Tucker Carlson Interview: Fact-checking Putin’s “nonsense” history

American talk show host Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin began with a rambling 30-minute lecture on the history of Russia and Ukraine.

Mr. Karlsson often listened, perplexed, as Mr. Putin explained in detail the origins of the Russian state in the 9th century, Ukraine as an artificial state, and cooperation between Poland and Hitler.

It’s familiar ground for Mr. Putin, who infamously penned a 5,000-word essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in 2021, which was published less than a year ago. It foreshadowed the intellectual justification the Kremlin offered for invading Ukraine.

For historians, Putin’s claims are nothing but nonsense and a selective abuse of history to justify the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Whatever the historical reality, none of Putin’s claims legally justify his invasion.

At the beginning of the interview, Putin claimed that 862 was the year of the “establishment of the Russian state.” This was the year when the Scandinavian prince Rurik was invited to rule the city of Novgorod, the capital of Rus, which later became today’s Russians.

Putin contrasts what he claims is the continuous tradition of Russian statehood dating back to the 9th century with the modern “invention” of Ukraine. Putin claims that the country was “created” in the 20th century.

But Sergey Radchenko, a historian at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, says the president’s claims are “completely false.”

“President Vladimir Putin is trying to reverse the story, saying that Russia as a nation began to develop in the 9th century. Similarly, Ukraine as a nation began to develop in the 9th century, using exactly the same evidence and documents. You could say it has started to develop.”

“He is using certain historical facts to construct a state-centric narrative that favors Russia rather than alternative agglomerations.”

Professor Ronald Sunny of the University of Michigan said the Rus’ were made up of “bandits who repeatedly burned down their own capital.”

He added that Putin was repeating “an established myth created at some point in the past by the Moscow tsars, whose lineage goes back to Rurik.”

“This myth was materialized in Moscow to justify their imperial control over Ukraine.”

President Putin told Tucker Carlson that by the 17th century, when Poland came to rule parts of what is now Ukraine, the inhabitants of those areas were “not exactly Russian. They lived on the frontier. He said that he introduced the idea that “he was Ukrainian because he was a Ukrainian.” . ”

“Originally, the word Ukrainian meant that a person lived on the outskirts, on the periphery of the state.”

But LSE professor emeritus Anita Plazumovska disagrees. According to her, Ukrainians existed at that time, although national consciousness developed later than in other Central European countries.

”[Vladimir Putin] uses as a throwback to the 20th century concept of the state, which is based on the protection of a defined state. it’s not. ”

Suni said Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians “may have originated from the same lineage, but over time they developed into different ethnic groups.”

President Putin insists that the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine “have no historical connection whatsoever to Ukraine.” Conquered from the Ottoman Empire by Russian Empress Catherine II in the 17th century, that means these lands actually rightfully belong to Russia, the Russian president says. Putin later referred to them using the 17th-century term “Novorossia” (New Russia).

Suny points out that at the time of the Russian conquest, the inhabitants of these lands were not Russians or Ukrainians, but Ottomans, Tatars, or Cossacks, Slavic peasants who had fled to the frontier.

But it is in President Putin’s interests to claim that these territories are, in fact, rightfully Russia’s. Because these are precisely the territories Russia is trying to conquer from Ukraine during its decade-long conflict with her neighbor.

The so-called Novorossia includes Crimea, which was illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014. New Russia also includes the areas around Kherson, Mariupol and Bakhmut, which President Putin declared part of Russia in 2022.

Putin continued, “Ukraine… [Joseph] “Stalin’s Will,” he said, arguing that Ukraine was created by the Soviet leadership in the 1920s and was given land to which it had no historical claim.

In a sense, Professor Radchenko says, he’s right. The Soviet leadership “drawn the borders of the Soviet republics in much the same way that the Western colonial powers drew their borders in Africa, in a somewhat random manner.

“But that doesn’t mean Ukrainians didn’t exist.”

More broadly, Radchenko rejects Putin’s claim that Ukraine is not a real country because it was formed in its modern form in the 20th century. “Every country is a false country in the sense that it is created as a result of a historical process.

“Russia was founded as a result of decisions made by the Russian tsar, such as the colonization of Siberia, which came at great cost to the local population.

“If Ukraine is a fake country, then Russia is also a fake country.”

Perhaps Putin’s most incendiary claim concerned Poland. President Putin claimed that Poland, which was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, “collaborated with Hitler.”

The Russian president said in an interview that Poland’s refusal to cede an area of ​​Poland known as the Danzig Corridor to Hitler meant that Poland had “gone too far and encouraged him to attack Hitler and start World War II.” ” he said.

For Professor Plasumovska, President Putin’s interpretation of history is a flawed interpretation of the historical record. While it is true that there were diplomatic contacts between Poland and the Nazis, the first treaty Hitler signed after coming to power was the 1934 non-aggression pact with Poland, Putin posed a threat. She says it confuses cooperation with diplomatic outreach to neighboring countries. .

“The accusation that Poles were collaborating is nonsense,” says Mrs. Plazumowska.

“You can’t interpret these things as collaboration with Nazi Germany, because the Soviet Union also happened to have a treaty with Germany.” [at the same time]. ”

In September 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland pursuant to the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between the two countries earlier that year.