Thread by @SSmithPeter1

For a decade, Putin's Russia has made every effort to encourage Western scholars of Russia to write history along Putin's lines. In the context of genocide, this is no longer acceptable. After 2014, Putin saw Russian history as part of national security and persecuted 1/11

dissenting views. In 2016, Russian historian Alexander Churbarian told Izvestia that "we have received a request from the president: to intensify and broaden contacts with foreign scholars with the purpose of promoting historical truth" (as understood by Putin, of course). 2/11

bit.ly/3NmDxwo, p. 76. As a result, many Western historians of Russia were invited to events. I myself met Chubarian at an event whose purpose was to argue that Russia was a better colonizer than the West around the time of this quote. As Olga Bertelsen says 3/11

in bit.ly/3AF3Eao, p. 4 [some] "Western historians have gradually embraced the arguments and talking points emanating from the Kremlin." Not all of course, but some have, and their status has given Kremlin talking points, such as a Ukraine defined by nationalism 4/11

(while Russia isn't) more legitimacy than the Kremlin's own efforts could have done. Bertelsen discusses the efforts of the SVOP, a Kremlin-backed organization whose goal is to shape public opinion in Russia's favor, to mold Western views of Ukrainian memory politics. 5/11

Andriy Zayarnyuk, in "Historians as Enablers?" bit.ly/3Hk9ZMb traces some of the implications and effects of this policy. The Valdai Club has been a key place for these efforts. Putin would meet with leading Western historians and other figures and debate 6/11

policies for hours, gaining invaluable insight into how best to present his policies to the West. In 2017, Putin told the Valdai Club that Russia's "reunification" with Ukraine would inevitably take place. bit.ly/3neQ7Dm, p. 98. So participants should have known 7/11

what they were getting into. I used to get email from the Valdai Club (not having signed up), but when I looked into it a decade ago I thought it was sketchy and unsubscribed, so it wasn't as though there was no way to figure out that taking part was not a good idea. 8/11

Now that Russia is engaging in genocide in Ukraine (see bit.ly/3Egz5ZE and bit.ly/3oQUogO), taking part in these projects is not okay. Genocide imposes higher standards of behavior on its contemporaries, and using whataboutism or "nothing depends on us" 9/11

tactics does not absolve enablers from the judgment of future generations. There has yet to be a serious discussion of the implications of SVOP and other Russian soft power campaigns against Western academics. Those who did engage with these campaigns should stop. Those 10/11

who continue should be confronted by what such activity means now: enabling genocide. @Horbyk @JohnVsetecka @ODrachewych @OPolianichev @TsurkanKate @BohdanaNeborak @eugene_finkel @aseeestudies @UmlandAndreas #UkraineRussiaWar️ @razomforukraine @lydiatomkiw @AndrewBuncombe 11/11