Peter the Great, Stalin, and Russia's Historical Reckoning

Journalists chat each others near a large screen showing Russian President Vladimir Putin's speech during the opening ceremony of the Third Belt and Road Forum, at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

The first was demonstrated by the Holy Roman Empire as it sought to tie its origins to the Hungarian state which, following centuries of Habsburg supervision, became formally absorbed by the Austrian Empire in 1867 as the state attempted to eliminate all undesirable nationalities within its boundaries through the process of Magyarization. The second was practiced by Napoleon in his quest to create the “United States of Europe” guided by the institutions he introduced to post-revolutionary France. The third was executed by the Mongol khanates who often did not exceed demands for tribute payments in their administration of an ethnically diverse empire.

On the European front, successive tsars leaned toward accommodation. Mikhail Speransky, Alexander I’s progressive minister whose reforms were rapidly overturned when historians like Nikolay Karamzin blamed the statesman for eroding Russia’s idiosyncratic past, drafted a constitution in 1809 that made the tsar a constitutional ruler in Finland until the empire’s 1917 collapse. Alexander I, who threatened to declare war on his allies with whom he had just defeated Napoleon when they initially refused to grant him the Duchy of Warsaw, wanted to keep Poland separate from Russia but remotely controlled by the empire. This accommodation lasted until his successor, Nicholas I, abolished Poland’s local autonomy.

And, of course, Russia has at times decided on assimilation, especially when it assumed a civilizing mission to prove its worth to Europe, as Dostoevsky advised. In the Caucasus, the imperial army hoped to make Russians out of the Georgians who steadfastly held to their traditions. The Soviet Union’s suffocation of independence movements and political expression also falls under this category since it strove for a wholly integrated union of assimilated socialist republics with instructions emanating from Moscow. Most recently, the Chechen Wars of the 1990s and early 2000s ended with the absorption of the republic of Chechnya into the Russian Federation—with some flexibility still provided to minimize dissent.

Where does Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine fit into this framework? The problem is that, even if the above categorization is substituted by a comparable method of analysis, the answer is not clear even to Russians themselves. This has triggered an internal crisis within the Russian Federation with consequences affecting the country’s educational, cultural, media, and political pillars. It has become especially visible in Russia’s increasingly vocal debates about its history.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2021 article on the “Historical Unity Between Russia and Ukraine” reignited this historical discussion with a pro-assimilation stance. He undermines any Ukrainian claim to independent statehood because its history, language, and culture are inextricable from those of Russia. Putin’s argument justified Moscow’s initial objective of taking Kyiv because such a victory would have paved the way for the installation of a pro-Kremlin puppet leader disposed to eroding expressions of Ukrainian nationality.

Ukraine’s resistance and Russia’s subsequent recalibration of its war aims made a strategy of complete assimilation impossible because it has become infeasible for Russian officials to declare that Ukraine is inseparable from its eastern neighbor. In addition, Ukrainian citizens overwhelmingly do not see themselves as Russian. As a result, Russia is attempting to scale back its assimilation tactics to Ukraine’s eastern territories where it expects Russian-speaking Ukrainians to more easily integrate into Russian society.

Accordingly, in March 2022, Putin changed his tune and explained that the main goal of his “special military operation” was the “liberation of the Donbas.” But then, three months later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expanded the war beyond the Donbass while Putin spoke of restoring Russia’s historical lands in the tradition of Peter the Great. To clarify Putin’s objectives, Russian propagandists assured listeners that he never intended to take Kyiv. This is contradicted by Russian troop activities around the capital during the first days of the invasion, statements made by Putin in 2014 about his ability to quickly snatch Kyiv, and, most recently, comments made during a meeting hosted by the Valdai Discussion Club, a Moscow-based think tank. Putin said that without Western aid, Ukraine would only “live one more week” since its defense system would crumble, implying that Russia would extend its war beyond the confines of the four annexed oblasts in eastern Ukraine. Yet during the same speech, Putin also said that Russia is not waging a territorial war, but one based on the upholding of moral principles, so it has no intention of taking more land.

In short, Russia’s strategy in Ukraine has oscillated to such an extent that the media and ordinary citizens are having trouble staying on the same page. Others have stopped trying, occasionally embracing perspectives that clash with the official line. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, for example, has pushed for the annihilation of Ukrainian cities and the erasure of “nationalism” writ-large in Ukraine, which contradicts Putin’s claim that Russia is not at war with the Ukrainian people but only the “Zelenskiy regime.”

In parallel, since the start of the war, hundreds of cultural sites in Ukraine have been destroyed, which would, in theory, pose a problem to an invading country that views these objects as parts of its own identity. Yet in April of this year, Lavrov noted that Russia is taking special protective measures to preserve “Russian” culture in the war. This would appear to exclude the landmarks treasured by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which declared its independence from its Russian counterpart in May of last year. Unsurprisingly, then, Russia damaged a culturally significant cathedral belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church earlier this year. Moscow has been forced to accept the idea that Ukraine’s detachment from Russia is not restrained to the top echelons of Zelenskiy’s administration.

The result of these contradictions is that Russian citizens are questioning whether Putin has a long-term strategy. One day, he compares himself to Peter the Great. The next day, he insists that Russia is eradicating neo-Nazism in Ukraine. Peter the Great’s goal was to put Russia on an equal footing with its competitors by gaining access to the Black Sea, the Ottoman Empire’s backyard, and solidifying Russia’s role in the Baltic Sea with the construction of St. Petersburg, which repelled the Swedish empire from Lake Ladoga. After Mazepa, the head of the Ukrainian Cossacks, betrayed Peter for Sweden’s Charles XII due to repeated Russian incursions on Ukrainian territory, Peter razed the Cossack Hetmanate capital to the ground and required Ukrainian traditions to be modified based on Russian imperial standards. Is this Putin’s ambition in Ukraine?

Putin’s talk of neo-Nazism suggests that it is not. It aligns more with the ideological purity demanded of Soviet leaders such as Stalin who disemboweled the Russian state to punish Nazi collaborators, often through unfounded claims. While Peter and Stalin shared the desire to expand the Russian Empire, the latter aimed to accomplish this through total ideological subservience to the dictator. Stalin’s motivation for the ironclad control of Russia’s neighboring states was the extermination of foreign influence originating in the West—ideas viewed as hostile to the regime’s survival. Peter the Great, on the other hand, placed a heavy hand on Russia’s periphery so that a cohesive Russian Empire could challenge other great powers without fear of internal dissent, as had happened during Mazepa’s betrayal. Putin, notwithstanding his allusions to Peter, is drifting in Stalin’s direction when he repeats his allegations of neo-Nazism.

At least, this seems to be what local officials and citizens have concluded. The days of discomfort surrounding Stalin’s terror are over, the party line has ruled. Monuments to the generalissimo are opening in record numbers once again after a hiatus that began with Nikita Khrushchev. Consequently, Stalin is climbing up public opinion polls. According to a survey released in August by Russian Field, an organization that conducts social and political research in Russia, Stalin was the third-highest ranked historical leader behind Peter the Great and Catherine the Great (Gorbachev and Yeltsin are ranked the lowest). By comparison, in December 2021, Stalin placed third in a list of Russia’s top “anti-heroes.” Times have changed.

Russians love imperialists, no matter their flavor. This is why Putin feels comfortable straddling between Peter and Stalin. Yet in tending toward the latter, certain Russian officials have jumped to the chase and offended those who are still not quite ready to welcome Stalin’s return.

This fracture is at the heart of the recent outcry over a new high school textbook written by former Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky and political scientist Anatoly Torkunov. Beyond justifying Putin’s rhetoric of neo-Nazism in Ukraine, which may disturb parents in Russia’s more well-off cities, the textbook also includes Chechens in a list of groups that collaborated with Fascists during World War II. As a result of the Chechens’ actions, the textbook explains, they were punished and expelled to Siberia. Magomed Daudov, the chairman of the current Republican parliament of Chechnya, voiced the republic’s outrage upon reading these lines, which completely absolve Stalin of his role in ordering the deportation. The authors were required to modify the paragraph.

The textbook also led to a diplomatic faux pas by noting in passing that “Western intelligence services” fueled the flames of Hungary’s 1956 uprising. The passage, which diminishes the agency of Hungarian citizens who fought for independence against a Soviet-imposed regime, was recently criticized by Tamas Mentzer, the secretary of state for bilateral relations between Russia and Hungary at the Hungarian foreign ministry, normally not one to fall out of line with Moscow.

This gradual reorientation toward Stalin’s outlook, which consigns Siberia to a place of rehabilitation for the nation’s traitors rather than a true part of the state, has excited Russian propagandists, who often do not know where to stop in their opposition to the West. The recent scandal around the comments made by Margarita Simonyan, Editor-in-Chief of Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT, is a case in point. She recently called for the detonation of a nuclear weapon over Siberia as the best way of deterring the West and demonstrating that Russia has no remorse over using such weapons. Most of her fellow propagandists went berserk, recommending Armenia as an alternative target since her family comes from there. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was forced to clarify that nothing has changed in Russia’s official nuclear policy.

The newfound rise in Stalin’s popularity has entailed efforts to erase the gruesome parts of Soviet history. In the Russian town of Vorkuta, a monument dedicated to the Polish victims of a major Gulag labor camp disappeared, with local officials hiding behind excuses that unfavorable weather conditions were to blame. Plaques commemorating Gulag victims previously displayed across Moscow have been removed. This came after Memorial International, an organization founded by Soviet dissident scientist Andrei Sakharov to remember those who suffered under the Gulag system, was liquidated at the end of 2021.

Russian “Z-stars”—poets, singers, and artists who openly support the ongoing war—have tried to absorb dissident Soviet figures into a continuous Russian history in this same spirit of historical revisionism. In honor of the “beacons of Russia,” who “defeat the enemy,” the Z-stars sing: “Korolev and Tsiolkovsky, Pavlov and Pirogov / With us there’s Diaghilev and Brodsky, Levitan and Serov / Pasternak and Vysotsky, Shukhov and Vasnetsov.” Among this motley list, we find the director of the Soviet space program, Korolev, who was arrested for six years and suffered life-changing injuries following cruel treatment in prison. Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago put into question communism and Stalin’s Great Purge since he had seen many of his close friends get dragged away by the police. Brodsky finished his life in the United States after it became impossible for him to publish his criticisms in the Soviet Union.

Such details, of course, are unimportant to Z-stars backing Russia’s campaigns to purify Stalin’s repression. It aligns with new curricula in Russian schools teaching students that the West bred Hitler to attack the Soviet Union, neglecting the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and portraying Stalin as the liberator of Eastern Europe. Ukraine, according to Putin, still houses the Nazis from the “Great Patriotic War,” so it is only logical that he would try to repair Stalin’s reputation as his predecessor in the fight against Nazism. To assure Russians that this is nothing new, propagandists have connected Hitler to Napoleon, insisting that both are examples of insidious Western coalitions attempting to take down the stalwart Russian people.

Russia is struggling to define its history and, consequently, its war aims, since the answers it arrives at for the former will influence the way it frames the latter. This has led to public divisions between propagandists and the government, contradictory statements from the Kremlin, and clumsy references to past historical figures to justify contemporary policy. This has left Russian citizens confused.

Chances are, however, that ordinary Russians are spending less time wrestling with the narratives of the war than struggling through a new way of life. Local media outlets have expressed panic about the disappearance of antibiotics and specialized drugs made in the West which treat conditions ranging from cardiovascular diseases to depression. As Russia reportedly plans to increase its defense budget to 6% of its GDP, up from 3.9% in 2023, citizens have become increasingly worried.

In advance of the 2024 elections, Russian Field ran another poll in which half of the 30-40 year old Russian respondents prioritized a decrease in prices, an increase in their salaries, and improvements to their living conditions, including medical and educational institutions. Only 7% of respondents chose Russia’s victory against Ukraine as their top priority, while about a third wished for an end to the war. The head of the Russian Public Opinion Research Center predictably refused to hear it, saying that indexes of satisfaction in Russia have not fallen since the start of 2022.

This disconnect between government officials and citizens is not unique to Russia but is particularly problematic for a warring state. That being said, Putin has maintained normalcy in Russia by insulating big cities from the draft, keeping GDP forecasts higher than expected at the outbreak of the war, and authorizing import substitution plans that give Russians the impression that brands are changing but the quality of their products is not. These measures, however, have placed Russia under China’s wing. And if there is one suggestion that sounds especially repulsive to Russians, it is foreign dependence. Peter and Catherine the Great drew from the West to make the empire more self-sufficient and modern. Stalin depended on no one. Putin is slapping familiar Soviet names on Chinese-produced cars, which account for about half of the Russian automobile market.

It would be out of character for Russians to accept being the junior partner to a country that has failed to provide military support. But then again, not much noise was made when China included Bolshoi Ussuriysky Island, currently Russian territory, on its new world map.

Axel de Vernou is a junior at Yale University majoring in History and Global Affairs with a Certificate of Advanced Language Study in Russian. He is a Research Assistant at the Yorktown Institute.