Old Believers as a (f)actor in the transformation of contemporary Russian historical policy and memorial culture

Abstract

The features of development and the main vectors of the transformation of historical memory of the Old Believer segment of modern Russian society are analyzed. It is shown that the Old Believer intellectuals are active in the formation of their own versions of the collective historical memory. The author analyzes the perception of community experience by Old Believer intellectuals in collective memory, constructed the concepts of "self" and "sacrifice". The grand narrative used in writing the history of the Old Believers is analyzed also. It is considered how the culture of memory of the Russian Old Believers actualizes the political and ideological contradictions of society, actualizing collective historical traumas and images of the Other in the memorial spaces. It is shown that the model of the collective memory of the Old Believers stimulates the development of the politics of memory in a religiously-centric coordinate system, where the Church itself and its figures are imagined as the main participants in the historical process, becoming objects of memorial reflection and symbolic canonization in the identity of the Old Believers.

Keywords

• old believers
• history
• collective memory
• historical memory
• historical politics
• memorial culture