Russian leaders have increasingly used museums and their digital collections to show propaganda about Slavic unity and deny Ukrainian identity since the 2022 invasion, analysis shows.
The research shows the increasing ideological indoctrination of Russian museums and digital spaces, a tightening of access to digital collections, and using copyright to limit and control how online collections are accessed and reused.
Russian museum websites and online collections have portrayed Ukraine, its history, and culture as inseparable from Russia before 2022. During the past three years they have hosted exhibitions which represent occupied territories as historically and culturally Russian, framing the invasion of Ukraine as a fight against Nazism and NATO, and glorifying the invasion and individuals who served in the Russian Army.
Ksenia Lavrenteva, from the University of Exeter, examined activities organised by Russian museums before and after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, as well as legislation, cultural policies, and museum practices.
This included four museums – Russian Museum, State Hermitage Museum, the State Historical Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and the State Catalogue, a national database of digitised museum objects, as well as 25 Russian museum websites.
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“This study underscores the need to scrutinize who controls access to cultural data and for what purposes. There is a need for a more critical and context-sensitive approach to open access —one that balances its potential for inclusivity with safeguards to prevent the amplification of oppressive ideologies.”
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During the first year of the invasion, Russian museums hosted 58 events on “Nazism,” with some focusing on World War II and others drawing parallels with contemporary issues, specifically discussing “Ukrainian neo-Nazism”. Exhibitions such as “Evidence of Crimes by Ukrainian Nazis in Donbas” and “Ordinary Nazism,” trace the “history of Ukrainian Nazism” and portray Ukraine as a Nazi state, thereby justifying the Russian invasion as a fight against Nazism akin to World War II. Exhibitions such as “NATO: History of Lies” and “NATO: Chronicles of Cruelty” aim to present the Russian war in Ukraine as a war against NATO.
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The Russian Ministry of Culture has launched the 2023 Guidelines for Creating Exhibitions on the History of the Special Military Operation. These exhibitions are expected to focus on the occupied regions of Ukraine from 2022, emphasize these regions’ historical significance as integral parts of Russia, highlight alleged anti-Russian sentiments in Ukraine, and present the purported reasons for Russia’s invasion. These reasons include the “ongoing terrorist shelling of Donbas” and “NATO’s involvement in enhancing the combat capabilities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces”.
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