Heroes and Symbols of a Specialy Military Operation: Practices of Commemoration in the Digital Environment

The article is devoted to the analysis of digital practices of commemoration of a special military operation. The material of the analysis is digital memory, concentrated in telegram channels. It is concluded that the memorialization of a special military operation in the public space is associated with the creation of images of heroes and the types of heroization are distinguished. The classical perception of heroism as extraordinary combat professionalism in a one-against-many situation dominates. A prominent place in commemoration is occupied by the non-combat heroism of martyrs (for example, Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky), with the help of which the idea of a common pantheon of heroes of the special military operation, Donbass and the Russian world is emphasized in the Russian public space. Digital practices include primarily memorial texts in blogs, as well as a range of digital artefacts, from comics to digital drawings. New forms of digital commemorations are being explored, such as the recording of military operations on video and “digital immortality”. There are different types of comments, divided according to four criteria: traditional and digital, official and unofficial.

References

Alexander, J. Smysly sotsial’noi zhizni: kul’tursotsiologiia. Moscow: Praksis, 2013.
Armstrong, J. Nations before Nationalism. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
Assman, J. Kul’turnaia pamiat’: Pis’mo, pamiat’ o proshlom i politicheskaia identichnost’ v vysokikh kul’turakh drevnosti. Moscow: Iazyki slavianskoi kul’tury, 2004.
Assmann, A. Dlinnaia ten’ proshlogo: Memorial’naia kul’tura i istoricheskaia politika, transl. B. Khlebnikov. Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2014.
Bubnov, A. Iu., and Savel’eva, M. A. “Pamiat’ o raspade SSSR v kontekste razlomov obshchestvennogo soznaniia sovremennoi Rossii (na materialakh Telegram),” Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta. Seriia 12. Politicheskie nauki, No. 6, 2022, pp. 79–97.
Giesen, B. Triumph and Trauma. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2004.
Hoskins, A. “Media, Memory, Metaphor: Remembering and the Connective Turn,” Parallax, Vol. 17, Vol. 4, 2011, pp. 19–31.
Hoskins, A. “The Mediatization of Memory,” Mediatization of Communication, ed. K. Lundby. Berlin: De Gruyter Mounton, 2014, pp. 661–679.
Mosse, G. L. Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Olick, J. “Figuratsii pamiati: protsessno-reliatsionnaia metodologiia, illiustriruemaia na primere Germanii,” transl. D. Khlevniuk, Sotsiologicheskoe obozrenie, Vol. 11, No. 1, 2012, pp. 40–78.
Olick, J. “Pamiat’ — eto ne veshch’ i ne predmet. Pamiat’ — eto nepreryvnyi protsess,” Istoricheskaia ekspertiza, No. 4, 2018, pp. 11–21.
Pavlovskii, A. F. “Vvedenie. Tsifrovye ramki kollektivnoi pamiati: Kuda vedet tsifrovoi povorot v memory studies?” Pamiat’ v seti: tsifrovoi povorot v memory studies: sbornik statei, eds. A. F. Pavlovskii, and A. I. Miller. St. Petersburg: European Universoty in St. Petersburg Press, 2023, pp. 7–48.
Reading, A. “The London Bombings: Mobile Witnessing, Mortal Bodies and Globital Timem” Memory Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3, 2011, pp. 298–311.
Smith, A. D. Myth and Memories of the Nation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Winter, J. Mesta pamiati, mesta skorbi: Pervaia mirovaia voina v kul’turnoi istorii Evropy. St. Petersburg: European Universoty in St. Petersburg Press, 2023.