Book Review: Franziska Exeler: Ghosts of War: Nazi Occupation and its Aftermath in Soviet Belarus

Abstract

nation-wide network of patriotic exhibitions and theme parks collectively called ‘Russia. My History’. A travesty of Russia’s genuine past, these lavish installations seek – with jaw-dropping popular success – to inculcate a cult of the glories of the country’s magnificent evolution – military, territorial, political, cultural, and religious – perniciously marginalizing or ignoring any negative features and instilling a frenzy of popular patriotic fervour in unquestioning exaltation of the collaborative achievements of the Russian people, the Russian Church, and the Russian state. One original supporter, now critic, of this grotesque enterprise, Pavel Kuzenkov, described it as ‘a striking example of history used in lieu of political propaganda’ (p. 66). Or, as the author succinctly puts it, under the regime of Vladimir Putin: ‘History is politics in Russia’ (p. 255). In his book, based on his 2018 doctoral thesis, James Pearce demonstrates how this situation is utilized as the basis of the teaching of history throughout the Russian education system from kindergarten to high school. It is worth remembering that everyone in Russia under the age of 22 has grown up in the Putin era, and therefore have no knowledge of the history of their own country other than that taught to them by the peddlers of the ‘Authorized Version’. This version may not exactly be written down in stone, but it is certainly etched indelibly into their own consciousness. There is simply no textbook or forum from which it is possible to mount a critical challenge to the official orthodoxy – which would in any case be likely to be illegal. Unfortunately, or unavoidably, there is – given the books’ respective titles – a good deal of subject matter and evidential overlap. The same emphases, arguments and examples are present in both volumes, and both come to inevitably similar conclusions. They are: that under Putin, reasserting control over Russia’s past is seen as an essential weapon in the struggle to create a patriotic-minded, right-thinking, quintessentially Russophile, nationalistic and culturally homogeneous society. One of the distinguishing features of Pearce’s book is his analysis – based on personal interviews and questionnaires – of the way in which both qualified, experienced teachers and young trainee teachers of history view their role, their tasks, and their objectives in tutoring a new generation of Russian citizens who will, after all, shape their country’s future. These people will, in the very nature of things, outlive Putin and Putinism, and who can foresee what new contours may then emerge on the landscape of Russian historiography or ‘historymaking’? As the Leningrad (now St Petersburg!) writer, Tatyana Tolstaya, has put it: ‘Russia is a country whose past is impossible to predict’.