Rewriting the past: how the Russian government and media framed the Ukraine crisis through the great patriotic war

[摘要] Remembering in Russia is increasingly performative and actualised, as shown by the Russian government and media’s conflation of the Ukraine Crisis with the Great Patriotic War. By presenting the Great Patriotic War as a frame though which to understand events in Ukraine, the media and government guide domestic political perceptions of the contemporary crisis and encourage participative shared remembering as a bulwark against threats to Russian cultural and historical legacies. Although minor divergences in the presentation of the historical frame suggest an element of agency in its implementation, the marked similarities that exist in the frame’s thematic content, sequencing, rhetoric, and methods of legitimisation across several sources demonstrate a concerted and sophisticated effort to instrumentalise the Ukraine Crisis for political positioning and identity formation. Through detailed research into how the historical frame blurs the Great Patriotic War into the first phase of the Ukraine Crisis, from the departure of President Yanukovych to the election of President Poroshenko, I produce a model for analysing similar mnemonic practices in Russia.

[发布机构] University:University of Birmingham;Department:School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music, Department of Modern Languages

[关键词] P Language and Literature;P Philology. Linguistics