History as a political weapon. What are the consequences?

The Tucker Carlson interview in 2024 was the moment that truth became undeniable. I discuss how Russian historical policy legitimizes war crimes, why Poland sits at the centre of Russia's narrative about a "wronged empire," and what we should do about it.

I begin the conversation with an argument that history for Putin is not a cynical instrument of propaganda. It is the foundation of his identity and a declaration of strategic intent. Russian historical policy provides society with psychological comfort while committing crimes: by projecting the ethos of the Great Patriotic War onto the current aggression against Ukraine, soldiers rationalize their actions as fighting on the "right side." Evidence of this is the decoration of units responsible for the Bucha massacre immediately after it was revealed, which I read as state confirmation of the righteousness of their "historical mission." Russia has also monopolized the memory of victory over the Third Reich, even though Belarus and Ukraine suffered proportionally greater losses than Russia itself.

I also look at how the Kremlin ranks historical figures. Lenin is a "saboteur" who planted a bomb under the Russian state by granting republics the right to secede. Stalin is a "great manager" who won the war and made the USSR a superpower, making him an acceptable figure in the national pantheon despite his crimes. Putin reserves particular respect for Peter the Great and Catherine the Great as empire-builders. This is not a random selection of heroes: for the Kremlin, the measure of state greatness is territorial conquest and force, not democracy. Russia seeks a return to "historical Russia," whose borders would encompass at minimum Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan, and the Baltic states. The closure of Russian archives and the covering of reference numbers with white paper marks the end of the 1990s "eldorado" and a deliberate step toward history totally controlled by the state.

I also address Poland specifically. The Kremlin sees us as an "avatar" of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with hidden territorial ambitions in the east. What I call the "Russian-Polish complex" manifests both in proposals to partition Ukraine and in the 2019 accusations blaming Poland for co-responsibility for the Holocaust. My warning is clear: when Putin begins speaking about Polish territories in the language of historical symbols, this is not a factual error but a warning signal of real action to come. Poland must pursue an active historical policy within the EU, push back against Russia's monopoly on the memory of war victims in the east, and resist the illusion that Russian intellectuals who know Mickiewicz have any political agency in the face of state propaganda.