👑 We live on the ruins of two empires — the Russian Empire and the USSR, writes Valdai Club expert Alexei Miller.

November 2, 2021, marked 300 years since the day when Peter I proclaimed himself emperor, and Russia — an empire. In the same years, the concept of “nation” entered the Russian language and began its varied adventures. In Peter the Great’s time, the word “nation” was used almost as a synonym for empire, as a designation for sovereign polity. In this sense, there was no tension between these concepts.

we can say that in the next 300 years, the concepts of empire and nation had a very complex relationship and were used to discuss several important topics for Russia, which in many ways remain relevant today. First, this concerns the topic of relations between Russia and Europe.

In Europe, Peter’s Russia was viewed as a “barbarian at the gates” or as an “apprentice”. Russian elites easily agreed with the status of a student until they realised that they were going to be kept in this status forever, with the Europeans always being “mentors”. Then they began to listen with interest to arguments about the “decline of Europe”.

🔗 The 300th Anniversary of the Russian Empire

#Morality_and_Law #RussianEmpire #history

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

🛡The inadmissibility of revision of the results of World War II is the most important postulate of Russian policy in the field of historical memory.

The Russian-backed narrative, where Nazism is an absolute evil and the Soviet Union played a key role in crushing it, is giving way to the dominant counter-narrative promoted by the countries of Eastern Europe.

The idea that the Soviet Union bears equal responsibility with Germany for unleashing the Second World War is gradually becoming pan-European mainstream sentiment, which entails important consequences for Russia’s status in the international arena. 

👉 Anton Bespalov, deputy editor-in-chief of valdaiclub.com, talks with Alexei Miller, professor at the European University in St. Petersburg about how this situation has developed and what politics Russia can follow in these circumstances.

🔗 Historical Memory Battles in the 21st Century: How Can Russia Defend Its WWII Narrative?

#history #society #WWII

📷 ©Sputnik/Maxim Bogodvid

@valdai_club

⏳🌏 Many could directly say: “Who cares about Rapallo now?”

And it is clear that the idea of a “new Rapallo” now, in April 2022, looks like an absolute utopia. That is true. But nevertheless, the topic of “breaking through diplomatic isolation” is now becoming as relevant as ever.

And history a hundred years later brings us back to these questions, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.

🔗 Anniversary of the the Rapallo Treaty: A Hundred Years On

#Norms_and_Values #History

@valdai_club — The Valdai Discussion Club

👑 The funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II marks a farewell to the twentieth century.

This phrase has become commonplace in numerous comments and articles on her death. It is clear that the twenty-second year of the next, twenty-first century is underway. But the calendar’s chronology does not always correspond to political symbolism.

With Queen Elizabeth’s departure, no matter how we feel about the monarchy or Britain, an almost eternal constant has disappeared from our subconscious.

After all, it is clear that on the scale of the life of an individual, 70 years is practically an eternity, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.

#Norms_and_Values #history

@valdai_club

💯🔴 December 30, 2022 marks one hundred years since the establishment of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. 

Attitudes towards the creation of the USSR are closely connected with our perception of the October Revolution. Here, obviously, there is no consensus in modern Russian society. In our social networks and the media, the most heated disputes, with mutual accusations between supporters and opponents of the revolution and all the events that followed it, have failed to subside. At the same time, on both sides, these events have turned into historical myths - which, in turn, are either idealised or demonised, depending on the political position one is arguing. As a result, very often and very convexly, civic positions completely determine historical assessments.

As a result, there can no longer be any question of any neutrality in assessing history. In the end, both the revolution and the Soviet Union have become only symbols for pamphlets.

In current geopolitical conditions, the centenary of the USSR ceases to be just an academic date. It makes one wonder about such things as historical predestination, writes Oleg Barabanov, Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-centenary-of-the-ussr/

#Norms_and_Values #USSR #History

@valdai_club

🗽🌏 Throughout the 20th century, American attitudes towards the Soviet Union were overwhelmingly negative. 

▪️ The United States’ had an extensive experience with truly communist utopian communities in the 19th century. These ranged from the secular, communitarian experiments launched by Robert Owen in the 1820s to religious sects.

▪️ Anti-communist sentiment in the late 1910s was mostly intertwined with late 19th century anti-anarchist sentiment, as the anarchists were seen as terrorists.

▪️ In late 1940s and early 1950s America, Soviet rule was synonymous with Stalin. As Joseph McCarthy said in 1950, “Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity.”

▪️ To the mid-20th century American, the Soviet Union was synonymous with communist rule – the nuances of communist vs. socialist styles of government were largely lost on the general public.

▪️ The first nuclear tests gave the Soviet Union a special resonance in the American psyche, which had for centuries been fertile ground for millenarian doomsayers warning about the Antichrist, the Book of Revelations and the end times.

It seemed that not only had the Marxist-Leninists attempted to destroy both God and individual liberty, but they could also bring about the end of the world, writes Valdai Club expert Travis Jones.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/the-soviet-union-in-retrospect-late-20th-century/

🔹 The article is published within the framework of Valdai experts’ discussion on the 100th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s establishment in 1922.

#Norms_and_Values #USSR #History #UnitedStates

@valdai_club

⏳ A clash of values and ideologies plays a large role in the current geopolitical struggle. In this regard, history has also frequently become a battlefield for modern political controversies.

The parties to the conflict use historical arguments to reinforce their positions. The politicisation of historical memory plays its most important role in the formation of modern national and other identities on both sides of the barricades.

Moreover, history is almost openly divided into “right” and “wrong”. The phrases “on the right side of history” and “on the wrong side of history” have become widely used and are taken by many for granted.

Entire histories of individual countries and peoples that are now on the “wrong” side for one view or another are being crossed out and become a direct target for “cancel culture”.

Thus, here we see the struggle between the universalist and the national concept, not only in the sphere of identity and patterns of behaviour, but also in relation to history, and within the emerging universalist canon of rules, where national historical identities can become victims, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.

https://valdaiclub.com/a/highlights/history-and-tasks-of-geopolitics/

#Norms_and_Values #history #geopolitics

@valdai_club