‘‘FOR MANY RUSSIANS,” writes McGlynn, “the road to shooting civilians in Bucha was paved with battle re-enactments and military dress-up.” In Putin’s Russia, warped memory has substituted Soviet ideology while cultural consciousness has replaced class consciousness. Popular cultural assumptions have been enlisted in a massive push against truth. As McGlynn puts it, “the Kremlin is not dictating the history, so much as appropriating it”.
Indeed, Putin’s regime drip-feeds patriotic pabulum into the minds of all children, not merely those specifically studying history, from their first day at school. Many Russian children aged between 12 and 17 belong to military history clubs or visit Country of Heroes, a network of camps where they are taught