Professor Francine Hirsch has published an article with Lawfare titled “Putin’s Memory Laws Set the Stage for His War in Ukraine.” The piece discusses Russian President Vladimir Putin’s use of specific language as propaganda to rally Russians behind his war against Ukraine. According to Hirsch, “Putin in 2022, like Stalin in 1939, is attempting to reconfigure the geopolitical balance of power. Putin, like Stalin, is attempting to enlarge his state and expand its influence with revanchist claims to territories that had once been part of a larger empire. Putin, like Stalin, has launched a war of aggression while calling it a special operation aimed at aiding civilians and ‘restoring the peace.'”
Read the full article at Lawfare.
Francine Hirsch is a historian of Modern Europe with a specialization in Russia and the Soviet Union. Her recent book, Soviet Judgement at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II (Oxford University Press, 2020) offers the first full picture of the war crimes trials and the Soviet Union’s role in the conversations about genocide, justice, and human rights in the aftermath of World War II.