Apparently, it happened without emotion: the workers came and slowly began to demolish. The work went on for two whole years (1924–1926) and, in the end, not one stone was left of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Warsaw [Fig. 7] At the beginning of the twentieth century, Poland was a bastion of Catholicism, so the destruction of a church in the capital city may have seemed out of step with popular sentiment, but to destroy a church that had only been completed twelve years earlier at that time smacked of sensationalism. The emotions behind such a decision must have been very strong. As a precaution against inciting an impassioned response, the demolition took a civil form, that is, it was a systematic and respectful demolition. This was certainly intended to calm the sensitive atmosphere in which this sacrilegious action took place, but it did nothing to diminish the power of the gesture. Such a gesture can only be understood in the context of violent nineteenth-century Russian imperialism, which turned art and saints into instruments of propaganda and identity. The destruction of the temple was, indeed, one way to oppose Russia's expansionist policies.

Dreaming Byzantium

The story of Russian imperialism has deep historical roots. Its origins can be traced back to the time when Ivan IV, known as the Terrible (1547–1584) was crowned “Tsar of All Russia” in 1547. Although the tendency of rulers to expand their territories was the practice of all major European powers in the sixteenth century (think, for example, of the brutal colonial policies of the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal), a glance at the history of the Russian Empire reveals that expansionist endeavours characterized Russian statehood from the reign of Ivan iv onwards. However, every imperial power requires rhetorical weapons to defend its ambitions—or to speak bluntly, it needs “excuses” for the inevitable imperial atrocities. This has often been done through the smoke screen of defending religious issues, protecting the oppressed or, and this is crucial for our reflection, through historical law, i.e. in the defence of policies in the light of (real or entirely imagined) historical claims. Russian power made abundant use of these tools, and at least since the early nineteenth century it can be said that “historical law” gained more and more space and power, especially in the context of an increasingly clearly declared relationship with the Byzantine Empire.

In the last two centuries or more, the Middle Ages, whether Russian or Byzantine, have become a powerful tool of propaganda and identity discourse for Russia. At crucial moments of crisis, medieval heritage has been used both visually and intellectually to affirm the country's imperial rights and to fight the external enemy. During the reign of the last Romanovs this situation seemed in some ways logical, and Russian rhetoric was essentially no different from that of other contemporary empires, but it was even more surprising (and complex) to uncover the (mis)use of the past in the Soviet years, when Stalin created a unique synthesis between the two seemingly contradictory trends of communism and clericalism. In the last two decades, then, it is possible to see a seeming return to the patterns that developed during the nineteenth century.

I hope I have been able to show that in each of the stages examined it is not so much the past itself that is interesting, but rather its use for the needs of the present. In this framework we can now return to the very beginning of this text, to Moscow's Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ. All of the visual and material tools mentioned above and used therein tell a story of Russian identity. The building refers to the medieval past, but also to its reuse in the mid-twentieth century. This is evident not only in the architectural design but also in the iconography of the decoration. It is a celebration of medieval and modern warlords, with a strong reference to the decoration of the Stalinist underground, and to an idealized image of the national past. In light of the current situation, the 2020 construction can be seen as one of the crucial preparatory steps in the expansionist, imperial ambitions of the Russian Federation, which culminated in the military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Visually and conceptually, the regime is following the rhetoric conveyed to the public by the mass media: that Moscow is the Third Rome, the last standard-bearer of Orthodoxy, and under its leader, it has a moral obligation to intervene, even with military force, against the evil that is rampant in the “fascist” West. It is clear, however, that something else is the goal of this huge propaganda effort.