How Ukraine is adapting the ancient practice of trophy displays for modern propaganda

This 15th-century painting depicts Romans carrying weapons, armor and other treasures captured in battle. Andrea Mantegna via Wikimedia Commons^[9]

Trophy displays in the Modern Era

The practice continued into the modern Western world.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Napoleon led French forces to conquer and pillage other countries^[10],including Italy, he brought back stolen art along with the enemy’s weapons. His triumphal processions in Paris deliberately evoked Roman tradition. The objects were then displayed in the Louvre^[11].

The pillaging of cultural property became a feature of colonial violence^[12], filling Western museums with looted art and valuables belonging to the colonized nations. The practice is currently prohibited by international humanitarian law^[13], though that does not actually stop the pillaging^[14].

Seizing the enemy’s weapons, however, is customarily accepted^[15] as war booty. Various nations have used displays of captured enemy arms to invoke patriotism and boost morale.

As the wars and the weapons became bigger, so did the trophy exhibitions. In 1918, London’s Trafalgar Square was turned into a “wrecked village^[16]” filled with German weapons. It was a part of the promotional campaign to sell bonds to continue to pay for the ongoing conflict, later known to history as World War I. Battle trophies were one of the biggest sources of exhibition material for the British Imperial War Museum^[17] in its early days.

As I have shown in my doctoral dissertation^[18], during World War II, the Soviet Union extensively used exhibitions of trophy weapons as a propaganda tool. When the Red Army won the monthslong Battle of Moscow^[19] in January 1942 and began a counteroffensive, the retreating Nazi army left behind a large amount of weapons. The trophies then became an important feature of war-themed exhibitions across the USSR.

An exhibition in Moscow’s Gorky Park in the 1940s displayed Nazi weapons captured by the Soviet Union. Gorky Park Archive

The biggest Soviet exhibition of captured German weapons opened in Moscow’s Gorky Park on June 22, 1943^[20], the second anniversary of Germany’s invasion of Russia. The grandiose outdoor display^[21] featured German tanks, planes, cannons and other large equipment.

The exhibition conveyed two messages. First, the enemy was powerful, as evidenced by its innovative and strong equipment^[22], and victory would require everyone’s full effort. Second, though, the fact the weapons were captured demonstrated that the Red Army and the Soviet people were able to overcome and defeat the invaders.

Similar exhibitions opened in many other Soviet cities, including Leningrad, Minsk and Kyiv^[23]. The displays were dismantled by the end of the 1940s; the weapons were recycled as scrap.

A 1943 Soviet film shows vehicles and weapons captured from the Nazis.

Mocking the enemy

Since Russia first invaded the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine^[24] in 2014, Ukrainians have embraced the practice of displaying captured weapons as trophies.

In July 2014, the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War^[25] in Kyiv presented a temporary exhibition of heavy equipment captured from Russia-sponsored separatist groups. After the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine continued to use the trophy exhibitions of newly captured Russian weaponry as propaganda, seeking both domestic and international support.

In May 2022, the National Military History Museum of Ukraine opened an exhibition of recently destroyed Russian military equipment on Mykhailivs’ka Square in the Kyiv city center. The exhibition of the wreckage was meant to boost the morale of the Ukrainian people by celebrating the strength of the Ukrainian army^[26], and to humiliate the enemy^[27] by demonstrating the incompetence and moral inferiority of the Russian army and its weaponry.

A month later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to visit the exhibition^[28], along with other sights of Kyiv.

A July 22, 2022, display in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, shows off Russian weaponry destroyed and captured by Ukrainian forces. Sean Gallup via Getty Images^[29]

Gathering international support

Ukraine has used captured weapons to seek support from other former Soviet-bloc countries^[30], sending Russian trophy weapons for display in Poland^[31] and the Czech Republic^[32].

In Prague, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Denys Monastyrsky opened the exhibition of the defeated Russian tanks and other weapons on July 11, 2022. In his speech, Monastyrsky referred to the August 1968 Soviet invasion^[33] that crushed the anti-communist Prague Spring demonstrations, saying, “Russian tanks are back in Prague^[34], but this time broken, burned out by the hands of the Ukrainian warriors.”

With this ancient practice, Ukraine is showing off its might and resolve, and demonstrating its opponents’ weaknesses – boosting morale within Ukraine and bolstering support from the international community.

Authors: Anya Free, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of California, Davis

Read more https://theconversation.com/how-ukraine-is-adapting-the-ancient-practice-of-trophy-displays-for-modern-propaganda-189920

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