2020/08/14 by Frederick C. Corney · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Psychology · #Soviet and Russian History #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration #Balkans: History, Politics, Society
paper · doi:10.1002/9781118620878.ch33
openalex publication_date 2020/08/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
The article draws upon nineteenth century thinkers and novelists who helped reconceptualize the idea of revolution as a necessary iconoclastic break with the past on the road to transforming the very fabric of society. It examines the rise of the secular metanarratives that helped fuel these reconceptualizations of the individual and the state and transformed notions of individual and collective memory and identity. It also looks at constructive and destructive aspects of the creation of a mythicized memory of revolution in Russia in the twentieth century as a new foundation event for the Soviet State. Revolutionary romanticism is a persistent motif here. The article examines commemorative practices in Soviet Russia not just as the province of the state but as the practice of individuals and groups as well. It also looks at the role of constructed memory among those who took part in the successive waves of emigration abroad. It finally charts how the romanticist revolutionary narrative was ultimately eclipsed by the new mythicization processes of the Great Patriotic War, and largely disappeared into oblivion with successive generations of post-Soviet citizens.