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In the early hours of 24 February 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine. The brutality of the Russian assault has horrified the world. But Russians themselves appear to be watching an entirely different war – one in which they are the courageous underdogs and kind-hearted heroes successfully battling a malign Ukrainian foe. Russia analyst Jade McGlynn takes us on a journey into this parallel military and political universe to reveal the sometimes monstrous, sometimes misconstrued attitudes behind Russian majority backing for the invasion. Drawing on media analysis and interviews with ordinary citizens, officials and foreign-policy elites in Russia and Ukraine, McGlynn explores the grievances, lies and half-truths that pervade the Russian worldview. She also exposes the complicity of many Russians, who have invested too deeply in the Kremlin's alternative narratives to regard the war as Putin's foolhardy mission. In their eyes, this is Russia's war – against Ukraine, against the West, against evil – and there can be no turning back.

Why aren't ordinary Russians more outraged by Putin's invasion of Ukraine? Inside the Kremlin's own historical propaganda narratives, Russia's invasion of Ukraine makes complete sense. From its World War II cult to anti-Western conspiracy theories, the Kremlin has long used myth and memory to legitimize repression at home and imperialism abroad, its patriotic history resonating with and persuading large swathes of the Russian population. In Memory Makers, Russia analyst Jade McGlynn takes us into the depths of Russian historical propaganda, revealing the chilling web of nationwide narratives and practices perforating everyday life, from after-school patriotic history clubs to tower block World War II murals. The use of history to manifest a particular Russian identity has had grotesque, even gruesome, consequences, but it belongs to a global political pattern – where one's view of history is the ultimate marker of political loyalty, patriotism and national belonging. Memory Makers demonstrates how the extreme Russian experience is a stark warning to other nations tempted to stare too long at the reflection of their own imagined and heroic past.

AbstractDuring Vladimir Putin's third presidential term, the Russian government and media's rhetorical embrace of illiberalism, patriotism, and chauvinism was accompanied and partly facilitated by the invocation of historical precedent and "correct" historical understanding. Politicians stressed the importance of a shared historical memory to Russian national identity, rendering the interpretation of history a question of patriotism. The government and state-supportive media then used "patriotic" historical memories to legitimize government policies. Through framing analysis of three significant episodes—namely, the Ukraine Crisis, imposition of sanctions, and Russian intervention in Syria—I outline how the government and state-supportive media conflated these events with supposed historical precedents. This conflation made "patriotic" (or government-approved) history an everyday topic of discussion, but it also confused supporting government policy with celebrating historical triumph (or condemning historical tragedy). In this way, the government co-opted the emotional power of the history they invoked for the purposes of legitimizing their policies. This was compounded by the government and state-supportive media using and citing images and descriptions of ordinary people performing their patriotism in a manner that simultaneously demonstrated awareness of Russian history and support for the government.

Periodisation is an ever-present feature of the grammar of history-writing. As with all grammatical rules, the order it imposes can both liberate and stifle. Though few historians would consider their period boundaries as anything more than useful guidelines, heuristic artifice all too easily congeals into immovable structure, blinkering the historical gaze. Researchers of literature are, of course, challenged by similar dilemmas. Here, too, the neatness of periodisation can obscure the cultural output of awkward individuals that do not fit the right chronological corset, whilst also creating unfounded expectations of shared experience and expression.Rather than discard periodisation altogether, in this cross-disciplinary volume an international group of historians and literary scholars presents different ways in which accepted period boundaries in modern European history can be challenged and rethought. To do so, they explore unnoticed continuities, and instances of delayed cultural transfer that defy easy periodisation; adopt the perspective of social groups that standard periodisation schemes have ignored; and consider how historical actors themselves divide up history and how this can affect their actions

This book offers a collection of innovative methodological approaches to Memory Studies in Russia and Eastern Europe. Providing insights into the relationship between memory and identity, the twelve chapters provide multidisciplinary analysis of how history is used to reinforce, remould, and reinvent national and group identities. This analysis includes a strong emphasis on interrogating the role of the researcher and the impact of methodology, exploring the field's most pressing challenges, such as the subjectivity of remembrance, reception versus production of discourse, and the inclusion of marginal perspectives. By focussing on countries in which the past is highly politicised, including Serbia, Ukraine, Poland, Russia and the Baltic States, the volume also analyses the diverse – and often conflicting – ways in which historical narratives emerge from these states' efforts to create new pasts that shape their respective visions of the future, with pressing ramifications across this region and beyond.

This volume contends that young individuals across Europe relate to their country's history in complex and often ambivalent ways. It pays attention to how both formal education and broader culture communicate ideas about the past, and how young people respond to these ideas. The studies collected in this volume show that such ideas about the past are central to the formation of the group identities of nations, social movements, or religious groups. Young people express received historical narratives in new, potentially subversive, ways. As young people tend to be more mobile and ready to interrogate their own roots than later generations, they selectively privilege certain aspects of their identities and their identification with their family or nation while neglecting others. This collection aims to correct the popular misperception that young people are indifferent towards history and prove instead that historical narratives are constitutive to their individual identities and their sense of belonging to something broader than themselves