White Russian Ideology and Its Role Towards Russia’s Historical Memory and the Invasion of Ukraine

Alongside the Great Russians and Belarusians, the Ukrainians are regarded as a Little Russian branch of the all-Russian people and do not exist from the perspective of the White Russian émigré ideology. In opposition to the Soviet regime which recognized Ukraine as a "sovereign" republic within the USSR, the rehabilitation of the White Russian ideology, which assumes that the Bolsheviks had created an "artificial" Ukrainian nation, has been massively supported by the Kremlin in recent decades. White Russian ideology argues that the Ukrainians were artificially created by the Austrians in the 19th century, by the Poles and Lenin at the beginning of the 20th century and finally by the USA, the CIA and the EU in more recent times in order to divide the "Russian" nation. The Ukrainian nationalists who came to power in a coup during the Euromaidan revolution, have turned, moreover, Ukraine into a puppet state run on behalf of Washington. They prevent the Little Russians from fulfilling their desire to join the Russian world. As a result, the US and the West turned Ukraine into an "anti-Russian" state that murdered Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The planning of the "special military operation" was heavily influenced by this ideology, assuming that Little Russians would welcome it as "liberation". The Kremlin cannot accept that the Russian military is since the invasion not welcomed anywhere in Ukraine. It refuses to recognize the existence of a Ukrainian nation and instead blames the Russian army, facing NATO troops and Western mercenaries, for its military defeats. The presentation examines how these widely held beliefs – which represent a Russian collective historical memory - played a role in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, how they are likely to play a role towards peace after the war, and how they will affect Russia's relations with the West.