«The Immortal Regiment of Russia»: symbolic and practical changes in reproduction and interpretation of the practice in 2019–2022

   The article is devoted to the transforming practices of the movement “Immortal Regiment” and its semantic interpretation on the eve, during the period, and the first year after the coronavirus pandemic.

   The key object of analysis is the state organization «Immortal Regiment of Russia».

   Tracing the logic of memory digitalization in Russian historical politics, as well as grassroots audience commemorative requests, the author points to key changes in ways of interpreting the practice in Russia after the resolution of the European Parliament on the “Importance of European Remembrance for the Future of Europe” (2019) that approved the concept of “two totalitarianisms”. The processes of expanding the concepts of kinship, heroism and chronological boundaries of memory, visual solutions, as well as the semantic subordination of practice to the needs of Russian historical politics have led to blurring of the concept “Immortal Regiment”. In the new configuration the “Immortal Regiment” has become an umbrella concept that incorporates mass of practices of remembering the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. In addition, it has taken shape as an image of a national heritage that affirms the inviolability of Russian patriotism, heroism, sacrifice and their intergenerational continuity. Moreover, the new idea of «Immortal Regiment of Russia» blurred the heroic narrative to the limit, uniting the military feat of all generations, including the current one. By 2022, the politicization of the initially civil independent movement has reached its semantic, practical, and rhetorical apogee.