Memory Politics and Collective Narratives in Contemporary Russia

The orchestration of collective memory in Russia has emerged as a central field of statecraft and cultural contestation. At its core, memory politics entails the deliberate shaping of past events—especially those of the Soviet era and the Second World War—to foster a cohesive national identity and to legitimise current power structures. Official narratives draw on monumental rituals, curated museum exhibitions and mass media to interlink the “Great Patriotic War” with contemporary military endeavours, collapsing historical distance and inviting citizens to partake in a continuous story of endurance and triumph. Simultaneously, grassroots actors, dissident historians and civil‐society groups seek to challenge or diversify these representations through alternative exhibitions, public art interventions and digital archives. These competing narratives negotiate questions of culpability, victimhood and heroism, transforming historical sites and symbols into arenas of political engagement. The global resonance of these debates underscores the importance of Russia’s memory politics for wider studies of authoritarian memory regimes, the dynamics of historical legitimacy and the resilience of collective identity under contested conditions.

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Memory Politics and Collective Narratives in Contemporary Russia publication trend

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Technical terms

Memory politics: The strategic use of historical narratives, symbols and commemorative practices by state or non‐state actors to influence collective identity and political legitimacy.

Collective narrative: An overarching story or framework that a society shares about its past, integrating multiple events and perspectives into a coherent sense of communal purpose.

Temporal modality: The manner in which past, present and future are connected within a narrative, ranging from strict historical distance to total collapse into a continuous temporal flow.

References

1. The temporality of memory politics: An analysis of Russian state media narratives on the war in Ukraine. British Journal of Sociology (2024).
2. Eclipsing Stalin: The GULAG History Museum in Moscow as a Manifestation of Russia’s Official Memory of Soviet Repression. Problems of Post-Communism (2021).
3. National patriotic day parade: the politics of historical memory and reconstruction of the russian identity during putin era. Cogent Arts and Humanities (2021).