Ukrainian Nazism: How the WWII became a Russian raison d'être

February 25 thread

Let's discuss Putin speech. He declared Ukrainians to be "Neonazis" and promised to "denazify" them. Indeed the "Nazi" character of Ukrainian statehood and identity has long been a central thesis of Russian propaganda. Let's discuss why and how it reflects ideology of Putinism🧵

Why do we exist? Different Russian regimes gave different answers to this question. Bolshevik theocracy claimed to lead humanity to the earthly heaven of communism. Until 1960s they were serious about it. In 1960 Khruchev gave specific deadline: communism will be built by 1980

Khruchev however was the last true believer at power. In 1964 he was deposed by Brezhnev who didn't care. Brezhnev abandoned the agenda of building communism by a specific deadline. "Developed socialism" would be good enough. So we kinda don't march to the earthly heaven anymore

That however created a problem of justification and legitimacy. If we aren't unironically building Communism, then why do we exist? What's our source of legitimacy? Brezhnev told: because we won the WWII. We saved humanity from the Nazism which is our greatest accomplishment ever

Brezhnev transferred the source of state legitimacy from the future to the past, changing the entire narrative. Previously sacrifices of Stalinism were justified as the path to Communism. But now we aren't really going anywhere. So now the sacrifice was necessary to win the War

As a result, Brezhnev started to massively build the cult of Great Victory. Immediately upon taking power, Brezhnev introduces Victory Marches on the Red Square every 9th of May - the date of the fall of Berlin. He makes it a ritual of the new state religion, justifying his rule. The Cult of Victory was made up to fill the hole left by the abandonment of Communism-building. If we can't say we are marching to the bright future (nobody believes), then we'll discuss our great accomplishments in the past.

The USSR became Russia, and the history repeated itself. In the 1990s Kremlin was claiming we are building the bright future and gonna become rich and developed like the West. By 2000 nobody believed in that future. So Putin again transferred the source of legitimacy to the past

As a result new, highly idiosyncratic ideology of Putinism emerged. It combined the respect to Stalinism (which achieved the Great Victory), the Russian Orthodox clericalism, the Russian ethnonationalism. It's often mocked as Russian Orthodox National-Communist Monarchism

Again, this led to a retrospective change in the narrative. Stalin became good cuz he restored the Russian Empire and won the war. But Stalin didn't want to restore the Russian empire, he was building Communism. And he didn't intend to wage this war, at least not like that

To start with, Stalin regarded *Germany* as his natural ally against the Versailles victors - UK and France. So he needed to pump Germany up, make it it stronger. Long before the rise of Hitler, Stalin had been building the German military might, which would then strike on Allies