Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia, and North Korea by Katie Stallard

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'Dancing on Bones' by Katie Stallard

Mao Zedong said, “Make the past serve the present,” a mantra for dictators and wannabe dictators of many political persuasions. In Dancing on Bones, the New Statesman’s Katie Stallard reports from China, Russia and North Korea, nations whose present-day rulers have mobilized history. The aims of those dictators include distracting their public from the horrors inflicted by their predecessors and rallying their citizens around real or imagined threats from abroad.

The degree of historical fabrication varies from nation to nation. Russia really has suffered periodic invasions from the West across its history, and the Nazi assault left a deep scar that Putin has found useful by exaggerating the prominence of right-wing nationalists in Ukraine, dubbing that country’s regime as a neo-Nazi threat to Russia. China really did suffer a century of humiliation from foreign powers which Xi Jinping appears ready to redress by war if necessary. However, Kim Jong un, whose grandfather founded the dynasty that continues to misrule North Korea, inherited the utterly false narrative he continues to propagate. Contrary to his line, the U.S. and South Korea didn’t start the war that shattered the Korean Peninsula., North Korea did—and Kim’s grandfather would have been defeated if not for massive aid from China.

Stallard finished Dancing on Bones this January, as Putin massed his forces against Ukraine but just before the invasion began. Putin’s rhetoric during the present war would not have surprised her. She adds that it’s “not unusual for democratic leaders to appeal to a glorious, uncomplicated version of the past and gloss over the dark and shameful episodes of the country’s history. Nostalgia is a powerful drug,” but it becomes even more toxic when those who challenge the nostalgia are branded as traitors, “enemies of the people.”