'The Jewish People Suffered, Suffered in a Way in Which Perhaps No One Else Did Except for the Russian People': Russia's New Populist Holocaust Memory

自2012年普京回国以来，俄罗斯联邦首次开始形成一种特定的大屠杀记忆，强调苏联的英雄主义、前加盟共和国的法西斯主义倾向，以及当代俄罗斯本应宽容的多元文化社会，在这个社会中，最痛苦的历史时期正面临着。然而，这一新现象往往与西方自由民主国家(Levy and Sznaider 2006；Allwork 2015)所描述的新兴全球世界性大屠杀记忆背道而驰；相反，与日益威权的匈牙利和波兰一样，民族主义政客出于国内合法性和国际软实力的原因，越来越多地在政治上动员大屠杀的另一个版本。这一博士学位将通过研究过去十年来大屠杀在俄罗斯联邦的文化和政治领域被动员起来的变化方式来解决这一新现象。它将探索大屠杀是如何成为一种更加明确的政治工具记忆的，主要表现在那些制作受到国家严格控制的空间--即博物馆、电影、政治演讲，无论是在俄罗斯还是在国外。这是一个跨学科的项目，其方法框架反映了这一点，结合了政治学、国际关系、电影研究和文化史视角。它将考察政治演讲、国内和国际俄罗斯展览，以及俄罗斯第一部大屠杀电影《索比卜》(2018)。利用这些文化和政治案例研究，该项目将首先考虑大屠杀文化如何在国内领域发挥作用，以使普京的国家合法化。它将从国内的角度审视对大屠杀的民族主义解读，考虑俄罗斯的经济和社会发展，如2014年的俄罗斯经济危机，并调查它们与促进民族主义大屠杀记忆的联系。它还将绘制反对这种新的动员的图表，特别是那些在普京统治之前出现的激进的大屠杀记忆团体，并提供不同的视角，如公民运动纪念馆和非政府组织俄罗斯研究和教育大屠杀中心。此外，本论文试图将这种复兴置于更广泛的跨国背景下。它将阐述新的纪念文化本身是如何成为跨国辩论的结果，这既是包括波兰和匈牙利在内的新兴威权民粹主义国际主义的产物，也是对欧盟“自由”纪念政治的反应。欧盟向作为新欧盟成员国的东欧国家施压，要求它们将大屠杀等同于共产主义罪行--包括苏联犯下的罪行。它将解释为什么俄罗斯政府利用大屠杀记忆来打击这些对俄罗斯历史记忆的攻击，并将俄罗斯定义为一个独立于西方的文明空间。然后，它将探索这种新的大屠杀文化如何发展成为俄罗斯国际关系中的软实力工具，并支撑俄罗斯的新地缘政治战略。最近，它是在2014年以来的乌克兰危机期间部署的--将他们的对手贴上带有法西斯主义遗产和大屠杀肇事者的标签。

Since Putin's return in 2012, for the first time the Russian Federation has started to develop a specific Holocaust memory which emphasises Soviet heroism, the fascist leaning of former republics, and contemporary Russia's supposedly tolerant, multicultural society in which the most painful periods of history are confronted. However, this new phenomenon is often in opposition to what has been described as an emerging global cosmopolitan Holocaust memory in liberal democracies in the West (Levy and Sznaider 2006; Allwork 2015); rather, as in an increasingly authoritarian Hungary and Poland, a very different version of the Holocaust is increasingly politically mobilised by nationalist politicians for reasons both of domestic legitimacy and international soft power. This PhD will address this novel phenomenon by examining the changing ways in which the Holocaust has been mobilised in both the cultural and political sphere in the Russian Federation over the last decade. It will explore how the Holocaust has become a far more explicitly politically instrumentalised memory, represented primarily in those spaces - namely museums, film, political speeches, whether in Russia or outside - where production has been closely controlled by the state.This is an interdisciplinary project, and its methodological framework reflects this, combining political science, International Relations, film studies and cultural history perspectives. It will examine political speeches, domestic and international Russian exhibitions, and Russia's first Holocaust film, Sobibor (2018).Using these cultural and political case studies, this project will first consider the ways in which Holocaust culture is instrumentalised in the domestic field, in order to legitimise Putin's state. It will examine the nationalist reading of the Holocaust within its domestic perspective, considering economic and social developments in Russia, such as the 2014 Russian Economic Crisis, and investigate their link to the promotion of a nationalist Holocaust memory. It will also chart the opposition to this new mobilisation, specifically those activist Holocaust memory groups that emerged prior to Putin's rule and offer alternative perspectives, such as civil movement Memorial and the non-governmental organisation The Russian Research and Educational Holocaust Centre.Moreover, this thesis seeks to place this revival in a broader transnational setting. It will address how the new memorial culture itself is a result of transnational debates, a product both of a newly emerging authoritarian populist internationalism including Poland and Hungary, and as a reaction to the 'liberal' memorial politics of the European Union which has pressurised eastern European states, as new EU members, into equating the Holocaust with Communist crimes - including those committed by the Soviet Union. It will explain why Holocaust memory has been used by the Russian state to combat these attacks on Russian historical memory, and to define Russia as a separate civilisational space to the West. It will then explore how this new Holocaust culture has developed as an instrument of soft power in Russian international relations, and underpins Russia's new geopolitical strategies. Most recently, it was deployed during the Ukrainian crisis since 2014 - to brand their opponents as bearing the legacies of Fascism and as Holocaust perpetrators.