State Legitimacy and National History: Memory of the Revolutions in Post-Soviet Russia

In the world of mass political participation, where subjects are replaced by citizens, a state, to be (perceived as) legitimate, must (seem to) be executing its rule on behalf of those ruled, and, thus, fulfilling their will. In other words, its rule must (appear to) be “proceeding naturally from a familiar and intelligible ‘we’” (Geertz Reference Geertz1973, 317). Hence, the ruled must be imagined as a community, at the same time internally homogenous and distinct from other communities of the kind. The “nation” becomes the way of imagining such a community (Anderson Reference Anderson1991); nationalism the predominant rhetoric in which a state’s legitimacy is debated (Calhoun Reference Calhoun1997). Somewhat rephrasing Ernest Gellner,Footnote ¹ we may conclude that in the world of nationalism, only those political units that are congruent with national ones are held legitimate.

While national communities are fundamental for the legitimacy of modern states, the pasts of these communities are central to national imaginings (Alonso Reference Alonso1988; Coakley Reference Coakley2004; Cruz Reference Cruz2000; Heisler Reference Heisler2008). To imagine a nation, therefore, it is necessary to narrate its past, thus inventing its history. Indeed, “the narrative construction of past events and the discursive representation of history” is crucial for “all of the variegated approaches to theorizing nationalism, however different their claims regarding its origins” (Bell Reference Bell2003, 66). States, if only because they are capable of “making historiography into a nationalist enterprise” (Olick and Robbins Reference Olick and Robbins1998, 126), are particularly powerful narrators of (national) histories. Possessing access to, and control over, resources that allow for constructing (politically expedient) historical narratives, their ruling elites are able to forge national communities, thus legitimizing their “monopoly on administrative control” (Boyarin Reference Boyarin and Boyarin1994, 16).

Since 1991, Russia’s ruling elite has been facing the challenge of legitimizing, first, the very existence of the state that emerged upon the disintegration of the USSR, and, secondly, their governing position in it. To tackle this challenge, it is (as it was in 1991) necessary to imagine a national community on behalf of which Russia is ruled, hence to narrate this community’s national history. Interpreting the Soviet period of this history (the Russian Revolutions with which this period began included) is a particularly challenging part of this endeavor.

Indeed, to tell the story of the Russian Revolutions in such a manner as to legitimize the political regime, which (practically) rests upon the political disengagement of the citizenry (Greene Reference Greene2017), and (symbolically) is shored up by the idea of the stability achieved after the chaos of the 1990s, is no easy a task. However, Russia’s “historical entrepreneurs,” as the project Russia—My History demonstrates, have tackled it. It is to the (pre)history of this project, which thanks to the joint efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church and the stateFootnote ² has grown into a chain of multimedia historical parks located all over Russia, that I now turn.

Russia—My History: Church and State Join Forces

The (pre)history of the chain of multimedia historical parks Russia—My History dates to the mid-1990s: the project is a spin-off of the Ecclesial-Public Exhibition-Forum “Orthodox Rus’,” a long-standing project of the Russian Orthodox Church whose aim is to “unite efforts of the Russian Orthodox Church, the worldly power, the public targeted at preserving and further developing traditional spiritual values of the national culture, art and moral, consolidating the Russian society, patriotic upbringing of youth” (Cerkovno-Obshhestvennaja Vystavka-Forum “Pravoslavnaja Rus’” n.d.).Footnote ³ Today, the forum, which is held annually in many locations both in Russia and abroad, includes dozens of cultural events: exhibitions, lectures, conferences, concerts. The most important of these take place in Moscow and make up part of the festivities dedicated to Russia’s two holidays: the national (the Day of People’s Unity) and the Orthodox (the Feast of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God) ones, both celebrated on November 4. It began, however, with a single exhibition-fair held in Mikhaylovsky Manezh in Saint Petersburg in October 1995. The small Saint Petersburg exhibition was a success, and, with the blessing of Patriarch Alexei II, became annual. The project grew rapidly: in 2003, the exhibition “Orthodox Rus”” was first held in Moscow; in 2004, it received the blessing of the Holy Synod; in 2006, it was expanded to an exhibition-forum.

Although the annual fora were popular enough with Orthodox believers, their organizers decided to reach out for a wider audience. The result was the 2011 exhibition “Russian Orthodox Church—A Summary of Twenty Years: 1991–2011.” The exhibition, held November 4–7 in Moscow Manezh, was organized by the Patriarch’s Council for Culture, which had been created one and a half years earlier, and of which (then archimandrite) Tikhon Shevkunov had been appointed the executive secretary.Footnote ⁴ “Russian Orthodox Church—A Summary” was one of the council’s first projects. Telling the story of the restoration of church life in the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate over the course of the twenty years that had passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, “Russian Orthodox Church—A Summary” became a testing ground for the technological and design solutions that would predetermine the exhibition’s great success: according to the organizers, tens of thousands of visitors visited it over the four days. It was this success that pointed the organizers of the exhibition in the direction to be followed for further development of the project. As the idea of uniting the technological and design solutions deployed in the 2011 exhibition with the history of Russia emerged, the project Orthodox Rus’. My History was born.

Two years later, on November 4, 2013, “The Romanovs,” the first multimedia exhibition of the cycle “Orthodox Rus’. My History” was opened in Moscow Manezh. Dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, it narrated the history of Russia from the accession of Mikhail Romanov to the throne in 1613 up to the Revolutions of 1917. The overwhelmingly positive response of the audience came as a surprise, even for the creators of the project: extended a number of times, the exhibition remained on display until November 24. As a result, it was visited by more than three hundred thousand people over a period of three weeks, up to fifteen thousand people daily; some visitors spent as long as eight hours queuing to see “The Romanovs.” The exhibition was still on display in Manezh when calls to make it available to an even wider audience—either by turning it into a permanent one, located somewhere in Moscow, or by showing it in Russia’s many regions—were voiced. In 2014, “The Romanovs” was, in fact, shown outside Moscow: in Saint Petersburg from February 16 to March 2; in Tyumen from June 21 to July 6; and in Krasnodar from December 5 to 21. In addition, a clone of “The Romanovs” was opened on August 15, 2014, in the Livadia Palace in Crimea.

The triumphant success of “The Romanovs” encouraged the creators of the project Orthodox Rus’. My History to develop it further and narrate the history of Russia—from the Kievan Rus’ to the post-Soviet Russian Federation—in the manner they had used to tell the story of the Romanov Empire. On November 4, 2014, the exhibition titled “The Rurikids,” dedicated to the 700th anniversary of Saint Sergius of Radonezh and recounting the history of Russia from the mysterious city of Arkaim to Smuta (the Time of Troubles), was opened in Moscow Manezh. In the following years, the project Orthodox Rus’. My History was completed with two exhibitions, both shown in Moscow Manezh: “From Great Upheaval to Great Victory” (November 4–22, 2015) dedicated to the period between the Russian Revolutions and the victory in the Great Patriotic War; “1945–2016” (November 4–22, 2016) telling the history of the postwar years.

After “The Rurikids” opened in Moscow, voices were heard suggesting that the exhibition, as did “The Romanovs” the previous year, should travel around Russia’s regions. Indeed, on September 9, 2016, the exhibition was opened in Sevastopol, Crimea. However, by then it had already become evident that Orthodox Rus’. My History would turn into something bigger than a few multimedia exhibitions traveling around Russia. In fact, shortly after “The Rurikids” had been—again, with great success—shown in Moscow, its creators came up with a different, and rather ambitious, strategy for further developing the project. Instead of working toward bringing separate exhibitions of the cycle Orthodox Rus’. My History to Russia’s various regions, they decided to unite the exhibitions under one roof and, calling what would appear as the result Historical Parks Russia—My History, operate them permanently all over Russia. The first of these historical parks, opened in Pavilion 57 of the Moscow exhibition center VDNKh on December 29, 2015, consisted of three exhibitions: “The Rurikids,” “The Romanovs,” “The 20th Century: From Great Upheaval to Great Victory”; the fourth, “1945–2016,” was still under construction at the time. The historical parks that subsequently sprang up throughout Russia in 2017–2018, however, include all four exhibitions, thus narrating the history of Russia in its entirety. At the time of writing this article, historical parks Russia—My History operate in Moscow, Ufa, Ekaterinburg, Stavropol, Volgograd, Makhachkala, Yakutsk, Kazan, Tyumen, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saint Petersburg, Perm, Saratov, Rostov-on-Don, and Krasnodar. The creators of the project have no intention of stopping at that: historical parks will continue to open until 2020.

From the very beginning, the state was providing the administrative and financial recourses necessary for the project’s development. Not only were the tours of “The Romanovs” and “The Rurikids” around Russia’s regions organized with the direct support of President Vladimir Putin and the government of Russia,Footnote ⁵ but in 2013, the Fond Gumanitarnyh Proektov (Fund for Humanitarian Projects) was created to administer what would later become a chain of multimedia Russia—My History historical parks. The official website of the fund lists as its partners the Presidential Executive Office, the Moscow Patriarchate, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, and the governments of Moscow and Saint Petersburg (Fond Gumanitarnyh Proektov n.d.). The fund’s founder and managing director is Ivan Esin, who previously worked as leading legal counsel for Gazprom Neft, one of Russia’s largest oil companies and a subsidiary of the (at least 50 percent state-owned) giant Gazprom. Esin’s professional path is not the only link between the project Russia—My History and Gazprom. In addition to public funding from both, federal and regional budgets, historical parks receive donations from sponsors, mainly from Gazprom.Footnote ⁶

The rapid growth of Russia—My History has not gone unnoticed in Russia. Since its very inception, the project has been a subject of interest for professional historians.Footnote ⁷ However, despite their severe criticism, within five years, Russia—My History has grown into a chain of multimedia historical parks with a presence in nineteen Russian cities.

Russia—My History: Exhibitions without Exhibits

Despite the geographical spread of the chain Russia—My History, the content of the exhibitions on display in its various branches is nearly identical. More precisely, what is identical is the so-called federal component of such content—the narrative of the history of Russia as a whole. While each of the historical parks also has a regional component—a special exhibition or section that is dedicated to the history of the particular region of the country— my focus is on the federal component of the content of the historical parks’ exhibitions.

Some of Russia’s most respected scholarly and educational institutions—including the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Russian State University for the Humanities, and the State Archive of the Russian Federation—are mentioned as having contributed to the creation of this content. Nonetheless, the names of the exact people who worked on it—those who wrote specific fragments dedicated to one or other historical period, event or figure, as well as those who put these fragments together—remain unknown. The role of one person in the creation of the project Russia—My History, however, is stressed whenever the historical parks are discussed, namely, that of (now Metropolitan) Tikhon Shevkunov.Footnote ⁸ Not only is Metropolitan Tikhon the author of the concept of the exhibitions of the cycle “Orthodox Rus’. My History,” but he is also personally responsible for the final editing of the federal component of the content that appears in the Russia—My History historical parks. What does this content—created, according to the administration of the parks, by hundreds of historians, museologists, and designers under the personal supervision of Father Tikhon—look like?

Each of the four exhibitions—“The Rurikids,” “The Romanovs,” “The 20th Century: From Great Upheaval to Great Victory,” and “1945–2016”—that the federal component of the “Russia—My History” historical parks includes is, in turn, composed of halls, which, much like in a palace enfilade, flow from one into another, creating a space-time of Russian history: advancing along the corridor-shaped space of park exhibitions, a visitor travels through time, from ancient Rus’ to contemporary Russia. Importantly, visitors’ progress through the exhibitions of the historical parks is heavily predetermined by the latter’s spatial constitution. Having little freedom in choosing either which of the exhibition halls to view and which to miss out, or in what sequence to observe the halls of any of the four exhibitions, a visitor, thus, follows the path set out by the historical parks’ creators. As she does so, the history of the Russian state and that of the Orthodox Church unfold before her eyes: the two are represented in the parks as indissolubly intertwined.

In the Russia—My History historical parks, four exhibitions are on display, but without exhibits. All that is shown to visitors are hundreds of interactive multimedia devices—screens, panels, lightboxes—on which thousands of pages of text are projected. (It is these texts that, according to members of the historical parks’ administration, are edited by Tikhon Shevkunov personally). While photographs and drawings are numerous, documents are almost entirely absent in the historical parks, which are, thus, very much like history textbooks that their visitors are expected to spend hours reading. However, they rarely attempt to do so: an average individual visitor spends up to three hours viewing a historical park, while a guided tour of any of the four park exhibitions lasts no longer than 1.5 hours.

In order to narrate Russian history to visitors, the creators of the historical parks employ means of expression other than lengthy texts projected onto numerous multimedia devices. These are elements of scenography, including the spatial organization of the parks, color and light, musicFootnote ⁹ and sound effects. It is primarily through the careful use of scenography in the parks that particular historical figures are portrayed in a certain way and selected historical events are invested with specific meanings.Footnote ¹⁰ In addition, short movies are screened in several of the historical parks’ halls. These, without any intricacy or ambiguity, reveal a vision of Russian historyFootnote ¹¹ that (being highly emotionally charged and at the same time open to political use) the creators of the historical parks (re)produce.

Russia—My History and the Problem of 1917: Interpreting the Russian Revolutions

The four exhibitions that the historical parks include are nearly equal in terms of the amount of physical space that they occupy, yet unequal in terms of historical periods that they cover: the emphasis, thus, is put on Russia’s history in the 20th century. Within the latter, the focus is, in turn, on the 1917 Russian Revolutions. Evidently, to provide an interpretation of it is of utmost importance for the creators of the historical parks.

Here 1914 is represented as the point of fracture: it was then that Russia peaked in its development (under the reign of one of its greatest leaders, Nicholas II), and it was then that it was enmeshed in the war by a treacherous Europe. February of 1917, in turn, is depicted as the opening act of the drama of Russia’s 20th century. Why did the February Revolution happen? Among the contributing factors, the authors of the historical park list the agrarian and the national questions, the degeneration of religious life, the low living standards of the majority of the population, the decline in trust between the rulers and society, the paralysis of the monarchy, and the inability of the power holders to tackle the challenges of the time. However, all of the factors listed above were not the “real” reasons behind the Revolutions. Those were the petty intrigues of enemies within (the intelligentsia and aristocracy, the former chasing their wrong political ideals, the latter pursuing their private interests) and without (foreign rivals worried by Russia’s rapid economic development) Russia.

While Russia’s internal traitors, encouraged by the country’s unscrupulous external competitors, are represented in the historical parks as responsible for (or guilty of) the February Revolution, the October Revolution is depicted as the latter’s (nearly inevitable) consequence. If authors of the February Revolution are rendered as committed and self-interested destroyers of Russia, the Bolsheviks, paradoxically enough, are portrayed as Russia’s saviors. Having (nearly haphazardly) come to power, they (even if against their own intentions) rebuilt (although in different shape and form) Russia precisely at the moment when its utter collapse seemed inevitable.Footnote ¹² The portrayal of the Bolsheviks suggested in the Russia—My History historical parks, however, is far from unambiguous. While Joseph Stalin is pictured here as a controversial—yet outstanding—political leader who played the key role in restoring the Russian state (and, surprisingly enough, resurrecting the Orthodox Church), Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky are characterized as the (nearly successful) destroyers of both the church and the state. This seemingly self-contradictory rendition of the Bolsheviks, however, does not add inconsistency to the interpretation of the Russian Revolutions (re)produced in the historical parks. Rather, it shores up the unequivocally statist historical narrative that is being forged here. In the historical parks, the Russian Revolutions are cursed, while the USSR, the state that emerged in their aftermath, is glorified. In a similar vein, while the legacy of the (Lenin’s and Trotsky’s) iconoclastic 1920s is questioned, that of the (Stalin’s) conservative 1930s–1940s is praised.

Within the narrative of the Revolutions developed in the historical parks, the portrayal of their maleficent instigators is counterbalanced by the representation of their innocent victims. Those are, first, Nicholas II and his family, and second, Orthodox believers. If the former fell prey to the senseless cruelty of the revolutionaries striving for power, the latter suffered for their faith.Footnote ¹³

Overall, the interpretation of the Russian Revolutions created in the historical parks is that of a tragic mistake. The mistake committed by Russians lured by the simplistic slogans of populists. Everything that followed the Revolutions—including the Civil War, the Stalinist repressions, and the Great Patriotic War—is represented here as the cost of this mistake and, at the same time, as the price that needed to be paid for Russia’s future resurrection. The latter was embodied, first and foremost, in the 1945 Victory and the postwar triumph of the Soviet Union.

As the concepts of “sin,” “retribution,” and “atonement” substitute for those of “mistake,” “cost,” and “price,” the story of the Russian Revolutions can be (and often is) told in the language of the Orthodox faith.Footnote ¹⁴ From a tale about the tsar who abdicated his throne, it, thus, turns into one about the people who betrayed their tsar and renounced their God. The ordeals that followed were nothing less than retribution—and atonement—for the committed sin. Nicholas II and his family were martyrs who gave their lives for Russia and its people. (Tellingly, on display in the historical parks is the quotation from Nicholas II: “Probably, to save Russia, the sacrifice of atonement is needed. I will be that sacrifice.”) Martyrs, too, were Orthodox believers who, persecuted by the Soviet state (executed or sent to the Gulag), suffered for their faith. It was those martyrs who, through their sacrifice, earned Russia’s salvation. The phenomenon of new martyrdomFootnote ¹⁵ is, hence, of crucial importance for the religious reading of the Russian Revolutions.

Although Tikhon Shevkunov is probably the most prominent of those hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church who are keenly preoccupied with perpetuating the memory of the new martyrs in contemporary RussiaFootnote ¹⁶, the Russia—My History historical parks, of which he is the demiurge, narrate the history of the Russian Revolutions in secular, but not religious, terms. Indeed, in the “From Great Upheaval to Great Victory” exhibition of the historical parks, the history of the persecution of the Orthodox Church is represented in great detail; moreover, the very concept “new martyrs and confessors of Russia” is used here extensively. However, the creators of the historical parks do not go further in representing the religious narrative of the history of the Russian Revolutions. The project Russia—My History may be regarded as a “meeting point” where the two visions of the Revolutions—the secular and the religious ones—intertwine. Nonetheless, of these two visions, it is elements of the former that are more pronounced in the interpretation of the Russian Revolutions (re)produced in the historical parks. This interpretation, thus, is not so much orthodoxizing the Russian Revolutions, as secularizing the Orthodox reading of it.Footnote ¹⁷ Resulting from the interplay of the secular and the religious readings of the Russian Revolutions, the interpretation of it that visitors of the historical parks are exposed to demonstrates in a rather peculiar way the process which Yuri Teper (Reference Teper, Lewin, Bick and Naor2017) rightly points out: as the rapprochement between the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church continues, it is not only the former that is becoming more religious, but also the latter that is growing secular.Footnote ¹⁸

Politically Usable Revolutions: 1917 and the Pendulum of Russian History

Before the eyes of the visitors to the historical parks, the history of the Russian Revolutions unfolds like pendulum swings: from the rapidly developing “Great Russia” of the pre-revolutionary period, toward “decay, chaos, expulsion, tears, violence, blood, death” that inevitably follow the (resulting from the Revolutions) “suicidal collapse [samoubiistvennyi razval] of the state,” (The Romanovs n.d.) and back, toward restoration, at enormous cost, of what had been forfeited during the Revolutions. At the same time, 1917 is represented here as one among many successive swings of the pendulum of Russian history, which moves back and forth from the flourishing and grandeur of the periods when the state is consolidated to blight and degeneration when it is not. National (dis)unity is crucial for this incessant movement: while consolidation of the state is based upon it, the state’s ruin results from the lack of it. Thus, the history of Russia is envisioned in the historical parks as developing through a cyclical pattern.Footnote ¹⁹ In this ever-repeating drama, (tragic) internal dissent brings on (disastrous in its consequences) failure of the state; however, when the former is overcome (always after unthinkable loss and suffering), the latter returns to its greatness. This template is employed in the historical parks to tell the stories of the Fragmentation and the Yoke followed by the rise of Moscow, of the Time of Troubles followed by the Accession of the Romanov Dynasty, of the Revolutions of 1917 followed by the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, and, finally, of the Disintegration of the USSR followed by today’s Russia Rising up from its Knees.

Because it is nested within the cyclical narrative that covers Russian history from Kievan Rus’ to the present-day Russian Federation, the (statist) tale of the Russian Revolutions, which is narrated in the historical parks, becomes focused on national unity rather than internal division, and historical continuity rather than rupture with the past. It is precisely how the Russia—My History historical parks turn Russia’s (politically problematic) revolutionary past into a politically usable one (for Russia’s ruling elite).

Upon the interpretation of the1917 Revolutions that the parks (re)produce, the national community, on behalf of which Russia is being ruled, is imagined in a specific way: as imminently united. Stressing national unity—which, though tragically lost in the run-up to 1917, was not shattered by the Revolutions, but was reacquired in their wake—the parks represent Russians as a nation that remained self-same throughout a thousand years of its history. (At the same time, emphasizing continuity of Russian history—and downplaying ruptures in it, the rupture of the 1917 Revolutions included—they portray the present-day Russian Federation as inheriting the thousand-year-old tradition of statehood.)

The unity of the Russian nation as it is represented in the historical parks, however, is reached (and sustained) primarily for the sake of the Russian state: it is only to protect the state from its enemies that Russia is (always) surrounded with and (constantly) threatened by that this unity is needed; at the same time, it is only when united that Russians are able to fight their country’s many enemies.Footnote ²⁰ Thus, it is not the nation that is celebrated in the historical parks, but the state: the vision of Russian history that is being forged here is not so much nationalist as statist.

The state (represented in the historical parks as the final cause and the end goal of historic development) is valorized independently of its ability (or inability) to cater to its citizens. The legitimacy of Russia’s current political regime, which—while placing emphasis on strong centralized executive power—is failing in terms of economic performance is being, thus, shored up in the parks.Footnote ²¹ The weakening of the state (which is what internal disputes are inevitably followed by), and, even more so, its collapse (which is what revolutionary changes imminently bring) being depicted here as the ultimate tragedy, the very idea of stability is celebrated in the historical parks. Contemporary Russia, in turn, is characterized here precisely as that: stable. While Vladimir Putin is portrayed in the historical parks as the leader who was capable of steering Russia out of the impasse of the turbulent ’90s,Footnote ²² Russia itself is pictured here as (re)acquiring its glory after the catastrophe of the Soviet collapse. Tellingly, in the historical parks, the latter is compared, rather unambiguously, to the disaster of the Russian Revolutions.

“Official” History: Russia—My History and the State-Sponsored Interpretation of the Revolutions

It is through the project Russia—My History that this interpretation of the Russian Revolutions, focused on national unity and historical continuity, is promoted, not through the words and gestures of members of Russia’s ruling elite. Nonetheless, when the latter speak of 1917, their vision of it is strikingly similar to the one (re)produced in the historical parks. The creators of Russia—My History on the one hand, and Russia’s ruling elite on the other, are united in the belief that the Russian Revolutions were a “true national disaster.”Footnote ²³ While the notion of—tragically lost and happily retrieved—national unity is central to the interpretation of the Russian Revolutions (re)produced in the historical parks, the official commemorative events dedicated to the centenary of 1917 were inspired by the (somewhat similar) concept of reconciliation.Footnote ²⁴ Not only did the metaphor of reconciliation haunt members of the Organizing Committee for the Centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution.Footnote ²⁵ Throughout 2017, Vladimir Putin himself employed the term reconciliation whenever he spoke of the Russian Revolutions; another notion that he often mentioned when referring to it was “unity.” During the aforementioned consecration of the Church of the Resurrection in Moscow’s Sretensky Monastery, he managed to marry the two concepts: having said that the church “embodies reconciliation,” he suggested that “it is our common duty to do everything we can to preserve the unity of the Russian nation.”Footnote ²⁶

In 2017, Russia’s reconciliation was to be cast in bronze and inaugurated on the Day of People’s Unity: the ceremony of the unveiling of the Monument to Reconciliation was to take place in Sevastopol on November 4, constituting the high point of the official celebrations of the centenary of the Russian Revolutions.Footnote ²⁷ Having received the blessing of Patriarch Kirill, the idea of erecting the monument was promoted by the Russian Military-Historical Society. In explanation, Mikhail Miagkov (Reference Miagkov2017), scientific director of the Society, reiterated the historical vision (re)produced thorough Russia—My History: “The monument that is being established—is a gesture that says: ‘Revolution, national strife, fratricidal war in the name of phantasmal political interests are evil for us, they are something we cannot allow to happen, they are the lesson of history that we must learn.’”

What matters, though, is not the similarities between the interpretation of the Russian Revolutions (re)produced in the Russia—My History historical parks and that reiterated by Vladimir Putin (and other members of Russia’s ruling elite), but the fact that the project is becoming a part of state-sponsored efforts to forge an “official” vision of Russian history. Not only was the state, from the very beginning of the project, providing the administrative and financial recourses necessary for its development. The historical parks of the chain Russia—My History are being integrated into the system of public education. In September 2016, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation recommended that the historical parks be used for school history teaching (Gorodskoi metodicheskii tsentr 2016). This recommendation did not go uncontested. On December 7, 2017, an open letter to the minister of education, Ol’ga Vasil’eva was published on the website of the Free Historical Society (Vol’noe istoricheskoe obshchestvo 2017). Professional historians, members of the society, pointed out a number of problems—including factual errors—in the content of the exhibitions on display in the parks and demanded that the latter undergo thorough examination by experts if they were to be employed for school history teaching. The historians’ address, however, had little effect, the only reaction being a press conference given by those who represent the public face of the project on December 13, 2017.Footnote ²⁸ At the time of writing this, not only guided tours but also history lessons for school-children and educational events for school history teachers—seminars, conferences, lectures—are taking place in the parks all over the country. In addition to this, the parks cooperate with information-methodical centers affiliated with the departments of education at local administrations. Thus, the historical parks are turning into spaces where school-children are being taught Russian history; at the same time, the public-school system is being used to promote the vision of history that is suggested in the historical parks.

Furthermore, the project Russia—My History has been de facto incorporated into official celebrations of the Day of People’s Unity. Celebrated annually on November 4, this is the national holiday that, along with Victory Day, is fundamental for the specific symbolic policy that Russia’s ruling elites have been developing. On November 4, 2013, Vladimir Putin, accompanied by Patriarch Kirill and Tikhon Shevkunov, visited “The Romanovs,” the first exhibition of the cycle “Orthodox Rus’,” and loved it.Footnote ²⁹ In the following years, he saw “The Rurikids” (on November 4, 2014), “From Great Upheaval to Great Victory” (on November 4, 2015), and “1945–2016” (on November 4, 2016). On November 4, 2017, Putin turned up at the opening of “Russia Headed Towards the Future,” the fifth and, until now, last exhibition of the cycle, which is dedicated to Russia’s (future) technological, economic, and cultural progress. Thus, for five years, attending Russia—My History—along with laying flowers at the monument to Kuzma Minin and Dmitry Pozharsky on Red Square in Moscow, presenting state decorations at the official ceremony at the Kremlin, and giving a state reception there—constituted Vladimir Putin’s personal annual ritual for November 4.

Introduced in 2005, at the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s second presidential term, the Day of People’s Unity marks the expulsion by the militia led by merchant Kuzma Minin and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky of Polish troops from Moscow in 1612. A year later, in 1613, Mikhail Romanov would ascend to the throne, becoming the first Russian tsar of the Romanov dynasty. The Day of People’s Unity, hence, celebrates both, the end of Smuta,Footnote ³⁰ the profound political, social, and economic crisis that struck Russia after the death of the last of the Rurikids, Feodor Ioannovich, and the beginning of Russia’s three centuries under the Romanovs. Three centuries that would come to an end in 1917.

The ideas manifested in the Day of People’s Unity are that of the people overcoming their internal strife and uniting in the face of their common enemy for the sake of salvaging their state, and that of the state being resurrected for glory and grandeur through the heroism and sacrifice of the people. Valorizing the consolidated state (and a reminder of the deadly consequences of division within the nation), the Day of People’s Unity, thus, preaches the same—state-centered and unity-focused—vision of Russian history that is (re)produced in the Russia—My History historical parks. Given this ideological proximity between the project Russia—My History and the Day of People’s Unity, it is of little wonder that when, in 2017, the time came to nominate Vladimir Putin for the (his fourth) presidency, the initiative group charged with this task was convened in VDNKh Pavilion 57, at the Moscow historical park Russia—My History (TASS 2017).Footnote ³¹ A site that manifests vividly the (profoundly statist) ideas of national unity, historical continuity, and political stability. Ideas that are fundamental to Vladimir Putin’s personal legitimacy and the legitimacy of the political regime of which he is the leader.