The alliance of victory: Russo-Serbian memory diplomacy

Abstract

The politics of memory of World War II underlies the public and political discourses in contemporary Russia and Serbia, with political elites using the narrative of the victory against fascism as a unifying and legitimising tool. The heroic war memory is also outward-oriented and underpins the ever-closer relations between the two countries. This article explores how Russia exports and engages with the memory of World War II in Serbia, introducing the concept of memory diplomacy as a form of public diplomacy. Based on the travelling of memory, narratives and practices, memory diplomacy takes memory politics to the international level. The article theorises memory diplomacy as co-creation, rather than a one-way process, which involves benefits for all parties involved. Through historical and content discourse analysis of data from Russia and Serbia, the article illustrates how the theory of memory diplomacy works in practice.

Introduction: intersecting Roads of Victory

On 21st October 2019, then Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev posed awkwardly in front of a group of fresh-faced students in Belgrade. The Serbian secondary school pupils were adorned with St George’s Ribbons, Soviet flags and T-shirts depicting the conquered Reichstag – all symbols of the Soviet victory in, and Russian memory regime of, World War II. They had gathered to launch the Russian government-backed initiative, Roads of Victory, which organises tours of important Red Army battle sites across Eastern Europe. Its purpose is to propagate a heroic vision of Russia’s past abroad and, as this article will show, it functions as just one of many examples of Russian ‘memory diplomacy’.

Memory diplomacy is defined here as political actors’ identification, creation and development of commonalities of memory for geopolitical purposes and/or bilateral relations. Unlike memory wars, which involve different actors contesting their countries’ historical – especially wartime – roles (Lebow et al., 2006), memory diplomacy involves coalescing and converging the historical narratives around these roles. However, the relationship between memory diplomacy and memory wars can be symbiotic, as diplomatic actors’ efforts to converge historical narratives can be directed against perceived or real mnemonic others. In this sense, memory diplomacy can function to create a mnemonic coalition within a memory war.

Memory diplomacy does not only operate at the state level. There is a multitude of actors active at different levels in society who engage in memory work that involves external audiences and allies, such as various non-governmental organizations and initiatives. However, memory diplomacy is most identifiable and influential at the state level, where memory alliances are forged. This article focuses on the institutional level of memory work (Conway, 2010) and the realms of the official and dominant memory.

With their political utilisation of national history, actors within state-sponsored memory politics always aim to present a positive view of their country or group’s own past but memory diplomacy is a way of taking memory politics international, involving multiple states and the travelling of carriers, media, contents, forms and practices of memory (Erll, 2011: 11). A distinguishing feature of memory diplomacy is that the actors involved are promoting their own narratives and commemorative traditions (memory exports) to external audiences but they also engage with and promote positive historical narratives of a second country, creating ‘memory alliances’ (McGlynn, 2020). Both actions contribute to achieving influence, reinforcing relationships and bolstering a country’s reputation. Memory diplomacy is not a one-way affair, where one side imposes its exports or narratives, but instead it is a mutual two-way engagement in which both sides are active, even if they are not equally active.

In this article, we set out to theorise and illustrate memory diplomacy as a form of public diplomacy. As with all forms of bilateral relations, memory diplomacy is not a one-way process, and it benefits all parties involved. To demonstrate memory diplomacy as an act of co-creation, we use the example of how Russia exports and engages with memories of World War II in Serbia. Russia has been increasingly active as a memory diplomat in recent years, as it looks to adapt its political uses of history at home (and targeted compatriots in the post-Soviet space) for audiences further afield (Becker and Becker, 2020). Serbia is a productive partner in this sphere, given its openness to Russian soft power (Davis and Slobodchikoff, 2019). Moreover, experiences of World War II loom large in the public and political discourse of both nations: the Russian government uses the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) as a unifying and legitimising device, punishing dissenting historical voices by law (Koposov, 2017); since 2012 and Aleksandar Vučić’s rise to power, Serbia has promoted a complementary view of the People’s Liberation War, where Serbia plays sidekick to the Soviet liberation of Europe. Notably, both countries have ethnicised the efforts of the multi-national Red Army and Yugoslav Partisans into Russian and Serbian victories, respectively.

Like many other countries, Russia uses memory diplomacy to engage a number of target audiences abroad (McGlynn, 2021), not just Serbia. However, the objective of this article is to provide a detailed explanation of our theoretical concept of memory diplomacy and the productiveness of Russian-Serbian memory diplomacy provides a wide range of illustrative examples for this groundwork. As such, we do not see the Russo-Serbian example as a limiting case but rather as ‘one of several constellations in the dynamics of memory diplomacies’ that we and others might explore. ¹

Memory diplomacy as transnational memory

Memory diplomacy can be understood as a form of memory politics that involves external mnemonic agents (Bernhard and Kubik, 2014) and audiences, and in which memory serves as ‘a strategic resource in the struggle for power’ (Nguyen, 2016: 10). We understand memory politics as a field of politics and policy where different actors load history with their specific interests and meanings (Wolfrum, 1999: 25). Memory politics always aims at the public sphere as ‘the arena within which politicized and highly contested debates about the official interpretations of the past can take place’ (Sierp and Wüstenberg, 2015: 322). In this public sphere, there is a multitude of individuals, groups and institutions who struggle over the meaning and interpretation of the past (Wolfrum, 2010: 21), but some narratives are dominant and ‘luxuriate grandly’ (Popular Memory Group, 1998: 76). The dominant memory is about ‘the power and pervasiveness of historical representations, their connections with dominant institutions and the part they play in winning consent and building alliances in the processes of formal politics’ (Popular Memory Group, 1998: 76). Both the official and dominant memory form the basis of memory diplomacy and alliance between Russia and Serbia, as both state and non-state political actors deploy the memory of World War II as a resource.

A number of scholars have explored the utilisation of historical narratives as a tool of foreign policy (Sverdrup-Thygeson, 2017). Some studies of the political uses of history in foreign policy have focussed on so-called ‘memory wars’ (Koposov, 2017) – or the conflict over competing visions of the past – that are a common and prominent feature of Russia’s relations with former Soviet and Warsaw Pact member states. By way of example, see the Russian government’s disputes with Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2019 over the start of World War II (BBC, 2019), or the Kremlin’s threats to begin legal proceedings against the Czech Republic following the decision of the Prague authorities to move a statue of Soviet war hero Marshall Konev. Memory diplomacy can be informed by these tensions and, at times, can even constitute an effort to construct a memory alliance against those who would ‘falsify history’, that is, those with whom the country has a mnemonic conflict. Yet, while memory wars and memory diplomacy are not incompatible, the latter is concerned with locating or constructing agreed narratives of the past, whereas the former is about contesting the past.

Starting a more theoretically informed discussion on the nexus between historical memory and foreign policy, Klymenko and Siddi (2020) discuss mechanisms such as the application of historical analogies, construction of historical narratives and sites of memory, marginalisation and forgetting of the past, and securitisation of memory. Their question of how representations of historical events evolve through interaction between political actors at the international level can foster a better understanding of particular cases such as Russia. With the concept of memory diplomacy, we hope to provide a more in-depth consideration of the movement of memory in the international political arena and of transnational communities of memory – the memory alliances.

Memory diplomacy is unthinkable without the travelling of memory, ‘the incessant wandering of carriers, media, contents, forms, and practices of memory, their continual “travels” and ongoing transformations through time and space, across social, linguistic, and political borders’ (Erll, 2011: 11). Russo-Serbian memory diplomacy is based on travelling memory content, namely shared images and narratives about the struggle and victory against fascism, but it also involves the travel and exchange of practices and ‘modes of conveying knowledge about the past’ (Erll, 2011: 13). Military parades and other militarised commemorative practices, such as the Immortal Regiment and St George’s Ribbons, represent examples of the ‘transnational memory space’ (Wüstenberg, 2019: 372–373) that exists between Russia and Serbia. Through memory diplomacy, Russia transnationalises its commemoration of the Great Patriotic War. If we distinguish between transnational memory as going across the border and transcultural as enabling ‘the imagining of new communities and new types of belonging’ (Törnquist-Plewa, 2018: 302), we can conclude that the Russo-Serbian memory diplomacy and alliance blend these two concepts of memory studies. The relationship between Russia and Serbia as two localities of memory is transnational, but it also represents a transcultural blending of their memory cultures (Wüstenberg, 2019: 374).

The concept of memory diplomacy emphasises agency in transnational and travelling memory and places it in the context of ‘micropolitics of the movement of memory’ (Keightley and Pickering, 2017: 120). Memory does not travel on its own. The public articulation of memory is informed by the discourses and institutions of the public sphere that mediate and authorise such recollection (Crownshaw, 2011: 2). In other words, it is the nation-state actors and infrastructures of power that enable the movement of memory that is ‘consequently mediated and consecrated through institutions’ (Tomsky, 2011: 50).

Memory diplomacy operates and intertwines multiple scales of memory as simultaneously transnational and nationally rooted. While the nation-state is not ‘the natural container, curator, and telos of collective memory’ (Rigney and De Cesari, 2014: 1), political actors usually think of memory and history in national terms and, at the same time, export it across national boundaries (Assmann and Conrad, 2010: 6). Memory diplomacy is based on transnational memory as the concept that ‘recognises the significance of national frameworks alongside the potential of cultural production both to reinforce and to transcend them’ (Rigney and De Cesari, 2014: 4). As a form of the transnational dynamics of memory production, memory diplomacy operates ‘in conjunction with the continuous presence and agency of the national’ (Rigney and De Cesari, 2014: 6).

The memory of victims of the Holocaust and other mass human rights violations has been the core focus of ‘the new field of transnational memory studies’ (Wüstenberg, 2019: 372), inspiring concepts such as cosmopolitan and multidirectional memory (Levy and Sznaider, 2002; Rothberg, 2009). While the term ‘memory diplomacy’ may not be used, there is a rich scholarship on the ways in which liberal democracies engage in similar practices (Gabowitsch, 2017: 1–21). Using the examples of Germany, Austria and Israel, Kathrin Bachleitner has theorised ‘diplomacy with memory’ as an alternative form of international political behaviour and official performance aimed at conveying a certain historic image to achieve rational aims on the international stage (Bachleitner, 2019); Lea David has discussed how some states refused to cooperate with the German model and global paradigm of dealing with the past (David, 2020); Viet Thanh Nguyen has written about the US efforts to distribute its Vietnam War narratives globally and establish a monopoly of memory that marginalises different experiences (Nguyen, 2016). Interestingly, a prominent memory warrior in Russia, Vladimir Medinskii, Minister of Culture (2012–2017), described the United States’ use of Hollywood war films to spread pro-American narratives of World War II as an important reason for Russia to promote its own World War II narratives – and films – at home and abroad (Medinskii, 2011: 534–543).

Although far from unique then, the Russo-Serbian memory diplomacy case study represents a useful theoretical case study because it shows that antagonistic memory constructed by populist-nationalist movements can also travel and is transnationally mediatised (Bull and Hansen, 2016: 391). The antagonistic mode of remembering is not ‘a remnant of a historical phase dominated by nation-state’ (Bull and Hansen, 2016: 393), but is still very much present and has even gained more traction in recent years. We should raise questions about ‘transnationalism as a uniquely progressive force’ (Wüstenberg, 2019: 377) because illiberal political actors and representatives of contemporary authoritarian democracies also engage in transnational memory work. As Bond and Rapson (2014) summarise, ‘even the most seemingly nationalistic examples of memory are implicit reactions to (or rather, against) the global culture in which contemporary commemorative practice takes place’ (p. 19). The case study of Russo-Serbian memory diplomacy contributes to the critical understanding of transnational memory as not inherently progressive. Built on emancipatory and positive historical processes such as the resistance against the Axis occupation in Yugoslavia, this memory alliance is promoted by illiberal actors who utilise the past as a strategic resource and stir the travelling of memory.

The similarity in Russian and Serbian narratives – and nationalisation – of World War II make these nations productive research subjects for clarifying our theorisation of memory diplomacy. The latter can be employed by a range of actors but, as the term ‘diplomacy’ suggests, we are primarily concerned with political actors from one country conducting diplomacy in a second ‘foreign’ country. While memory diplomacy is self-evidently a matter of foreign relations, we place it within public diplomacy efforts, by which we mean ‘efforts by the government of one nation to influence public or elite opinion in a second nation for the purpose of turning the foreign policy of the target nation to advantage’ (Manheim, 1994: 4).

Public diplomacy is often confused with soft power, as noted by Gilboa (2008), given that the success of the former depends considerably on the presence of the latter. Thus, soft power is a core element of successful ‘memory diplomacy’ in that memory alliances can only be constructed if the ‘pull’ of mnemonic attraction exists in the partner country (Nye, 2021). This has been demonstrated in studies of Russian soft power appeal among compatriots and ethnic Russians in the Former Soviet Union (Conley et al., 2011; Ćwiek-Karpowicz, 2012; Hudson, 2015; Lebedeva and Kharkevich, 2014; Popescu, 2006). Naumov (2020) has noted the potential of historical memory to be a resource of Russian soft power beyond the boundaries of the former Soviet Union, but most scholars to date have focused on Russian uses of history to attract so-called compatriots in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) states (Frants, 2020; Grigas, 2012; Pieper, 2018). In such cases, the Russian government or affiliated organisations have tapped into, or retrofitted (Oushakine, 2007), shared and common narratives of the past, rather than promote their histories or memory regimes to (relatively) unfamiliar audiences, as in this article. Moreover, as Saari (2014) notes, there are meaningful differences in Russia’s practices of public diplomacy depending on whether they are targeted at the former Soviet Union or further afield.

To illustrate how the theory of memory diplomacy works in practice, we provide findings from a Russo-Serbian case study of memory diplomacy, using a combination of historical and content discourse analysis. In the following section, we begin by providing a historical overview of the political and mnemonic context from which post-2012 Russian memory diplomacy in Serbia derives. Then, we present findings on the Russian promotion of memory diplomacy since 2012; these are derived from a Russian-language keyword search of the official websites of the Russian Presidency and Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the following three terms: Serb*, Belgrad*, Yugoslav*. ² We manually analysed texts published between January 2012 and January 2021 which contain these terms but also refer to the memory and history of World War II. Furthermore, we collected all references to commemorative initiatives and activities. To analyse Serbian engagement with Russian memory diplomacy, we carried out a discourse analysis of media reports published in Serbia between 2012 and 2021 and observed commemorative practices and events that took place between 2014 and 2020.

The decision to focus on World War II was determined by its prominence within both countries’ cultural and political memory. We selected this period to coincide with Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term, which heralded a new intensity in Russian government uses of history at home. In the case of Serbia, the year 2012, when the Serbian Progressive Party (Srpska napredna stranka, SNS) won the elections, represents a turning point in official memory politics, characterised by populism and the revival of World War II commemorations.

Contextualising Russian memory diplomacy in Serbia

The Russo-Serbian memory alliance about World War II builds upon the common historical experience of autumn 1944, when the Red Army and Yugoslav People’s Liberation Army fought together against the Axis forces on the territory of Serbia. Belgrade was liberated by the joint efforts of the Soviet and Yugoslav forces on 20 October. Between 1944 and 1948, the official narrative about the end of the war underlined the Soviet-Yugoslav alliance in the liberation struggle, with an emphasis on the leading role of the Soviet Union (Živanović, 2020: 142). The focus on the Red Army was evident in official commemorations and monuments, with the first memorial in Belgrade after the liberation commemorating the fallen Red Army soldiers. Immediately after the 1948 split with the Soviet Union, the participation of the Soviets in liberation was minimised to the role of a helper (Živanović, 2020: 145). In the following decades in socialist Yugoslavia, the emphasis shifted more significantly towards the Yugoslav Partisans as the liberators and carriers of the revolutionary transformation of the society (Manojlović Pintar, 2010: 547).

Government appropriation of the People’s Liberation War in Serbia and joint commemorations with Russian actors started before the SNS came to power in 2012, but they intensified as relations between the two countries grew closer. The dominant discourses in Serbia after 2000 reflected the general paradigm of anti-communist memory politics in post-socialist Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe. However, the increasing importance of Russia in the wake of Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008 encouraged Serbian political elites to embrace pompous celebrations of the victory against fascism to appeal to Russian state officials and diplomats. Following this turn in official memory politics, historical narratives about the struggle of Serbian people against fascism became hegemonic. These narratives resembled the memory of the Great Patriotic War in post-Soviet Russia (Kratochvíl and Shakhanova, 2020; Tumarkin, 1994; Walker, 2017).

Large-scale celebrations of the victory against fascism in World War II have not always enjoyed such prominence in post-socialist Serbia. During the rule of Slobodan Milošević in the 1990s, the regime commemorated the People’s Liberation War, utilising it for legitimacy purposes to maintain the image of the successor of socialist Yugoslavia and the Partisans’ struggle (Đureinović, 2020: 54). As Yugoslavia was breaking up through a series of wars, the Milošević regime ethnicised the Partisans as a Serbian army, erasing other Yugoslav peoples, now war enemies, from the communist-led resistance movement. Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian diplomats attended World War II commemorations in Serbia during the 1990s, but there were no representatives from the other former Yugoslav republics. ³

After the overthrow of Milošević in 2000, official memory politics was defined by the anti-communist consensus among the new political elites, who espoused a narrative in which the end of World War II signalled the beginning of the communist occupation, rather than liberation from fascism (Blic, 2008). This discourse involved the criminalisation of the People’s Liberation Movement, as the Partisans were officially called, and the positive reinterpretation of the defeated World War II forces (Milošević, 2006). ⁴ At the same time, the Red Army was either invisible in the dominant war narratives or used exaggeratedly to demonstrate that the communist-led Partisans were something foreign and external to Serbia and its people, originating and enjoying support from the Soviet Union. Streets honouring the liberation of Belgrade were renamed and the Liberation Day of Belgrade was removed from the official calendar. Although some individual mayors of Belgrade laid wreaths at the Cemetery of Belgrade Liberators, there was no media attention and the 60th anniversary in 2004 was not officially celebrated.

The attitude towards the Partisan victory and liberation started shifting as Kosovo’s independence became increasingly likely. Russia began to assume the role of a political and mnemonic ally from the beginning of this process. In 2007, President Boris Tadić visited the Liberators’ Cemetery and left a note in the memorial book: ‘For Serbia which has always fought and will always fight against fascism’ (Mondo, 2007). He was accompanied by diplomats from the embassies of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

In 2009, the shift in official memory politics and the importance of Russia became even more evident with a large-scale commemoration under the name ‘Belgrade Remembers: 65 Years of Freedom’. The Cemetery of Belgrade Liberators was quickly renovated before the anniversary and several streets in Belgrade were named after Red Army generals, a few years after their streets had been renamed. Russian ambassador Alexander Konuzin played a vital role in the weeks-long preparations before the arrival of Dmitry Medvedev, then-president of Russia. The commemoration, broadcast live on national television, focused on the common struggle and victory of the Russian and Serbian people against fascism and the future cooperation of the two countries (Politika, 2009). In total, 4000 people, including Sergei Lavrov, attended the event. In his speech, Tadić called the battles for Belgrade and victory against fascism the greatest Russo-Serbian endeavour in history (Politika, 2009), with both presidents emphasising the importance of preserving the memory of the joint fight against fascism. Kosovo’s independence and the defence of Serbia’s territorial integrity emerged as important reference points that would become commonplace in future commemorations.

The shift in memory politics cannot be understood without the wider context of Russo-Serbian diplomatic and economic relations as well as the 2008 declaration of Kosovo independence when Russian support assumed great significance for Serbian political actors. On the eve of Kosovo’s independence declaration, Serbia sold the majority of its gas monopoly to Gazprom at a very low price. During his visit in 2009, Medvedev signed five cooperation agreements in different fields, including the South Stream gas pipeline. He also discussed a potential loan to Serbia amounting to 1 billion dollars and affirmed Russian support for Serbia over the Kosovo question (Robinson, 2014). Kosovo features as an important theme in all commemorative speeches by Serbian and Russian officials and Stojanović argues that the first official commemorations of the Liberation Day of Belgrade in 2007 happened precisely because of the expected declaration of independence (Stojanović, 2011: 262).

The Russo-Serbian memory alliance

Russo-Serbian memory diplomacy – including memory alliances and exports – are based on the travelling of contents, images and narratives of memory. There are numerous similarities in the official interpretations of the People’s Liberation War and Great Patriotic War. These similarities include the ethnicisation of the two armies as Serbian and Russian, respectively, and the erasure of communist ideology and parties. Furthermore, both Russian and Serbian political actors employ narratives of national pride, which underpin their appropriation of the victory against fascism but also (re)construct and reinforce the legitimacy of the regimes in power.

Memory diplomacy is most identifiable at the state level, where memory alliances are constructed and reinforced through commemorative events. The most palpable example is Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, which take place on 9th May every year to mark the end of World War II. Aleksandar Vučić has either been present at the Red Square parade or sent an official celebratory message to Russia every year since 2012. At its most basic level, this invitation and attendance represent the simplest form of memory diplomacy: using history to extend a hand of friendship to another state, who accepts this and embraces your commemoration. However, this is far from the only form of memory diplomacy that Russian actors use in Serbia. On the intergovernmental level, working and state visits by Russian ministers, including the President, also centre around memory and history. For example, it has become a ritual for Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov to lay a wreath at the Monument of Liberators of Belgrade and the Memorial to the Soviet Soldier during their visits since 2014.

These new rituals occur even when the visits do not coincide with a memorial or commemoration; however, most visits are now timed to coincide with commemorative activities. This has been the case since 2014 when the Serbian government invited Vladimir Putin to be a guest of honour at the ‘March of the Victorious’ military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Belgrade (Prezident Rossii, 2014b). ⁵ At that time, Russia was internationally isolated at the G20 after the shooting down of MH17 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; however, in Serbia, Putin received a warm welcome as he attended the Belgrade liberation celebrations. In an interview with Politika during his visit, the Russian president expressed his gratitude to the Serbian leadership for inviting him to Belgrade for the commemorations, saying the anniversary ‘is a page of our shared glorious history that unites us and creates a firm foundation for the development of our relations’ (Bilbija and Vlahović, 2015). The military parade held for the Liberation Day of Belgrade in 2014, referenced above, was the first such event since the 1980s. Since this date, the Serbian government has used anniversaries of historical events to showcase military power, a practice they have also extended to commemorations of the 1990s wars.

Our analysis of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Presidential Administration documents illuminates the relevance of commemorative customs to bilateral relations, showing that state and working visits have consistently served the purpose of reiterating the importance of historical links – and shared memory of those historical episodes – to current and future relations. Our observation of official visits, including Sergei Lavrov’s visits in June 2014, May 2015, December 2016, February 2018, April 2019, and August 2020 or Putin’s visits in January 2016 and March 2019, shows that they all feature commemorative activities or discourses that reinforce the Russo-Serbian memory alliance. Serbia’s designation as a Russian memory ally emerges frequently on these occasions, in particular, as part of the idea that a shared understanding of the past indicates shared values (MID, 2016a). In June 2020, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) released a statement ahead of Lavrov’s working visit to Serbia, explaining why relations with Serbia are so important to Russia:

Russo-Serbian links are constructed on a cultural and historical unity, a shared way of approaching and evaluating the past and the present. This acquires particular importance in light of the 75th anniversary of Victory over fascism [. . .] In Serbia they treasure our joint heritage in the world wars, the memory of Russian and Soviet soldiers who died for the freedom of our own countries and those in Europe more generally. (MID, 2020)

Continuing with its fulsome praise of Serbia, the statement goes on to both explicitly and implicitly contrast the Serbian government’s approach with that of other countries, particularly those which the MFA routinely criticises for ‘falsifying history’, namely Ukraine and the Baltic States (MID, 2019, 2020). Just as at home, Russian political actors have sought to define values and morality through the prism of historical interpretation, dividing foreign countries into ‘friendly’ and ‘unfriendly, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ according to whether they espouse a view of history aligned with the Kremlin’s (BBC Russian, 2016; Medinskii, 2015).

Yet, Russia has not imposed the role of a mnemonic ally on Serbia unilaterally. In 2015, on Russia’s initiative, the Serbian representative office of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) hosted a conference dedicated to learning the ‘lessons of World War II’, a key Kremlin talking point often used by ministers when accusing other nations of historical falsification. It was attended by an MFA representative and Serbia’s then-foreign minister, Ivica Dačić. In his speech, the MFA representative criticised Ukraine and other countries for falsifying history and heroising Nazism (MID, 2015). He argued that Russia is defending and preserving the memory of World War II and especially the sacrifices and feats of the Red Army, to restore the valuable lessons, including the Yalta system, gained from the war. In particular, he praised Serbia for its support in defending the memory of World War II. While praising Serbia, however, the representative also criticised others, reiterating the potentially symbiotic relationship between memory wars and memory alliances, whereby an alliance is strengthened in a coalition against perceived mnemonic enemies. Such an argument strengthens Russia’s geopolitical tussle for influence in Serbia against perceived competitors, such as the European Union (EU), whose members Lavrov accused of pressuring Serbia into disregarding the memory of World War II (MID, 2015).

Russian political actors have depicted the question of preserving historical memory as relevant to – and even more important than – other spheres of international relations and geopolitics. Lavrov even linked historical memory to a successful outcome in Russian and Serbian trade negotiations (MID, 2015). In doing so, the Foreign Minister was not only seeking to reward Serbia’s memory alliance, but he was also reinforcing the Russian government’s domestic presentation of itself as leading the country – and other countries – to a state of cultural consciousness (McGlynn, 2020). Leading Russian politicians depict Russia as a country that has reconnected with its past and historical truth, a process that enables it to provide a civilisational alternative to the West (Putin, 2012, 2015; Uskov, 2013). In this context, Russia can cite Serbia as another country following Russia’s path and, by extension, justifying the Russian government’s increasingly messianic depiction of its country’s global role (MID, 2016b).

Through memory diplomacy, Russia and Serbia have constructed a memory alliance as a common transnational memory space that does not only serve Russian political actors. For Serbian political actors, it is an opportunity to bolster their importance at the international level and inflate national pride and patriotism at the domestic level. For Serbian politicians, the narrative of the eternal brotherhood of the two nations who share a common glorious and victorious past is an important source of legitimacy aimed at domestic audiences. The memory alliance has a strong defensive aspect. Through a memory alliance with Russia, Serbia becomes a part of the strong bulwark against historical revisionism, the anti-totalitarian paradigm and deliberate forgetting of heroes. The paradox is that the Serbian political actors involved in this memory alliance strongly endorsed the revision of World War II until a decade ago, pushing for the rehabilitation of Axis collaborators. Now, they celebrate the communist-led Partisans and stand against the very revision they fiercely promoted.

As such, populism is key to understanding the Serbian perspective of the memory alliance with Russia. The narrative of Serbian and Russian soldiers fighting and dying so that Europe could live in peace today is appealing to the Serbian mnemonic audience, or at least certainly more appealing than commemorating those who lost the war. However, while Russian actors use the memory of World War II to remind Serbs of the Red Army’s input into the liberation of Yugoslavia (MID, 2014), including by privileging the Soviet role over the Yugoslav one (Prezident Rossii, 2014a), Russian actors have also mutualised and militarised the alliance, engaging in Serbian memory wars. For example, Maria Zakharova, the MFA spokeswoman, took Serbia’s side in an argument with Croatia in 2018 over a UN exhibition on Jasenovac, a concentration camp and a constant point of contention between the two former Yugoslav states (MID, 2020). Similarly, the Russian authorities are sensitive to Serbia’s own mnemonic idiosyncrasies, as seen in a 2018 MFA report on the heroisation of Nazism in Europe, which focused heavily on World War II memory (MID, 2019). While there is ample, arguably even exaggerated, criticism of ‘unfriendly’ countries, like the United Kingdom, for their neo-Nazi problem, the section on Serbia contains only muted references to the rehabilitation of Chetniks and other Nazi collaborators.

Russian memory exports to and in Serbia

Memory diplomacy extends beyond the discursive level into the realm of initiatives and activities. This is similar to Russian domestic memory politics, in which the government and state-aligned media have incessantly inculcated official historical narratives but have also created and promoted mass programmes spanning commemorative initiatives, military history clubs and camps, historical festivals, war tourism, state-sponsored films, documentaries, books, television, education, and extracurricular activities (2015, 2019). Since 2015, Russian state-funded or affiliated organisations have begun to export many of these initiatives around the world, designating Serbia a target export market.

In recent years, Russia has been particularly successful in exporting two recently invented traditions: the St George’s Ribbon and the Immortal Regiment procession. The St George’s Ribbon is an orange-and-black bow with roots in imperial history; after a 2004 PR campaign, the ribbon has come to symbolise commemoration of the Great Patriotic War. The Russian cultural relations agency, Rossotrudnichestvo, promotes the ribbon abroad with Volunteers of Victory brigades who hand out the ribbon around the world. Their Serbian branch is especially active and has enjoyed the support of the Serbian language outlet of the Russian state media agency Sputnik, which has published videos on ‘how to wear your St George’s Ribbon’ for Victory Day commemorations (Sputnik Srbija, 2017).

Since 2016, another Russian export, the Immortal Regiment, has taken place in Belgrade and other cities across Serbia, The Immortal Regiment is a procession in which people carry photos of relatives who participated in World War II. Originally a grassroots and largely apolitical movement, organised by three opposition journalists in Tomsk, the Moscow City Government took over the movement in 2015, subverting it to political ends. Since then, Putin has marched at the head of the Immortal Regiment in Moscow, where Vučić joined him in 2018. The emergence of the Immortal Regiment and St George’s Ribbons (Danas, 2020) as a regular practice and a present symbol in the Serbian memoryscape is another example of memory diplomacy based on the travelling of memory. Members of Serbian far-right organisations and political parties often participate in the Immortal Regiment as well as individuals like Vladimir Lazarević, a general sentenced for war crimes against Albanians during the Kosovo war who led the 2019 procession in the city of Niš (Beta, 2019).

Alongside these more well-known memory exports, there are smaller initiatives, such as the Waltz of Victory, a dance competition that took place among other political and commemorative events (MID, 2018a). Pro-Kremlin Serbian political actors attended, including Dveri, the far-right movement turned opposition party whose leader Boško Obradović had also participated in the 2016 Immortal Regiment. While many of the aforementioned initiatives take place around the world, some exclusively target Serbia or give it pride of place, to underline Serbia’s significance and openness to Russian memory diplomacy. For example, in December 2019, the international conference ‘The Memory of the Victors’, took place in Belgrade. The conference was announced during a so-called ‘Victory’ Committee held in Moscow, at which Putin and Defence Minister, Sergei Shoigu, were present (Prezident Rossii, 2019). The Committee singled out Belgrade for its cooperation and support in the sphere of memory and listed several memory initiatives as evidence of international support for Russian official historical narratives. Another example of Serbia’s significance is the Roads of Victory, which involves tours around European Red Army battle sites (Rossotrudnichestvo, 2019). Although available in several countries, the Belgrade launch assumed a much more ambitious scale, including the attendance of Dmitry Medvedev, as noted in the introduction to our article (Rossotrudnichestvo, 2019).

Efforts to promote and organise these initiatives and exports take place at the state level or through various local or quasi-government organisations. The involvement of local actors can provide new and culturally nuanced initiatives that are less politicised, as in Arkhangelsk, where the local government worked to set up a cultural partnership and send choirs to Belgrade to perform Great Patriotic War songs at the Ruski Dom cultural centre in Belgrade (MID, 2018c). The role of friendship organisations in events and memory transfer (albeit seemingly from Russia to Serbia only, based on the findings) is also noteworthy as there are at least six different Russo-Serbian friendship associations across Russia. A friendship association in the Kaluga region, just south of Moscow, organised a special train to honour the 180th anniversary of the establishment of Russian and Serbian relations. The Kaluga chapter also organised a trip for ‘Young Diplomats’ from Russia to visit Serbia, during which they were told that historical links between the countries were the most important thing to know – more important than anything else (MID, 2018b).

The local element is interesting insofar as it provides evidence that memory diplomacy is far from being an exclusively top-down centre-led phenomenon, even though it does not suggest a purely organic growth of memory diplomacy initiatives. The use of memory exports alongside memory alliance construction is important because it reinforces the discourses – the mnemonic content – with a format for remembering. In other words, memory exports are not only about similar narratives, but they involve the travelling and sharing of the very acts of remembrance. This functions to reinforce the memory politics, which are concerned with delineating in- and out-groups, and with commodifying memory into a signifier of personal and collective identity that accommodates political and popular concerns.

Conclusion

Although memory diplomacy is international, or at least bilateral, in nature, its emergence depends on the presence of certain attributes within domestic memory politics in the countries involved. First and foremost, a possibility of convergence within the official historical narratives of both states or groups constitutes the basis for building a memory alliance. Second, at least one side engages in exporting not only its historical narratives but also commemorative modes or traditions, which are then partly or fully accepted and appropriated by the other side. Finally, in this context, mnemonic engagement and exchange are coming from both sides, which extends the relationship from the co-existence of two national memory cultures into transnationally constituted memory. In other words, this is a mutual arrangement; even in an asymmetrical relationship, like that of Russia and Serbia, both sides would engage with the other’s mnemonic context and products, either by adapting their narratives when promoting their own, or by accepting aspects of the other’s. A one-way imposition would not be an example of (successful) memory diplomacy but of attempted memory diplomacy.

The concept of memory diplomacy demonstrates different interactions between scales of memory and various paths that memory can travel. In the case of Russo-Serbian memory diplomacy, the relationship between the national and transnational scale is further complicated by the phenomenon of ‘transnationalism in reverse’ (Kirn, 2016). While transnationally constituted, the memory diplomacy and alliance between the two countries reinforce the sense of the nation and sovereignty and utilises the memory of World War II to boost patriotism. As opposed and in parallel to the travelling and exchange of carriers, modes, forms and practices of memory, the mnemonic content is national and ethnicises the Soviet and Yugoslav war history as Russian and Serbian, respectively. At the same time, the meaning of the victory against fascism is extended to the liberation of Europe and the whole world.

Both countries have engaged in a memory alliance with their own motives, interests and objectives. For Serbia, the memory alliance with Russia provides political actors with a chance to boost the significance of Serbia and its history in European and global history and politics, as well as strengthen relations with a powerful ally. Moreover, given that the current World War II narrative is a recent turn in Serbian memory politics, a memory alliance with Russian provides many Serbian politicians with a legitimacy they would otherwise not possess, given that they were, until recently attempting to rehabilitate World War II collaboration forces. For Russia, a memory alliance with Serbia reinforces a messianic understanding of its historical and international role, one which encompasses defending historical truth against malign mnemonic forces. Domestically, Russian state media depict their country as leading a counter-revolution against culture and history imposed by the West, it is important to show Russia has allies in this fight, and Serbia plays an important role by turning up to Victory Day parades and providing an example of a country that remembers ‘correctly’ (Khrebtan-Hörhager, 2016). Naturally, the asymmetrical nature of the Russo-Serbian relationship means that Russia has been the more active promoter of memory exports and narratives.

Memory diplomacy is not a new phenomenon. Politics of memory in nation-states do not exist in isolation and even though it primarily serves domestic political purposes, it is always also outward-oriented. Given its multitude of potential uses and always growing global connectivities among states and political and memory actors, memory diplomacy is likely to remain a relevant and increasingly visible form of travelling memory. The rise of populists in power across the world who mobilise the past and foster new alliances among each other makes the concept of memory diplomacy even more important for studying.

As such, in using the Russo-Serbian case study to illustrate the theoretical framework for memory diplomacy, we in no way discount its applicability to other countries and we do not intend this as a limiting study. Instead, we are quite confident that many of the same processes, if not always at the same level of intensity, can be found in Europe and around the world. Future case studies could examine the use of memory diplomacy between political groups, as opposed to states, or between a state and a political group; for example, by examining how foreign governments use history to appeal to sympathetic target audiences in external states with hostile governments. In providing the framework of memory diplomacy, we look forward to witnessing the refinement and expansion of this conceptualisation.