Historia provinciae: журнал региональной истории (Sep 2022)
Academic anatomy of the memory of “The City of Russian Glory”. Review of Volkov, E.V., N.S. Zhuravleva, and I.V. Sibiryakov. “Leningrada chernomorskii brat”: Sevastopol' v sovetskoi kul'turnoi pamyati: monografiya [“Leningrad’s Black Sea brother”: Sevastopol in Soviet cultural memory]. Chelyabinsk: Izdatel'skii tsentr YuUrGU, 2021. (In Russian)
Abstract
The monograph under review is a successful attempt to reconstruct the place of Sevastopol in the cultural memory of the Soviet period by means of in-depth analysis of the system of discourse related to the history of this city, “places of memory,” and commemorative practices (with special attention to the celebration of historical anniversaries). The authors managed to create a holistic image of how the main stages in the history of the “City of Russian Glory” together with the related narratives and personalities were included in the general context of the Soviet politics of history and are presented in the collective consciousness. To achieve the purpose of the study, they gave a detailed description of numerous memorial constructions, museum expositions, works of fine art, musical works, scientific and popular-science literature, memoirs and fiction, theatrical productions, documentaries and feature films – all the things that determined general visual and discourse content of the collective memory of the past in the context of the 20th century. The monograph under review is of great significance for Russian memory studies and is recommended to those who are interested in the history of Sevastopol and engaged in memory studies, new cultural history, symbolic policy, and discourse studies. At the same time, despite the variety of the topics raised and the depth of the analysis conducted, there remains a broad heuristic field for new studies devoted to the legendary “City of Russian Glory” in domestic memorial culture and historical memory.
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