Putin and his history. The roadmap of Russian aggression.
On the Szkice Wschodnie podcast, where I spoke with Tomasz Piechal, I draw attention to why Putin's obsession with history is not cynical PR, but a strategic reservoir in which the dictator looks at himself in a mirror, revealing his true intentions.
I analyse how Russian historical policy transforms citizens into soldiers, what role it plays in preparations for a potential conflict with Poland, and why dismissing Putin's historical arguments before 2022 was one of the West's greatest analytical mistakes.
The central argument here is that history in Russia functions as a "transmission belt of values." The mandatory course on "foundations of Russian statehood" introduced at universities has a single goal: to transform a citizen into a conscious soldier ready to fight without hesitation in the name of the state. I decode Putin's system of values through the figures he cited to Aleksander Kwasniewski as his models in 2002: Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and Joseph Stalin. For the Kremlin, the measure of state greatness is territorial conquest and repression, not democracy. This is why Lenin is interpreted as a "saboteur" who planted a "time bomb" under the USSR by granting republics the right to secede. Putin views history as a Great Russian nationalist: the collapse of the USSR was a catastrophe caused by legal and historical mistakes, not by the aspirations of nations for freedom.
I also analyse the generational experience of Russia's Kremlin elites, shaped during the Brezhnev era. Their understanding of World War II does not come from historical facts but from "memory of memory" - from the aesthetics of Soviet 1970s propaganda, films such as "The Shield and the Sword," "Seventeen Moments of Spring," and "Officers." This is the source of the conviction that "historical Russia" is a flexible concept whose borders the Kremlin draws arbitrarily wherever a Russian minority lives: in Ukraine, northern Kazakhstan, the Baltic states. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 was Putin's test of the effectiveness of "historical payload" as a political tool. When part of the Western elite responded with empathy toward "Khrushchev's historical mistake of 1954," the Kremlin drew far-reaching conclusions.
I also address what this historical policy means for Poland. "Polish Russophobia" is one of the greatest successes of Russian disinformation, serving to isolate us in the West and mentally prepare Russians for a potential conflict with Warsaw. Under the auspices of Vladimir Medinsky, a book titled "The Black Book. A History of Polish Russophobia" was produced, accusing Poland of attempting an alliance with Hitler and naming John Paul II as a leading Russophobe. Russia has drawn strategic lessons from Polish support for Ukraine and is seeking to "punish" Warsaw. My conclusion is unambiguous: listening to what Putin says about the past is the only way to understand his future plans. Every use of historical argumentation toward a given territory is not an invitation to discussion but a warning signal of planned aggression.