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

by Katie Stallard

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.

Russia has annexed Crimea, started a war in eastern Ukraine, and repeatedly massed troops on its borders. China has stepped up war games near Taiwan and militarized the South China Sea, while North Korea has resumed missile testing and blood-curdling threats against the United States. 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.

Genres: History, China, Politics, Nonfiction, Russia, European History, Asia

304 pages, Hardcover

Published May 2, 2022

Reviews

[Dbaguti]

Z rekomendacji: https://zawielkimmurem.net/2025/09/07...

Dodatkowo doskonały audiobook czytany przez Elizabeth Sastre.

[Inesbirrento]

DNF. Ai, mas que seca de livro!! Prometia tanto. As primeiras páginas ainda me cativaram, mas depois a autora começa num desfiar interminável de factos avulsos, sem nenhuma envergadura analítica, que me fez sentir que estava a ler uma lista de compras!  Irritou-me também a perspetiva marcadamente ideológica da autora nas poucas vezes em que saía dos factos. Como se movimentos como os que relata não pudessem passar-se num dos países do "Ocidente". Minhanossasenhora!

[Tori · Rating 2 out of 5]

For a book about rewriting history, the author sure does a lot of it. I find a lot of what they talked about interesting but it’s so clearly bent to be pro American that it’s hard to get through even the things I agree with without rolling my eyes. They talk about the pervasiveness of state radio propaganda, but were previously praising Voice of America. The book talks about history education just being patriotic education as though that’s unique to China. And she talks about the allegations of the US instigating protests as if it’s ridiculous and not something that’s widely known and declassified.

I don’t disagree with her criticism and disavowal of Russia and North Korea, but she makes her points in such a disingenuous way that it’s impossible to not take every fact she states with a heaping spoonful of salt.

[Leila Kern · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is amazing that leaders of countries want to change history to make themselves look like saviors. This is brainwashing at its utmost. My opinion of the leaders in Russia, China and North Korea was low before this book and my opinion is even lower. The United States isn’t clean either but, not the villains that these three countries teach their citizens. I am disgusted that one face is shown to the United States and another to the countries’ citizens. Why can’t we all work together? I felt that this book was an interesting, well researched book.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't learn a great deal about North Korea from this book but the parallels between Russia and China were remarkable. Especially the parts about their being ideologically adrift at certain points - in China's case, that period in between Deng's reforms and Tiananmen, and in Russia's the entire 1990s. In China's cases, this meant teaching children the "century of humiliation" narrative (a meme that's much more recent than people realize) and for Russia, it meant refusing to apologize for the past and claim the mantle of the people who saved the world from Nazism. Not a lot of good news to be found here, either, as none of the three countries appear to have given themselves ideological off-ramps for avoiding confrontation.

[Matt Conger · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author is one brave journalist. Immediate props to Katie Stallard for confronting three of the most powerful people in the world with this book. The thesis of this book is extremely compelling: these three leaders derive their power from a constant retelling of history in their countries.

This sounds a bit trite at first, as everyone knows the "history is written by the victors" expression. But the author does a commendable job focusing on a few key aspects of history to describe how the original chain of events have been (irreversibly? temporarily?) recast. The timing of this book's publication is also a bit frightening, as Moscow and Beijing are doubling down on the tactics that the author describes.

Three issues with this book prevent me from giving this 5 stars.

First, the choices of China, Russia and North Korea are a bit obvious. The author makes references in her introduction to other countries - including the US - that rewrite history to their advantage. I wish a fourth (or fifth!) country had been included in the book. I fully respect that the author is a journalist and not a historian. So the geographic scope of this book was likely limited to the countries in her professional background.

But I would have happily read this book a year later and/or paid more for it if the scope expanded to included countries a bit off the radar. Look at the Philippines. They just elected a new head of state who was the son of a prior one. And that result itself was only possible because of widespread revisionist history about life under the prior one. Or the author could have provided some counterexamples where heads of state resisted the temptation to clean up history. The author is a gifted storyteller, and so I can't help but be a bit disappointed by the fact that all of the stories were about well-known figures doing the same thing over and over.

My second criticism is more directed at the editor than the author. I did not like the organization of this book. It is mostly chronological, jumping between the three countries as their geopolitics collide. The ten chapters have a one-word title hinting at the theme of the chapter ("Memories", "Victims", "Lies", etc.). This has the effect of making the reader feel a bit lost and a bit bored ("look honey, I got to the chapter on lies!"). Considering how wild the source material is, this was a disappointment.

Lastly, there's a huge missed opportunity to showcase primary sources here. Would it have been that hard for the author to excerpt a couple paragraphs from mass market history textbooks (or even syllabi for history classes) in each of these countries? The author makes reference to things like the Cultural Revolution taking up less and less space in history textbooks. Show me, don't tell me.

By this point, an NLP algorithm looking at this would probably categorize this as a slightly/strongly negative review. That's incorrect. I really enjoyed this book. I just think the thesis is so strong and the author so gifted, that the resulting book was a bit of a disappointment. Here's hoping the author will continue to shine a light on this dark topic in future books and articles.

4 stars.

Side note: this was the third time in about a month that the concept of "nostalgia is dangerous" has come up. The first was in the context of science in The Life of the Cosmos where the author says the Standard Model in physics is so beloved that people will have nostalgia for it and not want to rip it apart when an inevitable discovery happens that challenges it. The second was an episode of South Park ("Back to the Cold War").

[Emily Nicoletta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shocking, sobering, and incredibly informative, “Dancing on Bones” isn’t by any means what I would call a bingeable book. However, it is an incredibly well-written and timely read, highlighting the danger and reality of life under some of society’s most notorious modern-day authoritarian leaders - Kim in North Korea, Xi in China, and Putin in Russia.

Transparently, I picked this up in preparation for the election. I feel it is incredibly important to stay educated and informed during what feels like the highest-stakes election cycle in recent American history. Dictatorships don’t happen overnight. Propaganda isn’t always obvious. No matter your race, religion, or beliefs, everybody’s freedom is impacted under authoritarianism. And once you have a dictator or true authoritarian government in place, it is incredibly difficult to reverse course without mass organization and/or resorting to violence.

Stay informed and learn to spot the trends between specific politicians and authoritarian/dictatorship tactics. The number of parallels I was able to draw and the amount of highlighting I did was terrifying, to say the least…

It goes without saying, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PAY ATTENTION TO THE PEOPLE POLITICIANS SURROUND THEMSELVES WITH OR TRY TO EMULATE AND DON’T SUPPORT ASPIRING DICTATORS.

“It’s a basic propaganda tactic. Promoting nationalism and patriotism helps the party. It is all for the purpose of politics.” But preventing the objective study of history, he believed, was not a patriotic act at all—just the opposite. “It stops the country from learning from history, so that it will repeat the same historical mistakes,”

“All sorts of past must constantly be in the spotlight to displace thoughts about the future and questions about the present.”

“Soviet society resembled a man who was walking backward into the future, fixated on his past.”

“The Communist Party had rewritten plenty of the country’s history. The extent of the man-made famine under Mao had been erased, as had the scale of the violence during the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen massacre. It would be more accurate to say that history and truth were whatever the leadership said they were at that moment, and no one was allowed to challenge that version of events.”

“The clause on term limits was wrapped in with popular initiatives enshrining the ‘historical truth’ of the conflict and the sanctity of the country’s war heroes, as well as banning same-sex marriage, and Putin delivered his final speech before the vote from a new war memorial. Standing beneath the twenty-five-meter-tall bronze statue of a Soviet soldier, he praised the ‘Great Victory’ and railed against those he said were trying to erase their glorious history. His pitch was less about the bright future he would deliver and more about how he would defend their sacred past.”

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

GREAT book that brings together history of 3 countries and is very relevant in geopolitics today. The 1984 quote sums up the importance of history in one sentence…”Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” -George Orwell

[Edward Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and very thought provoking!

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible & a great audiobook. Wish there were more vignettes from each region per chapter

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Insightful and well-written. Everyone needs to read this book.

[BenAbe · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."

The author opens the book with these words by George Orwell, which encapsulate the spirit of the subject explored in its pages. Every government, regardless of its nature, shares with its people a natural impulse to glorify the past. The problem lies not in this impulse but in cases where a selective (and at times partly or wholly fictional) version of history gains exclusive dominance. This monopoly suppresses or eliminates competing perspectives through an iron grip on the narrative. Such is the case with Russia, China, and North Korea (countries the author examines in depth), as she traces how each has shaped its national memory of World War II and the Korean War to meet political needs sometimes suppressing, sometimes resurrecting history depending on the moment.


Stallard takes us through the different ways and stages by which North Korea, the Soviet Union (and modern Russia), and China have chosen to remember their histories. I was particularly intrigued by the downplaying of the Soviet victory in World War II during the early postwar decades. As the author notes, Victory Day was removed as a public holiday under Stalin and regained prominence only under Brezhnev. This shift followed the dismantling of Stalin’s cult and the need for a new source of legitimacy. World War II, or the Great Patriotic War, became that source but the commemoration was highly selective. Under Brezhnev, the USSR reversed Khrushchev’s earlier openness and imposed rigid control on memory. Soldiers’ diaries were censored, alternative narratives suppressed. Gorbachev reintroduced openness, which shrank again under Putin. Today, wartime memory has been elevated into a state religion: mythical, sacred, and politically untouchable.
In North Korea, history is even more distorted. Though Kim Il-sung fought as an anti-Japanese guerrilla, the regime greatly exaggerated his role, portraying him as Korea’s liberator. In reality, Japan surrendered due to the broader Allied victory, not any Korean offensive. The same fabrication extends to the Korean War. Though the North initiated the conflict, its narrative frames it as a defensive war provoked by an American-backed South. Internal documents have kept this version, claiming the North’s first push was a counterattack. Over time, North Korea built a fully fictionalized war history, with invented battles and manufactured heroism, casting the Kim dynasty in a messianic light.
In China, the narrative took a different turn. Early Communist focus was on revolution, class struggle, and the Cultural Revolution. The “Century of Humiliation” gained prominence only after the Tiananmen Square massacre, as the Party sought to shore up declining support among youth. Patriotic education linked national pride to Party loyalty. The message was clear: before the CCP, China was weak; after it, China rose. Under Xi Jinping, this remains unchanged. Nationalism and Party loyalty are now fused: opposing the CCP is portrayed as opposing the nation itself.

For these regimes, history served as the lens through which they framed their present struggles. In times of crisis, conflict, or uncertainty, they consistently returned to the past in search of legitimacy whether by appealing to past victories with the assumption that today would be a faithful reproduction of yesterday, or by simply fabricating narratives.


I found this book to be an enjoyable and a highly informative read. a mosaic of how three different regimes and their peoples came to interpret and interact with their histories. What I appreciated most was the balanced approach: Stallard emphasizes that this appeal to the past wasn't always imposed from above. Often, there was genuine enthusiasm from the population itself whether in celebrating the Soviet victory or honoring the Chinese struggle against Japan. It was a mix of top-down framing and bottom-up acceptance. The regimes drew the boundaries of acceptable memory, but many people willingly and even eagerly embraced those boundaries and found fulfilment within them. I’ll be recommending this book because the way these nations remember themselves shapes how they justify their actions today. You can see this clearly in Russia’s war on Ukraine, China’s world view, and North Korea’s missile provocations. For the same thing that applies to people also applies to States: tell me what you believe in and I'll get an idea of your intentions.


Rating: 4/5.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had some serious bones to pick with with Kate Stallard's extreme dislike of Realism and John Mearsheimer, with her views.

But i guess she's at home at the New Statesman magazine and the Wilson Center, and i look forward to her other books.

----

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

.......
Katie Stallard is a foreign affairs journalist based in Washington, DC, and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She was previously based in Russia and China as a foreign correspondent for Sky News, where she covered conflicts, global politics, and some of the world's most repressive regimes.

[JournalsTLY]

Western styled democracy is not clean, there are hits and misses in the history of elected governments. This book tells us that non-democracy don't miss that often as it aims to re-write history in their own favour and aims to retain power even if people suffers.

This books tells of the chronological, historical ( eg Cold War) and personality factors that gave us the powerful unelected heads of states - Kim, Putin and Xi J P.

[Rhian-Emily Soulsby · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic overview of three countries, the history and how that affects current geopolitical tensions. Of particular interest to me was the North Korean section, which also discussed how their relationship with China and Russia has evolved over time Nd how they have shared history. The Chinese-North Korean history was particularly fascinating, as it went beyond 1948, and presented a long history that even I hadn't entirely known about.

[sumo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was absolutely fascinating. It traces the rise of Putin, Shi, and Kim - from WW2, which is ultimately where they derive their power. They all claim to have saved the world. It helps explain why Putin is now throwing around the accusations that his enemies are Nazis - the entire Russian (and Chinese) populous is still focused on Ww2.
Baked a few dozen cookies while listening to this one…

[L J Ingram · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great study to better understand autocracy and democracy.

[Vinayak Malik · Rating 5 out of 5]

the quote about controlling history and narratives influencing the future is the one piece that will stay with me. In the age of byte sized tiktoks this will become easier and easier.

[Gabriel Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

Very interesting overview of how three totalitarian regimes (not only them, by the way), bend and twist history to bolster their hold on power.

[Deirdre E Siegel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always find a dubious experiment is reading literature written by someone who does not
have any relevant proof of existence.
There was nothing new is this book where two of the countries have no trade deals with SUA
(States United in America).
All nations histories have been retold / rewritten since way back when,
political correctness made very sure histories were reworded so empirical
white man did not look so bigoted to the culturally, coloured, religiously,
diverse of humanity.
Thanks for history from the dark side Katie Stallard, much appreciated :-)
After three year break, I enjoyed the style and ease of the Author again,
history is written by white winners with no blood ties to the land, unless it involves China and Russia in which case,
people will be treated like slaves, beaten by the regime, starved into submission not unlike slavery rules in the SUA.