4 November as 4 February: Towards a History of the Recent Russian Protests

Russian version


Galina Nikiporets-Takigawa

In January 2012, in a report announcing Mikhail Prokhorov’s pledge to participate in the forthcoming demonstrations on 4 February, Gazeta.ru made a meaningful mistake: ‘The presidential candidate, who attended a rally of those protesting the results of the Gosduma elections, has promised to take part in the next rally, scheduled for 4 November’ (Gazeta.ru). A blogger immediately commented in a LiveJournal post entitled ‘4 November or 4 February?’: ‘Yesterday Gazeta.ru wrote that Mikhail Prokhorov had “promised to take part in the next rally, scheduled for 4 November”. – “They’ve confused him with Naval’nyi…” the civic activist Oleg Kozlovskii pointed out on Twitter… 4 November… is the day when the “Russian Marches” take place…’(igiss).

On New Media, Memory and Identity in Russia by Vera Zvereva

Russia has now become the European leader in terms of the number of internet users. ComScore statistics from September 2011 indicate that there are currently around 50.8 million internet users, i.e. unique visitors aged 15 and above, in Russia. In other words, roughly one third of Russians now use the internet.

Memory Work and Civil Society

Memory Work and Civil Society, CRASSH, University of Cambridge, 5 December 2011.

In a paper given at Memory at War’s ‘Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe’ conference in July 2011, Jay Winter outlined the important role of memory in bolstering the growing discourse of human rights in post-war Europe. Undoubtedly, in both Western and Eastern Europe, the attention to memory, versus traditionally authority-centred History, was of huge importance in re-evaluating a continent left in ruins by World War II. The cultivation of memory-based human rights discourse has, as Winter pointed out, been carried out to a large degree by activists operating in the sphere of civil society. Such individuals and groups existed in both Western and Eastern Europe, but the challenges they faced were quite different. In the West, the processes of uncovering and preserving the memories of the atrocities of the war, particularly the Holocaust, were central to official discourse and the basis of the creation of unity in Europe. In the Soviet Union and its satellite states, such groups were decidedly anti-official: memory, whether of those repressed by the state, or of alternative versions of the war, was a key element of resistance against communist ideology. With the fall of communism, such groups did not disappear, but came into the open, grew and developed. Today these movements function as influential non-governmental organisations, continuing to preserve memory and, in many cases, cultivate civil society. A number of these groups gathered in Cambridge in December 2011 to exchange experience with one another, with analogous groups from Western Europe, and with academics at the at the workshop ‘Memory Work and Civil Society’, organised by the East European Memory Studies research group, based at Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH).

(De)constructing a national memory – the presence of the past in post-independence Ukrainian literature.

Також не пишу я про гуннів, про готів,
Ані про манкуртів, ні про яничарів,
Ані про Батурин, ані про Почаїв,
Ні про Калнишевського, ні про Мазепу.
Варю собі каву. Читаю газету.
Ходжу до клозету. Ходжу до театру.

I don’t write about Huns or Goths,
Nor about Mankurts nor Janissaries,
Nor about Baturyn nor Pochaiv,
Nor about Kalnyshevskyi, nor Mazepa.
I make myself coffee. I read the paper.
I go to the loo. I go to the theatre.
Oleksandr Irvanets’

Ukrainian literature has always contained within itself the imperative to remember. The very title of the foundation stone of Ukrainian literature, Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar, alludes to the traditional bard, who would record and retell significant events. The narrator in his Haidamaky thanks his forebears for passing on the heroic story of the warrior Cossacks, and fulfils the same duty himself. Time and again Shevchenko urges his readers to ‘read’ and ‘study’ their past. This is nothing unusual, of course: literature, as incorporated into nation-building projects, has always played a key role with regard to cultural memory, propagating and retelling national myths, commemorating triumph and tragedy, forging a vision of the past to be shared by the readers of a particular linguistic/ethnic community. Literature maps out the national memory, allowing consecutive generations to find their place within the nation, and their nation’s rightful, independent place in the world. This is especially significant in the Ukrainian context: the production and institutionalisation of a national history was, for most of Ukraine’s history, impossible, or at least, extremely difficult. It was left to literature to preserve the past. Hence Haidamaky, Ivan Franko’s Zakhar Berkut, Lesia Ukrainka’s Boiarynia, Bohan Lepkyi’s Mazepa, Lina Kostenko’s Marusia Churai, to give a few examples.

Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe Conference Report by Simon Lewis

The “Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe” conference, which took place at King’s College, Cambridge on July 4^th and 5^th, gathered scholars from institutions in eight different countries, and was divided into seven panels. The last panel was followed by a round-table discussion involving all of the speakers and guests.

Post-Soviet Digital Memories in the Fjords

Memory at War's Bergen team looks back on an inspiring project conference. 'Post-socialist digital memories' were the topic of a 3-day Web Wars gathering in the Norwegian fjords of 22 European/Australian media experts, (literary & cultural) historians, linguists, sociologists, political scientists, and psychologists. In what proved to be a fruitful "experimental laboratory" (Vera Zvereva) of digital research methods and approaches, participants pondered how the socialist experience is mediated online.

This blog is not the place for an exhaustive summary - but it is the place for some snapshots:

* According to London/Sydney-based media scholar Anna Reading, "the globital memory field" annihilated Roma's erasure from the (Central-)European past.

* "How" - MAW project leader Alexander Etkind asked - "to quantify the distinctions between cultural amnesia, nostalgia, and melancholia" in post-Soviet society?

* Harvard's Mapping the Russian Blogosphere project boasts ample mistakes, according to London-based linguist-cum-IT-expert Galina Nikiporets-Takigawa.

* Volodymyr Kulyk, political scientist at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, spotted "thousands of history-related groups" and "discussions that last for years" on the Ukrainian Facebook pendant Vkontakte.

* Do post-Soviet online media increase "options to emulate transnational community for the service of national goals?" cultural historian & Helsinki MAW partner Jussi Lassila mused.

* Doreen Spoerer-Wagner, political scientist at Zurich's NCCR democracy institute, spotted a "much higher conflict visibility" of the Georgian-Russian clash in online than in offline media sources.

* Future of Russian project leader and Bergen-based linguist Ingunn Lunde observed how in online comments on Soviet language culture, "the flow of memory results" in another flow: that of language.

These are, as said, mere glimpses into the digital genres and geopolitical territories that passed in review. For more elaborate reports, keep an eye on the academic journals Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie and Digital Icons - both (near-)fully available online. Two conference reviews are in the making.

Post-Soviet Monuments to Holocaust Victims, by Andriy Portnov

On Three Monuments to Holocaust Victims:
Reflections on Victory Day (9 May)

Andriy Portnov

There was no place for ethnically or religiously marked suffering or victims in the Soviet image of the Great Patriotic War. It is precisely for this reason that the phrase ‘peaceful Soviet citizens’ was used in referring to the millions of Jews who were murdered. The Soviet deportations on ethnic grounds and on accusation of collective ‘betrayal of the Motherland’ were an absolute taboo. Also unmentionable was the fate of Soviet POWs, millions of whom died of artificial famine in Nazi concentration camps, while hundreds of thousands more survived only to find themselves later sent to Soviet camps as ‘traitors to the Motherland’.

Katyn Museum as Site of Divided Memory: Warsaw Seminar

On 22 June the Social Memory Laboratory at the Institute of Sociology, University of Warsaw, hosted a presentation by Piotr H. Kosicki (Department of History, Princeton University) A Divided Memory: A History of the Katyń Museum in Warsaw. The presentation was part of the Social Memory Laboratory’s regular ongoing seminar series.

A Georgian Perspective on Memory Conflicts

It's common to say that we have the most mobile monuments in Georgia. In fact, the statement is literally true: the government erects, removes, dismantles, blows up and relocates different statues and memorials quite frequently. Having been exposed during my first lecture as a student at the Faculty of History at Tbilisi State University to the positivist myth that "history is an exact science", I would have never imagined that eleven years later, my country would prove to be a battlefield of narratives and conflicting interpretations of past events and symbols.

Memory at War Lunch

On May 11, the Web Wars team hosts a project lunch at the University of Bergen. Team members Vera Zvereva (researcher), Maartje Gerretsen (filmmaker) and Ellen Rutten (project leader) will share project plans and first findings with local experts and project affiliates from both Slavonic and media studies.

Scholars or practitioners with an interest in the field(s) who happen to be able to join in are free to contact one of the WW team members -- for details, see the project's contact webpage.