Kremlin Must Be De-Linked from State Power if Nations of Russia are to Have a Future, Rozalskaya Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 25 – Since the middle of the 19th century, the Kremlin has emerged as a result of conscious Russian state policy as “the symbol of the permanence of Russian state power” and now forms a central position in the ideological world of Vladimir Putin, according to Nadezhda Rozalskaya.

    The Russian specialist on material and visual culture traces its development as that symbol from the end of the reign of Nicholas I to Putin today and argues that the Kremlin is so iconic and powerful that its link with a particular view of state power must be broken if the nations of the Russian Federation are to develop (posle.media/article/kreml-identichnosti).

    In a detailed 4,000-word article for Posle Media, Rozalskaya says that the image of the Kremlin as cultivated since the 1940s has been intended by the country’s rulers, tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet “to fuse the concept of Russian state power and the country’s cultural identity,” an action that has restricted the evolution of both.

    In historical terms, this image is relatively new as it originated not when Moscow was founded or the Russian state built but only in the middle of the 19th century, she continues, but since that time, “the state authorities have skillfully adapted it to serve their interests by transforming it into an important symbol of their power.”

    Among the many examples she gives, three are especially noteworthy: the destruction of buildings around the Kremlin to set it apart, the painting of its walls first white and then red to symbolize its ties to power, and the changing fortunes of churches and crosses within the confines of the Kremlin itself.

    This culminated in 1997 when the image of the Kremlin was put on the first page of the Russian passport, thus establishing it as “the visual symbol of the new Russia,” one in which “the various periods of its history” were linked and when victories succeeded defeats because power was consolidated in its precincts.

    Breaking the link between this image of the Kremlin and state power, Rozalskaya says, “is essential for the rethinking and liberation of national identities,” including first of all those of the now-dominant Russian nation.” Otherwise, that will remain truncated and won’t be able to develop.