Russia's imagined history: Visions of the Soviet past and the new ‘Russian idea’

Abstract

The ideologues of Russia's communist and nationalist opposition (the so‐called ‘national patriots') have developed an ‘imagined history’ of Russia as part of their concept of post‐Soviet Russian national identity. The Soviet period, however, presents particular problems for the national patriots, who must square the destruction of traditional Russia after 1917 with the expansion of Russian great‐power status after 1945. Both the neo‐communists and the orthodox nationalists tackle this paradox by discriminating between what they see as the patriotic Russian and the ‘Russophobic’ internationalist wings of the Soviet Communist Party. National patriotism also betrays the influence of Stalinist historiography ‐ its Russian imperialism, moral absolutism, and suspicion of the West. The Yeltsin government has adopted aspects of the national patriots’ imagined history in order to shore up its attempts to define a new Russian idea.