Mapping the Field of Contestation over Memory of the Soviet Past in Russia

In recent years, more scholars have been studying the memories of problematic past. The stories of victims shifted from the margins of historic politics to the core of it. The Holocaust memory became the ideal-typical case. However, it has been also noted that not all societies have dealt with their difficult past the same way as Germany (and later Europe in general) did. In some cases difficult past is silenced, in others - there is a contestation of narratives. One of such cases of contestation is contemporary Russia, where the memory of the Soviet times and, specifically, Stalin's period is still being discussed, evaluated and re-evaluated.

This paper is a part of a larger project in which I study concrete mechanics, types of agents, patterns and arenas of contestation of memory using the case of Russian memory of the Stalin’s period. In this paper, I focus on the problem of mapping out the agents of contestation, primarily social movements.

While some researchers suggest that the main contestation goes on between the state and the civic activists, I argue that the situation is more complex and nuanced. There are different social groups and movements that subscribe to a variety of versions of the past. Based on analysis of such social movements interested in promoting a certain version of history, this paper discusses methodological and theoretical issues of studying contested historic narratives.