The Kremlin rewrites history. Why do Russians support the war?
I talked with Piotr Pogorzelski about how the Russian state uses the myth of the Great Patriotic War to strip soldiers of moral responsibility for the crimes they commit in Ukraine.
I examine the economic foundations of Putin's regime and explain why Russians supported it for so long. This is a conversation about how history becomes a tool for legitimizing violence, and what would need to change for Russia to take a different path.The central argument I make in this conversation is simple and brutal at the same time: Russia's history literally kills both Ukrainians and Russians themselves. The Kremlin draws a direct parallel between the fight against Nazism and the current invasion, presenting soldiers as heirs to their ancestors' heroic mission and relieving them of individual responsibility for their crimes. The myth of the Great Patriotic War is also historically dishonest: in proportional terms, the greatest losses in World War II were suffered by Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, and Armenia, with Russia ranking only fifth. The clearest symbol of this memory policy is the closure of the Gulag Museum in Moscow in November 2024, which is to be replaced by an institution dedicated to the "genocide of the Soviet people."
I also examine the economic foundations of support for the regime. I draw on Ben Judah's concept of the "supermarket revolution": the arrival of modern retail in Russia's provincial towns during the first decade of the 21st century made the system materially worthwhile for ordinary Russians. The current war is gradually dismantling that legacy. The average Russian soldier is now 45-46 years old, and record-low unemployment is a direct result of the workforce being drained toward the front. Russia is burning through the natural resource wealth and demographic capital accumulated over more than two decades.
I also point to the trap in which Russian society finds itself: a genuine investigation into family history would reveal that every family consists of victims, perpetrators (NKWD/KGB), and bystanders. This fear of the truth has led to the deliberate disabling of what I call the "safeguard," the mechanism of historical reflection that protects societies from accepting state violence. I predict that Russia's new elite may soon carry out a symbolic "patricide," blaming Putin for the military catastrophe much as Khrushchev once turned against Stalin. Without a genuine reckoning with the history of repression, however, every future elite will be able to reach for the same tools.