Mikhail Yurievich Shmatov,
Educator of Russian History, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The Mobilized Past: the Memory Policy and Its Perception in Ideological Campaigns in Western Siberia (1934–1939)
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-1-11
The article is devoted to the problems of memory policy in the USSR of the second half of the 1930s. The correlation of officially broadcast ideological images of the past with the ideological attitudes of ordinary Soviet citizens has been studied on the materials of Western Siberia. Two main goals of using images of the past in the mobilization campaigns of 1934–1939 were identified: proving the regularity of the Bolsheviks’ coming to power and contrasting Soviet modernity with the pre-revolutionary past. The circle of positive and negative images of events and historical figures in Soviet propaganda is studied. It is proved that the images of progressive figures who “confirmed” the rightness of the Bolsheviks were positive; the images of “enemies” of revolutions and “working people” were negative. The main forms of using images of the past in propaganda are established: separate anniversary campaigns and secondary support of the main political campaigns. The causes of memory conflicts during the ideological influence of the population – misunderstanding, distrust, disagreement and inattention are investigated. The social, value and ideological causes of conflicts are established, their forms are considered. The conclusion is made about the forced and unstable nature of the implementation of the memory policy, about its utilitarian purpose and about the relatively weak mutual influence of the memory policy and personal images of the past in the Soviet society. The thesis is formulated about the parallel existence in the USSR society of official narratives about the past and multiple personal images of history – both national, local and family.
Publishing: 28/02/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 01.12.2021
How to cite: Shmatov M.Yu. The Mobilized Past: the Memory Policy and Its Perception in Ideological Campaigns in Western Siberia (1934–1939) // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 1 (21), pp. 116–123. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-1-11.pdf]
Links: Issue 1 2022
Keywords: Stalinism; memory politics; ideology; campaign; Western Siberia; perception