The History and Politics of the Russian Federation: a War for Memory, or a War against Memory?

The term ‘wars of memory’ refers to the Russian specificity of the issues described in the West as ‘politics of history’ or the ‘politics of memory’. The historical arguments which are employed in the Russian Federation in the context of information and cultural warfare, and are identified with the war over the interpretation of history, are being used to achieve the Kremlin’s political objectives in both its domestic and external arenas: any visions which conflict with the official one are discredited as anti-Russian and falsifications of the history of Russia. This text consists of three parts. The first discusses the evolution of the problem in Russian public discourse since the collapse of the USSR; the second describes the historical-cultural standard currently operative in Russia (its pattern of assessments and historical interpretations); and the third, outlines the manifestations of the state’s involvement in implementing its specifically understood politics of memory, with particular emphasis on the role of the Russian Historical Society and Rosarkhiv. The ‘wars’ discussed in this article have become one of the systemic mechanisms for Russia’s confrontation with both the external environment and its internal opposition. The memory and historical-cultural identity as disseminated now are leading to a secondary Sovietisation of society and the mobilisation of imperial and nationalist (ethnocentric, ethnically Russian) resentments within the Russian Federation.