ABSTRACT

Honing in on how citizens in the former Soviet Union find themselves in an information competition over their own past, this paper explores whether and why ordinary people’s perceptions of historical events and figures in their country’s past are in line with a Russian-promoted narrative that highlights World War II – known as the “Great Patriotic War” in Russia and some former Soviet states – as a glorious Soviet victory and Stalin as a great leader. We draw on comparative survey data across six states and one de facto state in 2019–2020 to examine whether geopolitical or cultural proximity to Russia is associated with a more favourable view on a Russian-promoted narrative about the past. We find that closer geopolitical proximity to Russia is associated with perceiving the past in line with the Russian-promoted narrative, though the findings are less consistent when it comes to measures for closer cultural proximity.

摘要

本文着眼于前苏联公民如何发现自己陷入了关于自己过去的信息竞争中，探讨了普通人对自己国家过去的历史事件和人物的看法是否以及为何与俄罗斯推动的叙述相一致，该叙述强调了第二次世界大战——在俄罗斯和一些前苏联国家被称为“伟大的卫国战争”——是苏联的光荣胜利，斯大林是一位伟大的领导人。我们利用了六个州和一个事实上的州的比较调查数据该州将在 2019-2020 年研究与俄罗斯的地缘政治或文化接近是否与对俄罗斯推动的关于过去的叙述更有利的看法有关。我们发现，地缘政治上与俄罗斯的距离越近，人们对过去的认知就越符合俄罗斯宣扬的叙事，尽管在衡量文化距离更近的措施方面，研究结果不太一致。