Nikolai Epple: "The war illustrates Putin's refusal to assess the Soviet past"

The Russian researcher notes that we find everywhere the same difficulties in facing the past: the slowness of the process, the need for it to come from within countries to succeed. But Russia is exceptional, he notes, because the persistence of cover-ups and repetition of state crimes has lasted longer than anywhere else. For Epple, we are witnessing "the agony of the Soviet monster", "an agony that can last and still cause many deaths".

LE FIGARO.- You wrote a landmark book on The Troublesome Past of Russia and 6 other nations, comparing their management of the memory of the crimes perpetrated by the State. For you, it is obvious that such a past, if not rejected and judged, kidnaps the present and the future, leading to the repetition of crimes and modes of behavior. Isn't that exactly what is happening with Putin's war?

Nikolai EPPLE. - In the mid-2010s, I worked as a columnist at the newspaper Vedomosti, one of the last...

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