Military Commemorations in the Educational Space of Contemporary Russia: Soviet Heritage and New Practices

The article explores the problem of transforming military commemorative practices in a contemporary Russian school with the help of a comparative analysis of Soviet practices related to the Great Patriotic War and new ways to perpetuate participants in a special military operation. There are three types of commemorative practices that updated the memory of the Great Patriotic War in the educational space of the Soviet school: nominative and organizational (renaming educational institutions, installing memorial plaques), museum and exhibition (expositions in school museums) and ceremonial (inviting veterans to conduct open lessons). Current commemorations related to the perpetuation of a special military operation rely on those symbolic practices that were developed in Soviet society. At the same time, they do not replace, but prolong existing practices, forming the interpretation of a special military operation as a logical continuation of the struggle of the Soviet people against Nazism. The difficult point of current military commemorations remains the question how memory of local conflicts (for example, the war in Afghanistan) can relate to the indicated continuity of commemorative practices as well as how to define the criteria for the selection of those characters and events that need commemoration.

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