OLD AND NEW RUSSIA. REREADING THE HISTORICAL LEGACY IN LIGHT OF THE WAR IN UKRAINE

Abstract

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation on February 24th, 2022, brought relations between Russia and the West to an unprecedented breaking point. In the days immediately preceding the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered two speeches in which he presented a historical reconstruction of Ukrainian-Russian relations that served to legitimize the war effort. Putin's entire argumentation is centered on the denial of Ukraine as an independent state entity distinct from Russia and the bearer of an autonomous culture capable of centuries of interweaving deep relations with the peoples of Eastern Europe. This paper is dedicated to the instrumental use of history by the Russian president, who conveys a narrative of facts functional to his political conception and his idea of Russia's place in relation to Europe. Three texts are analyzed: the speech of February 1st, 2022, the annexation speech of March 18th, 2014, and the essay Ob istoričeskom edinstve russkich i ukraincev [On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians], published on the Kremlin's website in July 2021. The events of 2014 and 2022 mark the culmination of the historically complex and troubled relationship between Russia and Ukraine from 1991 to the present. The 2021 essay stands in continuity between these two moments: it constitutes the theoretical basis that Putin exploits to anticipate and justify his actions towards Ukraine; several arguments in the 2021 essay had already emerged in the 2014 speech and were taken up in full in 2022. The analysis was conducted thematically and lexically. Referring to the Discourse Historical Approach (Wodak et al. 2009, 2016), the specific historical themes to which Putin refers were identified; the discursive construction of these themes was analyzed by identifying the morphosyntactic and lexical strategies and means employed to convey the representation of a single Russian nation, which follows its own predetermined and unchanging historical path, of which Ukrainian language and culture are a part. The thesis that Russians and Ukrainians are one people is argued by emphasizing the common origin from Kievan Rus' and the presence of a shared language and religion. A direct traslatio of power from Kievan Rus' to Mus covy is presented. The fact that after the end of the Kievan Rus', the historical development of the Ukrainian lands cannot be identified with the evolution from Muscovy to the Russian state is ignored. Furthermore, the presence of an external enemy is emphasized as a dividing element between the two peoples. Finally, by resorting to the semantic fields of gift and theft, the ideology of Russian lands is taken up to argue the artificiality of the Ukrainian state and the need for Russia to reintegrate the former Soviet space.