Putins Dark Ages: Political Neomedievalism and Re-Stalinization in Russia [Paperback]

This first in-depth comparison of Putins neomedieval memory politics and re-Stalinization proposes new approaches to the study of the right-wing populist memory in Russia and beyond.

Introduction  1. Political Neomedievalism, the Memory of the Perpetrators, and Mobmemory  2. Putins Neomedieval Politics of History  3. Post-Soviet Historians and Religious Activists on the Medieval Oprichnina  4. The Post-Soviet Far Right on Establishing the New Oprichnina  5. The Oprichnina and Serfdom in Popular Culture and Public Debates  6. Re-Stalinization in Putins Russia  7. Working through the Past Russian-Style: Mobmemory in Vladimir Sharovs Prose.  Conclusion: The Politics of Reversed Time  Apocalypse as Practice

Dina Khapaeva is Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. Among her latest books are Crimes sans ch?timent (2023) and The Celebration of Death in Contemporary Culture (2017). Until 2009, she was Director for Research at Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and a professor at St. Petersburg State University, Russia.

Two decades before the war against Ukraine, a special operation was launched against Russian historical memory, aggressively reshaping the nations understanding of its history and identity. The Kremlins militarization of Russia through World War II propaganda is well documented, but the glorification of Russian medieval society and its warlords as a source of support for Putinism has yet to be explored. This book offers the first comparison of Putins political neomedievalism and re-Stalinization and introduces the concept of mobmemory to the study of right-wing populism. It argues that the celebration of the oprichnina, Ivan the Terribles regime of state terror (15651572), has been&lÃ&