Why does Russian president Vladimir Putin so often draw on WWII analogies to justify Russia’s war on Ukraine? How does the Putin regime use memory politics to explain Russia’s war aims and Ukraine’s resistance to them, and why do these claims have resonance with the Russian public? In this talk, Professor Juliet Johnson (McGill University) will focus on the Russia-Ukraine war to explore how and why the Putin regime has strategically used the past to legitimize its authoritarian, aggressive, and anti-Western turn. 

Juliet Johnson is Professor in the Department of Political Science at McGill University, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, former President of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2023), and former Director of the international research network Between the EU and Russia: Domains of Diversity and Contestation (2015-2023). Her research focuses on the politics of money and on memory politics, particularly in post-communist Europe. Her publications include Developments in Russian Politics (Duke 2024), Priests of Prosperity: How Central Bankers Transformed the Postcommunist World (Cornell 2016), A Fistful of Rubles: The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System (Cornell 2000), and numerous scholarly and policy-oriented articles.

Location: Athenaeum