Gaining certainty in our own past. Russian identity and politics of memory at a new historical fork

   The article examines changes in the Russian memory politics at the turn of the 2010s-2020s, the balance of influence of mnemonic actors, external conditions and internal modalities of the struggle for the political use of the historical past. Growing tensions and conflict potential in Russia’s relations with the collective West have now escalated into a multifactorial confrontation in which the collective identity of Russians, the key elements of the historical narrative and collective memory answering the basic questions of identity politics – who we are, where we come from and where we are going to – are being decisively challenged. The author shows that securitization is becoming the dominant trend in the politics of memory, but at the same time, the historical narrative supported by the state is far from being fully completed. The information-psychological and mnemonic struggle both in the international arena and within the country encourages the federal government to focus primarily on the causes and results of the Second World War, the circumstances of the USSR's entry into it, its decisive role in the victory over fascism, as well as the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Meanwhile, the securitization of the official historical narrative includes legislative work, e.g. amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the adoption of «memorial» laws, the tightening and expansion of the scope of legislation on «oreign agents», as well as law enforcement practice, the result of which is a change in the mnemonic actors’ configuration and balance of power. The second part of the article deals with the problems of the political use of the past in the context of the Special military operation, including the memory politics in the regions incorporated into Russian Federation based on amendments to the Constitution adopted on October 4, 2022.

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