War Times: Layers of History in Russia's War against Ukraine

Abstract

First paragraph: The ongoing conflict in Ukraine is having profound repercussions in Britain, not least on our cultural and intellectual life. However, although the media has presented this unfolding crisis in exhaustive detail, no one could reasonably argue that there has been much depth to the general treatment. From the outset, media coverage has been superficial and woefully lacking in objectivity, with briefings by President Zelensky and other government spokespeople routinely accepted as absolute truth, or very nearly. This is hardly surprising, as Western journalists have tended to be based in Kyiv or Lviv, hundreds of miles away from the front line. Overt and covert control of the media by the British state is, moreover, a story that is familiar enough to students of the early Cold War.1 One particularly striking feature of the superficiality of approach is the almost total absence of historians in public discussion – we cannot say ‘debate’, as there has been very little, not in the public sphere anyway. The marginalization of history is even more surprising, perhaps, given the unremitting pressure on academics to prove that their research has some tangible ‘impact’ and demonstrate their engagement in the ‘real world’.