ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 documents post-Soviet neomedieval memory politics, which glorifies the Russian medieval past and its warlords. Disseminated by the Kremlin and its far-right proxies, political neomedievalism employs a variety of methods and agents to engage its Russian audiences. This chapter surveys state and grassroots initiatives, laws, monuments, museums, popular films and fiction dedicated to Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Nevsky, Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, and Prince Igor of Novgorod-Seversky, and several pamphlets. These pamphlets, written to influence Putin’s domestic politics, position Russia’s return to the Middle Ages as Russia’s political goal. The chapter analyzes social programs that advocate for the restoration of the society of estates, a social change that the pamphlets’ authors deem imperative for the reconstruction of the Russian Empire. The resemblance between state-supported neomedieval memory politics and these far-right pamphlets demonstrates the depth of Russia’s engagement with antidemocratic thinking, as well as the level of political influence wielded by the Russian far right on the Kremlin’s propaganda. This analysis exposes the devices of memory manipulation employed in fabricating the memory of the perpetrators and mobmemory.
