Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin undertook the formidable task of uniting a restless and disorganized Russia. Throughout the early 1990s, the national narrative behind USSR's regime remained unclear—causing national pride to deteriorate in the confusion. In the following excerpt from The Long Hangover, journalist Shaun Walker sheds light on how Putin used Russia's victory in World War II to reestablish patriotism within the new Russia.
The fifteen nations to emerge from the Soviet collapse all took different approaches to dealing with their pasts as they built new national identities. In the three Baltic states, where Soviet rule had been imposed only in 1940, and large swathes of the populations had always been strongly antipathetic to rule from Moscow, new governments worked feverishly to undo the Soviet legacy. Museums opened that equated the Soviet period with the Nazi occupation. The old KGB archives were opened, and monuments erected to the victims of the occupying regime. The national narratives saw 1991 as an unequivocally celebratory date: the end of oppression, the restoration of a past, interrupted independence, and a return to the European family.
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