Dancing on Bones is the story of how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule. History didn't end. Democracy didn't triumph. America's leading role in the world is no longer assured. Instead, authoritarian rule is on the rise, and the global order established after 1945 is under attack. This is the phenomenon Katie Stallard tackles in Dancing on Bones, probing the version of
history that leaders in China, Russia, and North Korea teach their citizens.
These three states consistently top the list of threats to the global order and US national security. All are governed by autocratic regimes. All have nuclear weapons and believe that the era of American hegemony is fading. All three share a sense of historical grievance, rooted in the wars of the
last century - specifically World War II and the Korean War - that their leaders exploit to shore up popular support at home and fuel increasingly aggressive foreign policy. Decades after the real guns fell silent, these wars rage on in China, Russia, and North Korea, reimagined in popular media,
public memorials, and patriotic education campaigns. This is not history as it was, but as the current rulers need it to be. Since coming to power in China, Xi Jinping has almost doubled the length of the war with Japan, Vladimir Putin has brought back bombastic military parades through Red Square,
and Kim Jong Un has invested vast sums in rebuilding war museums in his impoverished state, while historians who try to challenge the official line are silenced and jailed. But this didn't start with the current leaders and it won't end with them.
Drawing on first-hand, on-the-ground reporting, Dancing on Bones is the story of how the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea manipulate the past to serve the present and secure the future of authoritarian rule. 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.
Industry Reviews
"Dancing on Bones is a compelling testament to the power of history and myth in global politics. Fast-paced and insightful, Stallard's book skillfully unfolds the narratives that legitimize and drive the leaders of China, Russia, and North Korea. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand how America's competitors think." -- Peter Martin, author of China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy
"When I first arrived in England some thirty years ago, I was surprised to find that the history of the People's Republic of China, as taught at Oxford, was quite different from what we were taught at school. This book helped me to better understand why and how authoritarian leaders want to control the history of their nations. Interweaving interviews and personal stories of those challenging the official narrative and fighting for the right to preserve
individual memory, this book delivers a powerful antidote to the stereotypes and caricatures that so often dominate coverage of these countries. Deeply reported and drawing on extensive research, the result
is a nuanced and compelling account that sheds light on these consequential global powers." -- Lijia Zhang, author of Lotus and Socialism is Great!
"Through impeccable research and exhaustive reporting, Katie Stallard details how three modern-day autocrats have co-opted and corrupted-and often outright fabricated-history in their efforts to stay in power and try to gain the upper geopolitical hand. To understand how Putin, Xi, and Kim operate in the present, Stallard expertly shows how they are weaponizing the past. Essential reading." -- Anna Fifield, author of The Great Successor: The Divinely
Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un and former Beijing bureau chief for The Washington Post
"A beguiling and disturbing journey into how a new generation of authoritarian leaders distort the past to dominate the present. A powerful mix of reportage and analysis." -- Peter Pomerantsev, Senior Fellow at the SNF Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University
"An engaging account of how leaders in China, Russia and North Korea and remolded, re-tooled and retrofitted postwar history to turn it into an unforgiving bulwark of support for today's regimes. Its value lies not just in illuminating how this happened, but why it matters for the rest of the world, as the powerful and aggrieved nationalism constructed on this new historical foundation spills out into the rest of the world." -- Richard McGregor, author of
The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers
"The book is based on the author's first-hand experience as a journalist in Russia, China and North Korea, combining journalistic curiosity and scholarship to produce an interesting and readable account that avoids complex theories and jargon. Stallard's book, while offering much to specialists, is also accessible to non-specialist readers who wish to understand the popular support for the leadership of Putin, Xi and Kim." -- Ankur Yadav, Europe-Asia
Studies
"Dancing on Bones is a book about how three authoritarian states have shaped their respective historical narratives, but it also contains elements of reportage and time spent in Russia, China, and North Korea. This in-country experience lends Dancing on Bones a certain immediacy, a conversational fluency, that enlivens the text. Thus, while it operates along the same argumentative lines taken by other commercially successful or Timothy Snyder-esque
texts written for the US market-chronicling authoritarian similarities or sinews of alignment, accusing the authoritarian states of harnessing academia and repressing civil society, and sounding the alarm of a
rising colossus of misinformation in the East-Katie Stallard's book has unique aspects that make it worth reading." -- Adam Cathcart, H-Net Reviews
"In Dancing on Bones, Katie Stallard has produced a work of remarkable insight and relevance. Through meticulous analysis and evocative storytelling, she illuminates the ways in which history is co-opted to serve the interests of those in power. At once a study of authoritarian regimes and a broader meditation on the nature of historical memory, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the intersection of history, politics, and
power in the modern world." -- Nilantha Ilangamuwa, The Sri Lanka Guardian
