Local Memory as Propaganda: Russia’s New World War II Monuments

Every year, the small north Norwegian town of Kirkenes hosts a conference aimed at enhancing cross-border cooperation in the Barents region, an area covering the northernmost parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and north-west Russia. At the 2022 Kirkenes Conference – held on the 23 and 24 February – discussions of local issues were eclipsed by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It would be the last time Russian delegates would participate in this format. In the wake of the invasion, the Norwegian state was swift to condemn Russia and join EU sanctions against it. Northern Norway has since been a focal point of increasingly ambitious military exercises by NATO allies. Yet an ongoing local debate about World War II monuments indicates a greater degree of ambivalence towards Russia in this part of Norway.

Kirkenes is a town in Finnmark, the first Norwegian county to be liberated from the German occupation in October 1944 in an offensive started by the Soviets, who were later joined by Norwegian forces. Not surprisingly, Finnmark is dotted with monuments to the Soviet soldiers involved in the region’s liberation. My Norwegian colleagues differentiate between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ monuments: ‘Official’ monuments, such as the famous Liberation Monument (Frigjøringsmonumentet) in Kirkenes, date back to the Soviet era. The ‘unofficial’ monuments are those initiated by various Russian actors, including officials from across the border in Murmansk, in the 2000s and especially after 2014.

It is these more recent monuments that have been particularly controversial in northern Norway. In the months after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, local voices calling for the removal of at least the ‘unofficial’ monuments grew louder. Their main argument relates to Russia’s misuse of the monuments as a tool of war diplomacy. According to Kari Aga Myklebost, Professor of History at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT), it is no coincidence that Russia has been so active in initiating new monuments in northern Norway and patriotic ‘memory tours’ of them since its annexation of Crimea in 2014. In her research, she points to the different and interconnected goals Russia has been pursuing through these sites.

War diplomacy via monuments

The monuments and commemorative events organised around them have been used to spread the narratives of World War II so central to Russia’s propaganda toolbox among local stakeholders in northern Norway. When addressing audiences in the region, Russian officials typically praise its partisan history, while also criticising the Norwegian authorities for allegedly not paying enough attention to it. This plays on existing local sensibilities and is typical of a ‘divide and rule’ approach in Russia’s war diplomacy, which seeks to drive a wedge between central governments and regions in other countries.

Russia also uses the official and unofficial World War II monuments to suggest to the outside world that then, as now, Norway and Russia are on the same side. Thus in a speech at the Liberation Monument in Kirkenes to mark the 75^th anniversary of the town’s liberation on 25 October 2019, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov focused on the rise of neo-Nazism in Europe and the need for Russia and Norway to work together to address this threat. Allegations of neo-Nazism have, of course, been central to Russia’s justification of its war against Ukraine. The claim that Russia is fighting a ‘just’ war against neo-Nazism has resulted in some World War II monuments in northern Norway being instrumentalised for anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and propaganda. On his own tour of eastern Finnmark in 2014, Lavrov compared the controversial Ukrainian nationalists Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych with the Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, thus insinuating that Ukrainians who support their country’s struggle for independence today are also neo-Nazis.

Memory tours: An excuse to enter Norway

Finally – in very practical terms – the new monuments serve as a pretext for gaining physical access to specific parts of northern Norway. The seemingly harmless memory tours are an excuse for Russian actors to cross the border into Finnmark and cultivate relations with local politicians and historians. In this way, they can exploit war memories with a high emotional charge for the local population.

There is no consensus among local stakeholders in northern Norway about whether to remove even the ‘unofficial’ World War II monuments. The tensions around this issue became apparent during the ‘battle of the wreaths’ at the Liberation Monument in Kirkenes on the 79^th anniversary of the town’s liberation in 2023. Supported by local Russians, the Russian general consul in Kirkenes Nikolai Konygin tried to replace a wreath in the Ukrainian colours previously laid at the site by the mayor of Kirkenes with one in the Russian colours. Some locals argue that the monuments should not be removed because they may still be meaningful to the descendants of those Norwegians who fought against the Nazis in northern Norway, especially partisans. Others claim that one can condemn Russian propaganda without removing any monuments.

The case of the World War II monuments in Finnmark highlights the complex repercussions of Russia’s war against Ukraine for local societies in the High North. While there is no sign that any of the ‘official’ Soviet or ‘unofficial’ Russian monuments will be removed soon, raising public awareness of Russia’s instrumentalisation of these sites is crucial for the broader process of northern Norway’s rethinking of its relationship with Russia.

Maryna Rabinovych is an assistant professor at the Department of Public Policy and Governance at the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) in Ukraine and a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Social Sciences at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT). Since October 2024, she has also been a fellow in theUkraine Research Network@ZOiS, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.