Why Language Matters: Part IV
Narratives, Mythmaking, Ukraine and AI
**Subject to updates after further research**
Origin Stories
Snyder argues that each nation has its origin story – a myth, or a legend, created by its people over time through language, which explains how the nation was created and what were the struggles along the way.
Usually, this kind of “origin story” consists of three parts:
ideal state
disruption
redemption
Redemption means, of course, the reestablishment of the ideal state – which is the root of the narrative, the thing that, in some cases, shapes the course of history and defines the idea of origin.
Even the “greatest story of all time” follows this narrative to some extent – the Bible. There was Paradise; Adam and Eve sinned; there seems to be a road to redemption.
In the context of Russia and Ukraine, Putin refers to the idea of origin, to the “Great Rus’”, as the ideal state; or, as Harari puts it:
“Putin’s aspirations seem to be confined to rebuilding the old Soviet bloc, or the even older tsarist empire” (Homo Deus, p. 438).
Putin’s intentions to “restore” history might indeed go even further back in time, and that to the 18th century, when, as Tim Marshall notes in his “Prisoners of Geography”, Russia won the territories of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Odessa and Kherson from the Ottoman Empire – the territories back then known as “Новая Россия” – Novayia Rassyia (New Russia).
Putin has retained this term for these regions and his main reason for claiming the territories seems to be that “Russia lost these territories for various reasons, but the people remained” (Prisoners of Geography, p. 20).
The Great Rus was a subject to the disruption, meaning there was development – the political and national landscape changed… In other words, “history happened”, and eventually, both the tsarist empire and Soviet bloc were dismantled. In Putin’s view, the fall of the Soviet bloc constituted “a major geo-political disaster of the century” for which Gorbachev is to blame (Prisoners of Geography, p. 7).
Serhii Plokhy supports the existence of this Russian sentiment:
“The collapse of the Soviet Union left Russian elites bitter about their loss of imperial and superpower status, nourishing illusions that what had happened was an accident brought about by the ill will of the West or by politicians like Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin foolishly bickering for power. Such a view of the end of the Soviet Union makes it hard to resist the temptation to rewrite history.” (The Gates of Europe, p. 349)
Putin’s now looking for redemption – reverting Russia back to the original state; “the ideal state”; “the origin” – rewriting history with his story. Because, as his narrative goes, Russians have always existed; while other nations, such as Ukrainians, only came afterwards and are, therefore, of lesser importance. At least this is the narrative he seems to be enamoured with.
Serhii Plokhy writes in the “Gates of Europe”:
“President Vladimir Putin, who had led the Russian government since 2000, first as president, then as prime minister, and then again as president, had gone on record characterizing the collapse of the USSR as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century. Before returning to the presidential office in 2012, Putin proclaimed the reintegration of post-Soviet space as one of his primary tasks.” (pp. 339–340)
Putin’s sentiment clearly shows the signs of the “origin story” myth explored hereinabove. For Putin, USSR was the ideal state (or, if we go even further back in time, the Great Rus’ was his ideal). He calls its disintegration a “catastrophe”; therefore, intentionally framing historical developments in negative light – as a disruption of something perfect. This negativity is then transformed into the sense of injustice being done to Russia.
Such injustices need to be inevitably remedied, and thus we arrive at the redemption arc of the narrative – the reintegration of former Soviet republics into a single entity. A notion of liberation of sorts for the lost territories (like Ukraine), lifting them from the abyss and showing them the path to redemption and glory rooted in history – or, more accurately, in the history and myth Putin invented for Russia and Ukraine.
This is further fuelled by the concept of “historical determinism” (i.e. there is only way history can develop, and I will make it happen). And as history is, according to Putin, predetermined; it also has its defined parts, with narratives (or origin stories) which have beginnings…
And more importantly, ends.
The next part on Ends of History coming next month.