Jour fixe Culture Studies with Dr. Aleksey Kamenskikh, JGU Mainz | online 

This lecture examines the evolution of Russia’s politics of memory from the late Soviet period to the full-scale war against Ukraine, tracing the transformation of mnemonic regimes as defined by Michael Bernhard and Jan Kubik. Drawing on the author’s first-hand experience as a member of the Memorial Society and participant in regional and national commemorative institutions until his forced emigration in 2022, the study analyses how the state’s increasing monopolisation of historical discourse prepared Russian society for large-scale aggression.

The analysis identifies three successive mnemonic regimes: a pillarised regime of the early 1990s, based on fragile consensus around human dignity; a splitted regime of 2012–2021, marked by conflict between anti-Stalinist civic actors and state “etatists”; and, following the liquidation of Memorial’s central organisations in the winter of 2021–2022 and the onset of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a unified regime criminalising mnemonic dissent. It demonstrates how the instrumentalisation of the Great Patriotic War narrative, the construction of a “myth of the Great Victory,” and the co-option of public history institutions fostered a hybrid culture of historical legitimation that merged Soviet, imperial, and neo-authoritarian elements.

The lecture argues that Russia’s present war cannot be understood without accounting for this repressive mnemonic consolidation, which transformed memory from a field of pluralistic reflection into a mechanism of ideological mobilisation. It concludes with reflections on the possibilities of continuing research and commemorative work in exile.

Chair: Ljiljana Radonić