Publications · 6 November 2014
Historical Policy in the Twenty-First Century
Review prepared by Aliaksandr Paharely.
History is a dispute about the past. Yet the past remains a subject that people are unwilling to leave as the exclusive prerogative of historians. Historical events and the narratives of which they form a part serve not only as a field of work for researchers but also, often with the participation of those same researchers, turn into a space for political manipulation and conflict. A public dialogue about the past, about landmark historical events that, by virtue of their place and emotional potential, are of great significance for society, should help overcome such conflicts.
The absence of such a dialogue can lead to the sharpening of conflicts and to the destruction of trust in society. The events and narratives of the past, as well as their interpretations, are constantly objects of a struggle for meaning (Verdery, 1991: 27-29). When they are perceived as a basis for political legitimacy, such a struggle takes on rather acute forms and may threaten society with division.
Today, attempts by state institutions and other actors to interfere in and regulate the interpretation of the past are conceptualized as “historical policy.” This very concept appears in the title of the volume edited by the Russian historian Alexei Miller, senior research fellow at the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences and visiting professor at Central European University in Budapest, and Maria Lipman, an expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
The volume includes nineteen texts, some of which had appeared since 2008 in the pages of the journal “Pro et Contra.” Under one cover, the editors have gathered materials devoted to a single theme: attempts at the state level, and even through legislation, to set priorities in giving obligatory status to certain interpretations of historical events and the narratives associated with them; efforts to “freeze” one or another interpretation of the past and turn it into a weapon for settling political scores with opponents within the country or in interstate relations.
The editors attempted to define the phenomenon of historical policy and outline its features. According to Miller, such features do not necessarily appear simultaneously in all the cases presented in the volume. Yet, in his view, it is precisely the unique combination of forms in which historical policy, which he also calls the “politicization of history,” characterizes the region designated as “Eastern Europe” (pp. 7-8). It should be acknowledged that placing the countries assigned to this region in a comparative perspective is both interesting and useful (p. 27).
The question of the subjects of historical policy is very important. Alexei Miller rightly notes that, in addition to state structures, this category should include public organizations, the media, and others. He draws attention to the fact that it is precisely adherence to elementary democratic values and some degree of pluralism in society that make historical policy possible (p. 9). Yet even the absence of normally functioning democratic institutions, though not compensated for, is substantially supplemented by the internet and social networks, which become important conduits for discussions about the past.
Alexei Miller quite rightly points to the role of new media and new forms of publicity in the context of historical policy. At the same time, the example of Russia itself somehow falls outside his field of vision, although the Kremlin exercises almost complete control over electronic mass media there, which in turn makes issues connected with historical policy more problematic and considerably more manipulative. Where there are more opportunities for the normal functioning of the public sphere, the chances that the state can monologically impose a particular version of the past are smaller.
It was precisely in the region of Central and Eastern Europe, where there are both countries that have joined the EU and countries that have not, that historical policy acquired its most pronounced forms in the first decade of the new century and, in Miller’s view, underwent escalation. It moved to the level of interstate relations. Another of its distinctive features, according to the Russian specialist on Ukraine, was the borrowing from neighbours of experience in constructing discourse about the past, even when this policy could be directed against those very neighbours.
Here I would like to pause on the character of the terminology used in the volume, and above all on the term “Eastern Europe.” This political-geographical device is probably due to the reluctance of the editors, and first of all A. Miller, to use another term, to whose deconstruction he has devoted considerable attention: East-Central Europe (Miller, 2001). The Russian historian’s particular objection was provoked by the fact that a vision of this region was formulated that excluded Russia from it. At the same time, Miller hardly touches on the value-normative aspect of such exclusion and “othering,” nor does he comment in any way on the fact that he teaches at a university that bears precisely this name: Central European.
The volume does not offer any single vision of historical policy. The latter, according to the formulation of Miller, the Russian specialist on Ukraine, is an attempt to intervene in and regulate interpretations of the past with the help of state institutions in order to achieve political results. Historical policy is characterized by the methods through which it is carried out.
These include the creation of institutions used to impose a particular interpretation of history advantageous to one or another political force (“commissions to counter the falsification of history,” institutes of national memory, and others); political interference in the activities of the mass media; manipulation of archives (through maintaining secrecy where it should be lifted, selective publication of documents, and so on); the development and use of new techniques for controlling the work of historians; interference in the content of textbooks and curricula, including direct violations of the legislation in force on this matter (pp. 17-19, 341).
However, this is far from the only interpretation of historical policy offered in the volume. A more neutral and nuanced definition with respect to the Western European, and above all German, experience is proposed in the text by Jutta Scherer.
Historical policy, according to her, is directed toward the formation of socially significant historical images of the past and images of identity. Historical policy is not monological; in a democratic and pluralistic society, alongside politicians, other professional and social groups are involved in it, adding their own meanings and understandings to socially significant historical events. Such historical policy has a pluralistic character corresponding to the society that implements it. This includes the transmission of memory and experience, as well as the subject matter of historical research on sensitive issues (pp. 475-476).
For Europe as a whole, the German experience is an example of how difficult problems of the past should be approached. The emergence of the terminology and concept of “historical policy” itself, and the formation of a particular discourse for resolving these questions, occurred precisely in the context of German debates about “coming to terms with the past.” Two texts in the volume address intra-German discussions about the legacy of Nazism and the communist experience of the GDR, as well as Franco-German interstate relations in this context. By default, this experience is normative for the countries of East-Central Europe.
It is precisely the misuse of the German experience that Alexei Miller emphasizes (p. 27). The reception of the German conceptualization of a healthy dialogue about the past acquired a different character in the countries of the region. It was with reference to the German experience that the public adviser to President Lech Kaczyński, the philosopher and political scientist Marek Cichocki, announced the need for Poland’s own “historical policy” in order to resist the “revision” of historical events by Poland’s neighbours, first of all Germany and Russia.
Polish and Ukrainian themes are the most represented in the volume. Polish or Polish-Russian issues are represented in four texts, and Ukrainian issues in three. This is explained by the particular acuteness acquired by Russia’s interstate relations with these countries in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Overall, the volume shows the motives that create the ground for historical policy and influence not only it but also the broader political context. One such motive is a deficit of legitimacy. History is not the only source of legitimacy for post-Soviet countries. Yet when post-Soviet states experience such a deficit, the past becomes precisely the resource on which the elites of these countries rely (p. 388). In the case of states of the former USSR, both those that are not part of the EU and those that have become part of it, one may also speak of an “ontological concern” that becomes a driving force of historical policy, as, for example, in the case of Estonia (p. 189).
Some techniques of historical policy are common to the post-Soviet space. A Belarusian reader can compare the experience of other post-Soviet countries with Belarus’s own. For example, during the period of communist rule in Moldova, an attempt was made in 2002 to introduce an integrated course of national and world history in secondary schools, analogous to what had already been implemented for some time in Belarus (pp. 270-271).
Parallels with Belarus can also be traced through the example of Moldova in the way the communist authorities and the scholars and officials linked to them treated pro-Romanian historians in academic structures. They characterized their activity as “anti-Moldovan” and “anti-state.” According to the historian-minister in Moldova’s communist government, Victor Stepaniuc, an “ideological struggle” was waged against these historians.
The Belarusian experience, in the sense of interpreting Stalinism as a course toward modernization, was needed by the authors of Russian textbooks who sought to satisfy a demand from the state. This refers to Yakov Trashchenok and his textbook. Thus, the exchange of experience within historical policy does not necessarily have any fixed and stable “centres” and “peripheries” (p. 335). Miller, meanwhile, criticizes the instrumental use of the modernization paradigm to diminish the scale of Stalinist repressions in Russian school textbooks (p. 356).
The volume also addresses the very important problem of the preservation of essentially Soviet practices in the post-Soviet humanities. This is manifested both in the character of the institutionalization of certain disciplines and at the level of narratives, when a significant part of them is in fact borrowed from the communist period, only with certain qualifications and shifts of emphasis (pp. 223, 265). This specificity cannot be ignored when analyzing historical policy in post-Soviet countries.
Another subject that deserves attention and whose treatment gives an idea of the particularities of historical policy is the instrumentalization of the Holocaust. It takes place in the countries of East-Central Europe in very different political contexts and is practiced by forces of very different ideological orientations. In pluralistic and democratic societies, attempts to instrumentalize the Holocaust provoke an energetic response, as in the case of the “Blois Appeal” by the historian Pierre Nora, who in 2008 sharply condemned the possibility of adopting a law that would empower judicial authorities to determine the character of one or another interpretation of the historical past, even in the form of prosecution for denying any forms of crimes against humanity (pp. 501-502).
In the context of the instrumentalization of the Holocaust, attention should also be paid to the question of genocide. The appropriation of the concept of genocide takes place, among other things, with reference to the paradigmatic status of the Holocaust. In the context of historical policy and international relations, the term “genocide” has acquired an acutely conflictual character. The volume notes the possibility that issues connected with genocide may return to the arena of domestic and foreign-policy disputes in the post-Soviet space and in the countries of East-Central Europe (pp. 319-320). One must agree that using genocide for political purposes contributes to the inflation and relativization of this concept and does not so much resolve as complicate foreign-policy relations, as well as domestic politics.
The personal fate of scholars in connection with historical policy and the study of the Holocaust is undoubtedly a necessary element in clarifying the consequences of the politicization of history by various subjects. The example of the Canadian historian of Ukraine John-Paul Himka, and the de facto boycott declared against him by the academic Ukrainian diaspora in North America and Ukraine itself, as well as accusations that he collaborated with Russian special services because of his research into the role of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) in anti-Jewish pogroms and the Holocaust, shows how a certain “incorrect” topic can have a negative impact on a historian’s career.
The comparative perspective of the volume allows attention to be drawn to the insufficient treatment of certain topics within it. In the context of China, the role of cinema, as well as mass culture and the sphere of consumption in general, is discussed in the politicization of the past. This forces one to raise the question of the role of these spheres in historical policy in East-Central Europe as well. Although Miller mentions the role of Andrzej Wajda’s film “Katyń” in reducing tension in Polish-Russian relations and slowing the intensity of historical policy after the crash of the Polish president’s plane in Smolensk in April 2010, the context of Russian television and film production is entirely absent, although this production, if it does not openly glorify the controversial imperial legacy, Stalinism, and Soviet practices of mass violence, then at least contributes to their justification (Condee, 2009).
In his own article, Miller examines only one level of historical policy in Russia and completely ignores an entire array of official publications in which historical events are presented in an extremely politicized version. Nor does he include in his analysis certain sectors of the Russian public sphere. There, much more pronounced tendencies toward imperial revisionism and extreme nationalism exist. His outline of historical policy in Russia effectively ignores the growth of Stalinist tendencies in the public sphere, although the Russian specialist on Ukraine does note the inactivity of Stalin’s supporters in the public sphere during perestroika.
While Miller acknowledges the existence of problems in the sense of the absence of “working through the past” in Russia, he does not go beyond stating that there is no unambiguous legal assessment of the crimes of Stalinism. Yet it cannot be said that the volume is entirely one-sided in this regard. It includes a piece whose author, the historian and Memorial employee Nikita Petrov, unequivocally states that Stalin, both under contemporary Russian law and under Soviet law of the time, can be regarded as a criminal.
It is necessary to return once again to Miller’s use of the term “Eastern Europe.” Miller is significantly silent about the need to deconstruct Russian imperial myths and to distance contemporary Russia from them. This also touches on problems of a different order, which, had they received proper treatment from the Russian specialist on Ukraine, would have cast the understanding of the nature of neighbouring countries’ reactions to Russia’s actions in its domestic and foreign policy in a completely different light. Such deconstruction and its discussion in the public sphere are an essential precondition for the improvement of Russia’s bilateral and multilateral relations with neighbouring states.
In fairness, it should be noted that elsewhere he shows that the peoples of East-Central Europe have their own reasons for perceiving Russia as a threat. At the same time, he quotes the well-known work of the Hungarian István Bibó, though he gives its title while adding a rather dismissive epithet (“wretchedness”). In Miller’s eyes, this work clearly demonstrates that Russia cannot have the same existential or ontological insecurity that exists among the nations of this region, which may leave readers from there with an ambivalent impression (Miller, 2006: 10-11).
A peculiar continuation of this theme can be found in the reviewed volume. The Russian specialist on Ukraine effectively summarized the character of relations between the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia when he identified two levels of discourse, which may conventionally be called “official” and “crude,” in Russia’s bilateral contacts with the countries of the region, quoting the writer Viktor Pelevin (p. 31).
Miller’s attention has already been drawn to the one-sidedness of his approach, and of historians who refer to him, in deconstructing the national narratives of post-Soviet countries while at the same time “forgetting” about the deconstruction of the imperial narrative. This is used by those historians in Russia who practice a particular form of restoration of imperial discourse (Portnov, 2007a: 12, 14-15).
In such a context, the imperial dimension of history and its legacy in Russia’s relations with post-Soviet countries take on the character of an indisputable “reality,” whereas national narratives, in comparison with them, become merely “constructs.” Revisionist historians use the achievements of researchers working within constructivist and critical paradigms (Portnov, 2007b: 30), while they themselves often do not share such theoretical assumptions and assign them to what they call “alien postmodernism.” Thus, a peculiar division of labour emerges between critical historians and imperial revisionists. Such phenomena can be observed both in Russia and in other post-Soviet countries where there are intellectual and political supporters of this revisionism.
Perhaps this attitude of the Russian researcher toward the deconstruction of the imperial narrative can be partly explained by how he positions himself in relation to the political spectrum of his country at the time. In Miller’s work, the sphere of the “liberal” is constructed in such a way that he effectively presents this part of Russia’s political and public sector as marginal. Naturally, he does not place himself within the liberal sphere (pp. 357, 366).
Although the volume as a whole leaves an ambiguous impression, this by no means suggests that it is not worthy of the attention of historians, political scientists, and specialists in international relations. It raises very important questions about society’s relationship with its past, which may not always be convenient. The ability to overcome the legacy of this past may testify to the maturity of a given society and its readiness to resist attempts to instrumentalize history and to treat it soberly.
Literature mentioned in the review
- Miller, Alexei (2001). “The Theme of Central Europe: History, Contemporary Discourses, and Russia’s Place in Them,” New Literary Review, No. 52.
- Miller, Alexei (2006). The Romanov Empire and Nationalism. Essays on the Methodology of Historical Research. Moscow: New Literary Review.
- Portnov, Andrii (2007a). “News from a Good Empire,” Krytyka, No. 9: 10-15.
- Portnov, Andrii (2007b). “Let Us Strike Volunteers with Desertion,” Krytyka, No. 10: 30-31.
- Condee, Nancy (2009). The Imperial Trace. Recent Russian Cinema. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press.
- Verdery, Katherine (1991). National Ideology Under Socialism. Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauşescu Romania. Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford: University of California Press.