Legacies of Stalin or Putin? Public Opinion and Historical Memory in Ukraine

• Author: Vitali Shkliarov,Vera Mironova,Sam Whitt
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211041633
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2022, Vol. 75(4) 966–981

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211041633

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Legacies of Stalin or Putin? Public Opinion

and Historical Memory in Ukraine

Vitali Shkliarov

1

, Vera Mironova

1

, and Sam Whitt

2



Abstract

Our research considers the relationship between historical memory and political evaluations of the past and present. We

f‌irst examine how historical ref‌lection on the Soviet Union under Stalin is inf‌luenced by memories of f amilial suffering

during World War II and victimization under the widespread Soviet gulag prison system. Based on a 2019 representative

survey of Ukraine, we show that respondents who recall family members being injured or killed f‌ighting during World

War II and those who recount families being imprisoned in Soviet gulags have increased positive and negative app raisals of

the Soviet Union under Stalin respectively. However, we also f‌ind that favorable opinions of Stalin are strongly predicted

by approval of Vladimir Putin, who has actively promoted rehabilitation of Stalin’s legacy to bolster personalist rule at

home and justify revisionist agendas abroad, including in Ukraine. Our results underscore interactions between the

present and past in shaping historical memory such that what appears as enduring legacies of the past could also be a

function of present political circumstances.

Keywords

public opinion, historical memory, Stalin, Putin, Ukraine, World War II

Introduction

There is a burgeoning research program uncovering long-

term legacies of historical violence on present-day po-

litical attitudes and behavior (Walden and Zhukov 2021).

Prominent studies have found enduring, detrimental ef-

fects of violence and political repression on norms related

to social trust and tolerance, as well as voting behavior.

For example, Nunn and Leonard (2011) reveal destructive

effects of the slave trade on modern-day trust in Africa.

Grosjean (2014) and Conzo and Salustri (2019) f‌ind that

exposure to violence during WWII still resonates in lower

trust in Europe. Homola et al. (2020) expose how intol-

erance and far-right support in Germany is greater in areas

where there were former WWII concentration camps.

Rozenas et al. (2017) trace present-day ethnic parochi-

alism in Ukraine to repressive measures under Stalin,

while Zhukov and Roya (2018) highlight the enduring

negative consequences of Stalin era political repression on

contemporary voting behavior. The literature largely af-

f‌irms the long reach of historical trauma in shaping the

beliefs, attitudes, and behavior in contemporary polities.

1

In terms of mechanisms, most research has focused on

intergenerational transmission. Lupu and Peisakhin

(2017) identify familial drivers of parochialism among

Crimean Tatars resulting from Soviet forced resettlement.

Acharya et al. (2013) f‌ind a similar transmission mech-

anism in terms of slavery and conservative political at-

titudes in the American South, as does Mazumder (2018)

in how civil rights protests shifted partisanship among

white Southerners. Beyond the family, Balcells (2012)

and Villamil (2020) reveal how local networks help

sustain historical memories of the Spanish civil war for

future political mobilization. Furthermore, Costalli and

Ruggeri (2019) examine how early organizational ad-

vantages have persistent downstream effects on political

preferences and mobilization, as evidenced from com-

munist party strongholds and leftist politics in post-WWII

Italy. Overall, the literature underscores the importance of

intergenerational, organizational, and network-related

transmission mechanisms to sustaining the enduring

legacies of the historical past.

1

Davis Center Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

2

Department of Political Science, One University Parkway, High Point

University, High Point, NC, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sam Whitt, Department of Political Science, One University Parkway,

High Point University, High Point, NC, 27262, USA.

Email: swhitt@highpoint.edu

Building on existing research, we examine an alter-

native mechanism acting on historical memories, which is

based on the inf‌luence of present political actors in re-

constituting the past for their own entrepreneurial pur-

poses. We assume that historical memories may not be

static but vary across time and context (Bartlett 1932;

Kann 1958;Moscovici 1988;Halbwachs 1992). While

scholarship on the contemporary political impact of

historical memory is emerging (Lee 2012;Kesebir et al.,

2013;Bobowik et al. 2014;Rim´

e et al. 2015;Bouchat

et al. 2019), more work is needed as the topic is largely

underexplored. Our work is distinctive because we go

beyond questions of historically transmitted traumas and

experiences that is common in the literature. Instead, we

underscore how present-day political forces can shape

historical narratives impacting how the past is remem-

bered, reimagined, and then handed down to future

generations.

Our research adds to the growing case literature by

examining the long-term historical legacies of violence in

Ukraine. We focus on the effect of historical memories of

within-family gulag imprisonment and World War II

battlef‌ield deaths and injuries on appraisals of the Soviet

Union under Stalin. However, we also consider how

appraisals of Stalin could be inf‌luenced by contemporary

attitudes toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, who

has adopted a revisionist perspective on Stalin’s legacy to

justify his own expansionist machinations in Ukraine. By

exploring how contemporary support for Putin inf‌luences

memory-driven appraisals of the Stalin era, we can il-

lustrate the power of present political forces in shaping

historical awareness of the past.

Theory

Untangling the relationship between historical actors and

events, historical memory and the inf‌luence of present

political actors is a challenging task. First, linkages be-

tween historical facts and historical memory are often

tenuous (Bartlett 1932;Kann 1958;Moscovici 1961;

Schwartz 1982;Halbwachs 1992;Olick and Joyce 1998;

Olick 2013;Rieff 2016). As Moscovici (1988) contends:

“We derive only a small fraction of our knowledge and in-

formation from the simple interaction between ourselves and

the facts we encounter in the world. Most knowledge is

supplied to us by communication which affects our way of

thinking and creates new contents.”(p. 215)

Following social representation theory (Moscovici

1961), individual memories of the past are largely un-

derstood and communicated through socially constructed

and representative systems of collective values, beliefs,

narratives, and behaviors. Rather than f‌ixed and rigid,

these representations are subject to movement and change

over time.

Dynamic social representations of individual and col-

lective memory may be especially prevalent for experi-

ences of conf‌lictand violence (Paez and Liu 2011;Vol h a r d t

et al. 2018). Research suggests that memories of collective

trauma can increase group bonding, reinforcing shared

narratives,and it may also intensify adversarialreactions to

out-groups (Wohl and Brans combe 2008;La ˇ

sas et al.

2018). Furthermore, studies in the psychology of mem-

ory indicate that historical memories are often unreliable as

they are shaped by emotional experiences and outcomes

from historical events (Bartlett 1932;Levine 1997;Levine

et al. 2001;Safer et al. 2002).Individuals are also prone to

“moral rationalizations”of the past (Tsang 2 00 2), and

memories can become distorted through misinformation

(Loftus 1992). There may also be concerns about prefer-

ence falsif‌ication, social desirability bias, or non-

responsiveness with respect to memories of personally

sensitive traumatizing experiences (Kuran1987;Matanock

and Garc´

ıa-S´

anchez 2018;Blair et al. 2020).

Historical memories are often politically sensitive and

contentious as well (McGrattan 2013;Ver o v ˇ

sek 2016).

Memories involving individual or collective “pain and

shame”(Logan and Reeves 2008;Wang 2014); guilt and

responsibility (Frie 2012;Olick 2013), and traumatic

events such as wars and massacres can be politically po-

larizing and therefore exploitable (Boyd 2008;Lagrou

1999;Maier 2000;Uhl and Golsan 2006;Youn g 1 9 94 ).

We underscore how present-day political actors and or-

ganizations have incentives to reshape and mobilize his-

torical memories to serve strategic goals, especially when

they possess organizational advantages to do so (Costalli

and Ruggeri 2019).This process can occur throughaltering

both the memorial hardware that exists to symbolically

commemorate past events (monuments, mass gatherings

and other institutionalized social representations) as well as

memorial software involving historicalnarratives, salience,

and beliefs (Blacker and Alexander 2013;Etkind 2004).

Although elites in democracies also have incentives to

manipulatepublic opinion for politicalgain (Druckman and

Jacobs 2015), authoritarian regimes have greater control of

informationto alter and distort collectivehistorical memory

for political purposes (Arendt 1973;Geddes et al. 2018;

Svolik 2012).

Our work illustrates how appraisals of historical actors

and events are affected by both present political cir-

cumstances and relevant past experiences. To examine the

inf‌luence of past experiences on historical memory, we

follow work by Lupu and Peisakhin (2017) and Vilamil

(2020), who argue that transmission of information and

framing of historical experiences take place through

social networks involving family and local community.

Such memorialization could be reaff‌irming of positive

Shkliarov et al. 967