The First World War anniversaries in the early Soviet period: Problems of modern scientific comprehension

Abstract

The article analyses modern researches devoted to the politics of memory and historical memory of the First World War in Soviet Russia in the 1920s-1930s, one aspect of which is the phenomenon of the “imperialist war” anniversaries. The impact of the current situation on the comprehension and overcoming of the historiographic cliché about the “forgotten war”, occurring simultaneously in the social and scientific discourses, is considered. The achievements of modern historiography in the reinterpretation of the Russian memorial culture of the interwar period are interpreted, they demonstrate more complex and multidimensional character of the remembrance of the First World War than it has been previously thought. The author characterizes historians' approaches to the evaluation of the role of anniversaries and their place in the structure of the politics of memory, research developments in the field of studying the mechanisms involved in the preparation and holding various forms of jubilee campaigns. Modern achievements in studying the anniversary discourse, its characteristic features and peculiarities with reference to the 1920s-1930s are analyzed. It is argued that the mechanisms for implementing the jubilee politics have been studied mainly in relation to the main Soviet holidays dedicated to the Revolution and the Civil War anniversaries. When it concerns the First World War, these mechanisms are far from being properly studied. Promising areas for further studying the First World War anniversaries in the context of the problems of memorial culture and Bolshevik projecting are highlighted. It is concluded that there is a need for reconstruction of mechanisms of preparation and carrying out anniversary campaigns; for clarification of specifics of “waves of memory” about the war and their impact on the nature of anniversaries; for studying forms of interaction and conflicts between memory politics and communicative memory of individuals and communities under jubilee conditions. © 2019 Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS. All rights reserved.