'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年普京回归以来，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、前共和国的法西斯倾向，以及当代俄罗斯所谓的宽容、多元文化社会，在这个社会中，历史上最痛苦的时期面临着挑战。然而，这种新现象往往与西方自由民主国家所描述的新兴全球世界性大屠杀记忆相反（Levy and Sznaider 2006; Allwork 2015）；相反，就像日益专制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考虑，越来越多地在政治上动员一种截然不同的大屠杀版本。本博士课程将通过研究过去十年来在俄罗斯联邦文化和政治领域动员大屠杀的不断变化的方式来解决这一新奇现象。它将探讨大屠杀如何成为一种更加明确的政治工具化记忆，主要表现在那些空间——即博物馆、电影、政治演讲，无论是在俄罗斯还是在国外——这些空间的生产都受到国家的密切控制。这是一个跨学科的项目，它的方法框架反映了这一点，结合了政治学、国际关系、电影研究和文化史的观点。它将审查政治演讲、俄罗斯国内和国际展览以及俄罗斯第一部大屠杀电影《索比堡》（2018年）。利用这些文化和政治案例研究，本项目将首先考虑大屠杀文化在国内领域被工具化的方式，以使普京的国家合法化。它将从国内角度审视对大屠杀的民族主义解读，考虑到俄罗斯的经济和社会发展，如2014年俄罗斯经济危机，并调查它们与促进民族主义大屠杀记忆的联系。它还将描绘反对这种新动员的声音，特别是那些在普京统治之前出现的大屠杀记忆活动团体，他们提供了不同的观点，比如民间运动纪念馆和非政府组织俄罗斯大屠杀研究和教育中心。此外，本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如何成为跨国辩论的结果，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“自由主义”纪念政治的反应，这种政治迫使东欧国家作为欧盟新成员国，将大屠杀与共产主义罪行等同起来——包括苏联犯下的罪行。它将解释为什么大屠杀记忆被俄罗斯政府用来对抗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，它将探讨这种新的大屠杀文化如何发展成为俄罗斯国际关系中软实力的工具，并支撑俄罗斯新的地缘政治战略。最近的一次是在2014年的乌克兰危机期间，它被用来给他们的对手贴上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.