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Medievalism, defined as the use of medieval history to describe and interpret the present, has been seen in Western Europe primarily as a phenomenon of culture, intellectual history and commerce. However, in Eastern Europe and Russia things have been the other way round, for there, right from the start the appeal to medieval history was an important element of ethnic nationalism, and of official historical policy and memory in various systems. The phenomenon of Medievalism will be studied in this paper using the example of the history of the ancient Russian city of Pskov, which has an eventful and glorious past. The paper shows that rather than being comprehended, Pskov's early history was rather constructed, in compliance with the ideological and cultural discourses of later times. Many legends about the city came into existence over the 16th–19th centuries, but were then turned into 'real facts' in historical literature and became incarnated in places of memory (lieux de mémoire). Such places, manifesting the memory of the Middle Ages, became established from the 16th century onwards and were intensively modelled during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In modern times the Middle Ages are mobilized primarily as a period when legends of the origins of people were reified, where their origo gentis may be found. Thus, this paper argues, the mobilization of the Middle Ages acted as an element of nation-building in the Russian Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It was not before the end of 2016 that the governing elites of Russian decided how the Revolution should be remembered in the year of its 100th anniversary. According to the official line, the focal point of remembrance should be reconciliation. By the popularization of civil peace and national consolidation as dominant motifs the circles in power clearly favor a postponement of a real discussion about the revolutionary events of 1917. At the same time, there is a variety of controversial attempts in the contemporary Russian society to interpret the Revolution. The paper deals with the three most common views: the socialist, the national-conservative and the liberal one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]