Soviet symbolism returns to Russian diplomacy

Sergei Lavrov is no stranger to making a statement. But not in a fashion sense. So, when Russia’s long-serving Foreign Minister wore a pullover jumper emblazoned with the USSR logo “CCCP” when arriving for so-called peace talks in Alaska last month with Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Lavrov tried to claim his appearance did not mean anything.

Don’t believe this “diplomatic” language for a second.

These four letters conveyed a clear and powerful message – that the political project to restore the Soviet Union, at least in territorial sway, is still very much alive in the minds of Russia’s leaders. This is the wrong-headed logic that has driven Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and earlier aggression in Georgia and elsewhere.

💬 Sergey #Lavrov’s answers to media questions, Anchorage:

We never try to anticipate the outcome of negotiations. What we do know, however, is that we have arguments we can contribute to the discussion and that our position is clear. We will present it.https://t.co/hBwFSEm9Xf pic.twitter.com/uamb1npPd4
— MFA Russia 🇷🇺 (@mfa_russia) August 15, 2025

As a scholar of Ukraine and Soviet material culture and consumption, I have studied for many years how the communist material world was created, utilised, and exploited decades later. I have learned that in a society of everyday asceticism, symbols and mundane everyday objects played a truly important role. And while the Communist ideology might be gone, Russia very much does deploy Soviet history and material culture to achieve its goals on the international arena.

Lavrov’s display was yet another example of how Russia weaponised the Soviet history and shared past of a dozen socialist republics of the former Soviet Union. Now, in 2025, into a fourth year into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, his choice of clothing seeks to emphasise that Russia claims its power over Ukraine and the whole “post-Soviet” region.

It is an extension of Putin’s speech in February 2022 just days before the invasion of Ukraine where he sought to justify the conflict with numerous (and erroneous) references to the Second World War, the legacy of the Soviet Union, and nostalgia about the pre-1991 international order. This year, as it has many times before, Moscow’s May parade became another example of how Soviet history and the myth of the shared past of the “Soviet people” were used again.

Wearing clothes with the USSR logo at such a high-level diplomatic event, even if it was rushed in planning, was intended to send a message. Sure enough, when Lavrov was asked by a journalist about the shirt, he delivered. “It’s part of our life, part of our history. It’s our homeland, which has now taken the form of the Russian Federation.” Those words, “our homeland”, particularly stuck out. For Lavrov, the display was not “an imperialism or revival of imperial thinking,” but only a part of the modern “fashion.”

Tell that to Ukrainians living with the consequences of Russia’s aggression, particularly soldiers or residents in frontline or occupied regions.

Olena Zerkal, a Ukrainian former deputy foreign minister, saw Lavrov’s choice as a message to the United States, an instrument of Soviet-type diplomacy when using extortion and pressure was a common practice. Viewed historically, it could be seen as an attempt to flatter Trump by bringing to mind grandiose allusions, such as the time during the Second World War when Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met first in Tehran in 1943 to coordinate their military strategy and open the “second front” in Europe and then in Yalta in 1945 to plan the final Nazi defeat. These meetings of the “Big Three” resulted in major decisions that determined the outcome of the war and the post-war international order.

Other commentators saw Lavrov’s fashion choice as more a symbol of weakness, that Russia has to resort to such manipulation. More importantly, we do not see such bold statements during Russia’s meetings in China. This means that Russia’s “fashion diplomacy” was more calculated than spontaneous.

But either way, it’s not a simple article of clothing. The past is being instrumentalised by the former metropole, which, more than 30 years later, still can’t accept the independent path and choices of its neighbours. It’s a further way of dismissing the cause of peace and strong security guarantees for Ukraine. It makes Russia’s true intention plain to see.