The blockbuster Union of Salvation, dedicated to the Decembrist uprising of 1825, was released late last year and quickly became recognized as one of the most ambitious cinematic interventions into “historical politics” in Vladimir Putin's Russia. Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky announced at the premiere that the film should be included in the compulsory school curriculum. Director Andrei Kravchuk proudly called it part of his trilogy, following The Admiral (2008) and Viking (2016). Each previous film played a role in the radical revision of the Soviet historical narrative and in conservative identity formation in contemporary Russia. Viking told the story of St. Vladimir, who united the people through the adoption of Christianity and conquest of the Crimea (directly connected in the film). The Admiral presented Alexander Kolchak, one of the leaders of the Whites during the Civil War, as the last stand of truth, religion, and monarchy against the onslaught of destructive Bolshevism. Union of Salvation tasks itself with undoing the positive image of the Decembrists in history and collective imagination.

The Decembrists have been viewed as idealists who rebelled against autocracy, slavery, and privilege by both the official Soviet version and by unofficial collective memory of the Russian liberal intelligentsia. The Union of Salvation transforms their feat into the failed attempt of a handful of self-righteous egoists to undermine the unity between the legitimate government and the people. The filmmakers rely on “psychologizing” as its primary working methodology—discovering the meaning of an event not in its social and political context, but in the “personality” of the participants. Russian audiences have long accepted this approach to the events of 1917 (the revolution was bad because it was led by immoral people), so why not 1825 as well?

The main characters, accordingly, are four revolutionary “types”: Pavel Pestel is paranoid, hungry for power and violence; Sergei Trubetskoi is a pampered “hipster,” a narcissistic coward ready to run at an opportune moment; Kondraty Ryleev is a fanatic poet, prepared to wade through rivers of blood to realize his delusional fantasies; and finally, Sergei Muravyov-Apostol represents the noble but tragically mistaken patriot. Different motives lead all four protagonists to the same place: the prospect of a merciless civil war capable of dividing the people and destroying the state. It is from this fate that the fifth (and, in fact, only) hero saves Russia—the young Emperor Nicholas I.

The latter ruler, who has been synonymous with the cruelty of the state apparatus for essentially the entire Russian cultural tradition, beginning with Aleksandr Herzen and Lev Tolstoi, is here reimagined as a moral standard, a monarch capable of action in political turmoil. His attitude to power is radically different from that of the revolutionaries: for Nicholas I, power is neither a tool nor a goal, but a burden imposed by God himself. Like Christ, the Russian tsar sacrifices himself for the salvation of others: he does not allow his subjects to commit this sin. (Russian rock group Nautilus Pompilius's song “Apostol Andrei” serves as the film's main musical theme and confirms the Biblical metaphor.)

The Decembrists in The Union of Salvation long for immediate and violent change, the content of which is never discussed. Their idea of a constitution is abstract and divorced from Russia's historical development; true reforms must be carried out from above, gradually, without social upheaval. In the final scene, Nicholas I, having saved the country from revolution, looks with tenderness and hope at his son, the future reformer Alexander II.

The Union of Salvation was presented to the public just a month before Putin announced the need to amend the Russian Constitution. Critics protested that the amendments destroy basic constitutional principles, asserting the de facto non-removability of power and the lack of transparency in government decisions. The Union of Salvation provides an exhaustive answer to such critique: constitutions are temporary and unreliable, whereas “true law” is laid down in state history and revealed through the will of the sovereign.