Dancing on Bones, a Conversation with Katie Stallard

This week, journalist and former foreign correspondent Katie Stallard joins the NüVoices podcast in a special, live stream recording to celebrate the launch of her new book Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia and North Korea. Katie discusses her writing and research process, the significance and perspectives of WWII within these three authoritarian countries, and her analysis of Russia's current invasion of Ukraine. Joanna Chiu, NüVoices founder and board member, moderates this conversation. ABOUT DANCING ON BONES: "History didn't end. Democracy didn't triumph. America's leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, autocrats and populist strongmen are on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie Stallard tackles in Dancing on Bones, as she examines how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule...These three states consistently top lists of threats to US and European security, and yet the leaders of all three insist that it is their country that is threatened, rewriting history and exploiting the memory of the wars of the last century to justify their actions and shore up popular support. Since coming to power, Xi Jinping has almost doubled the length of China's World War II, Vladimir Putin has elevated the memory of the Great Patriotic War to the status of a national religion, and Kim Jong Un has invested vast sums in rebuilding war museums in his impoverished state, while those who try to challenge the official version of history are silenced and jailed. But this didn't start with Putin, Xi, and Kim, and it won't end with them. Drawing on first-hand, on-the-ground reporting, Dancing on Bones argues that if we want to understand where these three nuclear powers are heading, we must understand the stories they are telling their citizens about the past."