Georges Mink: "The confrontation with Russia has had one result: The Ukrainian nation has become consolidated and can no longer submit to attempts to destroy the Ukrainian identity"
The following interview with Georges Mink, a French sociologist and specialist in the field of memory studies and the use of the politics of memory in the pursuit of geopolitical goals, zeroes in on the role of the past in legitimizing Russia's aggressive policies. We discuss the politics of memory in the Kremlin's revived imperial paradigm and the historical events it is instrumentalizing the most, as well as Ukrainian collective memory about the Second World War and the Holocaust.
16 April 2024
"Putin has made a significant contribution to the revival of geopolitics based on historical revisionism"
In your research and public appearances, you often talk about the role of historical memory in geopolitics. Is there such a notion as the "geopolitics of memory"?
In response to this question, I think it is worthwhile, first of all, to define the concept of "geopolitics" and determine how it intersects with historical memory as a component of political activity. Geopolitics, a field of study at the intersection of geography and international politics, has always elicited much skepticism. Is the concept of geography inadequate for understanding spatial (territorial) conflicts? Is the concept of foreign policy insufficient in describing the actions of various state formations and actors operating in the international arena? If geography is a topographical description and demarcates the borders of states and territories, is this enough to make the conclusion that empires do not reckon with legally established borders in their conquests?
In 1981, when we founded the journal Géopolitique in France, one of us, General Pierre Gallois, offered a definition of geopolitics that we retained for the thirty-year-long existence of our journal. It is worth recalling it here: "Geopolitics is a blend of political science and geography, as well as the study of the relationship between the conduct of great power politics on the international left and the geographic framework within which they are being realized." [1] With this definition, Gallois did not devote particular attention to motives bestowing legitimacy on great power politics and even less to how and when historical revisionism becomes a building block for legitimizing aggression.
During the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries, geopolitical topics appeared in research on the role of historical memory in social or inter-state relations. These studies had to do with bilateral relations, the tendency to pardon wrongdoing, the process of reconciliation, and in the context of the expansion of the European Union — with reviving the memory of unhealed wounds inflicted in the recent past. This was also the area of my first texts, in which I utilized the concept of the geopolitics of memory, for example, in the article "Geopolitics, Reconciliation, and Memory Games: For a New Social Memory Explanatory Paradigm," first published in 2011. Local, two-sided armed conflicts pertained to the so-called painful past or mythical roots, such as China's conquest of Tibet. The descendants of German refugees from the Czechoslovak Sudetenland or Southern Poland made their vote for the accession of Poland or the Czech Republic to the European community dependent on those countries' recognition of their guilt and, consequently, the awarding of material compensation. The memory of perceived injustice was a thorny question in the years preceding the EU's expansion in 2004.
Putin nolens volens has made a significant contribution to the revival of geopolitics based on historical revisionism by legitimizing Russian neo-imperialism practically from the beginning of his presidency and during the lengthy occupation of Ukraine's eastern territories, reinforcing with particular intensity the pseudohistorical narrative during the full-scale war against Ukraine. What is interesting here is the certain kinship between Putin's narrative and his imperialistic predecessors, Stalin and Hitler. Under the guise of a narrative about the origin of Russianness, an arbitrary attitude to borders and the expansion of living space emerges.
When it appeared in the early 20th century, geopolitical thinking was based on a kind of Darwinian theory that pitted weak states against powerful ones. Friedrich Ratzel's idea that the driving force behind the formation of states is the struggle for "living space" predominated. The individual who most inspired German geopolitical strategies at the beginning of the 20th century was the geographer and staff officer General Karl Haushofer, who had close links with the NSDAP party. His relationships with high-ranking Nazis, like Rudolf Hess, gave him access to Hitler's policies. His geopolitical conception of reconstructing Germany's living space, which proclaimed that Germany was the victim of the Treaty of Versailles, inspired the war.
Around this time, the Soviet geopolitical strategy of territorial conquests was being developed, particularly by Lenin. This strategy was masked by the messianic theory of an inevitable world revolution, which, contrary to the Bolsheviks' intentions, brought them defeat in the Polish-Bolshevik War of 1921. In other words, the clash between these geopolitical approaches initially led to the signing of the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 (including a secret provision about military cooperation) and the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, to which we shall return. After the victory in 1945, Stalin explained the need to surround himself with a security zone around the only socialist state by an obsessive sense of persecution and threat that the Western states' support of the White armies posed to the young Russian Revolution. He justified the conquest of the states adjoining the USSR with the aid of history, which he interpreted in his own way. In Stalin's rhetoric, the seizure of these countries was masked by the notion of "friendly countries" that were forced to reject the Marshall Plan and sign on to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
As we can see, 20th-century geopolitical concepts were based on the notion of space and ideology, perhaps with reference to historical mythology, but they did not play on the mechanisms of memory.
"'Living, painful memory' is the most effective element of Russia's expansionist geopolitics"
Today, researchers who study memory often single out the state policy of "mnemonic security," by which they mean a special strategy for defending a specific political memory that supposedly constitutes the foundation of their identity (for example, the Law and Justice [PiS] Polish government). Such political state strategies often become a priority in foreign and domestic affairs. To what extent are such strategies consistent with the foundations of democracy, pluralism, and tolerance of diversity?
Governments all over the world are succumbing to the temptation "to exploit the dead in order to control the living," as Jerzy Giedroyc would put it. The Law and Justice (PiS)-led Polish government even formulated the concept of "historical politics" to justify the state's meddling in the interpretation of historical facts. Other governments are similarly exporting their version of national history in the international arena to win a double prize, pretending to be patriots at home while boosting the country's geopolitical status abroad. In continuing to appeal to "living" memory, pseudohistory justifies imperialistic wars, as Putin is doing right now. One example of such revisionist abuse is the current game that is causing dangerous disputes about the interpretation of responsibility for unleashing the Second World War; they do not bode well for Poles and Russians. All this is undoubtedly casting doubt on the autonomy of historical science because judges, police officers, parliamentarians, journalists, and diplomats consider themselves history experts. I doubt whether this phenomenon could be called democratic pluralism.
Where the nationalization of history is concerned, it is more about consolidating a single and exclusive historical vision. Such actions are intrinsic to autocracies. It is certainly no longer possible to turn back time and stop the trend toward the historicization of politics and, therefore, toward the external policies of states. It is necessary to warn against the abuse of history for political purposes. Leaders are governed not by academic canons but, instead, by political expediency. The more political advantages historical references bring, the more politicians resort to them. In this context, memory laws passed to safeguard historical "truth" or rectify past injustices are counterproductive as they threaten the free practice of the historian's profession. More importantly, they become a political weapon in the name of some monopoly on interpretation. By paving the way to instrumentalizing historical facts and their representation in memory, they create more problems than solutions. They become the building blocks of aggression, like in Russia's case. So, the question remains: What can be done to prevent the abuse of historical memory in criminal state projects?
Did your views and approaches to understanding the role of memory in geopolitical strategies change after 24 February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine? Did you believe that such a total war was possible?
My idea of strategy and action by using historical memory has not changed. On the contrary, it has been forcefully confirmed by the onset of Putin's full-scale war against Ukraine. I have been researching the politics of memory in Russia and, earlier, in Soviet Russia for a long time. This has helped me understand not so much the turn as the acceleration of the historical narrative in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Regardless of the dominance of Marxist-Leninist ideology — or thanks to it — Soviet propaganda sought to consolidate the militaristic model in collective memory. Despite their variety, the discursive sources of Putinism clearly indicate two goals: the idea of empire and an apologia for war. This is the common background of Sovietism, "orthodox" imperialism, Russian conservatism, Pan-Slavism, and Eurasianism. But Putin is able to "surf" on this ideological mishmash because the collective memory of the Russians who support him was formed back in the USSR and then reinforced by the propaganda mouthpieces of Putin's government. The Soviet citizens' education included military training, and people belonged to various military and patriotic organizations their entire lives. The calendar was filled with military holidays, and honoring the memory of veterans of the "Great Patriotic War" was a civic duty. This looked like the militarization of Russian collective memory.
I remember one of my trips to Moscow in the 1990s, on the invitation of the Paris-based Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (to write a report about the state of post-Soviet social studies), when I spent whole days watching various television channels to the point of exhaustion. Each one was broadcasting practically non-stop war films about the heroism of the Soviet people, their sacrifice and martyrdom, all this supposedly leading to the conclusion that the world did not value this. Mainly, the memory of the "Great Patriotic War" was promoted. In my conception, this historical period is an excellent memorial "deposit" (gisement mémoriel) of symbols that, within the narrative of legitimizing the war against Ukraine, especially the full-scale invasion after 24 February, have a mobilizing power in society, which has been formatted this way. That is why I believe that in the strategy of legitimization, living, painful memory is the most effective element of Russian expansionist geopolitics. On the other hand, all the remaining elements constituting the fantasies spun by Putin and his circle of propagandists serve only as the basis for reactivating the memory of nearly every Russian family once affected by the Second World War.
Let's return to the question about the point in time when I began seriously treating the Russian memory games as a geopolitical danger. It is worth mentioning the interference in the sphere of history, specifically the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which was committed by Dmitry Medvedev, the president of Russia, in May 2009 in the context of the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War. He declared that it would be incorrect to call white black and the one defending himself the aggressor. Earlier, a presidential committee was set up to combat falsifications of history. Many Russian historians protested against this kind of pressure from an oversight body that would authorize arbitrary political censorship under the guise of "tracking and countering incorrect interpretations of history abroad." The banning of the Memorial Society based on a law permitting the classification of local NGOs as being funded by foreign states and their designation as foreign agents compellingly validated these concerns.
"Today Putin seems to be an epigone and follower of the views of Ratzel, Haushofer, and, above all, Stalin"
What role does the politics of memory play in Russian foreign policy? In Putin's policies, what are the main features and components of the dominant "historical narrative" (or dominant strategy of the politics of memory)?
Today, Putin seems to be an epigone and follower of the views of Ratzel, Haushofer, and, above all, Stalin. Indeed, he thinks approximately along the same lines but needs a different justification. And this is where the memory masquerade starts: Nazism, racism, antisemitism, and reminders about the origins of Russian greatness.
The portfolio of historical and commemorative references for Russia does not end with European history. On 30 September 2022, Putin delivered a speech before a mob of gloomy, bloated regime beneficiaries (except the childishly excited Kadyrov). It happened after the votes cast in the so-called referendum were counted, and Putin announced the annexation of four Ukrainian oblasts. In his speech, he highlighted the clash of civilizations à la Huntington. He reminded the generation of Russians who had lived under Soviet rule about the dominant ideology, which revolved around accusations flung at the colonial West with its American devil and its axiological degeneracies.
However, the core of the revisionist, mobilizational discourse is not Russia's thousand-year-long history that Putin talked about at the beginning of the invasion in February 2022, which I have already mentioned, and not the clash of civilizations. At the center is the "Great Patriotic War." Why is that?
In the early 2000s, especially after the annexation of the Crimea, the "memory offensive" became focused on the "Great Patriotic War" against Nazism in 1941–1945 to such an extent that it turned into a kind of "mystical cult." To substantiate the revival of the empire by military means, Putin had to be backed not only by an army and generals but by society as well. I am talking about the legitimization of actions with the aid of a vision of history. Putin's geopolitics of Russian conquests has nothing in common with historical truth verified by the scholarly approach. The only thing that matters is the mobilizational effectiveness of the narrative.
In order to achieve this kind of effect, it is necessary to use a form of memory — the "reactive memory of Russians." This is the memory of the Second World War. The "Great Patriotic War" is not a site of memory (lieu de mémoire), although it has some symbolic moments, such as the Battle of Stalingrad or the Soviet flag on the Reichstag in Berlin. Instead, as I wrote earlier, it is a "deposit of memory." [2] In keeping with its metaphorical connotation, this concept signifies more than simply a "site of memory." It is a deposit of resources that can be reworked once again in current political or geopolitical games. Various actors will be utilizing this "deposit of territorial or imagined events" as symbolic material indispensable for maintaining competition. To use Adam Michnik's metaphorical phrase, it is based on the "egotism of suffering," which is connected with the human losses sustained by the Soviet Union, and on promoting pride in victorious devotion. The obstacles to Putin's use of these questions in this fashion are the disputes around the question of when the "Great Patriotic War" began and what actually happened between 1939 and 1941. However, Putin does not need to explain his narrative to the Russian people. Using this "deposit of memory" is sufficient to gain the support of nearly 80 percent of the population.
"A symbolic struggle for a symmetric, that is, equal, attitude toward the Soviet and Nazi totalitarian regimes is still taking place"
To what extent does the politics of memory influence the position of the French political establishment toward the Russo-Ukrainian War?
In domestic French debates, several images and symbols are still very much alive in memory, and they sometimes become the subjects of beneficial metaphors. The pull of various pro-Russian groupings is very strong. Some mainly remember the French policy of equidistance between the US and the USSR pursued by General de Gaulle. Others remember the Normandie-Niemen Air Force fighter squadron and the brotherhood of arms during the Second World War. The historical policy of the French Communist Party combines the invented image of "100,000 communists shot by the Nazis" and the image of the Red Army's selflessness. To this day, there is a subway station in Paris called Stalingrad.
On the other hand, in the context of the aggression against Ukraine and the war, supporters of aid to Ukraine remind people of the nefarious peace that was concluded in Munich in 1938 with the participation of Daladier, the prime minister of France.
How can the Russo-Ukrainian War affect the processes for transforming European narratives and discourses about Eastern Europe and Ukraine?
I think that it's too early for such global reflection. What we are learning about this war, its criminal nature, and the qualification of the crimes against the Ukrainian nation will undoubtedly have a great impact on historical narratives and research. One of the painful points of the European narrative, especially concerning the two totalitarianisms, was the unidirectionality of the foundation underpinning the institution of the community, which is the European Union. After the Central European countries joined the EU, a struggle for coordinating historical messages on various European platforms ensued. On the one hand, the "Never again" principle, which clearly concerned the Holocaust and Nazi crimes, was predominant. In contrast, the countries that were freed from the shadow of the Soviet Union intensified their mission to recognize the criminal nature of the communist regime imposed by Soviet Russia. There was and still is a symbolic struggle for a symmetrical, that is, equal treatment of the Soviet and Nazi totalitarian regimes.
There is a competition of memories among the victims of Nazi and Soviet totalitarian violence in the Eastern European discourse. How can the Russo-Ukrainian War influence the trends and the propensity to equate Nazism and Stalinism and their victims in Eastern European countries?
Paradigms of memory were connected with geopolitics, which did not fundamentally change in terms of how the causes and consequences of the Cold War were analyzed. We know that the geopolitical axis of the structure of the Cold War period was East-West. This division was partly preserved in the next period, when the demands of historical memory suddenly shook European institutions, the European Parliament, and other executive bodies of the European Union, as well as the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The 1990s and early 2000s saw an exchange of blows between the sides representing the national or state interests of groups that considered themselves as having been robbed during the Second World War. In the sphere of memory, a struggle was being waged to reconcile truthful historical memory between Russia and the countries freed from the communist bloc. This was marked by a discussion of asymmetry in the legitimacy of the memory of the European Union, the need to qualify communism as a totalitarian regime, recognized like Hitler's regime, a regime to which there could be no return "ever again." This struggle led to attempts to include individual stories into a single museum narrative presented as a transnational vision in the House of European History in Brussels. This did not fully satisfy the various parties of European historical memory. Several transnational initiatives reflecting both the East-West axis and the division between the European left and the conservative right attacked the general project of a permanent exhibition in Brussels as ideological, Hegelian, and neo-Marxist. [3] These initiatives underscored the deliberateness of the lacunae in the museum's narrative. After a 2017 study visit to the exhibition devoted to the history of the crimes committed by communism or both communist and Nazi totalitarianisms, the international group of historians and museum workers from the Platform of European Memory and Conscience published an exhaustive, critical report.
Some of these chroniclers of historical memory achieved real legislative successes at the European Parliament. In 2009, 23 August was designated as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. In connection with this, several EU member states added symbols typical of communist propaganda to the list of banned symbols of the Nazi regime. The date of 23 August is a compelling historical symbol because the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed on this day in 1939, with a secret protocol that entailed an attack on Poland by the two partnered countries. To the present day, this moment in European geopolitical history remains a hot point in the relations between Russian and Western historians, especially regarding establishing the date when the war started for Russians.
In this battle of memory for recognizing Soviet Russia as the equivalent of Hitler's Germany, which is still relevant today, the image that Russia is demonstrating now by invading a sovereign country like Ukraine and committing war crimes, especially against the civilian population — all this disqualifies every single one of the Russians' claims to a positive assessment of Soviet totalitarianism and post-Soviet imperialism.
"The three revolutions (the Revolution on Granite, the Orange Revolution, and the Revolution of Dignity) plus the war are four consecutive stages of intensifying nation-building processes"
What reconciliation and peacebuilding models can be utilized in the future after the conclusion of the war? Under what circumstances can the politics of reconciliation ensue? What role should the punishment of perpetrators and the implementation of justice during the transition period in general play in Russia?
I have a very simple idea concerning this. After the victory over Putin's Russia, it will be necessary first to try the criminals and those who were responsible for this war and the crimes against humanity committed in Ukraine. Then, pan-Russian ideology and imperialistic views must be fully uprooted. Unfortunately, this will require great enlightening work in society, whose very awareness will have to be demilitarized, similar to what was done in Germany right after the war. But the post-Nazi experience has also made it clear that we need to go further and deeper. The Spanish tactic of "amnesty — yes, amnesia — yes" would mean that the Russians would remain the sick people of Eurasia for a century. Where the collapse of communism in Central Europe is concerned, Michnik's "amnesty — yes, amnesia — no" carried the day. But reality turned out to be more complicated. To this day, arguments about decommunization still fuel political conflicts, even if they die down over time. Reconciliation can only happen after the successful completion of the above-mentioned processes, punishment, and large-scale education. Perhaps this will occur after the rise of new generations.
Processes are underway in present-day Ukraine to destroy monuments honoring Russian cultural figures and to reject many other symbols attesting to historical links with Russia. Is some kind of new model of collective memory being formed in Ukraine?
In order to answer this question, we need the results of both quantitative and qualitative long-term studies. Without question, this is difficult to do in wartime conditions. I can say one thing for sure. More generally, the three revolutions (the Revolution on Granite, the Orange Revolution, and the Revolution of Dignity) plus the war are the four consecutive stages of intensifying nation-building processes. The confrontation with Russia has had one result: The Ukrainian nation has become consolidated and can no longer submit to attempts to destroy the Ukrainian identity. Forming an "imagined community" [4] has gone too far and is irreversible.
What kind of model of reconciliation with the difficult legacy of the Second World War in general, as well as of the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in Volyn and Galicia (1943–1944), could be beneficial for Ukraine?
This is a complex topic because it is cyclical. While the generations that feed on these memories (living memory and communicative memory, as the German specialist in memory studies Aleida Assmann calls them) are still flourishing, there is a periodic risk of exploiting the pain and suffering present in collective memory and the arena of political struggle. My optimism is grounded in the experience of various types of reconciliation commissions along the lines of the one in South Africa and the German-Czech, German-Polish, and Ukrainian-Polish ones of the early 1990s. The latter commission of historians, which was, unfortunately, quickly forgotten, conducted in-depth discussions about the significance of true catharsis. It is a shame that this discussion did not go beyond the circle of academics.
Interviewed by Petro Dolhanov
Translated from the Ukrainian by Marta D. Olynyk
The photographs featured in this publication are from open sources.
Endnotes
1 Jean Klein, preface to De la géopolitique by Karl Haushofer (Paris : Editions Fayard, 1986), p. 11.
2 See, for example, “Géopolitique, Histoire et Jeux de Mémoire: pour une reconfiguration conceptuelle,” my introduction to Georges Mink and Pascal Bonnard, eds., Le Passé au Présent, Gisements mémoriels et actions historicisantes en Europe centrale et orientale (Houdiard: Paris, 2010).
3 Pawel Ukielski, Pamięć, pamięć sasiadów, pamięć Europy (Warsaw: Teologia Polityczna, 2020), p. 228. Polski
4 "Imagined communities" is Benedict Anderson's concept denoting modern nations.
Georges Mink is a professor in the European Interdisciplinary Studies Department at the College of Europe in Natolin (Warsaw, Poland) and Director of Research at the Institut des Sciences Sociales du Politique (CNRS - France). A sociologist and political scientist, he specializes in Central and Eastern European Studies. He is the author of approximately 250 studies (including books, monograph chapters, articles, and expert publications) devoted to studying political systems, the evolution of political regimes, the transformation of former communist elites in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Europeanization of national political systems. His current research interests are transitional justice mechanisms in the EU countries and memory games. He was a Visiting Professor at Science Po, Paris (1973–2018) and a Visiting Professor (2000–2010), Director of Studies (2010–2012), Permanent Professor (2012–), and Chairholder (Chair of European History and Civilization, 2019-2023) at the College of Europe, Natolin Campus. From 2001 to 2003, he worked for France's Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs as Director of the Centre Français de Recherche en Sciences Sociales in Prague (MAE-CNRS). He was Director of the Revue d’Études comparatives Est-Ouest and one of the founders of the journal Géopolitique. Georges Mink is a member of the editorial boards of several international journals, including New Eastern Europe, Studia Polityczne, and Acta Politologica. His most recent books are History, Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe, Memory Games (co-editor), Palgrave 2013; Poland in the Heart of Europe: From 1914 to the Present Day, Political History and Conflicts of Memory, Buchet Chastel, Paris, 2015; and the expanded and updated Polish edition of the book mentioned above, Polska w sercu Europy: od 1914 do czasów najnowszych. Historia polityczna i konflikty pamięci, which was published in Cracow in 2017.
Originally appeared in Ukrainian @Ukraina Moderna
This article was published as part of a project supported by the Canadian non-profit charitable organization Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.
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