How Putin Projects As A Modern-Day Peter The Great

The first is his identification with Peter I as a great military leader and the Great Northern War as a mighty military success. In light of Putin's assertions that Ukraine is an inalienable part of Russia, it's worth noting that victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War paved the way for the assimilation of the territory of Ukraine into what would become the Russian empire by defeating a rival great power and destroying its influence in the region.

There haven't been too many Russian military successes to celebrate over the past several hundred years – for 80 years the main one is of course the Second World War, known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. But the regime wants to present the history of Russia as a triumphant procession, so it will pick and choose victories from the past that fit neatly into its present-day narratives.

Similarly, as pointed out by my colleague Geoffrey Hosking in 2017, Putin wishes to present himself as part of a continuum of great Russian leaders. This posture conjures up visions of tsarist geopolitical and military might and the achievement of security through the creation and assertion of raw power.

The contemporary ramifications of this are not hard to grasp. The Great Northern War was a sign of Russian defiance against the West, represented in the form of the rival major military powers – particularly Sweden. Putin himself has commented on the Great Northern War as a struggle over Ukraine between Russia and the West.

Ukrainian resistance to Russia in the great northern war was most evident between 1708 and 1709 when Hetman (military commander) [Ivan Mazepa] created an alliance between several thousand Hetmanate cavalry , a large group of Zaporizhian Cossacks, and the forces of Swedish King Charles XII. Russian forces under Peter I crushed this alliance at the Battle of Poltava (1709) .

Peter the Great's role in all of this is also worthy of comment. The first emperor has been somewhat in vogue in Russia in recent years. For a historian, this is a curious development as, on one level, there is an evident contradiction here. Peter was very receptive to using Western technologies to drive his modernization of the Russian state – his city, St Petersburg, was often described as Russia's“window on the West.”

But he was also a strong leader who developed state power and won military conflicts against other great rivals.

In the Kremlin room where Putin receives foreign visitors, he has a quartet of statues of leaders he sees as synonymous with his own achievements. One of these is of Peter I. Peter has also been used openly as a frame in which Putin compares current actions in Ukraine with past skirmishes against Sweden – speaking of territories as“Slavic lands”, Putin refers to the northern wars as a reclamation of land that was actually Russian.

Sign up for one of our free newsletters

• The Daily Report Start your day right with Asia Times' top stories
• AT Weekly Report A weekly roundup of Asia Times' most-read stories

Finally, the commemoration of imperial-era heroes is striking. In 2011 Putin was reported to have told his ministers to pay“at least a month's wages” each to fund a statue of Pyotr Stolypin, a tsarist-era statesman and administrator who is one of Putin's political heroes. The following year the statue appeared on Freedom of Russia Square in Moscow.

In 2017, Putin appeared at a ceremony to mourn the assassination of Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, uncle to Tsar Nicholas II – the last tsar of Russia – who had been killed by a terrorist bomb in February 1905. A replica of the duke's memorial cross, originally erected in 1908 and removed by the Bolsheviks in 1918, has been installed. Putin has described the occasion as one to remember Russia's national and spiritual roots.

These memorials are all in line with Putin's drive to stress Russian national pride and identity. It's a program that is intimately bound up with his invasion of Ukraine – and one that stresses his identity as a modern-day agent of Russia's imperial greatness.

George Gilbert is Lecturer in Modern Russian History, University of Southampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

Already have an account? Sign i Sign up here to comment on Asia Times stories OR

Thank you for registering!

An account was already registered with this email. Please check your inbox for an authentication link.