Course Outline

Week 1 – Public history and memory studies in the contemporary Russian context: what can be said and what can be seen (Lecture)

The lecture will discuss differences between public history and memory studies: tasks that these disciplines have, the ways they work with the past, how they distinguish memory and the past. The main focus will be on the hopes, challenges and opportunities of these projects in the context of political changes in Russia in the 2010-20s.

Week 2 – Historical politics in the USSR and the post-Soviet Russia (Lecture)

The lecture will be an introduction to the broad context of key narratives of state use of the past in the late Soviet Union and Russia and their evolution. Much attention will be paid to the different research approaches to this phenomenon and the possibilities they offer for critically examining its agents and practices.

Week 3 – Holiday in Germany

Week 4 – Problematising state and society in today’s Russia: Concepts of Post-Socialist, Post-Soviet and Homo Sovieticus and their critique (Seminar)

In this seminar, we will critically discuss several concepts that are widely used to analyse society, power, and their relations, including in contemporary Russia. We will discuss what zones of tension they (re)produce, how they are criticized by contemporary researchers, and what other forms of generalization of social and historical analysis can be proposed.

Week 5 – State-Sponsored History: Education, Youth, and Ideology (Lecture)

The lecture will focus on the main areas of state-sponsored history — youth work and education. The focus will be on the Unified History Textbook and the ‘Russia — My History’ museum project. The key agents and mediators of this policy will be discussed.

Week 6 – New tools of state historical politics: “Affective management” of the past in today’s Russia (Seminar)

The seminar will discuss the concept of “affective management of history” using the example of Victory Day celebrations in Russia since the early 2010s as a fundamental event in Russian memorial policy. Special attention will be paid to the emotional involvement of participants and spectators in Victory Day celebrations.

Week 7 – Struggles against centralisation of memory: decolonial approach (Seminar)

In the seminar, we will discuss how postcolonial theory can be applied to the study of memory (and oblivion) of various ethnic groups in contemporary Russia. We will pay attention to the tensions and conflicts between central and regional narratives. As a case study, we will discuss issues of identity and memory of Yakut, the protagonist of Alexei Balabanov’s movie Kochegar.

Week 8 – Memory and heritage activism in Russia: from late Soviet initiatives to New grassroots movements (Lecture)

The lecture will focus on examining both the concepts of “memory and heritage activism” and the specifics of these phenomena in contemporary Russia. Much attention will be paid to the transformation of memory and heritage activism in the 2010s, changes in activist tactics, and discussions around new urban activism.

Week 9 – Memory activism and hidden stories: gender and queer histories in Russia (Seminar)

The seminar proposes to discuss the problem of memory activism related to gender and queer histories in Russia, which were extremely poorly represented in the Russian public sphere. After the adoption of the law banning “LGBT propaganda” in Russia, such hidden histories became even less accessible. The seminar will be focused on discourses and practices of public history, memory activism, and political journalism aimed at making these stories ‘vocal’.

Week 10 – Holiday in Germany 

Week 11 – “Web Memory Wars”: History, Propaganda, and New Media (Lecture)

The lecture will focus on the transformations that historical culture is undergoing in the context of the spread of new social media. On the one hand, the transformation of the role and strategies of historians, authorities and other agents in this process will be discussed. On the other hand, it will analyze how new media (in particular, new social media) are reshaping historical narratives, arguments, and the course of discussions in the Russian-language Internet environment.

Week 12 – Remediating the traumatic and inconvenient past in Russian social media (Seminar)

Continuing the problematization of the previous lecture, this seminar will discuss forms of rethinking the traumatic and controversial past in contemporary Russian-language social media. As a case study, we will examine the figure of Joseph Stalin emerging in Russian-language TikTok, YouTube, etc.

Week 13 – Post-Soviet nostalgia in Russian propaganda and grassroot projects (Lecture)

The lecture will focus on the problem of constructing the memory of the 1990s, which are often seen as one of the most turbulent and poorly understood periods in post-Soviet Russia, marked by severe economic and political upheaval. In the 2000s, Putin’s political narrative cemented the image of the “turbulent (or dashing) 1990s” as an era of chaos, replaced by the “stable 2000s” under his leadership. This narrative has been actively promoted for over two decades, reinforced by cultural mediators such as television, films, and social media, shaping the “collective memory” of the era. The lecture will examine both state-sponsored and grassroots ways of working with the memory of the 1990s.

Week 14 – Nostalgia for the 1990s and counter-narratives in Russian popular culture (Seminar)

The seminar will investigate contemporary Russian popular culture, especially popular music and new media, which represent efforts to shape memory and construct historical counter-narratives about the 1990s. It will propose to discuss the potential of popular culture and new media for more pluralistic memory landscapes despite increasing state control. In the seminar we will analyse several music videos of contemporary Russian musicians, both mainstream and underground, as well as current research on the topic.