vision . Putin ’ s geopolitics of Russian conquest has nothing to do with a historical truth corroborated by a scientific approach . What counts is the mobilising effectiveness of the narrative .
To achieve this effect , a certain type of memory must be used , a “ reactive memory ” for the Russians . This is the memory of the Second World War . The Great Patriotic War is not a lieu de mémoire , even if it has several locations , such as the Battle of Stalingrad or the raising of the Soviet flag over the Reichstag in Berlin . It is rather , as I used to say , a “ repository of memory ”. 6 This concept designates , through its metaphorical connotation , more than a “ lieu de mémoire ”, a stock of resources that can be recycled in the present political or geopolitical stakes . Various actors draw on these “ territorial or imaginary event ” repositories for the symbolic materials needed to fuel competitions . In the case of the Great Patriotic War , this is living memorial material . This material is based , as Adam Michnik metaphorically put it , on the “ selfishness of pain ” due to the human costs suffered by the Soviets , and on the exaltation of pride in victorious sacrifice . However , Putin still hinders these uses , namely the controversy over when the Great Patriotic War actually began and what actually happened between 1939 and 1941 . But the Putin narrative does not need to explain itself to the Russian population . Exploiting this repository of memory is enough to gain the support of approximately 80 % of the population for his strategy to include Ukraine in the empire .
Conclusion
But we can also see that Putin only needed historical justifications to justify the launch of a geopolitical adventure , but when the guns started talking , his memorial discourse became muddled and incoherent . Perhaps because remembering the tribute of blood paid by the Russian population between 1941 and 1945 revived the reflection on the meaning of today ’ s sufferings , thanks to the Russian and Ukrainian blood that flows abundantly in the war against Ukraine . At the risk of turning the Russian population against the geopolitics of conquest and its memorial make-up . But that is another hypothesis .
6
Georges Mink , see for example my introduction entitled “ Géopolitique , Histoire et Jeux de Mémoire : pour une reconfiguration conceptuelle ”, in Georges Mink and Pascal Bonnard ( ed .), Le Passé au Présent , Gisements mémoriels et actions historicisantes en Europe centrale et orientale , Michel Houdiard ( ed .), Nanterre , 2010
EUROPE INSIGHT
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