Russia in Global Affairs

With the approach the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, it has become increasingly visible how China and Russia’s vital roles in defeating fascism are downgraded and distorted in the Western narrative.

As we near 100 days of the special military operation in Ukraine it would be good to take a strategic-analytical step back and see where the current situation is in real terms.

The North Korean narrative on the Second World War originated from the Soviet narrative on the immediate post-War period, which was implanted into the DPRK by Soviet overseers in the late 1940s. In later years it was altered by the North Korean authorities to fit the changes in the state ideology.

Memory wars around the interpretation of the Second World War/Great Patriotic War continue to rage between Central and Eastern European countries and Russia, with European institutions being hostage to these conflictual narratives.

The willingness to see behind everything a conspiracy of dark forces and the belief that everything happens for a reason, well-known to us from our own history, have now spectacularly become commonplace. So, since the topic triggered such a powerful response, we decided to take it further by asking members of the academic community in different countries how they assess the current state of affairs in “memory politics.” They came up with a very broad range of opinions, which we gladly share with our readers.

The online session “International Relations and Memory of WWII Today”, organized by the European University in Saint Petersburg and the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, was held on November 23. The participants in the panel discussion, moderated by Fyodor Lukyanov, Editor-in-Chief of “Russia in Global Affairs”, included Alexei Miller, Tony Brenton, Sergei Kislyak, Ulrich Brandenburg, and Philip David Zelikow.