Weapons from the Past: How Memory Became a Security Issue

Written By Claire Van Proemeren

When we think of security threats, we usually think of armies, weapons or cyberattacks. We are much slower to recognize the past itself as a source of threat — or more precisely: the way in which states narrate that past. Yet over the past years, this has become one of the sharpest fault lines between Russia and Europe. Those who tell the history of the Second World War, the Holodomor or the Soviet legacy differently from what the official narrative allows are not merely criticized, but treated as a security risk.


From Ontological Security to Mnemonic Security

In international relations theory, there is the notion of ontological security: the idea that states, like individuals, pursue not only physical survival, but also a stable, coherent sense of who they are. A state without a clear story about itself loses its bearings, and for political elites that feels just as threatening as an external attack.

The Estonian scholar Maria Mälksoo extended this in 2015 with the concept of mnemonic security: collective memory — the stories about heroes, enemies, victories and loss — lies at the core of that stability (Mälksoo, 2015, Security Dialogue). When that memory is attacked or rewritten by another state, this is not experienced as a historical debate, but as an assault on one’s very identity.

Russian researcher Dmitry Yefremenko developed this into a mnemonic security dilemma: when a narrative that is fundamental to state A’s national consolidation is systematically attacked by actors from state B, A feels threatened and resorts to countermeasures to protect its own narrative — after which both identities harden further (Yefremenko, 2022, Russia in Global Affairs). Most of the time, this is not an isolated phenomenon: memory disputes are usually derived from an already existing military, economic or geopolitical dilemma, but they can sharpen that underlying conflict into an acute crisis.

 

Memory as Instrument, Not Just Symptom

This mechanism is demonstrably at work in practice. Yefremenko shows how competing historiographies fuelled escalation between Serbia and Croatia (around Jasenovac and the war of the 1990s) and between Russia and Ukraine (around the Holodomor, Bandera and the Soviet legacy). Putin had already voiced his underlying doubt about Ukrainian statehood in Bucharest in 2008, when he described Ukraine as a “complicated state construct” — an example of how history is used to underpin claims about the present.

Karl Gustafsson and Maria Mälksoo introduced the term memory-political deterrence: states seek to discourage other actors from threatening their collective memory narratives, through rhetoric, diplomatic statements, commemorative practices and memory laws. They cite both Russia’s conduct towards Ukraine and China’s conduct towards Japan as examples, and conclude that memory politics is interwoven with geopolitics (Gustafsson & Mälksoo, 2023, International Studies Quarterly). Crucial for the neutrality of this picture: research by Pierre Perchoc shows that the European Union, in its enlargement towards the Baltic states, also faced clashing historical narratives — a memory misfit. Memory politics is therefore not an exclusively Russian phenomenon, but a mechanism that appears wherever collective identity and geopolitical interest intersect.

One final nuance: it is tempting to attribute this dynamic to a single ideological master plan, often linked to thinker Aleksandr Dugin. Empirical research by Kirill Kalinin on Russian elites (1993–2016), however, shows that Dugin’s influence on actual foreign policy thinking is limited and did not increase after 2014 (Kalinin). Memory politics is better understood as a diffuse, recognizable mechanism than as a centrally directed plan.

 

How Understanding This Can Improve Cooperation

Recognizing this mechanism offers a tool that goes beyond analysis. There are three ways in which such understanding can concretely improve cooperation:

It depersonalizes conflict. Once it is clear that a fierce reaction to a historical issue stems from an ontological security dilemma — and not from sheer ill will — negotiators or mediators can situate that emotion and slow down escalation instead of responding with equal hardening.

It makes memory laws and commemorations legible as signals. A new memory law or a sharpened commemorative speech then no longer appears as an isolated domestic development, but as a diplomatic signal that can be read alongside other tensions — allowing for timely intervention before a symbolic dispute turns into an acute conflict.

It points towards a way out. Yefremenko himself cites the Franco–German reconciliation process after the Second World War as evidence that a mnemonic security dilemma can be resolved through a deliberate, jointly owned trajectory of recognition — shared history textbooks, joint commemorations, explicit acknowledgement of each other’s victimhood. This offers a concrete blueprint for today’s disputes: durable cooperation requires not only agreements on resources or borders, but also a developed, mutually recognized way of dealing with the past.




Three Key Facts for Diplomacy and Cooperation

  1. Memory politics is a recognized diplomatic instrument, not a side effect. Gustafsson and Mälksoo show that states deliberately use collective memory as a tool of deterrence — memory-political deterrence — alongside classical instruments such as sanctions or military threats. For diplomats and negotiators, this means that disputes over historiography deserve to be treated as seriously as disputes over resources or borders (Gustafsson & Mälksoo, 2023).

  2. The mechanism is universal, not confined to a single actor. Russia (towards Ukraine), China (towards Japan) and the European Union (in the Baltic enlargement, via Perchoc’s ‘memory misfit’) have all grappled with clashing historical narratives. Anyone seeking to improve international cooperation should therefore see this as a generic risk in any relationship with a heavily burdened past, not as a trait of one particular opponent (Perchoc, 2025; Gustafsson & Mälksoo, 2023).

  3. There is a proven way out: the Franco–German reconciliation model. Yefremenko points to the post-war Franco–German reconciliation as evidence that a mnemonic security dilemma can be resolved through shared history textbooks, joint commemorations and mutual recognition of victimhood. This provides diplomacy with a concrete, replicable template: lasting cooperation requires not only agreements on interests, but also a jointly developed way of handling the past (Yefremenko, 2022).

 

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Claire Van Proemeren
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