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Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. Class 21. Comparative Russian Imperialism

Mar 20, 2024
(electronic music) - Good afternoon everyone. Happy Tuesday. Today is one of those days when our biweekly lecture will be given by a guest. And our guest professor is Professor Arne Westad. Arne Westad studied history, philosophy, and

modern

languages ​​at the University of Oslo before pursuing a graduate degree in American and international history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining the faculty at Yale, where he is the Elihu Professor of History, he held positions at the London School of Economics and Harvard University. Professor Westad has published 16 books, most of which deal with 20th-century Asian and global history.
timothy snyder the making of modern ukraine class 21 comparative russian imperialism
He is one of the world's leading historians of the Cold War, on which he worked for a significant part of his career, writing important works on the Soviet bloc and the People's Republic of China. He now specializes in histories of empire and

imperialism

, as well as China's place in the international order. Today, in one of our last meetings of this course, he will give a lecture on

comparative

Russian

imperialism

. Arne, the word is yours. - Thank you. (students applauding) Thank you, Wiktor, for that generous presentation. I can see the Russian Empire up here blinking, and that's a little bit like what the Russian Empire has been for a long period of time.
timothy snyder the making of modern ukraine class 21 comparative russian imperialism

More Interesting Facts About,

timothy snyder the making of modern ukraine class 21 comparative russian imperialism...

Perhaps that is illustrative of what we are going to talk about today. So I think the reason I was asked to give this lecture is because this semester I teach a class here at Yale on

comparative

empires and imperialisms. So, we look at the transformations of empires dating back to the mid-19th century and up to the current American empire. It's an undergraduate seminar and I hope students enjoy it half as much as I do. So the purpose of the conference is to try to better understand how Russian imperialism versus Ukraine today fits into a broader context.
timothy snyder the making of modern ukraine class 21 comparative russian imperialism
Thus, both of Russia's own past as an empire, as well as that of other empires. And I think one of the problems we've had conceptually and interpretively with respect to Russia's war of aggression this year is that it hasn't been understood enough in terms of those contexts. And I hope that this class in general has helped people who are here or those who are watching better understand that aspect of the conflict, because to me it is crucial, not only in terms of the conduct of the war, but also how it is will carry out the war. the war is going to end.
timothy snyder the making of modern ukraine class 21 comparative russian imperialism
Without understanding that deeper background, it is really difficult to understand it. So I'm going to look, as I said, at Russia's own past, but I'm also going to look, albeit briefly, at China, France, Britain, and to some extent the United States, which I also think of in terms of. It is better to understand its past as an empire. And I will start with the drivers of Russian imperialism who emerged from the 19th century and who remained with us for a long time. And today you will hear resonances of these. I am going to talk about the competition between the Russian Empire and other empires in Europe and outside Europe.
I'm going to talk in particular about the Qing Empire in China, the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and Eastern Europe and Great Britain. Just to get a sense of how this element of competition came to frame much of the thinking in the early 20th century, but also today, about Russia's place in the world. Then I will make in the substantive part a more direct comparison between Russia and its relationship with Ukraine and Great Britain, that is, England, in its relationship with Ireland, and France in its relationship with Algeria. And I chose them not because they are identical, they are not identical, but they have a lot in common in terms of how long the participation has lasted.
But for me it is also crucial that this is a question of decolonization. Although these areas, these countries are close to the Imperial Centers, Ireland and Algeria, their evolution has been an evolution driven in the 20th century by decolonization. And what I'm indicating here, of course, is that the relationship between Russia and Ukraine is in many ways similar in character, not in all contexts of those relationships. And then I'll finish before, hopefully, we have time for just a couple of questions about what drives Russian imperialism today, especially, but not exclusively, with respect to Ukraine. That is the general framework of this conference.
And, of course, they will have mentioned some of this before, but probably not in the context that we are trying to elaborate today. So let me start with the drivers of Russian imperialism. Is there anyone who can prevent that map from turning on and off? - Press the Escape button on the keyboard. No, no, no, ESC keyboard. - Press the Escape button. - Yes. - It seems like a good idea. So let's start by thinking about the drivers of Russian imperialism, the way it emerged in the 19th century. Some of these factors, in my opinion, as you will hear later in the conference, have remained relatively intact and others have changed.
The argument I am

making

here is not an argument about absolute continuity. It is about the need to understand the starting point of many of these ways of thinking. Without which, I think we are lost in our attempt to understand what the current situation is. (phone ringing) This is it. It's not me. (students laughing) (phone ringing) (students laughing) Probably. It should have been a red phone, right? So the first of these factors is also the most complex. It is a feeling on the Russian side within the Russian elite or elites of uniqueness, of exceptionalism, of differentiating itself as an empire from other empires.
Now, Russia, you emphasize this, Russia is not the only empire that thinks of itself that way. You're sitting here inside an empire that thinks of itself that way, right? What's a little bit special about Russia is how comprehensively some of these ideas were developed very early on about religion, about authenticity, which is a term that's often used, for Russian speakers here, "samoefikasnost," which can be translated into many different languages. ways, but being oneself, very often, and I think more correctly, certainly in the context of the 19th century, is translated as authenticity, being close to people, having a certain almost mystical connection between the elites.
Then, of course, the imperial elites and the vast majority of people included within the empire, not just the Russians, it must be said, but everyone who was included within the empire. A genuine understanding of people's desires that other empires, according to these texts, did not possess. A search for a genuine order that can represent those desires of the people. Of course, it leads to the idea or ideal of a benign authoritarian government. And you'll hear a lot of this reflected in some of the later speeches as well. And speaking of this, by the way, I remember the great British historian, Sir Lewis Namier.
I don't know if Namier's name has appeared before in this series of lectures. He was one of the people, although most of his work was in British constitutional history, who gave voice to this idea about a particular link between Russia, the Russian empire, and authenticity. This is how Namier was born in Warsaw at the end of the 19th century under the name Bernstein. He then moved with his family to Ternopil, where he grew up. Polefied, is that the word? Polephizing the name from him to Niemirowski, who later became Namier when he arrived in Britain as a student.
Authenticity was the term he often used. He hated the Polish Republic. He hated Germany even more. He was ambivalent about Ukraine, but he really liked Russia because she was authentic, right? In a way that other empires were not, including the British Empire, which he served for most of his life. So this is the first factor: uniqueness, exceptionalism, authenticity. The second, it seems to me, is the emphasis within the official discourse on expansion as something defensive. Now again, other empires also do the same. There is always a border that needs to be pacified. We will talk about the Qing Empire later, always a frontier to pacify, the British Empire stumbled over its empire, etc.
But, in my opinion, it has never been emphasized so deeply and for so long as the expansion of the Russian Empire. And much of it was then transmitted in a somewhat different form to the Soviet Union, when it was later reconstituted within what had been the Russian Empire. Now, some of this is easy to understand: the emphasis on defense. Part of the reason is that Russia, of course, faced the eastern and western empires, which for most of its existence were much stronger than Russia itself. In Europe, certainly, but also in the Ottomans, and certainly in the Qing in East Asia, as the Russian Empire discovered quite early in its eastward expansion, it didn't mess with the Qing.
That wasn't a good idea. It was probably in terms of sheer military capability combined with an ideology of aggression, which you really didn't want to deal with. So, this idea of ​​expansion as something defensive to face the challenges that other empires were stronger in, was very significant in the 19th century. Then, thirdly, expansion is opportunistic. And this is the one that is most problematic in some ways, because it is not 100% true. I mean, this is not to say that there were no plans for expansion within the Russian Empire in the 19th century. There certainly were such plans, but in some ways, I would say they were carried out much less in the Russian Empire than in any other empire I know, including the ones I mentioned so far.
Part of the explanation for this is, of course, the relative weakness to which I have already referred. But of course, taking advantage of a unique moment from the mid-19th century onwards in which the eastern empires, and here I would include Great Britain, that is, British India, the eastern empires that Russia faced got into trouble, the three , the Qing, the British and the Ottomans, around the same time. The Qing, mainly for internal reasons, I would say, and then followed by confrontations with Western imperialism, the Ottomans due to the start of nationalist organizations in part of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the European part, and the British, due to the rebellion in India in the 1850s.
So instead of advancing outward, these empires begin to step aside, opening up to a remarkable period of Russian imperial expansion. That's opportunistic. It's opportunistic for a reason. That reason is the weakness of others. But it also tells you something about the ability to act. And that is what happened at the end of the 19th century. And the result that you see here, in terms of this, is the Russian Empire, and in 1914 or so. If we look at the red line, that is where we are really ruined by the massive expansion of the territory. Then, fourth, a driver of Russian imperialism that emerged from the 19th century is the emphasis on hierarchy and bureaucracy in the incorporation of elites.
Moreover, that is, these were non-Russian elites. Again, these are characteristics you would find in any empire, but particularly, the emphasis on incorporation is something that the Russian Empire took very far. I think most people will be deeply surprised if they think about this, but most of the people who made up the expansionist elite in the Russian Empire were not Russian. They came from other peoples, mainly European, but not exclusively, who were part of the Russian empire in the 19th century. They staffed and gave mandates, and they were bureaucrats who came to serve him, which was part of the promise that the empire presented to them in terms of how working for and with the Russian Empire could serve many people who were not necessarily Russian. , or perhaps even more crucially, he had not been born in a tsar's domain.
That worked. And it worked for a very long time. It was not without controversy. Certainly not in the areas that had been colonized. It was also not uncontroversial within Russia itself, but it was a powerful aspect of how the Russian empire functioned. People who were born and raised in Ukraine, for example, in many cases went to serve the Russian Empire in faraway places: Poles, Germans, Belarusians, you have it. I won't go over all the different groups that served in these types of worlds. So hierarchy, bureaucracy, incorporation. Of course, a driver of Russian expansionism was also resource exploitation.
So, for those who were already thinking: "Aha, here's Professor Westad arguing for a completely idealistic understanding of Russian imperialism." Not so. I mean, there were motives driven by the desire for resource exploitation outside of what had been the established borders of the empire. However, what was notable about the Russian Empire for a long, long time was that it was relatively ineffective at exploiting those resources. So this wasn't for lack of trying, but if you look at this map, and you've heard this many times, I'm sure that in this class, distance sometimes defeats the better purpose of exploitation, right?
They could seize the resources, as all imperialists do, that they want and need, but could they easily take them to the market, which here would be mainly in the West? Did he necessarily want to take them to the market when he could use them to strengthen the state much more at the local level? These are questions that need to be asked about the Russian empire. ByTherefore, it would be a mistake to say that it is not about the exploitation of resources, as almost all imperial enterprises are, but it is also important to remember that for a long time the exploitation of these resources by the Russian Empire was relatively ineffective and inefficient. .
And then the last factor I'm going to mention, there are many, but you have to stop a little bit. It is an agreement. Again, if you look at the map, we should have had a map indicating where people from various parts of Russia settled during the empire, but especially after emancipation, starting in the 1860s, there was a massive expansion of settlements in various parts of Russia, far from where people were born. So I'm not just saying that it was (incomprehensible) who solved it. They were quite a large number, but there were also other types of towns.
The empire, in a way, opened itself to colonization. For those of you who are here primarily because of your interest in Ukrainian history, you should look at where Ukrainians have ended up throughout the Russian empire. Perhaps look especially at the Far East and what are now the Maritime provinces, where large numbers of Ukrainians settle. This is important, because not all empires settle, right? There are some, Russia is among them, where settlement, trend settlement, whatever you want to call it, is an important part of the determining factors. We will return to this a little later. And there are others who are much less so.
And then, of course, there are other hybrids, such as the British Empire, which would settle in some areas, which is part of the reason why a large number of you are here today. North America would settle, Australia would settle parts of Africa, and in doing so they would carry out at least episodic acts of genocide. But in other parts of the British Empire settlements were not on the agenda. For example, there were very few British settlements in India. And we can, if you're interested in comparative imperial history, delve into why that was the case. I often use the example of Korea.
So Korea was in some kind of union in a very broad sense, tied to the Chinese empires for a long, long time. But there were no Chinese attempts to settle the Chinese in Korea during that period. From the beginning of the 20th century, Korea gradually became part of the Japanese empire and Japanese people settled in large numbers. Therefore, it is important, particularly for those of you who have an interest in concepts linked to certain colonialism, to understand what it is really about and what the forces are, the drivers of it, why it is consulted the way it is.
So, as I see it, these are the drivers of Russian imperialism at the highest level. Let's move on then to the question of competition that I originally mentioned. And I think this is important to understand why we end up with a Russian empire controlling this entire huge land mass that we're looking at here. And you will know this, and I'm not going to dwell on it, Russian expansion eastward and southward and into other parts of Europe began quite early. We are talking about the 17th century, the beginning of the 17th century. But of course during that period, as I already said, the Russian Empire had to be very careful not to run into stronger empires, which would basically defeat them if they tried to enter the disputed areas.
So most of that expansion was directed north and east, toward areas where anti-imperial resistance was much weaker. That was the story for a long, long time. And it is really the 19th century that changes this. As I already indicated, sometimes it is important to recognize this in history. The Russian Empire, in many ways, was lucky. He got lucky with the Qing. He was lucky with the Ottomans. You got lucky with the British for no reason related to the Russian Empire itself, right? There was an opportunity to expand to huge areas, due to the weakness of Russia's opponents.
So you see that here, along the borders of the Russian Empire, entering into (incomprehensible), entering into Central Asia, into the southern parts of Central Asia, which had been an absolute no-no, because if you entered there, you got in trouble. with the Qing. And then of course ultimately in the Far East, what became the Maritime Provinces were taken directly from the Qing Empire when the Qing got into real trouble in the late 19th century. I think we can learn a lot about how empires behave if we think about them in terms of competition, right? Not just each empire for itself, which has generally been the focus, but also how empires learn from each other, how they view each other.
My Princeton colleague Jeremy Adelman has written very well on this topic. I mean, how empires take over features, they take over imperial technologies from others. And in many ways, this is what Russia proceeded to do in the 19th century. Of course, not only in the areas that were taken, but also in other parts of the Russian Empire. This sudden burst of expansion also gave rise to much of this unrest taking place elsewhere in Russia, which would even lead to the fatal engagement in the 1914 war, and then the collapse of the Russian Empire in the revolution. . A collapse that a good number of historians will explain, at least in part, by the fact that they tried to do too many things at the same time and therefore failed.
There is a lot to say about it. I think Yale colleague Paul Kennedy's term "imperial extension" applies incredibly well to late 19th century Russia. So the comparison is not just an issue-by-issue comparison, at least for me. The comparison can also tell us a lot when we think about it in a broader context, in a social context, in an economic context and perhaps, above all, in a state context. Not just about political systems, but about how one creates or attempts to create capable states that respond to these types of imperialist opportunities as they arise. Now, at this point I thought it might be very helpful for us to explore some of the categories that we've mostly already touched on in terms of drawing a more immediate comparison, as I said, to begin with, between Russia and Russia. , Great Britain and France.
I don't choose these three because they are the only three you can compare. I mentioned the Qing. I mentioned the United States, but there is something in particular about the beginning of the expansion with these empires, Russia, Great Britain, France, that I think can be quite illuminating. And many people who have now lost about a decade and want to work on empires and comparative imperialisms have begun to analyze these factors. Ukraine is an important part in terms of its relationship with Russia. And the parallels then, as I said, to begin with, are the English in Ireland and the French in Algeria, both early attempts at colonization that lasted a long time and ultimately failed.
They failed because the people who lived in these regions assumed identities, accepted identities, worked through identities that were not proportional to the imperial project that had been imposed on them from the outside, even though significant elements, I think language remained, or after of that imperial. the period was over. Algeria's anti-colonial revolutionaries wrote mainly in French. The Sinn Féin and Irish Republican Army activist spoke almost exclusively in English. So there are things that do remain. But let's look at this in terms of some more specific comparisons. One, and here we have to go back to that term which, of course, refers to the agreement.
This is difficult because colonization occurs in slightly different ways in these three countries. The same happens in Algeria, Ireland and Ukraine. So in Ireland settlement, English settlement, occurred more or less throughout the country. But then more and more, and here we see a parallel with Ukraine, more and more, as industrialism began to take hold in the most resource- and energy-rich parts of the country, meaning in the north, right? And the parallel here, of course, is Donbas, particularly in the eastern part of Ukraine. There is also a parallel with France in Algeria, where there were the most productive areas, but mainly in agricultural terms, along the coast that were colonized by French-speaking people, not necessarily people who came from France, but people whose main language It was the French. and moved to these areas under the auspices of the French Empire.
In these three countries, in terms of settlement activities, the native population was mainly excluded. Not completely excluded, but mainly excluded. The arguments used for this were of a different nature. One had to do with education and skills, which of course the empire in control deliberately deprived from the people they ruled. If you've ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy, you can see it's there. But also, of course, the loyalty to the imperial project, which was probably very, very significant as we already mentioned, in all three cases, particularly in the late 19th century, the settlement was part of the expansion of the population itself abroad.
And in these cases, of course, in areas that were quite close to the imperial model country, which is important in this context. But the comparisons here do not refer only to agreements. It's also about incorporation. And this is where I think things get really interesting. The idea of ​​the Imperial Center of these countries, which for most countries had had a separate existence, was an integral part of the imperial homeland, not just the imperial state. Imperial states are vast and reach to the peripheries. And none, or very few people, especially if you're not French, would argue that these faraway places are actually part of France or part of whatever, right?
But if you are in the house next door, it is more problematic in many ways. So at the end of the 19th century there arose this argument, which has resonated until very close to today, that Ireland really belongs to Great Britain. She's part of the British Isles, right? She should sit up. What is needed is more incorporation, not less incorporation. Until, of course, the British reached one of the weakest moments in history, an armed rebellion that they could not overcome and which established an Irish State. But in the process, this is where onboarding really resonates. The British maintained control of the north, of the northern areas of Ireland, which had been the part populated mostly by English, Scots and other peoples of the empire who had come to work in the factories and to work in the areas, in the north.
In the Franco-Algerian situation, things were even worse in terms of finding a solution, because as many of you will know, in the late 1940s and 1950s, the position that the French State took was that Algeria was an integral part of France. Even considering any form of autonomy, let alone independence for Algeria, was tantamount to devaluing the entire importance and position of the French State, which is why the War of Independence became so incredibly cruel, right? Because it had to do with identity, and identity both within the former colonized zone and within the imperial center. Exploitation is a big part of this, and various types of exploitation of nearby areas in terms of empire.
I think there are some parallels here regarding these three as well. When I say exploitation, I don't always think of it in purely material terms, although that is an important part of it, as I have already described. But it goes further than that. It also uses manpower, for example, for wars, for future wars of expansion. If you look at the number of Algerians who served in France's wars during the 20th century, especially, it is a very, very large number. The number of Irish who served in various British armies, sometimes as front troops, is also very, very high, right?
So it's not just economic exploitation, but also exploitation of the labor that is actually there. They are also other forms of exploitation. Sexual exploitation is a part of this in a gendered sense, which I think is very important to emphasize. Its exploitation in terms of when it has greatest development as it did in the middle of the 20th century. Exploitation of resources in terms of everything from currency to fuel. When you think about imperialist exploitation in these proximate contexts, you have to go with the smash and grab version, right? The exploitation that most of us think of in imperialist terms and magnify, we see through a slightly different lens, in part because the cases I talk about here were not cases of resources that had to be brought in from afar.
They were quite close and easy to access. So settlement, incorporation, exploitation. And finally, cultural hegemony. I will dwell on this a little because I think it is very important for these three cases. So, to begin with this part, I talked about language and how it had been used to certainly incorporate the elites, but after a while, to also advance a field within the imperial project. Ukraine is, of course, the best example I know of this, right? But Ireland and Algeria would not stayback. Prioritizing the culture of the colonizer is, as Edward Said and others have told us, a really important aspect of the continuation of the imperial tradition, a kind of push to the kinds of questions that arise from the early period of empire and imperialism.
It is also a way in which imperial powers almost always create divisions within the countries they control. And culture here is probably more important than direct politics. It brings us back to what we talked about at the beginning of this conference in terms of identities, in terms of discouraging dissent among the colonized, because the cultural power of the colonizer is much greater. For example, we are international, we are global, we are a great power, we are a superpower, while you are not, right? You are local. So I think culture works that way with respect to imperial projects, and it's probably the last thing to go, right?
I think it is quite clear in the case of Ukraine and eminently visible in the case of Algeria and Ireland. This is certainly so and it is a problem. It is a problem that, of course, only colonized peoples after decolonization can successfully solve for themselves. But it is an important question. So I wanted to make sure that at the end we have a little time for questions. So I'm going to do something final. First comment on current Russian imperialism versus Ukraine. But then I think, more importantly, in terms of what I know about how the effects of this war are going to resonate on the Russian side in terms of dealing with the past, including the deeper past.
So I have absolutely no doubt, as you may have guessed, in terms of how I framed this lecture, that current Russian imperialism versus Ukraine will end up the same way England, Ireland and France did in Algeria in decolonization, neoliberals notwithstanding. . colonial wars. I want to say that the Russians in Ukraine in 2022 are not the first to engage in neocolonial wars. I mean, Algeria and, in my opinion, Ireland, are also good examples of that. You find it almost everywhere in the world. This idea that if a formal association disappears in terms of empire, that's the end of the story.
In almost all imperial contexts, this is not the case. This remains problematic for a long time after that. And I argue that part of the reason for this is that these positions are so closely linked to identities, to core identities, for many of the people who are involved, not only on the side of the colonized, but perhaps even more powerfully on the side of the colonized. on the side of the colonizers. And this is what we sometimes don't understand well enough, perhaps especially in the Russian case, because this has included the collapse of the Soviet Union, such a long, drawn-out affair.
In many ways, this has to do with Russian identity. And it is, in my opinion, first and foremost, identity in Russia in the sense of an inability to meaningfully address the past. I spent a lot of time in Moscow in the early 1990s. As Wiktor said, I worked on Cold War history. There was no better opportunity for a Cold War historian than to be in Moscow in the early 1990s, when the archives began to open and become accessible. I also witnessed how, almost overnight, people went from belonging to one of the two superpowers, which made many people in Russia proud, to being almost nothing.
People dying of hunger, people in Moscow, old people who died of hunger in 1993. So that feeling of collapse, of being declassed, of having everything taken away from you, is a very important reason, I think, why Putin has been able to whether or not to develop Russia in the direction he has. Of course, it also very effectively manipulates, at least until the war in Ukraine started, the global image of the Soviet era as a kind of anti-empire, while in reality, of course, the Soviet Union maintained some, not all, but some of those visions of empire relatively intact.
So what Russia needs, in my opinion, probably more than anything else except regime change, is a reckoning with the past. Just as there is a need to discuss slavery and settler colonialism in Europe, America and elsewhere, there is also a deep need for Russians to discuss the effect that empire has had on those on the receiving end, but also, and perhaps more fundamentally on the Russians themselves, because it is very difficult, since this country, the United States, is slowly realizing that it is an empire and a republic. Be an empire, let alone a democracy, but even a functional republic at the same time.
So these forms of what I call hybrid exceptionalism that Vladimir Putin has been using in his war of aggression against Ukraine, when Foreign Minister Lavrov, at the beginning of the conflict, spoke of Ukraine as a Russian sphere of privileged interests, TRUE? You can see how this resonates with some of these drivers of Russian imperialism that I've been talking about today. So, on the Russian side, it is as important to approach this in terms of empire as it is to approach it in terms of war. So that's what I had to say. And I think we have time.
Exactly five minutes for questions, if there were people who wanted to ask. Please. - Was there any conflict between this Russian sense of authenticity as an imperial motivation and the fact that many of the servants of imperialism were not Russian? - I think there are some links. I mean, one thing I think is that it's the imperial institution itself that's unique in a way. In a way you project it upwards. You can see some trends during the Soviet era and also in the post-Soviet era, this idea of ​​inclusive representation, right? Entire books have been written about this comparing the late imperial era in Russia and the Soviet Union, right?
This idea of ​​representing something that is much bigger than Russia, much bigger than the Soviet people themselves, is immensely attractive to others. Now, for most of the time, it should be said, with respect to the Russian Empire, that this was not the case, with some important exceptions. People were brought into the empire by force and not by choice, right? But you can still see how it could work, right? This idea that you represent a broader idea that is not even necessarily Russian in nature, but that has the Russian state, the imperial Russian state in this case, at its center.
Other questions? Yes. - You hinted that what you think Russia needs is a regime change and a reckoning with the past. Do you think that when the regime change comes, they will bring this reckoning with the past or not? - I certainly hope so. The record is not particularly good in this regard. Look, over the last 20 years in Russia, I'm sure you are all aware of this, there has been a very specific set of attempts to stop dealing with the past in any meaningful sense. I mean, to some extent, that's what the Putin regime is all about, right?
A kind of denial of everything that happened before. Not always in a specific sense. It's very interesting, right? So, as an archival historian, I found it fascinating that in the last two or three years before the invasion of Ukraine, Putin, we know it was Putin himself, acted to open up many Soviet-era archives. And we don't know the reason why he was like that. I have a strong suspicion that the real reason was to compare his own regime favorably with what had been the failure of the Soviets. I mean, Putin, as you know, the building block of him is that he is anti-communist.
He believes that the communist era, despite the small hiatus around the Great Patriotic War, communism was bad for Russia, bad for Russians. It might have been good for other people in the empire, but it was bad for the Russians. So I think a fairly significant change is necessary, not just in terms of the regime itself, which can go in any direction. In no way am I predicting that what the Russians get will necessarily be better than Putin's. But in terms of thinking about the past, I think it is more significant in terms of society than in terms of the state.
Of course, the state should neither resist nor reject it, but my biggest surprise regarding the 2014 and 2022 invasions was how many ordinary Russians managed, at least one step of the way, to move on. Wow, this bunch of lies and half-truths that Putin presented as justification for colonial wars. And that tells me that there is a lot of work to be done among Russians themselves to understand how they are held back by this imperial mentality. Because as I said in the case of the other examples, this always ends badly when one arrives at the beginning of the 21st century.
One last question, if there is one. If not, let me make a brief observation at the end. So in this lecture I have tried to analyze the long delay, the kind of trajectories that emerge from the past, even the deepest past. I have not done this by trying to tell you that history explains everything. It is not like this. There are new directions, new trajectories that are not necessarily connected to the past. But if you want to try to understand terms, terminologies, parts of language, ideas and identities, then history can be a great guide, because history brings something to the table in terms of understanding the present, which can explain things that would otherwise be really real. , really difficult to explain.
That is, in a way, my message in this conference. It doesn't explain everything. But it's hard to do without it because of the things it can help you understand. Well thank you very much. (students clapping) (soft, soft music)

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