The recent Tucker Carlson interview at the Kremlin has highlighted a bizarre strategic vulnerability in Europe – its history. The Russian President used more than half of his time for a thirty-minute monologue on the supposed origins of the current Russo-Ukrainian War – including such claims as that Poland was responsible for WWII, that Ukraine was an invention of the twentieth century, and that NATO had promised Russia it would not ‘expand’. All of these very obvious lies.
However, the Kremlin made these claims, and others about Central and Eastern Europe, knowing that a wider audience would be unable to tell fact from fiction. The Kremlin understood a basic fact, that few people outside of the region know or understand the history of Central and Eastern Europe. This approach to ‘geopolitical gaslighting’ is nothing new from Russia – in fact it has become something of a regular occurrence in their diplomatic and media output.
In June 2021, the Russian President himself authored an article the state-run newspaper TASS in which he set out an alternative view of Ukrainian history – claiming the nation to have always been a part of Russia that had been stolen away by Poland and other Western nations in the Medieval period.
Such false claims have now become common lines touted by Russia’s proxies in the West – again exploiting the fact that there are few organisations or individuals out there that have an expertise in the history, culture, and languages of the region. For the longest time, Central and Eastern Europe has remained a blind spot in the minds of the West.
Few historians publish books about the region, and historical TV shows and films rarely receive much attention. Names like Timothy Snyder, Steven Kotkin, and Serhii Plokhy, are far from household names – yet they are perhaps the most prolific writers on the region. As such Central and Eastern Europe remains, in the minds of most Western Europeans, distant and unfamiliar. And such a low level of understanding lends itself to manipulation.
Despite this, some nations in Central and Eastern Europe have taken their past more seriously than their allies in the West. Poland for example has established several state funded institutions focused on the promotion of national memory, and research institutes dedicated to the study of past crimes committed by totalitarian regimes in the region.
The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in Poland stands out as a leading example, founded in 1998, it received increased funding under the last Polish government – as well as new statutory obligations to counter historical disinformation about Poland. The role of the IPN has become that of a front-line institute in the fight against Russian anti-Polish propaganda and revisionism.
In the Czech Republic, several institutes have been set up to support the public in finding out the truth about what happened during the communist period. The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes, The Security Services Archives, and The Centre for the Documentation of Totalitarian Regimes have all been given a mandate from the Czech government to come to terms with the past – in many cases opening archives to the public and academics.
Since 2011, many of these organisations have organised together under the umbrella of the ‘European Platform for Memory and Conscience’ – a broad collection of institutes, think tanks, and museums dedicated to keeping the memory of victims of communism alive.
Their work has included the establishment of a dedicated, EU designated day for the remembrance of the victims of Communism and Nazism in Europe – Black Ribbon Day on the 23rd of August. The decision to mark this event annually was taken at the signing of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism – during a conference organised by then Czech Deputy Prime Minister Alexandr Vondra.
The need to keep the memory of Russia’s crimes in Central and Eastern Europe extends beyond academic institutes. In Prague, Tallinn, Riga, and Budapest – museums dedicated to the crimes of Communism. In the Czech case – the Museum of Communism, which is run with the support of the Security Services Archives, has become a popular tourist attraction, teaching not just Czechs but international guests about life under the Russian imposed authoritarian regime.
As of last year, a new Museum of Victims of Communism opened in Washington DC – with an aim to try and educate the American public on the crimes of communism. It’s focus extends beyond Europe and addresses the millions of victims of communism in Asia today. However, thanks to the support of partners from Central and Eastern Europe, the stories of Russian aggression in Europe are being told to a new audience.
The reality however is that such exercises in memory politics are far from enough to counter Russian narratives. The British academic Dr Jade McGlynn, in her 2023 book ‘Memory Makers’ talks about how Russia has spent the last three decades re-writing its history and changing the publics narrative through manipulation of the media. Every foreign policy decision taken by the Kremlin has been carefully reframed to match the current Russian mythology that they alone are destined to fight ‘fascism’ around the world – with the definition of ‘fascism’ changing depending on the situation.
Dr McGlynn’s book equally highlights how the Russian regime has used its authority to shut down and censor groups dedicated to searching for historical truth. In 2021 the NGO ‘Memory’, which had worked to document and highlight the crimes of Stalin, was forced to close. In February 2024, Radio Free Europe (RFE/RL) – long subject to repression from the Russian state – was finally forced to close after being declare illegal. RFE/RL had produced a number of documentaries comparing the current crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine, to the actions of the Soviet Union in the last century.
The greatest challenge of all however comes from social media – where anonymous voices on the internet can spread misinformation about history unchallenged. Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, bots on sites like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, 4Chan, and TikTok have been hard at work spreading counterfactuals. And with so much of the mainstream media drawing from social media, these narratives can bleed into the public space unintendedly.
The fact is that historical ignorance does play an important role in modern day politics. Not long after the release of Tucker Carlson’s interview, US lawmaker took to social media to express how they could no longer back aid to Ukraine, or a military presence on the Russian frontier. Debates on the floor of the US House and Senate over support for Ukraine, and NATO in general, have been coloured by the spread of disinformation. Unless western governments spend more time defending their history, they risk having it dictated to them by someone else.