Introduction to the Special Issue on Under Communism’s Shadow

Abstract

Perhaps no topic could be more crucial to the concept of “post-communism” than how the Soviet past is commemorated, challenged, or forgotten. The study of historical memory is often correctly tied to identity politics and nation-building. While the usable past framework is broadly applicable to all modern states, in the Russian case a degree of alarmism and negativity surrounds interpretations of how the country has managed its communist past, particularly its violent parts. A significant element to this is a teleological view of progress and the salience of the transition paradigm. In memory studies, this is manifested in the dominance of the cosmopolitan memory mode as the correct way the violent past should be commemorated. The introduction reviews the existing literature on Russia’s memory politics and highlights three limitations: (1) overemphasis on the political center and the failure to capture the diversity of regions, (2) too much focus on the supply side of memory politics, and (3) one-sided presentations of the role the Great Patriotic War plays in Russian memory politics. The introduction reviews how the special issue contributions address these limitations in the literature and shows how, taken together, they offer ideas for new research on memory studies. A case is made for how this new research agenda can better understand memory processes and how they relate to broader ideological, cultural, social, and political change in Russia.