AIPH 30 – Shaping Public History in Russia: Forms, Places and Media
Data
2019Autore
Levinson, Kirill
Savelieva, Irina
Stepanov, Boris
Kolesnik Tsoi, Alexandra
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Public History as a discipline and as a problem field covers a wide range of issues
related to the existence of individual and collective ideas about the past, representations of
the past in media and educational practices, its political instrumentalisation, and the role of
professional historians in these processes. While Public History as a discipline appeared in
Russia just a few years ago, its practices have existed obviously for a long time. In the
2010s, attention to historical subjects in Russian public space became extremely
noticeable. Given the specifics of Soviet and modern Russian history, the past often
becomes object of close scrutiny by the authorities and increased interest on the part of
various media and the public, turning it into an instrument of political game, propaganda or
protest. Suffice it to mention the discussions around the attempt to introduce a “single
history textbook”, the installation of new monuments to significant historic figures in
different cities (the first monument to Ivan the Terrible in Orel in 2016, the monuments to
Prince Vladimir the Great in Moscow in 2016, the monument to Alexander III in Yalta in
2017, etc.), the historical films that were sponsored by the Cinema Foundation of Russia
and actively advertised in the Russian box office (Yaroslav. A Thousand Years Ago, 2010;
1812: The Ballad of Uhlans, 2012; Viking, 2016; Salyut-7, 2017, etc.).
At the same time, key actors are often not professional historians but politicians,
journalists, or civic activists. In this situation, several educational programs on Public
History have appeared in Russia over the past few years. Nevertheless, the lack of
platforms for presenting expert opinions on various issues related to history and the past is
being made up for in different ways: whether it is private initiatives to present military
history, civil actions to create museums of Stalin’s terror and repression, or spontaneous
civic actions to save memorial places. Our panel aims to understand the specifics of the
forms and practices of Public History that can be seen in contemporary Russia.