Sergey Aleksandrovich Krasilnikov,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
History and Memory in the Context of Political Interests
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-1-1
In the Soviet era, the authorities tried to construct an identity for society based on ideology, while sacrificing the rest of the basic identities (ethnic, confessional, cultural, settlement/community, family). This resulted in formation of the phenomenon of ‘chopped off’, deformed historical and social memory. The next round of the search for an identity uniting society prompted the post-Soviet authorities to use the potential of the historical past through “memory management” (state policy of historical memory). Historians are now being given an “order” not so much for a proven, as for a “glorious” version of historical past, which implies the use of “memory erasure” technologies and the imposition of memory standards. There is a contradiction between the nature and goal-setting of social memory and scientific reflection on the past (“history” is historical knowledge, “memory” is based on values). “Historical memory” is the applied application of historical knowledge, the movement of history towards the demands and requirements of social memory; in a narrow and instrumental sense, it is the involvement and responsibility of professional historians for the formation and transformation of all types of memory. Coverage of the historical process should imply and take into account the presence of three components in it – state-centric, socio-centric and personality-centric. The social function of a historian to a large extent consists in reviving interest in the civic aspects of the past and thereby helping to fill the deficit of their identity by various communities and personalities. An important and potentially very productive field is competent professional interaction with carriers and keepers of social / cultural memory in the field of collecting oral memories, their adequate fixation, preservation and popularization of the latter.
Publishing: 28/02/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 01.12.2021
How to cite: Krasilnikov S.A. History and Memory in the Context of Political Interests // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 1 (21), pp. 9–21. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-1-01.pdf]
Links: Issue 1 2022
Keywords: history, scientific reflection, social memory, state policy of memory, political interests