I will today pick up a subject we've had before – the increased role of history in the rhetoric and activities of the Russian state. We cannot say the powers that be in Russia haven't developed. They have, and primarily in one particular direction.

The role of the Orthodox church started growing after Vladimir Putin came to power. Traditional values and the Orthodox way of life were promoted in institutional cooperation of secular and religious authority.

The role of history started growing in the official narrative. Some observers believe a breakthrough happened around the change of 2021 and 2022. That is when the regime supposedly entered a new era the precursor to which was Putin's 2020 piece to mark the 75th anniversary of the victory of the Great Patriotic War. Let's recall how it lays the blame for starting World War II on the sides to the "Munich deal" and even Poland. Not a word on the role of Stalinist Soviet Union. Let us also recall Putin's recent remark that Hitler had no choice but to invade Poland.

The concept of "protecting historical truth" was also introduced to the Russian constitution in 2020. It suggested there is such a thing as final historical truth, which means that other truths need to be removed.

A course was plotted for repressing organizations using so-called non-national versions of history, drawing up uniform history textbooks and introducing mandatory history programs at universities, irrespective of field of study.

A national investigative committee started looking for acts of genocide against the Soviet people, and, sure enough, the Novgorod Oblast court found the activities of the Wehrmacht in and around Novgorod to have been genocide in October of 2020. The same process was launched in Leningrad Oblast, Saint Petersburg, the Volgograd and Kaluga oblasts and Crimea.

The Memorial society, which investigated and shed light on Soviet repressions, was closed, while a campaign to remove monuments to victims of repressions started. Commemorative plaques also started coming down, especially those in the memory of Poles, Estonians, Lithuanians, Latvians etc. A uniform history textbook was introduced last year and all other views of history were banned.

We should also keep in mind that the justification for the war in Ukraine is now also completely based on history. In this narrative, Ukraine is a part of Russia that has allowed itself to be duped by the West and ripped away from the motherland.

There is another interesting development in the context of the war unleashed on Ukraine. Parts of Russia's militant elite saw it as restoring the Soviet Union. But the Kremlin takes a different view. Equating Russia with the Soviet Union does not sit well with them anymore. Rather, they see it as the rebirth of the Russian Empire. This vision might be behind the reason we would rather see Russia as a community or neighborhood of separate republics in the future.

Using the past in the present eats away at the future. In other words, more past means less future. But the Kremlin authorities are probably not bothered about such aspects. Moscow also tends to take utilizing history to the extreme, which may seem strange looking from the outside, but is natural in Russia. For example, the 2016 movie "Pantifol's 28" that tells the story of heroic acts committed during the defense of Moscow. By then, historians had proved that four posthumously decorated heroes had survived instead of dying a hero's death. One was taken prisoner by the Germans and later served in the German police, as determined by a Soviet court.

Then Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinski said that the historians who proved it are "the worst kind of bastards" and that even if the Pantifol Division story is fiction, the legend is sacred and not to be touched. So much for historical truth.

History is also brought out into the streets. Based on data from the "We can explain" project, by last October, Russia had opened or reopened 110 monuments to Stalin of which 95 during Putin's time in office and half following the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the start of hostilities in Ukraine. Putin attended one such opening ceremony. Renaming Volgograd as Stalingrad is being discussed.

Turning Stalin into a positive character serves several purposes. Aleksandr Dugin, who is well-known for his many harebrained ideas, declared that Stalin expresses the spirit of the Soviet people and society and was a Soviet Tsar, an absolute monarch. That is Ivan the Terrible created the Moscow Rus, Stalin created the Soviet empire, which makes him a remarkable historical leader. The Russian people, and Stalin especially, is a messiah-people that saved the world from fascism. This in turn functions as justification for all manner of crimes committed by the Soviet regime.

Putin is probably longing for a similar aura with the Ukraine war, which would work to justify the crimes he has committed.

People in Russia have many opportunities to feel they're part of the official history. Since 2017, a network of multimedia parks dubbed "Russia – My History" has been created. They offer a vision of history that is even more conservative, antiliberal and anti-West than the uniform history textbooks.

Allow me a linguistic excursion to conclude. In the old East Slavic language, from which Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian languages evolved and which was the language of Kievan Rus, the territories of Rus were called "russkaja zemlja." Russians adopted this term for their own land, which is now also called "russkaja zemlja." This includes the appropriation of the name Rus from old Kiev by Russia. Thus, even the name of Russia was taken from Kiev, intentionally obliterating the distinction between the ancient non-Russian Rus and the arbitrarily derived Rossiya. And now, Muscovy wants to conquer these lands in reality for itself.

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