Transforming Ivan the Terrible: History, Memory Politics, and Monuments in Putin’s Russia

Authors

Lena LaPierre, Bates CollegeFollow

Abstract

Like Joseph Stalin before him, Vladimir Putin has brought Ivan the Terrible back from oblivion and has made the memorialization of one of the country’s most infamous and brutal rulers a centerpiece of the Kremlin's contemporary propaganda toolkit. Analyzing a wide spectrum of Russian language sources such as the political speeches, historical lectures, protest posters, and Russian social media posts, this paper explores the various factors motivating the Putin regime’s revitalization of Ivan the Terrible and outlines how ordinary Russians have responded to the politicized whitewashing of their history. In 2016, with much fanfare, the provincial city of Orel erected Russia’s first ever monument to this infamous tyrant. Ripe with direct analogies between Ivan the Terrible and Putin, the highly nationalist and religiously-informed rhetoric around the Orel monument creates what I call a genealogy of sacred autocracy. By celebrating Russia’s first autocrat as both an exemplary Russian leader and a predecessor of dictators like Stalin and Putin, the Kremlin is creating an idealized and false historical legacy of triumphant, strong, and inevitable Russian authoritarianism—a narrative that naturalizes and legitimizes the regime’s imperialism, human rights violations, and crackdown on domestic dissidence.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

LaPierre, Lena (2025) "Transforming Ivan the Terrible: History, Memory Politics, and Monuments in Putin’s Russia," Bates College Journal of Political Studies: Vol. 1: Iss. 1, Article 6.
Available at: https://scarab.bates.edu/bjps/vol1/iss1/6