In Conversation: Katie Stallard on ‘Dancing on Bones’
In Conversation: Katie Stallard on ‘Dancing on Bones’
16 August 2022
9DASHLINE recently sat down with Katie Stallard to discuss her new book ‘Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia, and North Korea’. Drawing on first-hand, on-the-ground reporting, this fascinating book examines how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule.
What are the similarities and differences in how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate historical narratives for their own purposes?
KS: Let me start by saying that, overall, the differences between the ruling regimes and the characteristics of these countries are far greater than their similarities, but what they share is an understanding of the potency of history, and more precisely, historical memory, as a political tool to generate regime support. All three leaders go to great lengths to curate and enforce their preferred historical narrative, making it difficult and increasingly dangerous for individuals in these countries to challenge the official line. These narratives share an appeal to a great and glorious mythical past and a reminder of the suffering and sacrifice the country has endured at the hands of foreign imperialists and during past wars, before their purported salvation by strong leaders who are said to have rallied the population to fight back.
In the contemporary Russian case, this involves the Soviet victory after Hitler’s invasion during the ‘Great Patriotic War’ (WWII), in the Chinese case, the victories won by Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) following the ‘century of humiliation’ the country is said to have suffered before the CCP’s rise to power. In the case of North Korea, the regime mythology focuses on Kim Il Sung’s supposed vanquishing of two imperialist enemies — Japan and the US — in 1945 and then the Korean War that followed from 1950-53, although in fact the Kim regime’s version of that history is partly fictional. All three present-day leaders — Putin, Xi, and Kim — draw on this history to frame the current threats they claim their country faces (often focused on the US), and to present their own leadership as necessarily strong, selfless, and patriotic.
How has Putin's particular framing of history served him to justify his unlawful aggressions against Ukraine?
KS: We have seen this approach play a particularly important role in Putin’s framing of his invasion of Ukraine for his domestic audience as he explicitly invokes comparisons with the Great Patriotic War during his speeches, and claims that now, as then, the country is fighting “Nazis” and “fascists” in Ukraine. This is patently untrue, and even absurd, given that Ukraine’s president is Jewish and his own family suffered during the Holocaust. However, this narrative appears to have held up (to the extent that public opinion can be measured under current conditions) as it builds on the Kremlin’s propaganda messaging over many years (particularly since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014) that “fascists” have risen to power in Kyiv. Putin and his propagandists have framed the war as a “demilitarisation and denazification” campaign. Presenting himself and Russian military personnel as “patriots” who are defending the country also allows Putin to smear all those who oppose him as “traitors”.
Kim Jung-un had to follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, both mythologised as great leaders of North Korea. How does he set himself apart from them and what would you say is the strategy behind this?
KS: Kim Jong-un seems to have deliberately set out to emulate his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, and to draw on the reverence many North Koreans still hold for the founding leader. He is portrayed in domestic propaganda outlets as a war hero and a visionary leader who defended the country from its foreign enemies and dedicated his every waking moment to providing for his citizens. Kim Il-sung’s birthday is celebrated in North Korea as the ‘Day of the Sun’ and the country’s most important holiday, and unlike the current leader’s father — Kim Jong-il — Kim Il-sung’s rule coincided with a period when living standards were higher, and for a time the North’s economy outpaced that of South Korea. He died before the great famine of the 1990s reached its height and is generally remembered more fondly than the second leader, Kim Jong-il.
Kim Jong-un has mirrored the first leader’s style of interacting with citizens — embracing workers, soldiers, and children in displays of physical affection — and even his fashion sense, wearing great coats and a broad fedora hat as his grandfather did. When I visited the remodelled Victorious Fatherland Liberation Museum in Pyongyang that commemorates the Korean War, which the youngest Kim had rebuilt and significantly expanded after coming to power, I was struck by how much the statue of Kim Il-sung in the entrance hall looks like his grandson. When I mentioned this to the guide, she told me that people often comment on how similar they look.
So, Kim deliberately invokes the memory of his grandfather and presents himself as following in his ‘heroic’ footsteps, but he sets himself apart and defines his own role by focusing on his ‘great victory’ in developing the country’s nuclear programme and its long-range missile capabilities. He has significantly accelerated the pace of weapons testing since he came to power ten years ago, including Pyongyang’s first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests and a series of increasingly powerful nuclear weapons. Kim has also promised better living standards for his citizens, vowing that they will never again have to tighten their belts and publicly apologising for his failure to deliver on this promise in a tearful address in October 2020. He seeks to portray himself as a modern leader who is responsive to his citizens’ concerns and provides for their defence, although of course, in truth, he is interested in his own security and the survival of his regime above all else.
When talking about Putin at the end of Chapter 4, you seem to suggest that post-Soviet Russia is no longer “one of the world's great superpowers”. Contra the glorification of The Great Patriotic War, how has the Soviet defeat in the Cold War been remembered today?
KS: Putin draws on the memory of the Soviet Union, which he frequently elides with Russia, to invoke a time when the country was strong — an undisputed superpower whose interests had to be respected. He also invokes the Russian empire and the rule of Peter the Great for similar purposes. He contrasts this with the humiliation, chaos, and economic uncertainty that followed the collapse of the USSR during the 1990s. This is still well within living memory for many Russian citizens and he has long invoked this period as a comparison to his own rule — and evidence for why he must be in power. He is strong, whereas his predecessors were weak and allowed the collapse and the humiliation that followed, in his telling, pensions and salaries went unpaid for months at a time before he came to power, whereas now there is stability and discipline. Of course, it helps that his first two terms as president coincided with surging oil prices that saw the Russian economy boom. Putin also focuses on how Western powers — specifically the US — supposedly took advantage of Russia’s weakness after the Soviet collapse, disregarding its interests and advancing toward its borders. He exploits these historical grievances to serve his own political purposes and to show why the country needs a strong leader who will stand up to Russia’s enemies and push back against the West.
Some commentators speculate that historical narratives, especially nationalism, could become even more toxic in China if the CCP was to ever lose power, since a post-CCP government could only attempt to unite the government through nationalism. You write: "Whoever comes next may be even more dependent on stoking these historical grievances and finding an external enemy to blame for domestic difficulties". Do you think this is generally understood by Western policymakers, especially those who might advocate for regime change in Moscow or Beijing?
KS: I think Western policymakers should be careful what they wish for in terms of regime change, as recent history has shown this is unlikely to result in a swift transition to a liberal democratic stable regime. It was striking to me researching this book, how often Western observers have viewed leadership transitions in these three countries as an opportunity for a reformer to come to power — Xi, Kim, and Putin were all viewed as pragmatic, modern leaders who would pursue economic reform and perhaps greater integration with the West, when the opposite turned out to be true. Perhaps hope springs eternal, but we should be wary of assuming that whoever comes next will be less inclined to stoke nationalism and exploit these past historical grievances.
You argue that "the impulse to manipulate history for political purposes is not a uniquely authoritarian trait", since democratically elected leaders, such as Donald Trump, do so as well. Is any attempt to manipulate history an authoritarian trait, regardless of who tries to do so (as George Orwell would argue) or is there something uniquely different in how authoritarian and democratically elected leaders manipulate history?
KS: I would say the impulse to manipulate history is a human trait; as long as humans have lived in groups, we have been telling each other stories about who we are and where we come from, and how we differentiate ourselves from other groups. The desire to draw selectively from the past, and to want to believe that we are descended from great, heroic ancestors, as citizens of a great nation or members of a particular group, is not unique to autocrats. I would argue, and I hope George Orwell would agree, that the difference in how authoritarian leaders approach this is that they wall off their narrative from popular scrutiny and insist that theirs is the only acceptable version of history, understanding, as Orwell put it that “who controls the past controls the future”. But this is also why we should be particularly wary of populist, would-be strongmen-style leaders across political systems who seek to curtail the critical examination of the past and introduce ‘patriotic education’ initiatives that bolster their own narratives. This approach, which is often dressed up as ‘patriotism’ and casts opponents as ‘traitors’, is self-serving and deeply troubling. It is not patriotic to idealise the past and ignore the lessons that could be learned from the darker and more complex aspects of our history; this merely serves to help these leaders get or keep power, and to entrench the status quo.
Given that historians rarely agree on one interpretation of any event, aren't most politicians doing the same thing as historians in finding narratives that suit their own beliefs or teleology?
KS: I know my answers have already overrun, so I will keep this brief! It is perfectly rational for politicians to advance narratives that suit their own beliefs, and to marshal historical evidence in support of their arguments. But where it becomes problematic is when those in power insist that theirs is the only acceptable version of history and denigrate those who disagree with them as traitors and enemies of the state. The more glorious and heroic the myth, the more we should all be questioning whose interests it really serves.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Katie Stallard is the author of ‘Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia, and North Korea’ (Oxford University Press). She is the Senior Editor, China and Global Affairs, of the New Statesman magazine, and a non-resident global fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC.
Her latest book, 'Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia, and North Korea', is available here.