Welcome to today's discussion. My name is Glenn Dyson.

I'm joined by Alexander Mercurse from the Duran and the guest today is Jeffrey Roberts,

Emeritus Professor of History at the University of College Cork.

It's great to see you both again.

Michael and Alexander.

So our topic today will be, yeah, the use of history in politics, both authentic and, well, misrepresentation, of course.

I think a nice quote I always like is George Orwell in 1984.

He wrote, you know, who controls the past, controls the future.

I think it's a good quote outlining the imperative of using history for politics.

Well, those who controlled and historical narrative often have the ability to also influence the present and the future.

However, as we always see, manipulating history also comes at a huge cause because it will

undermines our ability to have a common understanding of the past, to live in the same reality,

and of course, we're also less able to draw on the conclusions of history to inform the present.

So I think that the use of history is especially important to understand the relations between the West and Russia,

because often it seems we do live in two very different worlds, which can have its root in two different narratives of all history.

So, yeah, I tend to see this as being very much front and center of tensions.

For example, briefly, I would just say, to understand the conflict between the West and Russia,

I often ask my students a very simple question, which everyone, you know, ideally would have the

same answer to, which is, when did the Cold War end, for example, because I often find that

whenever people say, oh, it's 1989 when Bush and Gorbachev declared

an end to the Cold War, and we reached an agreement the year after, the Charter of Paris for

a new Europe outlining inclusive European security architecture without dividing lines.

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