The Patriotic Turn and Re-Building Russia’s Historical Memory: Resisting the West, Leading the Post-Soviet East?

In 2017, the draft of the law on patriotic education was submitted to the State Duma. The document clearly signaled that Russian authorities were starting to prepare for long-term resistance to external threats, both military and cultural. This development follows the adoption of five decrees with a similar focus. Exploring this “patriotic turn,” our research will focus on how power shapes collective memory and how the Russian patriotic campaign is perceived elsewhere in the post-Soviet space, namely in Kazakhstan. In this way, we want to shed new light on the nexus between historical memory, anti-Western resistance, and the foreign policy.