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What do the Confederacy and the USSR have in common? A loyal fanbase.

An intriguing phenomenon is shared by the US and by Russia – the veneration of a past fallen country diametrically opposed to the one currently in power. In the case of the United States, we see the Lost Cause of the Confederacy; and in Russia, we see a state-driven glorification of the USSR’s World War I and II military victories. What drives these two surprising celebrations of past failed states? How have politicians benefited from the successes of other governments’ successes?

The Lost Cause of the American Confederacy

The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, according to Encyclopedia Virginia, is a rewritten history of the Confederate States of America based on six tenets:

  • The cause of the Civil War was state rights and secession, not slavery;

  • Slaves were happy to, and wanted, to remain slaves to their masters and to the Confederacy;

  • The Civil War was inherently a Lost Cause due to the Union’s tremendous resources in comparison to the South’s;

  • Confederate soldiers are to be held in the highest regard due to their heroism (fighting a losing battle from the get-go);

  • Robert E. Lee is beyond reproach (see previous point); and

  • All Southern women happily sacrificed their loved ones, time and resources to the Confederate cause.

Blanketing each of these tenets is the use of the Christian faith to justify them. The Lost Cause myth began immediately after the Confederacy lost the Civil War and was invigorated by the death of Robert E. Lee in 1870, which allowed him to be further mythicized.

The Lost Cause harkened back to the antebellum days of the Confederacy, which lasted from the late eighteenth century to the onset of the Civil War. The Encyclopedia of Alabama describes the three phases of the Lost Cause as bereavement, celebration, and then vindication. An exemplification of the sentiment of the first phase was the first observance of the Confederate Memorial Day to remember and honor the Confederate lives recently lost in the Civil War.

The second phase began at the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and turned the mourning spirit of the Lost Cause movement into celebration. This twenty-year period marked the creation and dissemination of revisionist literature espousing the six aforementioned tenets. In particular, proponents of this myth idealized the racial, gender, and class arrangements of this era and wished that it continue into their present. The 1832 publication of the book Swallow Barn by John Pendleton Kennedy kicked off the cultural phenomenon of the plantation novel, which established the mythical image of the decorum and social framework of the plantation. The book Gone with the Wind, published in 1936, further solidified the mythical standing of the Southern Belle and her social life. It is important to point out, though, that these arrangements largely benefited the wealthy merchant and planter class, rather than the average Southerner.

During the final phase of the Lost Cause, the United Daughters of the Confederacy drove the effort to put up Confederate statues and teach their version of Civil War history in schools. While their organized efforts faded away in the intense national patriotism of the two world wars, the effect of the revisionist school programming and textbooks continued through the Civil Rights Movement into the present. A 2018 Time magazine article quantifies the enduring impact of the Lost Cause’s revisionist textbooks: in 2011, around 50% of Americans polled believed that states’ rights chiefly instigated the Civil War. As Hollywood is currently coming to terms with the problematic representation of slaves in Gone with the Wind, the continued impact of the Lost Cause idealization of the Antebellum social structure cannot be so neatly measured.

Commemorating the USSR

While the Lost Cause originated as a sort of grassroots movement, the Russian glorification of its past came from above. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, former President Yeltsin tried to take a heavy-handed approach to the rewriting of the near past and failed dramatically. He tried to villainize the Soviet Revolution and Communist Regime, but this initiative angered many of the common folk, who saw it (correctly) as a top-down propaganda mission.

Following the failure of this technique, the new leader Vladimir Putin tried a new one. In contrast to the Lost Cause’s focus on the social structure of the Southern Antebellum period, Putin’s glorification of the Russian past focuses on recalling Soviet military victories while overlooking the leaders behind them. His strategy has been to blur history to his advantage, minimizing regime changes – a danger to his conservative aim of staying in power as long as possible – and emphasizing a mythicized, uninterrupted Russian history.

In 2005, Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the (20th) century,” and eight years later reinstated the Soviet-era “Hero of Labor” award. What these two seemingly disparate acts serve to do is highlight the disastrous effects of regime change while blurring its historical line in the Russian collective consciousness. In this way, he can take the credit away from Soviet leaders and give it to the Russian people and their glorious history. In the same vein, he can also justify his own military campaigns with historical precedence, such as in 2014, when journalists interpreted his taking of Crimea as his returning Soviet land to Russia in a way.

A June 2020 Christian Science Monitor article by Fred Weir points out the possibility that the current Russian state “lacks great achievements and the democratic legitimacy that would confer unity” and so relies on the World Wars for the ultimate story of pride and “social consolidation.” Nostalgia for the Soviet era remains strong in Russia – around three quarters of Russians polled in 2020 called the Soviet era the best in Russian history.

Another possibility for the official celebration of the USSR’s successes is described in this article by The Week. The author, Jeva Lange, argues that the failure of the communist experiment led to a need to retroactively justify its actions that did not end up panning out. An example of this: the incredible expenditures in the space race.

Fabricating a historical lineage

Some Southerners trace their lineage to the origin of the American state and maintain a sense of moral superiority over their Northern counterparts. In the same way, the uninterrupted vision of Russia’s history creates essays such as this one describing the seemingly normal celebrations of military victories of yore while ignoring the regime shifts between them. Putin has cultivated this narrative, as described above. Despite both of these nations undergoing dramatic territory and political changes, politicians underscore the continuity of their histories.

What is essential to point out is that, despite the major political shifts in 1991 in Russia and in 1865 in the US, it was the same population before and after. The new regimes wanted them to deny all that they had grown up believing and being told, and these individuals understandably found that reversal hard to swallow. The Russian people lived through a shift from a communist state to a democratic one; and the South transformed from an independent collection of states to what felt like foreign occupation. The major setbacks encountered by these individuals – the Russians thrown into turmoil and power seizure, and the white Southern slave owners losing their ability to rampantly exploit their slaves – inspired a mythicization for the stability of before.

The nostalgia for the Antebellum period and Soviet era was made possible by a collective culling of only the good parts of these times. Today’s Russians remember the period’s stability and the good life they enjoyed, painted in the general rosiness of youth. The antebellum South comprised a proud separate collection of states whose cotton industry was fundamental to the American economy. (Remember – this has always been a white-driven movement; Black activists have been combatting the Lost Cause movement since it began).

While it might be counterintuitive to take credit for a past fallen states’ actions, this strategy is politically advantageous to today’s politicians. Up to the current day, American politicians find it strategic to present themselves as distinctively Southern and support basic tenets of the Lost Cause’s propaganda – such as the former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly remarking that, “the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War” or the ongoing debate over Confederate symbols by both parties.

Simplifying history can highlight successes by a people’s ancestors. People want to be proud of what their past family members fought for, so they are willing to hear politicians blur the lines of history if that means they came from heroes. The question one must ask, though, is: whose heroes?

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