Karen Petrone, history professor at the University of Kentucky. (Courtesy of University of Kentucky)
A University of Kentucky professor discussed the memory of World War II and the invasion of Ukraine at the 2025 Charles Hill Moffat Lecture at Marshall on Thursday, April 10.
Marshall history professor Christopher White introduced Karen Petrone, history professor at the University of Kentucky. He said the idea came to invite Petrone after he decided to learn more about the history of the war in Ukraine.
“After the invasion of Ukraine, I didn’t know very much about the history of the conflict. I really wanted to know a lot more,” White said.
He said Petrone did the best job of explaining the conflict’s history and context in an objective manner.
“I reached out to several people in the area, including Dr. Petrone, to try and give us a little bit more context,” White said. “I really felt that Dr. Petrone did the best job of explaining it in context, and in an objective way, too. I felt like it would be great if we can get her here.”
During her lecture, Petrone discussed how the memory of World War II is constantly changing in Russia across different leaders and governments.
“The way in which World War II was understood was different at different times, right?” Petrone said. “It’s always changing. For example, when Stalin was alive, Stalin didn’t want to acknowledge anybody’s sacrifice but his own.”
Petrone said many of the myths around World War II in Russia began to be debunked during the Gorbachev period, when the government began to prioritize transparency.
“There’s a major change because Gorbachev is trying to reform the Soviet Union, so he really begins to lift the censorship,” Petrone said. “Things that were suppressed by the Soviet leadership began pouring out between 1985 and 2000. For example, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, where Stalin claims Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and the acknowledgement of when the Soviet Union killed 40,000 Polish officers in the Katyn Forest.”
Petrone said there has been a return to censorship regarding war under Putin’s government in Russia.
“It’s been a quarter century of Putin’s rule, and throughout his whole rule, he’s made a concerted effort to rebuild the military and build Russian pride, patriotism and a commitment to militarism,” Petrone said. “There’s renewed censorship because the more and more Putin’s regime is trying to shape history, the more it needs to control what can be said in public.”
During her lecture, Petrone also emphasized the cyclical nature of wartime propaganda in Russia, where the Russian government portrays its enemies as being Nazis to compare all of its wars to World War II.
“War is used in this cyclical narrative to set the boundaries between friend and foe,” Petrone said. “So, if you are against Putin, you are a Nazi. That’s them harkening back to World War II.”
Petrone said this cyclical narrative has been used in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Putin refers to the Ukrainians as Nazis.
“His mission, he claims, is to quote, ‘demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine.’ So again, they’re fighting the same war. It’s World War II, and they say Ukrainians are Nazis,” Petrone said.
Ashton Pack can be contacted at pack173@marshall.edu.