I. Kolonitskij B.

Predictable Past in an Unpredictable Future? The Anniversary of the Revolution, the Politics of Memory and Cultural Memory in Contemporary Russia

Authors

I. Kolonitskij B.

Keywords:

Российская революция 1917 года, Russian revolution, 1917, World war 1, anniversaries, historical memory, the politics of memory, cultural memory, communicative memory, cultural memory and historiography.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the contemporary Russian politics of memory. Author demonstrates how existing cultural memory of the First World war and the Revolution of 1917 limits different projects of the politics of memory. Therefore we can expect that the anniversary of 2017 would be used by different political actors for their own political agenda. There is no chances for real national conciliation as far as the memory of revolution is concerned. At the same time contradicting memory project share same interpretation tools: many political actors view the Revolution of 1917 (and the phenomenon of revolution) as a result of conspiracy. At this stage we can’t expect that community of historians could influence the cultural memory.

Predictable Past in an Unpredictable Future? The Anniversary of the Revolution, the Politics of Memory and Cultural Memory in Contemporary Russia