129. ANALYSIS: Oleksa Drachewych on echoes of history in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - implications of Bolshevik revolution; use of WWII narratives & brutal historical echoes in Russia’s invasion
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Welcome to the War in Ukraine, Update from Kyiv podcast. I'm Jessica Gnauer, a senior lecturer in international relations at Flinders University in Australia, and I'm talking today with Olexa Dreychevich. Olexa is assistant professor in history at Western University. Olexa's research focuses on Soviet history and the history of modern Europe, as well as international communism, transnational human civil rights movements, and transnational anti-imperialism.

So thanks for joining me on the podcast today, Alexa. Thank you for having me. So in order to understand modern Russia, I think it's fair to say that we need to contextualize it within the long history of the Soviet Union. And in order to understand the Soviet Union, we need to also understand its origin story. So can you talk a little bit about what was the promise of the Bolshevik Republic?

revolution and did it manage to live up to that promise? So there's a couple of ways to answer that question. The first is by focusing on Russia itself. So the Bolshevik revolution is the second of two revolutions that take place in 1917 that basically stem from long problems in Russia, political, social, cultural, that

sort of reached their boiling point with the First World War. Essentially, you have a peasantry that with 1861, when you have the emancipation of the serfs, there's a sort of moment where they think that things might change and it doesn't really start to happen. And so there's now a growing desire for land reform in some way, shape or form coming from a

For the working class, they're having long hours. There's not many rights. All of that plays a role. You also have an oppressive regime in the Tsardom in terms of secret police, russification policies, and so forth. So you also have a national aspect to it as well, where the various ethnicities of the Russian Empire are becoming increasingly unhappy. And then you have things like the Russo-Japanese War that lead to this moment where the Tsardom does not look as strong.

Fast forward to the First World War without getting into too much detail. This is where you then have the fact that the Russian war effort doesn't go well. That leads to certain strife and you end up having, along with also the issues of Rasputin and all of those highly mythologized events that do have some truth to them. You then have this moment that leads to February 1917. Again, I'm going by the old calendar where what starts as a protest against Russia

looking for food leads to a broad scale revolution. Members of the military join and this leads to the provisional government, but also the Petrograd Soviet. Go fast forward another six, seven months. The Petrograd Soviet largely starts to gain more and more power as it represents the workers, the peasants, the military, while the provisional government doesn't really deal with any of the issues.

there's still food supply issues, there's still labor issues, and then on top of that, there was a growing sentiment to want to end the war. The provisional government elects to continue with the war with

With the idea of winning over the allies, that might then potentially, if there's a couple of victories, that might turn the tide and Russia can be part of the victorious allies. The Krensky offensive happens. It's a total catastrophe on so many levels. And what ends up happening is in many cases, the Bolsheviks start to appear as one of the few really revolutionary groups that might actually fight for change in Russia.

And so in Russia, the Bolsheviks end up, at least in the moment, appear to be at least the party that might do its best for the workers. They're willing to accept land reform largely as a fait accompli because they just, the peasants are already starting to engage in their own land reform by literally just operating themselves and going against the nobles. So basically the Bolsheviks say, yeah, just go with it. And they also call for an end to the war. So there's this sort of utopianism of a new path forward that might then change

change Russia for the better, deal with a lot of these long-standing issues, then the Bolsheviks would then presumably have this moment where they would provide a freer Russia in some way, shape, or form. On the global stage, the Bolshevik revolution represents something a little bit different. It represents a lot of that utopia, but it often depends on where you look at it. So for example, you have leftists and people who might, for example, be revolutionaries see finally, okay,

we have a socialist nation that maybe socialism can work, that maybe communism can work, and they're then emboldened by this. For those who, for revolutionaries, for nationalists, for those seeking to fight for colonial liberation,

This is where the Bolsheviks take on an anti-imperial character because with the Russian Civil War and the Allied intervention, they're actually fighting, as Lenin says, fighting half of world imperialism. And so they appear to be an anti-imperial force. Granted, there's also the paradox of Soviet imperialism that also lasts the majority of their rule, both with taking over the Tsarist Empire, Central Asia, and later Eastern Europe.

But that paradox doesn't really hurt that part because the Bolsheviks are really, in many cases, one of the few options that a lot of these liberationists have. You have things then like racial equality, where they take seriously through the Comintern, the organization that they developed to basically develop international communist parties.

They take seriously some of the complaints that black delegates had and take racial equality seriously and then even promote how the Soviet Union is this alleged post-racial society. And they promote that there is no Jim Crow as a way to also sort of attack the United States, but also show that there is a better path and all of these things that resonate with different groups of people.

And so the Bolshevik Revolution represents in many ways a hope for something new, a hope for a more egalitarian society, a hope for this utopia that they're selling. The problem is...

The Bolsheviks very quickly get caught up in the fact that it's a revolution. Whether you take the view that it's a coup or it's a general revolution, the Bolsheviks get very focused on consolidating power. And that is something that never really vanishes. I take the approach that is sometimes sort of brought up in a number of broad histories of the Soviet Union, that the Soviet Union always feels like it is fighting for revolution.

And so they're always looking for the counter-revolution to stop it. They're always worried that it's all going to be undone. And so the problem is, is that you then have under Lenin, the Russian Civil War, very violent. You have the period of nap where it's sort of this reset period to get everyone sort of stabilize the nation. And then with Stalin, there is a focus on imposing a certain vision of order and modernity, consequences be damned.

And we all know the high loss of life under Stalin. And this is sort of the one main tension in the Soviet experiment to say broadly is on one hand, it represents and even promotes these ideals and always talking about how they're fighting to work towards social. They're on the on the path to communism. But at the same time, there's always this violent, coercive aspect to the state and party control.

that never is fully shed. And so the problem comes down to that you have a party that often focuses on how to maintain power and maintain the experiment and their vision, while you have then a populace that is

gradually starting to become numb to the rhetoric if they bought into it. Or if they didn't buy into it, they know that there's something else out there and they're no longer sort of seeing the Soviet project as something worth fighting for. And this is where you have dissidents. This is where you have resistance. This is where you have people fleeing if they're able to leave for one reason or another. This is where you get the oppression as well. And this is one reason why then when you look at the sort of the Cold War years, one of the sort of major trends is that to maintain communist control of Eastern Europe,

military coercion, violence is always seemingly the answer. Whereas on the other hand, you have things like Prague Spring, which really is an attempt at a socialist revolution to fight for the utopia they claimed that they were going to provide them that they never really did. And so that's really sort of what kind of is that main tension there. And so there's sort of a lot of these different aspects to it of where the Soviet Union means these things and means these utopian visions and yet never really meets them.

And at the same time, though, they have, at least today in popular memory, there are still certain aspects of the Soviet experience that still resonate. Its superpower status is something that Russia wants to go back to. The important role that the Soviet Union played in fighting Nazism, that plays a massive role in the historical memory of the Second World War in

in Russia today. And on top of that, we're seeing also with Lavrov and others drawing on that history of Soviet anti-imperialism and the alleged post-racial society to highlight better relations with the global south, building on a lot of those relationships that were built in the Cold War era and continue to today.

In that regard, when Putin did announce the full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year in February, there was this very explicit narrative regarding

around, quote unquote, putting air quotes around it, denazification of the Ukrainian domestic arena. We've seen as recently as Putin's national address in February this year, where he again emphasized the fact that from his perspective, this war is somehow for Russia, is one in which Russia is defending itself against Nazi variants. Why is Putin using that language of

denazification to describe Russia's invasion of Ukraine? So this leads to what a number of myself and a number of colleagues see as the Russian desire to relive the Second World War. The

The fight against Nazism, the fight against Nazi Germany during the Second World War is hailed as one of the great triumphs of not just Soviet history, but Russian history. There's a clear conflation of Soviet and Russian, especially today in Russian national memory. And so this is seen as kind of something that Russia can always throw at the world. And it's hard to argue, OK, well, you stop Nazism, like something that sort of gives them something they can kind of run with in terms of just the general cachet of the world.

But there's also a specific meaning to denazification, which there's this popular sort of idea that Soviet denazification was thorough, it was harsh, but it was necessary and it is what basically expunged Nazism, especially in Eastern Europe. And often this is also mentioned even in some of the state media mentions, there's hints towards how the American, the British or the French zones of West Germany, denazification wasn't as thorough and they didn't really do a good job. What's

kind of lost in all of that is that the Soviets really had a very inconsistent approach to the Nazification as well. But there's this popular idea that the Soviets really thoroughly dealt with the Nazis. This includes Nuremberg. This also includes the NKVD special camps that many Germans were placed in in the latter days of the war and after. And they make this argument that they're going to do the same thing to Ukraine.

As part of this, by also them basically conflating the Soviet experience to being Russian, they

they're also essentially removing the Ukrainian experience from the broader narrative and they're entirely focusing the Ukrainian experience on not just the Ukrainian nationalist movement, but particularly OWUN and UPA, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which has connections or had connections to the Nazis using Nazism both for their own national aims, but also perpetrating a number of

of serious atrocities and ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews as part of the Holocaust. And what Russia is trying to do is to take those figures and suggest that as the entire history of the war for Ukraine, their experience is fully collaboration. And therefore, the role of Nazism in that is something that continues to prevail in Ukraine today.

And that is what they're drawing on in terms of when they're using the term denazification. Plus, on top of that, they have done a...

notable job of highlighting the alleged far-right character of Ukrainian society when, just to name one simple thing, is when you look at the last elections, the far-right did not poll well, I believe under 2%. So again, there's this sort of idea of promoting Ukraine to be these things based off of this historical moment and the historical memory that Russia is creating. And then Russia is using that to justify their war of aggression, their imperialist war of aggression against Ukraine. And beyond that specific

rhetoric? Do we see in the way that Putin is building up and emphasizing a Russian national identity, do we see other elements of harking back to symbols that might be evocative of that sort of World War II period? So one thing, and I preface this by saying it's not necessarily something we fully have where there's a clear direct line to it.

But one of the things that I've noticed in, as I work on a book that is essentially looking at the parallels between Soviet atrocities during the Second World War and after in Eastern Europe and their echoes in Russia's war in Ukraine and what Russia is doing in Ukraine. One of the things that I have noticed is that

The Russian rhetoric that tends to dehumanize Ukrainians very much mimics a lot of the way that the Soviet Union aimed to dehumanize the Germans, Romanians, and other sort of Nazi collaborators during the Second World War. And that was what was then often when the Red Army then it was pushing into those areas as part of the Second World War, that final push for Berlin. That

dehumanization turned into anger and violence against civilians. And this is where we have the atrocities and sexual violence that was very prevalent in certain areas. And yet at the same time, there's been some research, for example, to suggest that, so Yugoslavia to name one, which was framed often as an ally due to the presence of Tito and the role of the partisans there. There was still some of those atrocities, but nowhere near to the same level as these areas that had been dehumanized in Soviet propaganda.

With Ukraine today, we're seeing a similar situation where because Ukrainians have been so sort of demonized in Russian rhetoric, that may be one parallel in which helps explain as much as we don't want to necessarily explain or rationalize, but it's one of those trying to understand why do these things happen? Why does atrocity happen? This may be one reason why there was such a level of violence towards civilians and continues to be still to this day with Russia's war in Ukraine.

And this might be one parallel that does have sort of that connection to the Second World War. Along with that is also just, we've heard the use of filtration camps. That has also, it's sort of a precursor from the Second World War period, the use of mass graves. When I saw satellite photos of Bucha, for example, I immediately thought of

the broad photos of Katyn, things like that, where there's sort of at this moment, outside of them flat out saying it's hard to say, are they replaying the Second World War in this way through atrocity? But there are a number of parallels that might suggest that there might be something more there.

Yeah, the brutality of that is really harsh. And to what extent does that narrative of denazification or, you know, drawing on themes from Soviet activity during World War II, to what extent do you think that that resonates and is absorbed within the broader Russian population? Yeah.

That's a great question. And sort of, I will give a probably an unsatisfactory answer, because it really depends on how much you put faith into the public opinion polls. So do you trust the Levada polls, for example, which suggest the majority of Russians support the war?

which suggests older Russians tend to support the war, which also suggests, on the other hand, some of the polling that was coming up, especially last year, even suggested general ambivalence to the war, that if the war ended tomorrow, they'd be fine with it. I think just following also individuals who've been following viewing patterns.

We tend to hear in the West focused a lot on state television. And so Margarita Simonian and some of the others who are making these ridiculous over-the-top statements, and we tend to draw on all of them. Are Russians gravitating to those? Are they watching more local-based television in which maybe these events just don't play much of a role? I think one of the...

The sort of ways to look at it is that there is clearly an audience for this. There is clearly support for the war. That the role that the Second World War plays, I think that there is sort of a general rallying around some of those concepts.

But I think also you have quite a bit of a population that is happy to be a bystander. And as long as the war doesn't directly affect them, they're happy to sort of stay at it. We saw some of that with the partial mobilization in which that tended to lead to a notable uptick in at least resistance or at least vocal expression against the

The Putin regime, there's also obviously then a variety of different forms of resistance to all of this that we might not necessarily always be seeing here in the West. But again, with Putin increasingly developing an oppressive state where the state apparatus is very quickly operating against anyone who says anything against the war or the regime, that we won't know, again, the impact of a lot of those efforts.

So again, it's hard to say for sure. There clearly is though some resonance. And I think some of the books that are coming out this year are starting to look at that to see really where does that resonate. And I just name a couple that I know of that are coming out by Jade McGlynn and by Ian Garner.

they look at those phenomenon and at least try to provide some answers to who is at least, who is this gravitate or who gravitates to these narratives. Yeah. And both Jade McGlynn and Ian Garner do really awesome work. So we've seen Putin really doubling down on Russia's invasion of Ukraine and not appearing to show any inclination to withdraw or to back down. What do you think

could expect to see from the trajectory of the war this year? So I recently, about three weeks ago, published in the Conversation of Peace where I basically argue peace is elusive and it's probably not happening anytime soon. This is mainly because, as you've hinted at, Russia is maintaining maximalist demands. A starting point for negotiations is for the Ukrainians to accept the so-called "annexed territories" that Russia, again, "annexed."

in September. Ukraine's not going to accept that. And at this point, the military situation does not suggest one way or another that Russian defense will immediately collapse in the next couple of days and that Ukrainian liberation is not a possibility yet. For Ukraine, they're looking to liberate their territory. That's still their goal, including Crimea.

But on top of this, I want to highlight that that liberation is not just simply territory. For them, we know how harsh Russian occupation is to Ukrainians. And Ukrainians view that any territory that remains under Russian occupation essentially is condemning the Ukrainian population there. That we don't know what further atrocity they have committed in the areas that they are occupying. And in the absence of other information, given what we already know, we have to assume they are continuing to commit atrocities.

And for that reason, Ukraine is not going to give up unless they are essentially somehow forced to. All of that leads to that likely this war is continuing for the very least the balance of this year, if not longer.

I think the next six months are going to prove to be very telling. That's where we're going to see the value of Putin's partial mobilization, whether the sheer numbers of troops will have a notable role beyond simply making it difficult for the Ukrainians. For example, Pakhmut is happening right now, whereas the Ukrainians are going to have the new tanks and other technology that they're getting from the nations that are supporting them.

them. And if they continue to use that technology as well as they have all the other weaponry and support they have in 2022, this is where, again, we should highlight how effective the Ukrainian military has been in all of this. It's not just a matter that they're getting these munitions, they're using it very capably. If that continues, that could be a difference maker.

At the same time, war is hard to predict. As we all probably remember in the early days of the full-scale invasion last February, the American military intelligence suggested Kyiv would fall within a couple of days. A number of people did not necessarily see the Ukrainian offensive that allowed them to take back quite a bit of territory in the summer and fall. So again,

The issue is going to be, I think, that now is we're in that stage where stalemate is becoming increasingly likely. There might be a break in that. But right now, my thought would be is that Ukraine is sort of in some ways working against a timer. As Putin seems, my assumption would be that Putin and the Russian government and military seems to believe that time is on their side.

that at some point, as we're starting to hear rumblings that some European nations are thinking about a peace plan, China's offered a fairly sort of general peace plan that Russia immediately disregarded, but that Russia might be able to just wait out the unity that has sort of crystallized around Ukraine. And if that happens, that unfortunately will make it very difficult for Ukraine to continue to put up the fight that it has.

That's what sort of, again, the thing that's looming in the background is can the U.S. maintain that unity? If they can, Ukraine has a chance because they then have that extra support, not just in the current military liberation of Ukraine, but also we have to also be thinking about what does the end sort of afterwards look like? Ukraine is going to have to be rebuilt.

And that's going to be sort of another aspect where it's one reason why I think that Putin is focusing on civilian targets, is that Ukraine could be potentially a drain on the West, which then allows Russia to not feel as threatened. I think all of that plays a role in some of the calculus that is developing. And I think it's also why Russia sees no need to sue for peace.

How does this all end up? I don't know, unfortunately. As I've said a number of times, I'm a historian. I'm much more comfortable in the past than I am in the present or future. But that is the reality that we're in yet is that we won't know until we know. And there's a number of things that could break one way or another. Yeah, makes sense. I can see how a lot is going to depend on what we see in the next approximately six months-ish is going to be a very critical time period for

Well, thanks, Alexa. I really appreciate you being on the podcast and I've really enjoyed this discussion and found that it's provided me with an additional perspective from which to understand the historical context of the current situation. So thanks for joining me today. Well, thank you for having me on. It was a pleasure. Thanks for listening and thanks to Gonca Verol for our theme music.