Jade Selena McGlynn is a British researcher, lecturer, linguist, historian, and author specialising in modern Eastern Europe, particularly

Russia under Vladimir Putin Since 1999, Vladimir Putin has continuously served as either President of Russia, president (Acting President of Russia, acting president from 1999 to 2000; two terms 2000–2008, three terms 2012–present) or Prime Minister of Russia (three ...

. As research fellow at the

Department of War Studies, King's College London The Department of War Studies (DWS) is an academic department in the School of Security Studies within the Faculty of Social Science & Public Policy at King's College London in London, United Kingdom. Senior government officials, members of t ...

, her work has focussed on the

Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia Russian occupation of Crimea, occupied and Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then ...

since 2014, as well as identity construction,

memory politics The politics of memory refers to how societies construct, contest, and institutionalize collective memories of historical events. Often this practice should serve political, social, or ideological purpose. As a field of study, memory politics seek ...

, propaganda, and state-society relations in the

Russian Federation Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. McGlynn is also affiliated with the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

Early life and education

McGlynn studied Russian and Spanish at the

, obtaining her Bachelor of Arts there, before completing her Russian Studies research Master of Arts at the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

in 2017. In the 2010s, McGlynn lived and worked in the Russian cities of Moscow,

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

Voronezh Voronezh ( ; , ) is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects wes ...

Pskov Pskov ( rus, Псков, a=Ru-Псков.oga, p=psˈkof; see also Names of Pskov in different languages, names in other languages) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in northwestern Russia and the administrative center of Pskov O ...

, and

Sochi Sochi ( rus, Сочи, p=ˈsotɕɪ, a=Ru-Сочи.ogg, from – ''seaside'') is the largest Resort town, resort city in Russia. The city is situated on the Sochi (river), Sochi River, along the Black Sea in the North Caucasus of Souther ...

for four years, as well as travelling extensively throughout Russia and other

post-Soviet states The post-Soviet states, also referred to as the former Soviet Union or the former Soviet republics, are the independent sovereign states that emerged/re-emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Prior to their independence, they ...

. From 2018 to 2020, McGlynn conducted her PhD studies in Russian at the University of Oxford on the Russian government and media's politicisation and securitisation of history during

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

's third presidential term (2012–2018).

Career

McGlynn obtained her DPhil from Oxford for her dissertation ''Reliving the Past. How the Russian Government and Media Use History to Frame the Present'' (2020). She analysed that since Putin's return to the presidency in 2012, the

Kremlin The Moscow Kremlin (also the Kremlin) is a fortified complex in Moscow, Russia. Located in the centre of the country's capital city, the Moscow Kremlin (fortification), Kremlin comprises five palaces, four cathedrals, and the enclosing Mosco ...

has put the "

Great Patriotic War The Eastern Front, also known as the Great Patriotic War (term), Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union and its successor states, and the German–Soviet War in modern Germany and Ukraine, was a Theater (warfare), theatre of World War II ...

", a term used in reference to the 1941–1945 fight of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

(reduced to Russia in this narrative) against

Nazism Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was fre ...

(conveniently leaving out the 1939

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...

with

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

), at the centre of Russian identity and politics, thereby arguing that the Russian Federation was entitled to dominate all the lands occupied or essentially controlled by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union. The army was established in January 1918 by a decree of the Council of People ...

at the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

. Whereas Putin in January 2018 compared

Russophobia Anti-Russian sentiment or Russophobia is the dislike or fear of Russia, Russian people, or Russian culture. The opposite of Russophobia is Russophilia. Historically, Russophobia has included state-sponsored and grassroots mistreatment and di ...

antisemitism Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

, McGlynn considered conflation of modern Russophobia and Nazi antisemitism to be a part of propaganda strategy that uses historical framing to create a flattering narrative that the Russo-Ukrainian War is a restaging of the

. Since the full-scale

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

began in February 2022, McGlynn has made frequent contributions in English-language international media, including the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

Deutsche Welle (; "German Wave"), commonly shortened to DW (), is a German state-funded television network, state-owned international broadcaster funded by the Federal Government of Germany. The service is available in 32 languages. DW's satellite tele ...

, ''

Foreign Policy Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...

'', ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'', ''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are often names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * The Telegraph (Adelaide), ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaid ...

'', and ''

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. ''The Spectator'' is politically conservative, and its principal subject a ...

''. Writing for ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', Michael S. Neiberg praised McGlynn's monographs ''Russia's War'' (2023) and ''Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin's Russia'' (2023) as being able to explain the reasons why the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine happened, which to many "Western eyes ... appeared to make no sense." Instead, she made the case that the war turning into such a catastrophe for Russian society in the present could only be understood from how the Russian government and state-controlled media had been distorting views of the past; these included erroneous notions such as that Ukraine had always been a natural part of Russia, which was destined to be restored as a great power that it once was, and that Russian soldiers were engaged in a heroic struggle against a decadent West rather than in war crimes against those very Ukrainians they considered to be their "Russian brothers". In ''The Times'', Marc Bennetts wrote that ''Russia's War'' demonstrated that most ordinary Russians were not enthusiastic about the war but felt there was nothing they could do about it, and therefore tended to go along with the Kremlin's propaganda, as it provided the common people with comfortable lies in challenging circumstances. Political scientist Leo Goretti added that ''Memory Makers'' made the case that the Russian leadership itself had fallen victim. Over time, the historical truth of the Kremlin has acquired such emotional and framing power that in the end, in the author's words, "Putin and those around him have started to believe their own lies." According Goretti, McGlynn's book ''Memory Makers'' was "much-needed reading for scholars who want to dig deeper into the discourse underpinning Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and the political use of history in today's world more generally." Although it was somewhat lacking in cross-examining "how professional and academic historians have reacted to the Kremlin's weaponisation of history", Goretti called her work a "thorough and painstaking analysis", including of "thousands of newspaper articles on the Russia-Ukraine conflict in spring 2014" alone. In ''

New Left Review The ''New Left Review'' is a British bimonthly journal, established in 1960, which analyses international politics, the global economy, social theory, and cultural topics from a leftist perspective. History Background As part of the emergin ...

'' in April 2024, Joy Neumeyer alleged that in a description of the 1997 film ''

Brother A brother (: brothers or brethren) is a man or boy who shares one or more parents with another; a male sibling. The female counterpart is a sister. Although the term typically refers to a family, familial relationship, it is sometimes used ende ...

'', McGlynn had plagiarized Neumeyer's own work.

Selected works

Monographs

* * pp. 360. (dissertation). * Jade McGlynn, ''Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin's Russia'' (2023). xii, 234 p. London, New York, Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 978-1-350-28076-2. * Jade McGlynn, ''Russia's War'' (2023). 264 p. Cambridge, Hoboken: Polity Press. ISBN 9781509556779.

Journal articles

* * *

Co-authored or co-edited works

* (co-edited) * (co-edited by Jade McGlynn and Lucian George), ''Rethinking Period Boundaries: New Approaches to Continuity and Discontinuity in Modern European History and Culture'' (2022), pp. 267. De Gruyter Oldenbourg. . * Co-author of the chapters "Promoting Patriotism" and "Living Forms of Patriotism" in: Félix Krawatzek, Nina Friess, ''Youth and Memory in Europe: Defining the Past, Shaping the Future'' (2022), p. 221–246. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110733501. * (co-authored by Jade McGlynn and Oliver T. Jones), ''Researching Memory and Identity in Russia and Eastern Europe: Interdisciplinary Methodologies'' (2023), pp. 218. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9783030999148.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McGlynn, Jade 21st-century British historians 21st-century British women writers 21st-century British linguists British women historians Historians of Russia Historians of Ukraine Linguists of Russian Living people Year of birth missing (living people)