The ‘State Patriotic Turn’: State Ideology and History According to the Russian Military Historical Society, 2022–2024

ABSTRACT The Russian Military Historical Society (RMHS) was founded in 2012 on President Vladimir Putin's orders. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the society's members have not only published propaganda to support the ‘special military operation’ but have discussed the need for a proper ‘state ideology’. Intertwined with this discussion, the contributors have pondered the ideological role of academic historical research. This paper argues that both discourses are based on 19th‐century premises: the idea of a ‘civilisational’ juxtaposition with the West, and that of national history as a united continuum. Putin's regime deploys institutions such as the RMHS not only to use the past as a tool to justify its political and military activities and to promote patriotism but also to attempt to use pseudo‐academic discursive practices paradigmatically to warp the entire scholarly field to support its long‐term ideological goals. One of those practices is the paradoxical demand for ‘objectivity’ in historical research while promoting the unquestionability of the national interpretation of a united and continuous history.