire. But Putin wants to reconcile both – by picking the moments that suit him. He copied the structure of the political system from the Tsars and took over the military strategy from the Soviets. Putin and the Kremlin have a very creative approach to history, a utilitarian one. Putin didn’t just tell lies, he demonstrated a fundamentally wrong interpretation of history.
Nikita Petrov
Nikita Petrov, born in Kiev, is now the deputy chairman of the human rights organization Memorial. The historian specializes in publications on crimes committed by the Soviet secret services during the Stalin era. After the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, he was appointed by the Russian Constitutional Court to the expert commission for the process of banning the CPSU, which had been ordered by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. From 1992 onwards, Petrov was allowed to work in the archives of the Soviet secret services from the Cheka to the KGB for the first time. His work focused on publications about the secret services and processes related to access to the archives, which have been restricted again since the mid-1990s.
Petrov argues that the Soviet Union was equally complicit in the outbreak of World War II because of its alliance with the Third Reich, sealed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. A view that Russia no one wants to hear. In November 2021, the Russian prosecutor’s office requested that Memorial and its regionally active institutions in Russia be dissolved. The Supreme Court finally implemented the dissolution on December 28, 2021.
“Modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia, more specifically by Bolshevik, communist Russia,” Putin said. Ukraine should bear the name of Lenin. He is the architect of the country. Does Ukraine really owe its “statehood” to the communists?
That’s not the truth. The idea of Ukrainian independence arose long before the Soviet Union existed. The Ukrainian People’s Republic was founded after the October Revolution in 1917 from the Ukrainian regions. In 1918 Vsevolod Holubovych became the first Prime Minister of this People’s Republic. When the country was later Sovietized, the state that had emerged up to that point simply continued to exist in a different form. Now to say that you are the author of the existing borders and have dictated the conditions of existence is a lie.
Lenin and Stalin once created an illusion of statehood for the smaller nations of the crumbling Russian empire. It was the only way to reunite the Empire. However, the Kremlin denies this and thinks that it is possible to return to the pre-revolutionary conditions.
Putin spoke of all sorts of Russian gifts to Ukraine: from Lenin’s national statehood to Stalin’s Polish, Romanian and Hungarian territories and Khrushchev’s Crimea.
The Kremlin twists history to present Russia as the world’s benefactor. It is only thanks to Russia that everything that used to be called the Soviet Union exists. At the same time, Putin claims that Lenin and Stalin planted a ticking time bomb with the idea of national statehood. It was these artificially drawn borders that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another lie. There were a number of reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, wrongly drawn borders were not one of them. What we see today is the reframing of history to manipulate the masses.
The Soviet Union was the association of states on a voluntary basis and the possibility of leaving this union again. If this right was still written down in 1922, how can one speak of a gift today? This is demagoguery. Russia acts like a criminal and spits on its international obligations.
What is the purpose of this rewriting of history?
Our population is very receptive to such rhetoric. On the one hand, Russians are convinced that they are powerful, sovereign and special. On the other hand, Russian society suffers from an inferiority complex cultivated by the Kremlin. The West doesn’t want to be our friend, they say. Yet during his more than 20-year rule, Putin did everything he could to drive a wedge between Russia and the West. He unfurled the iron curtain again with every step he took.
Putin mourns the loss of Russia’s global standing. All the talk about a multipolar world, about blocs, about NATO originated here. NATO poses no threat to Russia. But the Kremlin wants its people to believe that the NATO bloc is a danger. The Kremlin must present an enemy to the population. So that the population thinks that the enemy is from outside and not in the Kremlin. For the current government, this is the only way to remain in power.
In his speech, Putin mentioned Bill Clinton and the then President’s unpleasant reaction when Putin inquired many years ago about Russia’s opportunities to join NATO. The episode visibly hurt Putin’s ego. Why does he keep telling about this humiliation?
To once again make it clear to our people that NATO never wanted to see us in its own ranks. That the West always looks down on us as outlaws. Anti-NATO rhetoric began under Yeltsin, beginning with the crisis in what was then Yugoslavia. Even then, Russia played a destructive role. Moscow has incited former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević to commit crimes. Moscow has also backed Libya’s former ruler Muammar Gaddafi. But the Kremlin doesn’t want to talk about that.
Has Putin himself become a victim of his own propaganda and sees NATO as a threat to Russia? Or is it pure calculation?
With this threat scenario, Putin manipulates the masses. He knows that NATO is not threatening Russia. But you have to drum it into the people: we are offended, insulted and humiliated by everyone. All want to rob us, conquer us or keep us small so that we cannot rise to our true greatness. If you take a look into the past, you will see that another man has already used such a tactic. Hitler.
For Hitler, the alleged injustice of the hated Versailles Treaty was once the means to an end. For Putin, it is now the supposed illegitimacy of the Soviet treaties that bestowed national status on Ukraine. The very similar rhetoric of Putin and Hitler you can read in the second part of the interview with Nikita Petrov.