Historical Memory: The Construction of Consciousness

Abstract

Historical (national) memory is considered in this article as one of the most important pillars of national identity. In addition to identifying some of the characteristic features of national, historical memory, the author shows that historical memory is influenced by two factors—the direct experience of the witnesses and participants of past events and official propaganda. As the direct witnesses of events disappear, the possibility of reconstructing and distorting historical memory increases. The ideas put forth in this article are formulated based on the historical memory of World War II in the United States, Russia, Germany, and other European countries.

Keywords:

• memory
• history
• nation
• national identity

Notes

1. M. Halbwachs, “Kollektivnaia i istoricheskaia pamiat’,” Pamiat o voine 60 let spustia. Rossia, Germaniia, Evropa (Moscow, 2005), p. 18.

2. H. Welzer, “Istoriia, pamiat’ i sovremennost’ proshlogo. Pamiat’ kak arena politicheskoi bor’by,” in Pamiat’ o voine 60 let spustia. Rossia, Germaniia, Evropa, ed. by M. Gabovich (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2005), p. 59.

3. Welzer, “Istoriia, pamiat’,” p. 55.

4. Ibid., p. 710.

5. Quoted in W. Shirer, Vzlet i padenie Tret’ego reicha [The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich] (Moscow, 1991), p. 400.

6. Welzer, “Istoriia, pamiat’,” p. 52.

7. A. Borozniak, “FRG: Volny istoricheskoi pamiati,” in Pamiat o voine 60 let spustia. Rossia, Germaniia, Evropa, p. 109.

8. Welzer, “Istoriia, pamiat’,” pp. 51–52.

9. Borozniak, “FRG: Volny istoricheskoi pamiati,” p. 111.

10. A. Werth, Rosssiia v voine 1941–1945 (Moscow: Progress, 1967), p. 657.

11. Andrey Andreevich Vlasov (1901–1946) was a Soviet Red Army general, who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. He defected to Nazi Germany in July 1942 after he lost his army participating in a military operation to lift the siege of Leningrad. Providing assistance to the Nazis, he led a so-called Russian Liberation (Vlasov) Army (infamous ROA), but at the war’s end (in early May 1945) he changed sides again and aided the Prague uprising. He was eventually trialed in Moscow for treason and hanged.—Ed.

12. Trained as a military engineer, Dmitry Mikhailovich Karbyshev (1880–1945) served as an officer of the Russian Imperial Army, eventually grown into a Red Army general. Participating in the summer of 1941 combat at the Dnieper River, he suffered from post-concussion syndrome and while unconscious was captured by the Nazis. For four years (1941–1945) he was held in concentration camps, where he actively participated and led the camp resistance movement. As a Soviet Army general, he was intimidated, coerced, and tortured, but never solicited his cooperation to the Nazis. He died in February 1945, frozen to death after being left outside the barrack in the frost while imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp Mauthausen (Austria). He became a role model of patriotism and was posthumously awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union (1946).—Ed.

13. GDR is the abbreviation for German Democratic Republic, better known as East Germany.—Ed.

14. A.G. Zdravomyslov, Nemtsy o russkikh na poroge novogo tysiacheletiia. Besedy v Germanii: 22 ekspertnykh interv’iu c predstaviteliami nemetskoi intellektual’noi elity o Rossii—ee nastoiashchem, proshlom i budushchem—kontent-analiz i kommentarii (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2003.), pp. 516–17. It is interesting how little has been invented by our own homegrown “debunkers” of the Soviet interpretation of World War II. They mainly repeat what the Germans have said in defense of their crimes, that is, they are working toward the purification of the historical memory of the Germans and toward discrediting the historical memory of their own people.

15. L. Gudkov, “‘Pamiat’ o voine i massovaia identichnost’ rossiian,” in Pamiat’ o voine 60 let spustia. Rossia, Germaniia, Evropa, 2005, p. 89.

16. Ferretti, Pamiat o voine 60 let spustia. Rossia, Germaniia, Evropa, p. 144–5.

17. Gudkov, Pamiat’ o voine, p. 96.

18. Ibid, p. 101. A.S. Seniavskii and E.S. Seniavskaia, Pamiat o voine 60 let spustia. Rossia, Germaniia, Evropa, p. 695.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander L. Nikiforov

Alexander Leonidovich Nikiforov, doctor of philosophical sciences, is the principal research associate in the department of social epistemology at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. E-mail: [email protected]