Join us on Friday 22 September for a conversation between political scientist Dr Jade McGlynn and journalist and documentary filmmaker Vladimir Raevskiy. Focusing on Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin's Russia (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), the new book by McGlynn, the speakers will discuss the role of history in the production of Russian identity in the 21st century, popular involvement with historical narratives, and the combination of facts, myths and ideological frameworks that justify the Russian aggression for both decision-makers and regular Russian citizens.
The Kremlin’s obsession with history did not emerge overnight: it started with genuine public appetite for patriotic stories, leading to the dissemination of increasingly twisted “approved” history, and now the active suppression and criminalisation of alternative narratives. State propaganda focuses on triumphs like Soviet victory over the Nazis and Catherine the Great’s colonial ambitions, as well as traumatic events that act as warnings against a weak state – revolution, the Soviet collapse or the wild ‘90s – and frames current events as continuation of these episodes. The latest instance of this was the Wagner uprising, which Vladimir Putin likened to the “stab in the back” in 1917 that toppled the Tsarist regime and cost Russia’s victory in WWI.
McGlynn has spent years studying the media landscapes of Russian propaganda before and after February 2022. Raevskiy spent years trying to make a difference by producing popular television films reflecting on various aspects of national history, and decided to leave the country when Russia invaded Ukraine. Both cannot go back to Russia anymore – and both have a lot to say about how history is used and twisted by those in power.
about the speakers
Dr Jade McGlynn is a Leverhulme EC Researcher in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford, where she previously worked as a Lecturer in Russian. She is a frequent contributor to international media, including the BBC, CNN, DW, Foreign Policy, The Times, The Telegraph and The Spectator. Her previous book Russia’s War (Polity, 2023) was nominated for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023.
Vladimir Raevskiy is a journalist, presenter, TV producer and author of documentary TV shows. From 2014–2022, he created over 250 episodes of the documentary series Raevskiy’s Moscow for Moscow 24, the city’s main TV channel, in which he used Moscow’s historical landmarks as starting points for exploring contemporary Russian culture and history. After the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Raevskiy publicly expressed his opposition to the war, left Russia and is now based in London.