I explained why Putin's interest in history is not cynical PR but an authentic identity that makes dialogue with the current Russian elite nearly impossible. This is a conversation about how the past became the only permissible reality in Russia and a tool of aggression.

I put forward a thesis that Putin is not purely a cynical player who uses history instrumentally. It is his authentic identity. He sees himself as a continuator of the great Russian leaders, and treats the past as a "reservoir of strategic coaching advice," a manual for governing the state. Key here is the mechanism of egalitarian emotion: the Great Patriotic War is the only common ground linking a multimillionaire in the Kremlin with an inhabitant of a poor province, because it rests on intimate, family memory of the war's victims. The Russian vision of the past is not the result of "brainwashing." It has become the real identity of millions of people, and to deny it would be a form of psychological self-annihilation for them. This is why dialogue with the current elite is impossible: it operates within an entirely different axiological reality.

The Kremlin is building a syncretic model of the state combining the tsarist and Bolshevik eras. The USSR is presented as yet another incarnation of great Russia, which allows it to avoid painful reckonings. The symbol of this pragmatism is Lenin's body in the mausoleum: Putin criticizes his political decisions but does not remove the "relic," because doing so would divide society. Putin is also an archaist in the sense given to the term by Jerzy Szacki: a man convinced that the best has already happened and needs to be restored. This is why Russia does not pursue a future but the restoration of the USSR's global status: the right to dictate terms to other states. History in Putin's hands is lethal precisely because it has been institutionalized as the only permissible reality.

Russian historical policy or something more? On "History That Kills".