Publication details
L’imperialismo russo e il mito di Bisanzio : Arte, scienza e religione al servizio del potere (1801-2025)
| Title in English | Russian imperialism and the myth of Byzantium : Art, science, and religion in the service of power (1801–2025) |
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| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Monograph |
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| Description | Vladimir Putin uses the past to justify his imperialist policies. In official propaganda, Russia must be restored to its former glory and its “original” territory. But is this a new strategy? This book shows that it is actually a traditional solution: over the last two centuries, the ruling elites in Russia have used architecture and images from the past and manipulated research to repeatedly justify their imperialist ambitions. At the heart of this propaganda process was the Byzantine Empire, whose succession and territory Russia claimed. The ideologues of Russian imperialism have repeatedly found in Orthodoxy a bridge between the medieval past and the present. Paradoxically, the same story has served very different regimes: the last Romanovs, Stalin, and now Putin. The crucial question is whether this history, repeatedly distorted by propaganda, corresponds to reality. And above all, what does it really tell us about Russia itself? |