Peace at What Price?

In recent months, a growing number of voices – from political figures such as U.S. President Donald Trump and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico to various public opinion polls – have suggested that a resolution to the war in Ukraine may require Kyiv to cede some of its territory to Russia. These arguments, now gaining renewed attention as peace talks have begun, frame territorial concessions as a pragmatic step toward ending the conflict.

Accepting any peace agreement resulting in Ukraine losing part of its territory, however, would not only legitimize territorial aggression but also reinforce Russia’s use of constitutionalized memory politics as a tool of expansion. Ever since the 2020 amendments, the Kremlin has embedded a revisionist historical narrative into its constitutional framework – one that reinforces authoritarian rule domestically while advancing imperial claims abroad. By framing its aggression through the lens of historical entitlement, Russia has provided itself with legal justification for territorial conquest.

Ceding Ukrainian land under these conditions would reward historical revisionism as a geopolitical strategy and set a dangerous precedent in international law. It risks encouraging further expansionism, both by Russia and by other revisionist regimes, undermining the very principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that underpin the international order.

Constitutions as Instruments of Collective Memory

Constitutions are not merely legal documents. They also function as lieux de mémoire – sites where nations preserve memories of both glorious and traumatic pasts. Johan Snyman and Lourens du Plessis have compared Constitutions to monuments and memorials, while Karin van Marle has likened them to archives to emphasize that Constitutions – like other sites of memory – contain selective interpretations of the past. This selectivity reveals that the past codified in Constitutions is not objective history but rather collective memory: shared representations of a group’s past that shape its collective identity. This memory is not neutral. Unlike history, which aspires to uncover factual truth, collective memory is politically constructed. Since its goal is to create a shared narrative that fosters a sense of belonging, it often mythologizes the past. As such, it is frequently linked to invented traditions and revisionist accounts.

By constitutionalizing collective memory, Constitutions delineate the symbolic boundaries of national belonging. Through the selective inclusion of historical narratives, they define who is included in, and who is excluded from, the nation. They also determine which historical accounts are officially recognized as legitimate and acceptable to remember, as well as which are silenced or marginalized. In this way, constitutional memory politics can serve as a powerful tool for nation-building, offering a unifying historical narrative that fosters cohesion and a sense of continuity. However, it can just as easily operate as a mechanism of exclusion and symbolic violence. By privileging certain memories and suppressing others, Constitutions may legitimize the marginalization of minority groups or contested historical experiences. In more extreme cases, the constitutionalization of mythologized past can be used to justify territorial claims or promote nationalist aggression.

The Russian Constitution exemplifies how authoritarian regimes manipulate collective memory to support territorial expansion. Following the 2020 amendments – viewed by many as a mechanism to extend President Putin’s rule – the Constitution incorporated rigid, exclusive, and nationalist narratives about Russia’s past, with neo-imperialist undertones, into its chapter on federal structure. These narratives include two foundational myths: the millennial origin of the Russian nation and the glorification of the Soviet victory in WWII.

The Myth of a Thousand-Year-Old Russia

The narrative about the millennial origin of the nation is enclosed in Article 67.1, paragraph 2 of the amended Russian Constitution, which states:

“The Russian Federation, united by a millennium history, preserving the memory of ancestors who conveyed to us ideals and belief in God, as well as continuity of development of the Russian state, recognizes the historically established state unity.”

The crucial point of this provision is that it asserts that Russia is a thousand-year-old state with uninterrupted historical continuity. It is built upon the claim that Kievan Rus – a medieval realm that existed a thousand years ago in present-day Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of Russia – was the first Russian state.

In the official Russian narrative, Kievan Rus reached its Golden Age under the reign of Vladimir the Great (980–1015), who is celebrated as the unifier of Russian lands and the ruler who christianized the realm in 988 by aligning it with the Eastern Orthodox Church. According to this state-sponsored account, Vladimir’s adoption of Christianity created a common spiritual space for Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians, distinct from the Roman Catholic West. By invoking this legacy, the Russian Constitution implicitly claims that the contemporary Russian Federation is the direct successor of Kievan Rus. This claim is reinforced by elevating Prince Vladimir’s key achievements  – state unity and faith in God – to the constitutional level as core values inherited from a thousand years of Russian history.

This narrative about the origin of the Russian nation serves a clear political function. It denies Ukrainians and Belarusians independent nationhood, portraying them instead as mere subgroups of the triune (or all-Russian) nation with common origins in Kievan Rus.

The concept of the triune nation was originally developed by the Russian Empire to justify its imperial claims over former Kievan Rus territories. Putin revived this notion in his 2021 essay “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” where he argued that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” denying Ukraine the right to exist as a state and nation unless it remains tied to Russia. He also claimed that modern Ukraine was artificially created by the Bolsheviks, who transferred historically Russian lands to it. According to this logic, the “natural” borders of the Russian state are those of the 19th- and early 20th-century Russian Empire. During that period, the lands of Kievan Rus were once again united under Russian rule, thereby reuniting the three sub-groups that formed the all-Russian nation.

The narrative about the Kievan Rus is historically inaccurate. The medieval realm was not a centralized state but a loose confederation of principalities with no ethnic or national continuity within modern Russia. Moreover, its political and cultural center was Kyiv, not Moscow. Most historians agree that the first Russian state only emerged in the 15th century. Yet the myth of a thousand-year-old Russia, now enshrined in the Constitution, has direct geopolitical consequences. It provides a legal and ideological legitimizing framework for territorial expansion, reinforcing claims that regions once under the Kievan Rus and later ruled by the Russian Empire remain an integral part of Russia’s historical patrimony.

Russia’s Constitutional Tools for Expansion

Russia’s Constitution not only rewrites history but also provides mechanisms for enforcing its revisionist vision. It safeguards territorial integrity by suppressing dissent, including any acts or expressions deemed separatist. Article 67, paragraph 2.1 asserts that:

“The Russian Federation shall ensure the protection of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Actions […] aimed at alienating a part of the territory […], and also calling for such actions, are prohibited.”

This provision precludes the return of Russian lands to foreign powers and thus protects Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea by punishing those questioning its legality. There is nothing in principle that prevents Russia from applying the same provision to future annexation of territories it considers historically Russian, such as southeastern Ukraine or even parts of other former Soviet republics. This is because Putin has long portrayed the collapse of the Soviet Union as the demise of historical Russia. According to his perspective, early Soviet authorities transferred ancestral Russian lands to Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, which then retained them upon gaining independence in 1991.

The Russian Constitution also provides a pretext for international intervention in neighboring countries, justifying acts such as the incursion in Ukraine’s Donbas region. It claims that:

“The Russian Federation provides support to compatriots living abroad in exercising their rights, ensuring the protection of their interests, and preserving their shared Russian cultural identity.”

This provision intentionally relativizes borders between states, implying that Russia has a duty to protect not only its citizens but also Russian-speaking communities abroad. In doing so, it expands the boundaries of the Russian nation beyond the borders of the Russian Federation. While the Constitution does not explicitly define “compatriots,” the term aligns with the Kremlin’s concept of the “Russian world,” which encompasses both ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking populations in neighboring states.

Article 68, paragraph 1 of the Constitution reinforces this vision by designating Russian as the official language and defining it as a language of the  “state-forming people in a multicultural union of people with equal rights.” This wording, in fact, perfectly summarizes the complexities and contradictions of Russian nationalism. On the surface, it contains the idea of a civic nation by invoking the country’s multinational people. Yet it simultaneously emphasizes the Kremlin’s ethno-nationalist vision by elevating the status of ethnic Russians – referring to the Russian language as that of a “state-forming people”, with a privileged nation’s historical development. In this way, the Constitution introduces a hierarchy within the concept of the nation, casting ethnic Russians as primus inter pares – accorded primacy over other nationalities.

Weaponizing WWII Memory to Justify War

Article 67.1, paragraph 3 of the Russian Constitution adds another layer of legal justification for contemporary aggression. It states:

“The Russian Federation honors the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland and ensures the defense of historical truth. Diminishing the significance of the heroism of the people in defending the Fatherland shall not be permitted.”

Here, “defense of the Fatherland” refers specifically to the Great Patriotic War, the Russian term for WWII. The Constitution promotes a selective narrative that glorifies the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany while omitting the darkest chapters of Soviet history itself. Article 67.1, paragraph 1 of the Constitution further reinforces continuity with these glorious pages of Soviet history by asserting that the Russian Federation is a legal successor and continuator of the Soviet Union.

This narrative intentionally ignores Soviet-era crimes, including communist repressions, mass terror used by the state against its people, the Soviet Union’s ambiguous role in provoking WWII, and the war crimes committed during the conflict. It also portrays the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe as liberation from Nazi Germany, ignoring local perspectives on Soviet repression. While the Constitution protects this selective version of WWII as historical truth, Russian legislation criminalizes its “distortion,” which in practice means banning any alternative interpretations of WWII that challenge the official state narrative, including arguments suggesting Soviet complicity in the invasion of Poland for signing the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. As historian Nikolay Koposov observes, Russia’s WWII narrative is almost unique in its defense of an oppressive regime against the memory of its victims.

Putin has instrumentalized this constitutional narrative to justify war under the pretext of combating “Nazism.” When he launched the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, he called it a “special military operation” to “demilitarize and de-Nazify” the country. Such a rhetoric recast Russia’s invasion as a moral continuation of the Soviet struggle against fascism. It further reinforces internal propaganda and provides ideological cover for future military actions.

Implications for International Law and Global Stability

Russia’s manipulation of constitutional memory illustrates how authoritarian regimes monopolize memory to serve their political ends. As Avishai Margalit has noted, such regimes have an urgent need and ardent desire to control the past because by so doing, they exercise a monopoly on all sources of legitimacy. In Russia, this has led to the suppression of historical debate and the constitutional entrenchment of selective national myths, placing them beyond the reach of ordinary legislation and insulating them from democratic revision.

This constitutionalization of historical revisionism is not merely a domestic issue. It directly challenges international law and the right to historical truth. By including expansionist narratives in its supreme legal document, the Russian Constitution implicitly portrays Ukraine as an inseparable part of its history. Consequently, any peace settlement recognizing Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would contradict the very foundation of Russian constitutional law, complicating the prospects for conflict resolution. Conversely, a peace deal that legitimizes Russia’s annexations of Ukraine’s territories would validate this strategy, encouraging Russia to pursue additional territorial claims to what the Kremlin deems historically Russian lands – under the guise of restoring historical justice.

The consequences of such an approach extend beyond Russia and Ukraine. The normalization of constitutionalized historical revisionism as a tool of geopolitical strategy poses a threat to global stability. If left unchecked, this model could inspire other expansionist or separatist movements, such as the potential secession of Bosnia’s Republika Srpska and its unification with Serbia.

The international community should therefore respond strategically. This includes reinforcing international legal norms, sanctioning institutions that enable revisionist policies, defending historical truth and academic freedom, and strengthening Ukraine’s sovereignty. Above all, it means rejecting constitutionalized historical revisionism as a legitimate tool of warfare. Without a firm response, Russia’s actions risk legitimizing historical distortion as a strategy of territorial conquest, eroding the core principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity in international law.