Join the KU Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREES) for the first lecture in the series “Information Wars and the Battle for History."

Dr. Rebecca Johnston (KU CREES) will give a talk titled "We Are an Empire: History and Culture in Wartime Russia" on Thursday September 26 at 4:00pm in the English Room of the KU Memorial Union. Paid parking is available in the union parking garage using the ParkMobile app (zone 3930) or parking garage payment kiosk.

In recent years, the Russian government has increasingly incorporated history into its official conceptions of national security and sovereignty writ large. Many commentators and analysts have, for their part, framed Russian foreign policy and military aggression as part of an extended historical narrative: that Vladimir Putin is seeking to resurrect the Soviet Union, or sees himself as a modern-day Peter the Great. Meanwhile, the Russian government has poured significant resources into instrumentalizing historical narratives and leveraging them towards policy goals. Those efforts have become increasingly dogmatic as Russia’s war against Ukraine continues to grind on with no end in sight. This talk will address important questions about the implications of these practices. How does the Kremlin’s preoccupation with history impact populations in both Ukraine and Russia itself? To what extent are state policies rooted in Russia’s own history of empire, and how much do they constitute something different and new? What can the weaponization of history tell us about the Russian government’s priorities and intentions—both at home and abroad, especially in Ukraine?

Rebecca Adeline Johnston is the inaugural Cyber Social Fellow at the University of Kansas, where she conducts research on the intersection of Russian and Soviet history, culture, and information warfare. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas-Austin. Her expertise includes the history of culture, ideology, and governance across the Russian, Soviet, and post-Soviet space. She has previously held positions at UT-Austin as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Historical Studies, National Security Fellow at the Clements Center for National Security, project lead at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law, and has additionally worked in international human rights.