The Evolution of Russian Thinking, 1985-2025, about the Early Cold War in Asia

On May 9, 2025, Vladimir Putin commemorated the victory of the Soviet Union eighty years earlier, heralding its significance for Asia as well as Europe. On September 3, standing next to Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un, he conveyed more fully his verdict on the Soviet contribution to postwar Asia. Russian publications have expanded at length on this legacy with obvious implications for current foreign policy. Justifications for transformed policies toward China, Japan, North Korea, and South Korea are increasingly linked to interpretations of events dating from 1945 and the following decade. Reflecting on Russian publications over four decades on the histories of these countries, we can trace how this outlook has solidified.*

After the collapse of the communist bloc, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union itself, Russians struggled with a crisis of identity. Told that the narrative they had accepted for over seventy years was false, they were asked to accept claims in direct opposition to the preceding worldview. In this topsy-turvy rhetoric, Washington had noble intentions; Tokyo would be a benefactor if only it could regain inherent territory it had lost after declaring its surrender in 1945; Seoul sought a close economic partnership with one objective, securing cooperation to persuade Pyongyang to peacefully coexist during a reunification transition; and Moscow might cooperate with Beijing while nudging closer. None of this could be reconciled with the messages long inculcated into the population.

*No citations are listed. I draw on previous journal postings or analyses of these writings.

Wavering on how to react to US and Chinese overtures at a time of pessimism over how to reclaim their lost superpower identity, but knowing it required maneuvering between the two, Russians felt greater immediate humiliation by the about-face in Japanese and ROK relations. These countries did not have the stature to presume to pressure Moscow, using economic enticements as if those were weighty enough to impress a past superpower. A more aggressive foreign policy, blaming Yeltsin’s “Westernizers” for betraying the national interest, commenced with Japan as early as the spring of 1992 and quickly spread to South Korea. Tokyo’s territorial demands in the Russian Far East and Seoul’s attempts to outflank Pyongyang in that same arena compounded the fear of losing control in an area earlier deemed to be a target of Chinese irredentism and fast-shedding population under economic duress.

Clamping down on those ready to find common ground with Tokyo and Seoul and favoring a more sympathetic historical interpretation of them became manifest in the 1990s, but then took a more aggressive turn for Japan from 2002, after Tokyo had spurned Putin’s proposal for talks that would have led to diplomacy even if Putin’s intentions were unclear. For Seoul, the intensification occurred during the Six-Party Talks, as Moscow tilted toward Pyongyang. In the 2000s, historical coverage of China and the United States hardened as well. Finally, in the mid-2010s, when Putin’s “Turn to the East” strongly favored Beijing and Pyongyang, the historical message fully solidified, seen at the 2015 70th anniversary of victory in World War II. The 80th anniversary reinforced a historical narrative much closer to the Soviet precedent than to the worldview encouraged by Gorbachev and still resonant over the Yeltsin period.

Russian Views of the End of the War in Japan: Turning Points in 1992 and 2002

Until the late 1980s, Russian publications denied the reality of postwar Japan. Censoring information on its economic and technical prowess, as if poverty prevailed and a downturn would soon lead to class struggle, they finally began to face a dubious public, at last catching wind of the global fascination with Japan’s “economic miracle.” Insistent that Japan’s ruling conservatives were intent on remilitarization and even revival of war-era thinking, while the people adhered to pacifism and rejected the Japan-US alliance, they left no room for negotiations over a peace treaty to finalize the end of the war. Just as Japanese used the Soviet seizure of the four islands they called the “Northern Territories” to justify their insistence that the Soviet Union remained an aggressive state with which talks would be of little use, the USSR said that efforts to overturn the results of the war made talks useless. Both sides steeped their perceptions of the other in narratives of 1945 and its aftermath.

Starting with breakthrough articles at the end of the 1980s by intrepid authors rooting the Russia-Japan relationship in a realistic assessment of evolving conditions, the narrative seemed to be shifting. Fascination with Japan’s economy and culture accompanied newly accurate views of its politics and history. Yet two factors militated against their widespread dissemination. First, as early as mid-1992, Japan’s territorial demands became the poster child of failure to respect Russia and of pressure to take advantage of its weakness. Rather than a forthright view of Japan as it was, history remained the prism through which it had to be perceived. Second, Russia failed to undertake serious reforms that could have boosted economic cooperation with Japan beyond oil and gas investments in nearby Sakhalin. Moreover, a perceived dearth of economic ties was blamed, with some justification, on Japan’s refusal to separate politics and economics, i.e., letting history stand in the way. When Putin’s 2001 Irkutsk offer to talk about territory (with uncertain prospects of the transfer of the two tiny islands visible from Hokkaido) was rejected in Japan, the Russian narrative again resembled the Cold War era. Japan was demeaning a much greater power.

When, in 2013, Abe Shinzo began to woo Vladimir Putin under the illusion that Russia sought a compromise on territory with joint development of the islands as well as the transfer of the same two islands, Japanese optimism ignored the reality of Russia’s narrative remaining fixed on the injustice of Japan’s case. As the cult of World War II intensified in Moscow, arguments hardened that Japan had to accept Russia’s view of history regardless of any deal ahead. By 2025, after relations had sunk further due to the Ukraine war and Japan’s sanctions, Russia fully demonized Japan as reverting to its prewar behavior, remilitarizing, or even threatening.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told his counterpart, Kishida Fumio, on September 21, 2015, “that progress on this issue is only possible after we receive clarification regarding the recognition by Japan of postwar historical realities, including the UN Charter in its entirety. In fact, the historical aspect of this problem that we inherited from World War II is the most serious impediment to its resolution..,without clarifying the historical reality that we have today as a result of World War II, we will be unable to move forward.”

Stopping in Mongolia en route to China for the SCO summit and September 3 parade, Putin celebrated the Red Army victories there over Japan in 1938-39, aligning Russia more closely with the Chinese argument that World War II began with the 1937 full-scale Japanese attack on China. In this way, the Red Army prevented Japan from opening a second front against the USSR. Earlier, Putin moved Victory Day in Asia from September 2 to September 3, endorsing China’s timing.

Russian publications in 2025 threaten Japan over its audacity to differ on events in 1945.
Viktor Zhdanov, in RIA Novosti, warned those who dispute the results of World War II, saying Moscow was promised something completely different and singling out Japan for its attempts to snatch Russia’s “Southern Kuril Islands.” Despite Japan’s February 7 protests on the anniversary of the 1855 territorial agreement, that treaty long ago lost force with the Potsdam Declaration of 1945. When Russian forces took the islands, nobody complained, Zhdanov insists. Japan had held them for only ninety years, while Russia had held them earlier for a longer period, the article asserts. In 1956, Khrushchev agreed to give up two islands for the sake of a peace agreement on the condition of Japan’s neutrality. The 1960 Japan-US security treaty annulled that proposal. The Kuril Islands are very important for Russia’s security. Any Japanese call for the islands cannot be perceived as anything but a reexamination of the results of World War II. On March 21, 2022, Moscow rejected the possibility of talks over a peace agreement, ended visa-free visits of Japanese to the Southern Kurils, and pulled out of dialogue on joint economic activity on the islands. According to one Russian expert cited, relations have now fallen to the lowest level of the entire postwar period.

Apart from Japan’s territorial pretensions, its change of thinking about security also figures into Russian critiques. As a defeated state, it apparently had no right to discard the pacifist tradition that ruled in the early postwar period. Ol’ga Dobrinskaya in Izvestiya on August 6, 2025, treated Japan’s “nuclear allergy” as an essential part of its postwar identity. Japan treated possession of its own nuclear weapons as a taboo topic, but lately its rearmament and nuclear debate defy the postwar arrangements. Having warned of Japan’s remilitarization since the 1950s, Moscow made it seem as if this was a fixed obligation to the world, and it has returned to this familiar message.

For a brief time, Russians as well as Chinese were inclined not to look to the past as the standard for judging current international relations, in contrast to Korean images of Japan and Japanese images of Russia. Then, Russian narratives, as Chinese ones, increasingly found a substitute for ideology in historical rhetoric about Japan and even South Korea. As I wrote in The Asan Forum, Dmitry Strel’tsov traced this back to “the emotional stress associated with Russia’s defeat in the Russo-Japanese War. There formed an image of Japanese as insidious, malicious, and vindictive ‘aliens.’ Stalin appealed to the feeling of this hurt when he laid moral grounds for the USSR’s entry into the war with Japan. Russo-Japanese relations during the first half of the 20th century remained in the memory of the Soviet people as evidence of Japan’s aggressive course toward Russia/USSR, and over time, this impression grew. The entry into war against Japan in 1945 is widely seen as the highest act of historical justice. After the end of the Cold War, Japan as the ‘defeated enemy’ played an indispensable role in reestablishing Russia’s glamour, however illusionary, alleviating the pains of the superpower complex.”

I cited Strel’tsov as arguing that “Cold War mentality shaped an alarmist view of Japan as a ‘militarist’ and even a ‘hostile’ country belonging to the opposing political camp. Special attention was always paid to the ‘revisionist’ ruling circles, which endeavored to change the pacifist constitution for a full-fledged military one. ‘Walking the path of militarization,’ Japan, in Soviet mass media reports, was establishing a powerful army in defiance of the Constitution. On issues of bilateral relations involving World War II, media scrutiny was not welcome because the USSR considered them to be completely resolved by the Joint Declaration of 1956 and did not want to create a pretext for a new debate. A taboo was imposed even on the study of the historical background of the Soviet-Japanese territorial problem. One could speak only about the ‘unfounded territorial claims’…After the end of the Cold War, the Russian political establishment inherited earlier stereotypes of Japan. The overwhelming majority of Russians, even those who received historical education in the post-Soviet period, adopted the Cold War postulates regarding Japan and Russo/Soviet-Japanese relations: the Soviet entry into the war against Japan was an act of ultimate historical justice leading to a speedy end of the war; Japan as a defeated country should bear this status with humility; the results of WWII, including the territorial acquisitions, are inviolable; and Japan is a subordinate country with ‘semi-colonial status,’ which at best, does not control its own foreign policy or, at worst, is a satellite of the United States and hence the geopolitical adversary of Russia. Russian public opinion related to Japan with increasing wariness…Japan is perceived through this prism.”

Russians cling to “Russia’s status as a guarantor state of the Yalta-Potsdam system and postulate the inviolability of the results of WWII. Japan as the defeated country should humbly adhere to this status, accepting it in repentance and humility…Conservatives treat Japan’s territorial claims with extreme negative emotions. Insistence on the inviolability of the outcome of World War II and of Japan’s status as the ‘defeated enemy’ means rigid adherence to the line of ‘no territorial problem’ in Moscow’s dialogue with Tokyo. Any compromise, even in the spirit of the 1956 Declaration, would imply revision of the results of WWII and lay a time bomb under the whole global system of postwar frontiers.” Affirming this historical narrative—central to national identity—takes precedence over improving the bilateral relationship.

I previously summarized Strel’tsov’s argument that “history classes taught in Russian schools portray Japan as either a hostile adversary of Russia in the prewar period or a satellite of the United States—Russia’s rival and geopolitical enemy—after WWII…After the end of the Cold War, Russians turned inward, judging countries primarily for their impact on the revival of Russia as a great power…In 1992, Japan was deemed unhelpful and unduly pressuring Russia; in 2002, it was dismissed for having abandoned negotiations after a lot of fanfare.”

“As [new] status was acquired due to its victory in WWII, the ‘moral authority’ related to this status became increasingly significant for the international posturing of the USSR, especially after it had become clear that Moscow was losing in the economic competition against the West. Equally important were the domestic aspects of this self-identification, especially after the collapse of the USSR. After failing to accommodate itself as part of the Western global paradigm, Russia started to search for a new national idea…the only thing that could consolidate the nation became the great victory in the holy war, achieved at a cost of the lives of 27 million Soviet citizens, as well as events of the more distant historical past…Postwar pacifism was perceived in the Soviet Union as ‘divine punishment.’”

Having lost the Russo-Japanese War in 1905 and gloried in the revenge reeked in 1945, the Russian mindset fixated on historical differences with a neighbor to the east. Tokyo’s call for the return of four islands kept historical memory in the forefront, and Soviet writings on Japanese history and Japan during the Cold War were particularly harsh. Despite interest in the 1980s in Japanese technological prowess and cultural exceptionalism, this legacy of demeaning Japan remained deeply rooted. Japan became an easy target for humiliating a weakened nation, and from 2002, there was no turning back from this one-sided imagery.

Russian Views of the Korean War and South Korea: Turning Points in 1994 and 2004

South Korea’s view of history from the end of World War II and its pursuit of reunification posed serious challenges to Russian historiography. Given the importance of the Korean War and North Korea’s presence for Russia’s standing in Northeast Asia, Seoul became an existential threat to Russia’s revival in the East. It was seen as denying Russia its rightful place in the region. In contrast, North Korea welcomed Russia’s role, while also downplaying the Red Army’s role in the liberation from Japan. Whereas recent attention has centered on Russian grievances over intrusions by the West in Ukraine, few have noticed the parallel rhetoric on threats by South Korea and the United States to North Korea. Not only are their policies suspect, but their historical “revisionism” also seriously undermines Russia’s legitimacy.

Throughout the Cold War, North Korea represented a bulwark against US imperialism and South Korea an enemy threatening not only the North but also the Soviet standing in Asia. Not only did the Soviet Union play the greatest role in defeating Nazi Germany and then a decisive role in the defeat of Japan, according to this narrative, but it also liberated Korea and then stood behind North Korea when it was endangered by the United States and its allies. As the Soviet position in Northeast Asia grew more tenuous during the Sino-Soviet split, its claim to having earned the right to play a large role in the future of the region centered more on its historical role in North Korea, reinforcing its just fruits from liberating the peninsula.

Through the 1990s, Russia’s position in Northeast Asia appeared precarious. Moscow’s hold over the Russian Far East did not seem secure: local economies in crisis, massive out-migration, alarm over Chinese in-migration and foreign investments overwhelming local control, South Korean networking with local Korean residents, and Russia excluded from APEC. Diplomacy over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program became a regional focus, and Russia was alarmed at its absence. Resentful of South Korea for allegedly failing to deliver on the promise of normalization, Moscow saw an opportunity in North Korea to reassert its regional influence, while historical writings easily reverted to earlier tropes.

Excluded from the Four-Party Talks following the Agreed Framework of 1994, Moscow rued its omission, and by 1997 its charges against South Korea of espionage gave substance to the widening rift with Seoul over more than just charges of backtracking on promises that brought normalization and bilateral economic relations. When Putin stopped in Pyongyang in 2000 en route to Japan for the G8 summit and when Russia failed in its 2003 attempt to become the intermediary for North Korea and decided to make common cause with China in these talks, South Korea lost more ground, as coverage of its history also turned more negative. There had been little time to disseminate a different narrative after normalization. The year 2004 was decisive for Russia’s shifting outlook, including in the Six-Party Talks.

The transformation of thinking became unmistakable by the end of the 2000s. Lee Myung-bak, not Kim Jong-il, was the villain. He damaged ties by his response to Russia’s war with Georgia, his step back from three-way cooperation by putting denuclearization in the forefront, and his supposed role in raising tensions with sanctions on the North and rejection of further Six-Party Talks. Park Geun-hye did not fare much better in Russian assessments despite using the appealing term “Eurasia,” boosting ties with no-visa travel, and winning support for her Northeast Peace and Cooperation Initiative. She also resisted the Six-Party Talks without preconditions and backed away from three-way projects with the North. If it appeared that Seoul did not join Western sanctions against Russia in 2014 despite intense US pressure, it may have done so in less overt fashion, reducing political ties. Park did not attend the Sochi Winter Olympics, despite the tradition of doing so by the head of government tasked with subsequent games, nor was she present at the 70th anniversary of victory in WWII, when Putin had hoped to host her and Kim Jong-un in a diplomatic coup for the “Turn to the East.”

Filling the void left by China’s tougher posture toward North Korea in 2014, Russia appeared to communicate to Kim that it was an alternative allowing him to avoid the heavy dependence on China that he feared. In these respects, it was not simply reinforcing China’s approach to the North. The ROK is regularly portrayed as a quasi-sovereign protectorate of the US that lacks independent foreign policies. Putin spoke of the ROK’s “shortage of sovereignty” in April 2019. 

The Korean Peninsula become a testing ground for Russian interests in the Asia-Pacific and whether it is treated with respect. When Vladimir Putin began his third term as president in 2012 and, even more, after relations with the US deteriorated in 2014, the peninsula was seen in a different light. The focus over the year was on a visit by Kim Jong-un to Russia for the February Winter Olympics in Sochi or for the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII in May. Kim’s first visit abroad could have showcased Russia’s role on the peninsula and stimulated talk of joining the Korean and Trans-Siberian railroads. At the last minute, Kim chose not to visit, but Moscow kept showing its sympathy toward the North.

By the 2020s, Seoul and Tokyo were lumped together as countries striving to overturn the results of WWII in Asia. As US allies, they had become prime targets for demonization. Accompanying the intensified rehabilitation of Stalin, in 2025, new monuments were being constructed, as his leadership in Asia was cited in justifying policy toward Japan and Korea.

On May 9, 2025, Kim Jong-un visited the Russian embassy in Pyongyang, giving Russians direct support for current foreign policy and an indirect reminder of the Soviet role in Asia, construed in Moscow as saving Korea from Japan and then North Korea in the Korean War. Commenting on the visit, Georgii Toloraya insisted that his words were very close to Putin’s viewpoint, i.e., the USSR saved the planet and human civilization, including the liberation of Korea, and now it is necessary to oppose together the countries of neo-Naziism.

In RSMD, Konstantin Osmolov wrote in 2025 on echoes of the Korean War. He argued that the liberation of Korea had some peculiarities. Although the Soviet Army played the decisive role, a large part of North Korea and all of South Korea were not freed by it through direct fighting on their territory. Thus, the local population perceived the occupiers as suddenly giving up, and in South Korea, Americans arrived three weeks later. In this interval Japanese authorities, to avoid pogroms against Japanese citizens or destruction of Shinto shrines, negotiated with leftist nationalists, who declared a Republic of Korea without Kim Gu’s leadership, gaining acceptance as the legitimate government. It appeared that Korea had been liberated by itself, with no role for communists or nationalists, leading to an “unoccupied victory.” There was no liquidation of all the structures, and accomplices and collaborators dominant in the security forces treated the strengthening of leftist political forces as the more serious threat. Without replacement cadres, pro-Japanese ones remained, accepted first by the Americans and then by the South Korean administration. How was this the “victory of the Korean nation”? The US military administration kept collaborationists in posts. This outcome resonated in narratives on liberation and the results of WWII. Anti-North Korean propaganda distorts the North’s information on the liberation, as if the Soviet Army has been fully blotted out of photos, which Osmolov deeply regrets.

Osmolov explains that at the outset of the DPRK, the role of the Soviet Army was strongly underscored everywhere. Respect continued even in the Yeltsin era, when relations fell to almost zero, and wreaths were laid annually at the monument, as was still done by Kim Jong-un in 2021. Similar monuments are found in other regions. Toward the 1970s, Kim Il-sung changed the narrative to give the partisans the decisive role, but it would be incorrect to see that as an omission of Russia’s role in liberation. The memorial in honor of Russian soldiers stands, and the museum for the victory in the civil war of liberation (referring to wars against Japan and the US aggression) has a third-floor hall of internationalists with portraits of Soviet fighters and Chinese volunteers. This gives room for flexibility: excursions for Koreans to the first and second floors, for Russians to the third. DPRK textbooks cover the victory of the Soviet Union over fascism, not overlooking the heroism and bravery of the Soviet people. Although the Soviet declaration of war against Japan is briefly noted, the decisive contribution to Japan’s capitulation and the liberation of Korea is deemed the work of Kim Il-sung. Nothing is said about the participation of Soviet soldiers in the liberation. “We can only hope that because of improved bilateral ties, coverage will be more realistic,” Osmolov adds. Koreans, North and South, know almost nothing about the Soviet victory over fascist Germany. Yet the more serious omission is by the South in its views of history.

Osmolov explains that most South Koreans’ view of the US is not about the end of WWII, when the US did nothing for the victory over Japan in Korea, but over the Korean War. They ignore the Soviet factor in the liberation of Korea, asserting in textbooks that the Soviet Union hurriedly declared war on Japan to seize territory and to have the right to participate in the postwar peace settlement. He repudiates that, saying the Soviet Army did the job. He adds that Yoon Suk-yeol’s assertion that with independence began the occupation of the northern half by forces of communist totalitarianism is misleading, as if first came some sort of liberation without the Soviets. The leadership of a temporary government in the South under Kim Gu, who supported a unified country, was also slighted by Yoon since this group was excluded in 1948 from the creation of the ROK.

At the October 10, 2025, 80th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of North Korea, Russia was well represented, as was China. Dmitry Medvedev stood with Kim Jong-un and Li Qiang. As the third parade in 2025 in honor of events in 1945, it confirmed the historical significance of that year for Russia, not only as a force in Europe but also as a power that reshaped Asia.

A.V. Torkunov, G.D. Toloraya, and I.V. D’iachkov explained that Russia has consistently tried to increase its role in Korean affairs after its leverage dwindled in the 1990s. When the “Turn to the East” became the focus in the mid-2010s, it had to promote its regional interests and coordination within the Russia-China-US triangle, in which Russia is the weakest partner. The Korean issue is an Asian problem where Russia’s position is comparatively advantageous.
Since the late 19th century, Russia has been a major stakeholder in Korean affairs, at times capable of exercising critical influence on them. The current crisis over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs once again is raising Russia’s profile on the Korean Peninsula, ending a period when Moscow had been labeled “the forgotten player.” While most observers focus on Sino-Russian relations, Russian authors showcase Korea as well in their comeback story.

Russian Views of Chinese History: Turning Points in the 1990s to 2010s

Rather than stick to blaming Chinese politics for the Sino-Soviet dispute, Russians looked back to the entire history of China to identify distortions of the prescribed stages of history.  In the 1970s, they discerned deviations at each stage of China’s development. History was an indispensable tool for analyzing international relations. Silencing the diatribes warning of “Maoism without Mao,” Russian leaders from 1982 grasped for a new narrative on China.

The rediscovery of China proceeded in earnest after the normalization of relations in 1989. To a remarkable degree, it was coordinated with Chinese historians, setting aside vindictive language with an eye to keeping bilateral relations moving forward. When demagogic local leaders tried to revive talk of Chinese recidivism and territorial designs based on historical reasoning, they were silenced. The focus was shifting to constructing a shared narrative.

After two decades of intense criticism of China. Russian authors reverted to praising the Chinese Communist Party, recalling a golden age of Sino-Soviet relations in the initial Cold War period. This about-face depended on three factors: (1) the narrow, ideological basis of the critique of China as a rival for communist legitimacy, which concern disappeared in the 1990s; (2) the “yellow peril” emotionalism of China’s territorial and demographic threat, which faded, in stages, over the 1990s, as Beijing took reassuring measures; and (3) the positive appeal of agreeing with China’s reassertion of a “Cold War” worldview linked to shared thinking prior to the 1960s. Russia’s turnabout was gaining ground in the mid-1990s, accelerated under Vladimir Putin’s leadership in the 2000s, and became irreversible with the Putin-Xi consensus from the mid-2010s. The 70th anniversary commemoration of 2015 solidified their consensus, and the 80th anniversaries in both capitals in 2025 glorified it.

After the mixed messaging of the Yeltsin era and the comprehensive backlash against Gorbachev confirmed by Putin, Russian national identity reverted to praise of the order built through seventy years of communist rule. It grew defensive over authoritarianism and the foreign policy record from Stalin through Brezhnev. The national identity gap with China closed precipitously. They shared an image of the United States and the West as consistent enemies of the Soviet Union and China under communist rule. Disagreements between leaders, which had been amplified during the Sino-Soviet split, now seemed secondary. They could be erased from history or easily downplayed in favor of a common cause and a shared threat to their political order, social system, and, as reported, their very civilization.

China eased the way for Russia to narrow the historical gap by advancing the view that the two giants of socialism were inseparable cases of one model of transformation. However much this idea was challenged in the 1980s in obscure Chinese publications and through the 2010s in the informed analyses of Chinese historians critical of the shortcomings that had led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Chinese orthodoxy increasingly suppressed the historical details as threatening to the legitimacy of their own communist rule. As Putin saw such critiques of the Soviet system—even Stalinism—in a similar vein, there was nothing in the way of forging a consensus on history, setting aside inconvenient episodes of the past.

Returning to the presidency with a polarized worldview and finding in China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, a similar obsession with history, Putin found common cause in constructing a worldview glorifying Stalin’s success, demonizing the West, and heralding ties to China. The three pillars of this shared history were the revolutionary movement, the victory in World War II, and the close alliance from 1949, exemplified by camaraderie in the Korean War. As Sino-Russian coordination on the narrative about the end of WWII intensified, Russia in 2020 officially aligned its date for the victory over Japan with China’s, shifting to September 3 from September 2, while attaching greater significance to this final point in the war.

The two sides agreed on key points about the period 1945-55: each had been instrumental in victory in 1945 at great cost and deserved the fruits of victory, assumed to have been promised by the United States; each was targeted by US containment policies responsible for the Cold War; the Korean War was a heroic victory that stopped US expansionism aimed at them as well as North Korea; and Japan had been rightly suppressed without a military, which served as a cornerstone of the postwar order. It was as if, after an interval of forty to fifty years, Beijing and Moscow could just pick up where their relations had been in 1955.

Anniversaries of 1945 and statements related to Japan and the Korean Peninsula offered an ideal opportunity to set aside the interlude of the Sino-Soviet split and the nasty rhetoric on Tsarist imperialism, Han chauvinism, and Chinese revanchism. Leaders looked back to the golden age of cooperation, pointedly warning of the shared determination of their two states to avert a revival of Naziism (Ukraine), militarism (Japan), and fascism more broadly.

To write negatively about traditional socialism in the other country, as if it stood in the way of reform and international cooperation, came to be seen as a stain on one’s own system. To dwell on criticisms of the other state in the pre-socialist era was seen as complicating current relations and best kept in Chinese museums closed to foreigners or in private chats in Russia. Commenting on rival regional aspirations with historical references was left to oblique wording or silenced altogether. Anniversaries other than those of 1945 could pose a challenge: the 100th-year commemoration of the October Revolution paralyzed the Chinese response, as Russia was wary of it, and the Soviet Union was not recognized as a model despite not being criticized; the 160th year of the founding of Vladivostok drew some unwanted attention in China as an unnecessary provocation. Consensus was clearer on the Korean War, the resistance to “peaceful evolution,” and Japan’s illegitimate revival.

Recent history in East Asia draws Russia closer to China. Both sides oppose rhetoric on the “Indo-Pacific” region as conducive to containment. Both have drawn the line against deep scholarship on the past, which results in so-called “historical nihilism.” The debate on the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Stalinist system demonstrates considerable overlap, even if the subject of Maoism and China from 1955 to the 1980s does not, despite careful, joint archival research, much of which has been tightly limited to internal publications.

Conclusion

As Moscow struggled with how to escape from the dogmatic narrative about foreign policy and history that had contributed to a pariah status in much of East Asia by the early 1980s, revelations breaking through decades of censorship began to impact bilateral relations. In the wake of Gorbachev’s “new thinking,” eye-opening articles about Japan, South Korea, North Korea, and China accompanied a new outlook on the US role in Asia. Through the 1990s and even into the 2010s, these breakthroughs in public awareness were buttressed by solid historical analyses. Nonetheless, they were increasingly overwhelmed by views that reinforced old stereotypes and historical distortions. “Old thinking” easily prevailed. The exception was China, where a sharp about-face occurred, reverting to the 1950s.

We can trace the return of “old thinking” toward the Northeast Asia region across four stages: From 1992 and gathering pace in the second half of the decade there was a backlash against loss of status in the region: the audacity of Japan’s challenge to the narrative of the Soviet victory in WWII; the exclusion of Russia from diplomacy over North Korea despite perceptions it had liberated the peninsula and cemented its place there; and the development of APEC without Russia as if its geography and history there matter not at all. Both the search for the “Russian idea” and the fear of losing the Russian Far East drove a different narrative, centered on historical rights. Ironically, the country earlier viewed as the primary challenger to those rights, China became the leading backer of Russia’s rights.

The second stage of reconstructing history in Northeast Asia saw a hardening of views of Japan from 2002 as diplomacy failed, a shift toward North Korea in the diplomacy underway, a warmer embrace of China as a partner versus the United States and its allies, and a Cold War outlook toward the United States. Putin led the way in reviving views from the Soviet era. Yet, the targets of criticism saw the situation as still fluid, not a Soviet mindset.

After Putin returned to the presidency and announced his “Turn to the East,” ambiguity remained, as writings on history were slow to draw foreign interest. Only after the assault on Crimea and eastern Ukraine, followed by a shift in the “Turn to the East” favoring both China and North Korea, did the historical foundation of Russia’s new policies become clearer. In 2015, the third stage of historical revisionism was manifest at the 70th anniversary commemoration, when Russia and China showed that they were on the same wavelength and Kim Jong-un was expected to make an appearance, reinforcing historical friendship.

Finally, after the full-scale Ukraine war began in 2022, the full scope of Russia’s historical mindset came into view, most fully revealed in the 2025 commemorations in Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang. If this could not be labeled the revival of the communist bloc, it could be understood as the revival of the victors in 1945 across continental Northeast Asia. Solidified through the Korean War, they opposed US involvement there, South Korea’s call for reunification on its terms, and Japan’s alliance with the US or return as a political power.

With the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 leading to strong sanctions from Japan and South Korea, Russia’s rhetoric on its war-related history acquired a more ominous tone.
Russia is a critical barrier to attempts to overturn the results of WWII in Asia, too. The struggle over historical narratives plays an important role in international relations. In calling today’s struggle the “war against fascism,” Russians specifically link the two eras.