Sergey Rumyantsev’s volume is a valuable addition to the rapidly growing literature on the politics of the past in the post-Soviet region. It centers on Russia, Ukraine, and, despite its title, also on Armenia and Azerbaijan, sometimes expanding its comparisons to other former Soviet republics. By focusing on countries involved in two recent armed conflicts—the Nagorno-Karabakh War and the Russo-Ukrainian War—the volume supports the overarching idea that memory wars and shooting wars are deeply connected and that many modern societies are dangerously “infested with history” (as its subtitle states).

The volume is based on a conference held in Berlin in 2016. Since then, the situation in the region and around the world has changed significantly. However, the editor and co-authors have successfully updated their contributions, most of which also cover more recent developments.

The volume starts with Victor Shnirelman’s analysis of “the roots of post-Soviet historical imagination” and Rumyantsev’s review of how memory politics influence school education across all four countries highlighted in the collection. Both emphasize (like most other contributors) the increasing influence of nationalism on history teaching, mainly seen in the region as a tool for “patriotic education.” Ivan Kurilla discusses the problem of history being used as “a political language.” Serhy Yekelchyk’s analysis of Ukrainian history textbooks from the fall of the Soviet regime to today shows “a rather slow transition to Western models” (182). Other contributions include case studies on how various educational programs (mainly in history and literature), media, cultural symbols, and urban spaces are utilized for political propaganda. Notably, two articles focus on memory politics in the Donbas region. Oksana Mikheieva illustrates how the Russian occupation of Donbas led (among other things) to the Kremlin-supported shift from a relatively peaceful coexistence of multiple group memories, typical of the 2000s, to violent anti-Ukrainian propaganda based on the old Soviet myth of the “Great Patriotic War.” The impact of this myth on the politics of memory in the “Donetsk People’s Republic” is also discussed in Dmytro Tytarenko’s chapter.

While some contributions provide new insights into widely debated topics, others examine lesser-known cases (at least to the current reviewer). For example, Tsypylma Darieva discusses the “politics of nature” in Armenia, including the use of the pomegranate and the pine tree as “powerful regenerative symbols” that help “to heal Armenia’s wounded history” (162). She even talks about “Armenian arboreal patriotism” (167), a sentiment also shared by the Armenian diaspora in North America. Philip Gamaghelyan explores the growing mutual understanding (or, more precisely, the decreasing alienation) between some groups of Armenian and Turkish intellectuals regarding their painful shared history, especially the Armenian genocide. His analysis, based on his experience organizing discussions between representatives of these groups, shows that “a sharp turn away from self-righteousness and glory toward self-criticism” occurred among some Turkish intellectuals in the 2010s, while “the Armenian discourse [understandably, let me add] retained the image of a victim-nation but showed signs of opening toward contextualizing their past” (286).

The overall picture portrayed by the volume is quite discouraging. According to the co-authors, no country in the region has made significant progress toward “de-nationalizing” and “de-militarizing” history education and the politics of the past, which are consistently and increasingly used for national mobilization. “Everything is bad everywhere, but in Russia it is even worse” seems to be the main message of the volume. This may not be entirely wrong, although more emphasis could be placed on the differences between the aggressors and their victims, as well as some more positive (though limited in scope and only partly successful) developments, such as the opening of post-Soviet national historiographies to the west and their influence on history education and collective memories of the past. The volume could also improve by including a more systematic comparison of how historical memory and the politics surrounding history have evolved in post-Soviet countries compared to the west. The memory of the Holocaust and its use (and misuse) in the region is occasionally mentioned in passing but not discussed in detail. Have “Western models” been poorly applied in the region because of its specific traditions or because of the challenges these models currently face in the west? The almost complete lack of a broader framework is perhaps the most significant flaw of this helpful volume.