Savelyeva Maria Anatolyevna

The article presents an analysis of the perceptions of states belonging to the categories of “near” and “ far abroad”. The representation of the “abroad” have been examined in terms of the attractiveness, strength and assertiveness, focusing on both the rationalized assessments and fully verbalized, unconscious representations of the countries. As result of in-depth interviews and projective techniques, the research analyzed the representation of Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, the USA, Germany, India, China, Brazil, and Turkey formed in the minds of the respondents. The study shows an unequal perception of these countries, which is infl uenced by a complex set of factors. For countries associated with the “near abroad”, a signifi cant set of factors shaping the perception of the respondents is associated with personal experience, such as living in the specifi c country in the past, or elements of self-identifi cation, such as ethnic, confessional and ethnocultural values. On the other hand, for the perception of countries associated with the “ far-abroad”, important factors are the mutual agreements between the states, the established set of ethnocultural stereotypes, the nature of foreign policy relations and the personal experience of relations with people of the specifi c foreign country. Finally, the perception of both categories, “near” and “ far abroad”, is also infl uenced by the media. Overall, the results of the research show a high impact of the trends in bilateral relations with Russia on a public perception of the specifi c foreign country.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the semantic structure of narratives about the collapse of the Soviet Union in the context of ideological splits. The material of the analysis is Telegram as an information platform that manages media memory in modern Russia. 62 influential political Telegram channels have been identified, reflecting the main ideological positions and splits of public consciousness. Based on a combination of narrative analysis and content analysis, a conclusion is made about the competition of two large narratives about the collapse of the Soviet Union — patriotic and liberal-Westernist, each of which corresponds to a block of Telegram channels. The peculiarity of the liberal-Westernist narrative is the deconstruction of the cultural trauma of the of the Soviet Union. The patriotic narrative uniting the right and left is based on the perception of the collapse of the Soviet Union as a national trauma and a negative assessment of Gorbachev’s role. It is concluded that the tragic memory of the collapse of the Soviet Union through the mechanism of cultural trauma becomes part of the collective identity of Russian society, significantly changing it.