The transformation of the political use of the memory of Nazi crimes in contemporary Russia

   The article is devoted to the evolution of the policy of memory of Nazi crimes in modern Russia. The general trend of differentiation and deepening of ideas about these events in the 1990s–2010s has sharply changed in the early 2020s in the form of the assertion of the «genocide of the Soviet people» thesis. Since the 2000s, external challenges had a serious impact on the political use of Nazi crimes: attempts to fit into the emerging «pan-European» culture of memory, «wars of memory» with the Baltic states and Ukraine (since the mid-2000s), actualization of history in relations with Israel, the conflict with Ukraine (since 2014). All of this eventually led to the affirmation of a progressive (heroic) approach with a focus on the liberating role of the Red Army and the participation of Soviet citizens in the resistance against Nazi extermination policy. In part, this coincided with the establishment of institutions of historical politics in Russia and the strengthening of the significance of the memory of the Great Patriotic War as a «civil religion». For the official politics, the memory of Nazi crimes remains rather in a vivid way, emphasizing both the brutality of the enemy and the sanctity of the feat of the Soviet soldier, rather than an independent object of commemoration, allowing a discussion of the causes of such violence, questions of guilt, complicity and responsibility. However, this does not preclude the gradual development of memory infrastructure of Nazi crimes, the increase in the number of memory actors engaged, in working with it, as well as the inclusion of this topic in regional historical narratives.

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