Writing (and Rewriting) Russian History

Summary

On the Media: Writing (and Rewriting) Russian History Hosted by Brooke Gladstone and Micah Loewinger | Released February 26, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of the On the Media Midweek podcast, host Brooke Gladstone delves into the intricate process of how Russian history is being rewritten to justify contemporary political agendas, particularly the invasion of Ukraine. Brooke is joined by Mikhail Zegar, a Russian investigative journalist and author of War and Punishment: Putin, Zelensky, and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine. Their conversation explores the myths propagated by Russian authorities, the historical context of Russian-Ukrainian relations, and the broader implications for free speech and government transparency.

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Putin's Historical Narrative

The episode opens with Brooke marking the three-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She highlights how Russian President Vladimir Putin has been recasting historical narratives to legitimize the war. Specifically, Putin has been quoting Lenin to assert that Ukraine is an artificial creation, a "fake country born from the Bolshevik imagination."

Brooke Gladstone [01:23]: "This week started with President Putin quoting Lenin in saying that Ukraine was a fake country created by Lenin."

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The Origins of the Unity Myth

Mikhail Zegar explains that the idea of Ukraine being inherently a part of Russia isn't a long-standing belief but rather a relatively recent construct. This myth traces back to a 300-year-old chronicle by German monk Akenti Gazelle, which falsely unified ancient Kyiv with Moscow, thereby erasing Ukraine's distinct national identity.

Mikhail Zegar [03:34]: "A myth of the unity of Slavic nations is very new. It was created only three centuries ago by that German person named in Akenti Gazelle."

Zegar discusses how Gazelle's Synopsis became a foundational text used by Russian historians from the 18th to the 20th century, solidifying the notion of a singular Russian identity encompassing Ukraine.

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Ivan Mazepa: Symbol of Betrayal

The conversation moves to the historical figure Ivan Mazepa, a Ukrainian hetman who allied with Sweden against Russia in the early 18th century. Zegar explains how Mazepa's actions have been portrayed as a betrayal in Russian historiography, while Ukrainians view him as a national hero who prioritized his country's interests over imperial allegiance.

Mikhail Zegar [05:14]: "Ivan Mazepa...his symbolic choice is still considered for many years to be a symbolic betrayal by Russian historians...for Ukrainian historians, on the contrary, he chose his own people and his own nation."

This dual perception underscores the deep-seated tensions and differing historical narratives between the two nations.

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Cultural Rejection and the Language Debate

Zegar addresses the current backlash against Russian culture in Ukraine, where Ukrainian writers and intellectuals distance themselves from Russian counterparts, even dissidents opposed to Putin. He criticizes the blanket rejection of Russian literary figures like Pushkin and Dostoevsky, arguing that such actions prevent meaningful dialogue and reconciliation.

Mikhail Zegar [07:06]: "Ukrainians blame not only Russian government and not only Vladimir Putin, but Russia as such, and all representatives of Russian culture...We should reconsider all the mistakes and crimes of Russian culture as well."

The discussion extends to the linguistic divide, with Putin and his supporters dismissing Ukrainian as merely a dialect of Russian. Zegar emphasizes the rich history and legitimacy of the Ukrainian language, which has survived despite prolonged suppression.

Mikhail Zegar [10:26]: "A lot of Russians...consider Ukrainian not as a real language, but as provincial Russian...the language that does not exist was banned and it still exists even after all those centuries."

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Ukraine's Independence: Debunking Lenin's Myth

Addressing Putin's claim that Ukraine was a Lenin invention, Zegar clarifies that Ukraine's aspirations for independence predate Lenin. He highlights the role of Mikhail Krushevsky, a historian and the first head of the Ukrainian parliament, who championed Ukrainian autonomy following the collapse of the Russian Empire.

Mikhail Zegar [11:14]: "After the collapse of the Russian Empire...Mikhail Krushevsky...proclaimed the independent Ukrainian state."

Zegar argues that Ukraine's formation as an independent nation was a direct response to the Bolshevik coup, making Putin's assertions historically unfounded.

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State-Controlled Russian Historiography

The episode delves into the manipulation of history by Russian authorities, a practice that dates back to Tsarist times and continues under the Soviet Union and Putin's regime. Zegar explains how state-appointed historians have consistently crafted narratives that support the ruling power's agenda, often at the expense of historical accuracy.

Mikhail Zegar [13:00]: "It was absolutely clear for Russian leaders that they have to create the version of Russian history that proves they deserve to be in power."

This control over historical narratives serves to justify imperial ambitions and aggressive policies, as seen in the current Russia-Ukraine conflict.

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A Call for a People's History

Zegar advocates for a "people's history" of Russia that acknowledges and confronts past atrocities and imperialist actions. He believes that recognizing these historical truths is essential for preventing future conflicts and fostering a more honest national identity.

Mikhail Zegar [14:23]: "Imperial history is our disease and that future generations of Russians will not tread the same path if we, their ancestors, bear the punishment today."

Zegar emphasizes the importance of transparency and accountability in historical scholarship to break free from the cycle of revisionism.

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Inspiration from American History Debates

Drawing parallels with American efforts to diversify historical narratives, Zegar finds inspiration in the ongoing debates about how history is taught and understood in the United States. He cites the establishment of the African American Museum in Washington, D.C., as a positive step towards inclusive history.

Mikhail Zegar [15:40]: "The debate about history in America is an inspiration for me because I think that every time we add another historical narrative to the traditional one, that's the way out."

Zegar advocates for Russian historians to adopt a similar approach, incorporating multiple perspectives to enrich and correct historical understanding.

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Conclusion

The episode concludes with Brooke and Zegar reflecting on the necessity of revising historical narratives to foster truth and reconciliation. By addressing and debunking longstanding myths, particularly those used to justify aggression, there is hope for a more transparent and peaceful future.

Brooke Gladstone [16:19]: "Michal, thank you very much."

Mikhail Zegar [16:21]: "Thank you. That was a pleasure talking to you."

Brooke wraps up by highlighting Zegar's contributions and teasing upcoming topics, reinforcing the podcast's commitment to uncovering and analyzing the complexities of media and history.

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Key Takeaways

• Historical Revisionism: Russian authorities, particularly under Putin, have systematically rewritten history to legitimize political actions, especially regarding Ukraine.
• Myths of Unity: The false narrative of Russian-Ukrainian unity originates from misleading historical texts like Gazelle's Synopsis.
• Cultural and Linguistic Suppression: Efforts to delegitimize Ukrainian culture and language are central to undermining Ukraine's sovereignty.
• Call for Transparent Historiography: There is a pressing need for an honest and inclusive recounting of Russian history to prevent the repetition of past imperialist mistakes.
• Global Inspiration: Lessons from American historical debates can inform and inspire efforts to create a more accurate and inclusive historical narrative in Russia.

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Notable Quotes:

• Brooke Gladstone [01:23]: "This week started with President Putin quoting Lenin in saying that Ukraine was a fake country created by Lenin."

• Mikhail Zegar [03:34]: "A myth of the unity of Slavic nations is very new. It was created only three centuries ago by that German person named in Akenti Gazelle."

• Mikhail Zegar [05:14]: "Ivan Mazepa...his symbolic choice is still considered for many years to be a symbolic betrayal by Russian historians...for Ukrainian historians, on the contrary, he chose his own people and his own nation."

• Mikhail Zegar [07:06]: "Ukrainians blame not only Russian government and not only Vladimir Putin, but Russia as such, and all representatives of Russian culture...We should reconsider all the mistakes and crimes of Russian culture as well."

• Mikhail Zegar [10:26]: "A lot of Russians...consider Ukrainian not as a real language, but as provincial Russian...the language that does not exist was banned and it still exists even after all those centuries."

• Mikhail Zegar [14:23]: "Imperial history is our disease and that future generations of Russians will not tread the same path if we, their ancestors, bear the punishment today."

• Mikhail Zegar [15:40]: "The debate about history in America is an inspiration for me because I think that every time we add another historical narrative to the traditional one, that's the way out."

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the critical discussions and insights from the episode, providing a thorough understanding for those who have not listened to the podcast.

Transcript

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[Brooke Gladstone]

This is on the Media's Midweek podcast. I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week we mark a grim milestone, the three year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Days before the war began, Russian President Vladimir Putin recited an old essay on the quote, historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians, wherein he rewrote the past. And this week started with President Putin quoting Lenin in saying that Ukraine was a fake country created by Lenin.

[Mikhail Zegar]

President Putin laying out his case that Ukraine is always part of Russia. Historically cultural, ethnic, religious ties that go way back in history, that it's not a real country, it is naturally part.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Of a bigger Russia, a notion featured heavily on Russian news to justify the war because Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities. But this is not new fiction. In fact, Mikhail Zegar has traced it back at least as far as the Middle Ages. He's a Russian investigative journalist and founding editor in chief of the independent Russian TV channel Rain Suspended for its war coverage and now based in the Netherlands. He's also the author of the book War and Punishment. Actually, when I spoke to him back in 2023, he told me that the history starts in a Europe that would be familiar to fans of Game of Thrones, with empires and religions vying for power and for land.

[Mikhail Zegar]

My mission was to start writing completely different version of Russian history because unfortunately, we have never had any kind of history of Russian people or peoples of Russia. It has always been written by official historians who were serving the state, and they were much more propagandists than historians.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Your book explores seven myths about the relationship between Ukraine and Russia. We won't get to them all, but we'll start with the most crucial one, probably Unity, which was penned in a paper called Synopsis by a German monk 300 years ago.

[Mikhail Zegar]

A myth of the unity of Slavic nations is very new. It was created only three centuries ago by that German person named in Akenti Gazelle.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So how does Gazelle's chronicle read?

[Mikhail Zegar]

It starts from the creation of the world, then goes all the way to Noah and Moses and the first princes of Kyivan Rus. According to that chronicle, direct descendants of characters of the Bible, the first statehood was created in Kyiv, but then the grandsons of grandsons of the first Kyivan princes moved the capital of unified Rus to the city of Moscow. He draws that imaginary line that unifies old Kiev with new Moscow.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You say Gazelle's Synopsis went on to be used as a textbook.

[Mikhail Zegar]

It was one of the first scientific texts on Russian history. And Akinti Gazelle could not have foreseen that. But Peter the Great loved it and it was used by all the official historians. Actually, it was the main source of the information for most Russian historians in 18th century and the 19th century till 20th century.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Okay, so stay with the era of Peter the Great, when the Ukrainian leader or hetman Ivan Mazepa was navigating two different empires, Sweden's and Russia's, now rapidly expanding. How did Mazepa become a symbol of betrayal? That would be the second myth that still resonates today.

[Mikhail Zegar]

During that period, Ukraine has become part of Russian empire and he was considered to be one of the very close military leaders to Russian Emperor Peter the Great. As Mazepa always considered himself to be first Ukrainian leader and only then ally of the Russian czar. When the situation for his homeland has become really dangerous, he has chosen to switch sides and ally with Swedish emperor. And that symbolic choice is still considered for many years to be a symbolic betrayal by Russian historians. At the same time for Ukrainian historians, on the contrary, he chose his own people and his own nation. And he might have been a traitor if he had chosen Peter the Great but not his people and is right now, during the current war, it's associated with Ukrainian word zarada that means betrayal, a very important political term in today's Ukraine. That moral dilemma of Ivan Mazepa. It's always raised when a politician or an activist has A choice between real interests of his nation and possibility of some political alliance.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And it explains so much, because in the last year or so, at various international cultural events like the PEN conference, which stands for the Freedom of Writers, Ukrainian writers simply won't appear on the same stage with Russians, even if those Russians are dissidents and at risk and opposed to Putin's war. Understood. Until you explain the idea of Zorada, why Ukrainians would shun those Russians.

[Mikhail Zegar]

Ukrainians blame not only Russian government and not only Vladimir Putin, but Russia as such, and all representatives of Russian culture. Ukrainians blame Pushkin, as well as Joseph Brodsky, Dostoevsky, or other representatives of Russian culture, claiming that they were imperialists. That's a very important idea for me because I think that we won't find common grounds before we address all those issues. And we cannot, as Russian writers, Russian intellectuals, we cannot say, don't touch Pushkin. He's sacred. He's our everything that would be just blind. We should reconsider all the mistakes and crimes of Russian culture as well. And we are not. The first very symbolic example is, for example, Kipling, who has written the infamous.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Poem about white man's burden.

[Mikhail Zegar]

Yes, and Jungle Book is not canceled, is still loved by kids all over the world. But this particular concept of Kipling is widely discussed and is denounced by British intellectuals and by British historians. And we must do that. We must get rid of our historical myths and of our sacred cause, including Pushkin or Dostoyevsky or Solzhenitsyn.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You want to just get rid of Dostoevsky?

[Mikhail Zegar]

No, I.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You mean that we have to understand that he's a creature of his time.

[Mikhail Zegar]

We should read him in full. And if he was terribly wrong, we must find courage to admit it and to say it.

[Brooke Gladstone]

You liken the Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko to Frederick Douglass, because Shevchenko was basically a serf who happened to become the greatest Ukrainian poet. Liberated at the same time as Frederick Douglass ran away from slavery to New York City and liberated himself.

[Mikhail Zegar]

There are no parallels in history, definitely, but there are rhymes. And different countries were facing very similar political and social process. And serfdom is a form of slavery. Serfdom in Russia was abolished the same year as the American Civil War started. And Taraschenko is the first writer who used classic, traditional, literary Ukrainian language, because before him, Ukrainians could reach the highest positions in Russian cultural elite or in political bureaucracy. They could have become members of government or chancellors with only one condition. If they abandoned their Ukrainian background and started speaking Russian, So Shevchenko, even after being liberated and even after he had become one of the most popular artists in St. Petersburg, he never stopped writing in Ukrainian, and he has become a moral example.

[Brooke Gladstone]

It's interesting, though, how many Russians suggest that Ukrainian is actually just pigeon Russian. The words look alike, they sound alike. How do you address the language issue or the language myth?

[Mikhail Zegar]

A lot of Russians, and we know that Vladimir Putin is one of them, consider Ukrainian not as a real language, but as provincial Russian. Unfortunately, all those people don't know anything about Ukrainian literature or the history of Ukrainian language. And they don't know, for example, the history of Russian authorities, especially in 18th and 19th and 20th century, to suppress the usage of Ukrainian languages. Ukrainian books were banned. The education in Ukrainian was permanently banned. So, yes, that's a real historical tragedy. And it's funny that the language that does not exist was banned and it still exists even after all those centuries.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Another myth you address is the myth of Lenin, Putin's claim before invading that Ukraine was an invention of Lenin's. You write that an independent Ukrainian state was formed in spite of Lenin.

[Mikhail Zegar]

Oh, yeah. It's important to say that after the collapse of the Russian Empire, Mikhail Krushevsky, who was the spiritual leader and the head of first Ukrainian parliament, had an idea about Ukrainian autonomy.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And he was, interestingly enough, a historian. And his book, the History of Ukraine Rus, played a role in establishing Ukraine as a modern state.

[Mikhail Zegar]

He is still considered to be probably the founding father of the political Ukrainian nation, because he was the first author to write the academic history of Ukraine.

[Brooke Gladstone]

That was written in 1898, and it was the first impactful response to the history written by the monk Gazelle.

[Mikhail Zegar]

He was successfully trying to prove that Giselle's concept, written in synopsis, was fake. So how Ukraine became the independent state back in 1918. In October of 1917, there was a Bolshevik coup in St. Petersburg and Russia had become a communist dictatorship. And that was a catastrophe for all the democratic movements in Russia and in Ukraine. So after Lenin has become Russian dictator, there was no other choice for Ukrainian authorities and for Khrushchevsky and but to proclaim the independent Ukrainian state. So it's really ridiculous when Vladimir Putin says that Ukraine was invented by Lenin.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Khrushchevsky was interrogated by the Soviet secret police. In the 30s, historians arrested in the Soviet Union were called wrecker historians by the government. So the Russian government has always been extremely sensitive to how history is depicted.

[Mikhail Zegar]

That's the curse of Russian history, that it has always been very close to the Power. All famous classical historians were always appointed by the heads of state and were reporting to the emperors or to the secretary generals. Nikolai Koramzin, probably one of the most famous Russian historians of 19th century, was reporting directly to the Emperor Alexander I. In 20th century, Stalin himself was editing the official version of the Communist Party history. So, yes, it was absolutely clear for Russian leaders that they have to create the version of Russian history that proves they deserve to be in power. It should explain why Russia needs to be the empire. That was very clear for me that the moment when Putin started to build his ideology around his version of Russian history and to justify the current brutal aggression.

[Brooke Gladstone]

In the epilogue, you write that imperial history is our disease and that future generations of Russians will, quote, not tread the same path if we, their ancestors, bear the punishment today. So if imperial history has been the problem, you're turning to a revision of that history as the solution.

[Mikhail Zegar]

Yeah, that's true. We have never had a proper people's history of Russia. And that's right time to start writing it. And if in history, Russian army or Russian leaders have committed war crimes, they should be named this way. We should know everything about history of peoples of Russia, history of Siberia and how Siberia was colonized, history of Far east, history of Urals, history of North Caucasus, all the neighbors of Russia and confess to ourselves and apologize to all other nations which have become victims of Russian imperial history.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Have you been following the fight here in America over history? How to teach it, how to advance it, how to reckon with it?

[Mikhail Zegar]

You know, the debate about history in America is an inspiration for me because I think that every time we add another historical narrative to the traditional one, that's the way out. For example, I love the African American museum in Washington, D.C. because it adds another. Another very important narrative missing in the traditional version of American history. And I think that the more historical narratives Nation adds to its perception of history, the better. And that's the way I hope Russian historians will proceed.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Michal, thank you very much.

[Mikhail Zegar]

Thank you. That was a pleasure talking to you.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Same here. Michael Ziger is the author of the book War and Putin, Zelensky and the Path to Russia's Invasion of Ukraine. Thanks for listening to the midweek podcast. On this weekend's show, we'll be asking all the right questions about the new deputy director of the FBI. Right wing podcaster Dan Bongino. See you then. I'm Brooklyn Stone.

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