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This article examines how the historical memory of World War I emerged and developed in Russia, and also compares it to how Europeans have thought about the conflict. The author argues that the politics of memory differed during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In the wake of the 1917 Revolution, Bolshevik efforts to "re-format" the memory of the Great War were part of its attempt to create a new society and new man. At the same time, the regime used it to mobilize society for the impending conflict with the 'imperialist' powers. The key actors that sought to inculcate the notion of the war with imperialism into Soviet mass consciousness were the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Communist Party, the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, and, in particular, the Red Army and Comintern. The latter two worked together to organize the major campaigns dedicated to war anniversaries, which were important both to reinforce the concept of imperialist war as well as to involve the masses in public commemorations, rituals and practices. The Soviet state also relied on organizations of war veterans to promote such commemorative practices while suppressing any alternative narratives. The article goes on to explain how, under Stalin, the government began to change the way it portrayed the Great War in the mid-1930s. And after the Second World War, Soviet politics of memory differed greatly from those in the West. In the USSR the Great Patriotic War was sacralized, while the earlier conflict remained a symbol of unjust imperialist wars. © 2021, RUDN UNiversity. All rights reserved. ; This research was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (Project № 18-18-00053 'Politics of Memory vs. Historical Memory: Napoleonic Wars and World War I in Anniversaries').

The article explores the institutional aspect of the politics of memory of World War I in Soviet Russia/ USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. The author characterizes the factors playing a special role in the politics of memory and the importance of "reformatting memory" about the war. The role of the most influential actors in the politics of memory, which played a decisive role in the adoption of the concept of "imperialist war" in mass consciousness of early Soviet society, is revealed. These major actors were the Central Committee of the RCP(b)/CPSU(b), the Red Army, and the Comintern. The specificity of activities of the Red Army and Comintern and their interaction in managing mass political campaigns on anniversaries of the war is discussed. The organizational mechanism of mass commemorations devoted to the "imperialist war" was reconstructed on the basis of archival materials of the Agitprop Central Committee of the RCP(b)/CPSU(b), the Agitpropotdel of the Political Administration of the Red Army, and the Agitprop Comintern Department. The special role of "anniversary" campaigns in promoting the concept of "imperialist war", involving the masses in public commemorations, is explored. The author analyzes the activity of state structures in creating the Associations of World War veterans, the institutionalization and ideologization of their commemorative practices, and displacement of alternative memory narratives. The article characterizes the evolution of the politics of memory andthe adjustment of the concept and change in the use of the image of war in propaganda of the mid-late 1930s. © 2020 Saint-Petersburg State University. All rights reserved. ; Russian Science Foundation, RSF: 18-18-00053 ; The research was carried out with the support of the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 18-18-00053 "Politics of memory vs historical memory: Napoleonic Wars and the First World War anniversaries").

The article analyses modern researches devoted to the politics of memory and historical memory of the First World War in Soviet Russia in the 1920s-1930s, one aspect of which is the phenomenon of the "imperialist war" anniversaries. The impact of the current situation on the comprehension and overcoming of the historiographic cliché about the "forgotten war", occurring simultaneously in the social and scientific discourses, is considered. The achievements of modern historiography in the reinterpretation of the Russian memorial culture of the interwar period are interpreted, they demonstrate more complex and multidimensional character of the remembrance of the First World War than it has been previously thought. The author characterizes historians' approaches to the evaluation of the role of anniversaries and their place in the structure of the politics of memory, research developments in the field of studying the mechanisms involved in the preparation and holding various forms of jubilee campaigns. Modern achievements in studying the anniversary discourse, its characteristic features and peculiarities with reference to the 1920s-1930s are analyzed. It is argued that the mechanisms for implementing the jubilee politics have been studied mainly in relation to the main Soviet holidays dedicated to the Revolution and the Civil War anniversaries. When it concerns the First World War, these mechanisms are far from being properly studied. Promising areas for further studying the First World War anniversaries in the context of the problems of memorial culture and Bolshevik projecting are highlighted. It is concluded that there is a need for reconstruction of mechanisms of preparation and carrying out anniversary campaigns; for clarification of specifics of "waves of memory" about the war and their impact on the nature of anniversaries; for studying forms of interaction and conflicts between memory politics and communicative memory of individuals and communities under jubilee conditions. © 2019 Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS. All rights reserved.

The First World War is called "Great" only among the British. This circumstance underlines its enduring importance for British spiritual, political and everyday culture. The conceptualization of historical events as an act of forming cultural memory, a form of presenting a significant past and its cultural heritage is considered in this article on the basis of the methodology of memory studies and heritage studies, its new direction — critical heritage studies. Within the framework of the latter, cultural heritage is interpreted as a process of permanent rethinking and redefinition of the cultural values of the past, which includes various social actors. The influential participants in this process are researchers: culturologists, historians, literary scholars, sociologists, who not only influence collective ideas about the events of the past, but also interpret their contemporary significance. Accordingly, from a huge number of works devoted to the Great War memorialization the authors of the article focus on those that consider the interaction of various forms of memory and their influence on the evolution of the collective memory of the British; they are created in the mainstream of the historical science of culture and distinguished by a pronounced historical and anthropological approach. The article identifies several conceptual approaches in the development of the problems of the cultural heritage and the memory of the war, analyzes the achievements in a comparative study of the image of war and its evolution in the cultural memory of the British, in studying the interaction of the official and popular, collective and individual forms of war memory, general and specific features of the British and foreign traditions of memory about the First World War. It also interprets the significance of the revisionist historiography in changing the notions of the Great War heritage. © 2021 Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of RAS. All rights reserved.

This paper examines how Soviet anti-Versailles rhetoric was actively used in foreign and internal policy to legitimise Bolshevik power, train party cadres, and mobilise the masses politically. It explains that criticism of the Versailles order was an important feature of Bolshevik postrevolutionary discourse on the Great War. Soviet Russia portrayed the settlement as unjust, unstable, and leading to feverish rearmament amongst the "imperialist" powers. ; В статье анализируются проявления анти-Версальского политического курса большевиков в постреволюционный период. Показано, что анти-Версальский дискурс был нацелен на легитимацию большевистской власти, мобилизацию "трудящихся" масс, использовался в системе идеологической подготовки коммунистов внутри страны и за рубежом. Критика Версальского договора и послевоенного мирного урегулирования была важной составляющей официального большевистского дискурса о мировой "империалистической" войне, инструментом политики памяти.