Dancing on Bones

Abstract

Dancing on Bones examines how the leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea exploit the history of past wars—specifically World War II and the Korean War—to shore up popular support and frame contemporary challenges and foreign policy. This book traces the history of how successive ruling regimes have approached this period of history from 1945 to the present day, examining the political utility of historical memory and attempts to enforce a collective national narrative through patriotic education, propaganda, memory laws, censorship, harassment of individual historians, and appeals to nationalism and national pride. It draws on research in Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, Seoul, Crimea, Shanghai, and Donetsk and covers events such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the 2013–2014 Maidan Revolution and subsequent conflict in Ukraine; the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989; Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika reforms; the collapse of the Soviet Union; Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, his return to the presidency for a third term, and constitutional reforms; and leadership transitions in North Korea from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un. Key figures covered within the book include Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Xi Jinping, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un.