Analysis | Seeking the truth: myth, memory, and history
The Influence of History is a limited spring blog series from the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. With contributions from ISD director of programs and research, Dr. Kelly McFarland and guest authors, this series will focus on the enduring influence of history on foreign affairs. Read more from ISD on diplomatic history.
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine drags on into its third month, the conflict continues to provide many examples of the ways in which history can be manipulated for geopolitical gain. One way in which history is collectively distorted and simplified by individuals, groups and nations is through the creation and use of myth.
The use of myth has been on full display with the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. Both sides have used the history of World War II, in particular, to justify their actions, rally their people, and to try and gain external aid or acquiescence. As a previous piece in this series highlighted, Vladimir Putin’s words leading up to Russia’s invasion were chock full of a mythologized version of Ukrainian and Russian history. More recently, as an insightful article by Ian Garner highlights, Russia and Ukraine are competing over who owns the legacy of World War II. As the author points out, “for Russia, memory of the “Great Patriotic War,” as Russians call it, provides a justification for its aggression in Ukraine; for Ukraine, it provides ways to resist the invader and to create new, unifying national myths.”
On the Russian side, Putin has portrayed his actions as defensive in nature, echoing memories of the Nazi invasion of 1941. In his now infamous February 24th speech, Garner describes how Putin “portrayed Russia as the defenders of oppressed minorities, as the Soviet Union had defended Jews and Slavs in 1941. He stated that the Soviet Union had, just as Russia had now, done everything it could to avoid war in 1941. War, he claimed, only became inevitable then, just as today, due to an inescapable and existential “Nazi” threat.”
Putin’s mythmaking surrounding World War II is nothing new. For almost two decades, he has built up the myth of the Soviet Union alone standing up to the Nazi onslaught, at the same time that he attempts to frame the West today as a new version of the Nazi threat. At the same time, gone are any references to the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, Russia’s murder of thousands of Poles, and other atrocities undertaken throughout the war.
Ukraine’s vision of World War II, according to Garner, is more nuanced than Russia’s, which makes the use of myths in the current fight more fluid in nature. A major myth, and, as we will see, one also apparent in American myths of World War II, is that of complete national unity throughout World War II.
What are myth and popular memory?
In order to understand how myth and popular memory are used and misused, we must first understand how they are created and what, exactly, they are. Paul Cohen has written extensively on myth and popular memory. In History in Three Keys, Cohen goes into detail to describe myth, and to differentiate it from history. He notes that:
“On the level of intentionality, the past treated as myth is fundamentally different from the past treated as history. When good historians write history, their primary objective is to construct, on the basis of the evidence available, as accurate and truthful an understanding of the past as possible. Mythologizers, in a sense, do the reverse. Certainly, mythologizers start out with an understanding of the past, which in many (though not all) cases they may sincerely believe to be ‘correct.’ Their purpose, however, is not to enlarge upon or deepen this understanding. Rather, it is to draw on it to serve the political, ideological, rhetorical, and/or emotional needs of the present.”
There are obviously many problems with the act of mythologization. Key among them is the fact that it can bleed into what can be called “popular memory,” and create a “truth” all its own. Cohen notes that:
“Once assertions about the past enter deeply into people’s minds (and hearts), it is arguable that they acquire a truth of their own, even if this truth does not at all coincide with what actually happened at some point in past time. At the very least such assertions are true statements about what people believe and therefore must occupy a central place in any history of human consciousness.”
What makes myth and popular memory so easily digestible for so many people is the fact that they always contain a nugget of truth. Putin’s rants about World War II contain some elements of truth, as do the Ukrainians’. Scholars and pundits today who argue over myths regarding the “winnability” of the Vietnam War work from many of the same sets of facts. To quote Cohen once again, myth “achieves its effect typically not through out-and-out falsification but through distortion, oversimplification, and omission of material that doesn’t serve its purpose or runs counter to it. The mythologized past need not be historically accurate. But if it is to be effective in persuading or mobilizing people in the present, it must be bound by at least a loose conception of ‘truthfulness’.” Myths also often work best if users are able to strip history of its nuance and glean a key big idea, oftentimes one that can be duplicated in the present.
Why myth and popular memory matter
Throughout history, leaders and groups have used mythologized versions of history to create a greater sense of unity among large groups of people, what Benedict Anderson refers to as “imagined communities.” They have also used myths and twisted versions of popular memory to stoke antagonisms between different groups, and to create violence and even war. Recent events in Ukraine are crystalline examples of this.
Take Kosovo for example. As Cohen highlights in History and popular Memory, the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 and the myth surrounding it is the “central event in Serbian history and eventually [served] as the cornerstone of Serbian national consciousness.” The problem, though, is that the differences between the myth and the actual history are stark. In historical terms, the battle was most likely inconclusive, and not nearly as important as battles held both earlier and later. But, certain aspects of the myth created almost immediately after the battle lent themselves better to nationalist consciousness that began to spread in the nineteenth century. Amidst the changing atmosphere of the fall of communism in the late 1980s and the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosovic was able to use the Kosovo myth and its underlying meanings to stoke Serbian nationalism and rampant violence.
The United States is by no means immune to the power of myth and popular memory. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many scholars believe that the myth of the frontier in American history, and the closing of it, led to an increase in America’s imperialistic tendencies. Likewise, Elizabeth Samet has demonstrated how American myths surrounding World War II have repercussions for U.S. foreign policymaking today. Samet explodes the myth of the “Good War” that encapsulates the way Americans think about World War II. She details how the nation wasn’t as unified as it is portrayed to have been and reminds us that not everyone rushed off to fight fascists. She asks, “Has the prevailing memory of the ‘Good War’ shaped as it has been by nostalgia, sentimentality, and jingoism, done more harm than good to Americans’ sense of themselves and their country’s place in the world?” Ultimately, she decides that “every American exercise of military force since World War II, at least in the eyes of its architects, has inherited that war’s moral justification and been understood as its offspring: motivated by its memory, prosecuted in its shadow, inevitably measured against it.”
Understanding the differences between myth, popular memory, and actual history is not only important for history teachers at all levels, but for policymakers as well, as these examples attest. While some policymakers and leaders purposefully use myth to agitate their political base and/or justify their actions, a la Milosovic and Putin among others, other policymakers stumble into making questionable policy because they base their underlying assumptions on myths. It is imperative that policymakers interrogate their preconceived notions about themselves, their country, their allies, their adversaries, and so on. This will create a solid foundation for policymaking, and most likely lead to better policy in general.
In America today, fierce battles rage over what history is being taught in the classroom. The Trump administration, through its 1776 Commision, hoped to build an education system that pumped out “patriotic citizens,” and focused almost exclusively on the positive aspects of American history. Meanwhile, the 2021 Virginia Gubernatorial race hinged, in large part, on arguments over Critical Race Theory and education.
Only knowing your country’s history through myth can be dangerous. As historians, we need to teach all aspects of our nation’s history, both the negative and positive, arming our students with the knowledge to make their own, informed decisions. As the British historian Michael Howard notes, ‘the proper role for historians is to challenge and even explode national myths: such disillusion is a necessary part of growing up in and belonging to an adult society; and a good definition of the difference between a Western liberal society and a totalitarian one — whether it is Communist, Fascist, or Catholic authoritarian — is that in the former the government treats its citizens as responsible adults and in the latter it cannot.”
Kelly McFarland is a U.S. diplomatic historian and the director of programs and research at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. Follow him on Twitter @McFarlandKellyM.
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