Bekliamishev Vladimir Olegovich

The article is devoted to the description of a new segment of the memory studies problem fi eld — the study of historical analogies in political discourse. From the point of view of mnemonic research, historical analogy is an intermediate link between individual consciousness, collective ideas about the past and the pragmatics of discourse. It is considered not as a special case of “inference by analogy”, studied within the framework of formal logic, but as an element of the process of political communication, the meaning of which is determined primarily by the social context. The author examines the origins of the formation of interest in this issue in Western political science and its development in line with political linguistics, theory of international relations and political psychology. Cognitive, communicative, discursive and constructivist approaches to the study of historical analogies are distinguished. For the fi rst time, the distinction between an individual and a collective subject of historical analogy is fixed (in the fi rst case, we are talking about an analogy that is used by a decision-maker; in the second case, it is about an analogy functioning at the level of discourse, forming collectively shared images of the present or the future).

The article is devoted to the role of Russian museums in constructing collective memory of the Special Military Operation (SMO) events and the main aspects of this process. The research is based on publicly available materials on museum and exhibition projects dedicated to the SMO, as well as the results of an expert survey (n = 5) of representatives of federal museums and non-profit organizations who participated in collecting artifacts at the frontline zone as part of the work of the intermuseum group of the Ministry of Culture of Russia. During the study it was explained why museum workers were involved in creating exhibitions dedicated to the SMO, and main approaches to making exhibitions in departmental, federal and regional museums were revealed. Today’s most problematic issue is that military departmental museums posess priority access to collecting artifacts in the area of SMO. At the same time civil museums, that have more visitors and widest public, get the access on a residual basis. The difficulty also lies in the fact that small regional museums are often unable to place exhibits from SMO area in a broad historical context, as required by the guidelines developed at the federal level.

The article is devoted to a political science study of the phenomenon of medievalism — the use of images and symbols of the Middle Ages in current politics and public discourse. The authors consider medievalism as a reaction to the crisis of universalist educational narratives and analyze its role in the post-Soviet space, especially in Russia. The work argues that the political actualization of medieval images in the countries of the post-Soviet region is closely related to the processes of nation building and the wars of memory aimed at revising the general imperial and Soviet historiography. The authors identify two competing models of medievalism in present Russian public space: conservative, idealizing the domestic Middle Ages within the framework of traditional values, and liberal, using ironic images of the European Middle Ages to criticize the current political agenda and distance from the official sacralization of history. As a result, it is concluded that, despite its active use in public policy, medievalism has a limited impact on present commemorative practices.