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Detector Media analyzes how Russian agitational propaganda hides the Kremlin's crimes behind a pompous phrase.
The rise of “historical justice” in Russia's government communications
According to Google search trends, the annexation of Crimea in 2014 was the starting point for the increase in popularity of the phrase "historical justice" in the Russian information space. Compared to the current period, the use of the phrase before 2014 can be described as frequent but still marginal.
Google Trends graph. The numbers show the popularity of a search term relative to the peak on the graph for a given region and time period. 100 is the peak of the term's popularity. 50 means the term is half as popular. 0 signifies that there was not enough data available for the term. The graph of the popularity of the term "historical justice" in Russia shows a drastic increase in 2014-2015 and a smaller one in 2022-2023.
Similarly, the undeclared military intervention in Crimea and the subsequent blatant annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula were initially commented on by Russian political elites as the “restoration of historical justice.” Putin also mentioned this in his so-called “Crimea speech” on March 18, 2014, during his address to the Federal Assembly (the bicameral body of the Russian parliament), calling for a vote in favor of the annexation.
“However, the people could not reconcile to this outrageous historical injustice. All these years, citizens and many public figures came back to this issue, saying that Crimea is historically Russian land and Sevastopol is a Russian city,” Putin said, justifying the violation of international law and the first annexation in Europe since World War II.
At the time, the Russian leader called the situation in Crimea exceptional. Notably, in the same speech, Putin addressed the Ukrainian people with assurances that he had no plans for further annexations of Ukrainian territory: “Do not believe those who want you to fear Russia, shouting that other regions will follow Crimea.”
But 11 years later, in another address to the Federal Assembly on February 21, 2023, Putin will see “historical justice” in the seizure of four more regions of Ukraine: “Russia's regions are currently providing direct assistance to the cities, districts, and villages in the Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. They are doing it sincerely, like true brothers and sisters. We are together again, which means that we have become even stronger, and we will do everything in our power to bring back the long-awaited peace to our land and ensure the safety of our people. Our soldiers, our heroes, are fighting for this, for their ancestors, for the future of their children and grandchildren, for uniting our people.”
Over the years, the phrase “historical justice” has become an integral linguistic attribute of Russian state media and officials at various levels. The annexation of Crimea itself was consistently supported by more than 80% of Russians in 2014-2021, according to polls by the Levada Center. The perception of the argument “about the restoration of historical justice” has become even more widespread in Russian society than support for the annexation itself. For example, the editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, Alexei Venediktov, called the annexation of Crimea a mistake but at the same time considered the “historical justice” argument quite appropriate. “Putin had a choice between restoring historical justice... And the second position was to skip the move, to choose political expediency, to exchange Crimea’s wider autonomy for further strengthening Russia’s presence all over Ukraine, on the entire territory of Ukraine, including Kyiv, and not to risk leaving the G8,” Venediktov legitimized the “historical justice” argument in March 2014 for the audience critical of Putin listening to Echo of Moscow.
In the dichotomy of "historical justice – political expediency," Venediktov's "Putin's mistake" even took on a noble tone, especially in the context that at the same time, Venediktov, who used to work as a school history teacher, was defending the idea of the "historical injustice" of Crimea being part of Ukraine. "And I bet seven to three that he (Putin – DM) would choose historical justice. Especially since, in my opinion, it was indeed a historical injustice. My position is this: indeed, countries, territories, and borders are changed with blood, and people give their lives for it. Territories are annexed, and as a result of revolutions, territories are broken. But that is how history works. We know how borders move. In this case, it was, if not arbitrariness, then injustice – he just gave it away. Just as Stalin drew borders between regions and republics. These borders were not suffered out, they were drawn at the whim of a tyrant or the whim of an autocrat. In other words, it was a historical injustice in the sense that, as Putin rightly said today, it was simply handed down like a sack of potatoes,” Venediktov said in the same interview. It is revealing that “historically unjust” are those borders whose creation was accompanied by insufficient violence, i.e. the struggle for them was not bloody enough.
Since 2014, the phrase has become integral to Russian government communication. To analyze the current context of the use of the “historical justice” argument in the pro-Russian and Russian information space, we identified 3593 publications with the phrases “historical justice” and “historically just” in Ukrainian and Russian in Russian and pro-Russian Telegram channels from August 28, 2023, to September 1, 2024. These publications were provided to us by TeleZip / Mantis Analytics.
The information in this visualization is grouped by seven days. The period for which the Telegram publications are displayed covers August 28, 2023, through September 1, 2024, inclusive. The data for the visualization was provided by TeleZip / Mantis Analytics.
“Historical justice” in the Russian and pro-Russian segment of Telegram
More than half of all mentions in the sample are used in the context of justifying annexations already carried out and plans to seize new territories. There are noticeable spikes in such publications on anniversaries of annexations: in late September on the first anniversary of the annexation of parts of four more regions of Ukraine and in mid-March on the tenth anniversary of the annexation of Crimea.
“Crimeans firmly believed that all obstacles would be overcome and historical justice would be restored,” Russian Telegram channels quoted the head of the occupation authorities in Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, as saying on the tenth anniversary of the annexation.
On the first anniversary of the annexation of the southern regions of Ukraine, the Telegram channels already refer to the words of the leader of the occupied part of Zaporizhzhia, Yevgeny Balytskyi: “September 30 is the day of the liberation of Novorossiya from Ukrainian Nazism, and historical justice is restored with the incorporation of its regions into Russia”.
The ritual of commemorating the historical justice of the occupation of Ukrainian lands is spreading deeper into Russia. For example, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Kaluga region, Oleg Kalugin, reported on his page about the planting of a “Novorossiya Alley” on the anniversary of the annexation: “Recently our national leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, signed a law introducing a memorable date – the Day of Reunification of New Regions with Russia. This is a great event because four regions have returned home. The DPR, LPR, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions are now subjects of the Russian Federation. Historical justice is restored. The mistakes of the politicians of the past years have been corrected. ‘Novorossiya Alley’ is a symbol of unity of our people and Russian civilization.”
The historical justice of the reunification of Russian civilization is also reflected in an anonymous Telegram channel with more than 180,000 subscribers: “A year ago, historical justice was fulfilled – the long-awaited homecoming of people who have always considered themselves part of the Russian civilizational space.”
Crimean State Duma member Mykhailo Sheremet, quoted by a channel with more than 270,000 subscribers, also puts “historical justice” above international law: “The Sea of Azov is no longer subject to the actions and principles of international law because historical justice has prevailed and Ukraine has lost its status as a coastal state here.”
Appeals to the phrase appear in defense of Putin’s Zaporizhzhia-Kherson ultimatum, in which the Russian leader made the uncontested surrender of the Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions a precondition for negotiations with Ukraine. “Historical justice, the chronicle of the development of the Ukrainian conflict after the 2014 coup, the situation on the battlefield, and the obvious military advantage allow Russia to make these demands,” a Telegram channel with over 40,000 subscribers wrote.
Several Telegram channels quoted Denis Pushilin, the head of the occupation authorities in the Donetsk region, who used the above phrase to argue for new annexations: “All Russian cities must be liberated, including Kharkiv, Odesa, and Dnipro, and historical justice must be restored.”
The second most frequent reference in the sample is a more abstract reference to “historical justice” as the ultimate goal of the war, as well as a core value of Russian society. Pushilin mentions historical justice in his public birthday greeting to Putin: “Today, historical justice is being served, Russian lands are returning to the Motherland.”
A Telegram channel with a readership of more than 340,000 subscribers shared a post by the mother of a soldier killed in Ukraine, who called on Putin to take part in the presidential “elections,” appealing to the latter’s allegedly unique ability to bring about historical justice: “We are aware of the historical significance of the moment and believe that only Putin can complete the special military operation today. For us, this will be historical justice, realization, and recognition of the feat of our boys who gave their lives for the sake of peace today.”
In other contexts, historical justice is mentioned as having the highest value among several others. For example, in a speech by the Head of the Republic of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov: “Regardless of ethnicity, loyalty to the Motherland, camaraderie and historical justice are at the heart of everything.”
Also noticeable in the sample are more niche regional appeals to historical justice in the context of the politics of historical memory, including the erection of monuments, the approval of holidays, street names, textbook revisions, and so on. In this way, the regions are trying to push through their agenda, their little “historical justice” in addition to the big “historical justice” being perpetrated in the war with Ukraine.
At the same time, the phrase is also used in the broader context of Russia’s updated historical positioning, for example, to justify the reorientation of its historical memory policy toward China to the detriment of the West. “Not a century has passed, as they say. Now, historical justice is served, and the president has made September 3 another Victory Day. Over ‘militaristic Japan.’ As a political jab at our former ‘allies’ (who celebrate the end of World War II on September 2), by combining the celebration ... with our Chinese comrades,” writes the channel, which has nearly 19,000 subscribers.
A less common but noteworthy context for the phrase is the discussion of territorial disputes in different parts of the world. In particular, during the monitoring year, “historical justice” was invoked in discussions of the war between Israel and Hamas, the wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and Venezuela’s territorial claims to Guyana. In such discussions, however, the phrase is often used ironically.
Historically just violence
Justice is a key concept for Western culture, a supreme virtue since antiquity that describes an appropriate distribution of benefits, rights, and responsibilities in the socio-political sphere. Yet, combined with a historical reference, this principle becomes a powerful tool for propagandists.
“Historical justice” is a fundamentally relativistic concept from which it is impossible to isolate a universal meaning for different cultural and historical communities. The phrase has a unique meaning for each community, which subjectively chooses the historical moment of violation of justice and forms figurative ideas about the correct state of affairs before this excess.
In particular, claims to ownership of Crimea from different historical perspectives could be "historically just" made by Turkey, whose vassal the Crimean Khanate was for several centuries, or, for example, by Greece, whose ancestors settled Crimea and built cities there more than two millennia before the Russians appeared on the peninsula. History is made up of wars, revolutions, resettlements, cultural assimilation, and dissimilation, so a consistent universal restoration of "historical justice," a return to the way things were, would mean a utopian reversal of history back to prehistory itself. Thus, the appeal to historical justice becomes an irrational appeal, speculatively used to justify violent revisionism.
But what further entangles the phrase with violence is that the appeal to historical justice implies regret for the unjust violation of history and indirectly assigns blame for the offense inflicted on history and justifies revenge for it. The moral responsibility for actions to "restore historical justice" is transferred to history itself, in whose name and on whose behalf such a restoration is carried out. Violent border changes, conquests, forced relocations, prohibitions, and executions are carried out in the name of history and justice. Moreover, this restoration is assumed to be preordained and to take place by all means, and thus, people become mere instruments of this preordained return to the right state of affairs. The use of this phrase by Russian officials allows them to gain moral justification through an irrational notion. Shifting responsibility to the irreversible advance of "historical justice" allows one to distance oneself from the ethical assessment of one's actions and from discussing personal responsibility for their consequences.
Data export and processing for visualization: Oleksii Pivtorak
Main page illustration: Natalia Lobach
