Militarization of history and mnemonic habits in Putin’s Russia: pedagogy of war

Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and the ways in which many in Russian society accepted the so-called “special military operation” highlight the importance of cultural militarization. Our article contributes to the literature on militarization by exploring Russia’s state-endorsed memory articulated through history teaching. Unlike most previous studies that focus on narratives about specific military events, we examine patterns of inserting war and territorial change within the fabric of Russia’s memory more broadly – as it emerges in the Russian Unified State Exam in History over 2006–2023 – to capture more routine and deeper militarized understandings. We explore how military references relate to seemingly non-military events, how they punctuate the imagined historical trajectory of the Russian state, how they relate to understandings of space, and how they link to understandings of Others. We show how these patterns constitute distinct mnemonic habits – habits of remembering – contributing to the militarization of Russia’s memory.