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Although the situation with Russian archives under Vladimir Putin remains deeply frustrating in many cases, it is not as bad as commonly assumed. Russian archives have always been difficult to access, and many of the current problems continue from the Yeltsin era. Russia has yet to make an honest assessment of its history, something it must do to ensure that the past does not come back to haunt it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of photography in creating, preserving and transforming memory of state violence? The events surrounding the 'Novocherkassk massacre', the brutal suppression of a workers' demonstration in the Russian town of Novocherkassk in 1962, have been shrouded in secrecy until the fall of the USSR. Subsequent attempts by local activists to investigate the state's crimes and commemorate the victims have been only partially successful. In the meantime, numerous snapshots preserved in family archives reference the events of 1962, and create frameworks for remembering that can be actualized during a conversation over the family album. The nature of the photographic 'evidence', however, is such that it enables not only remembering and identification, but also a partial reinvention of the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the collective memory of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union and the degree to which it depends on the memory of, and nostalgia for, communist leader Joseph Stalin and the political apparatus of the Soviet Union. Topics include the 1992 trial of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), an analysis of the trial's constitutional aspects as they relate to criminality in the Soviet era, and its impact on the nostalgia for the Soviet Union.

The article discusses the ideas of remembering and forgetting in relation to attitudes towards Stalinism after the fall of the Soviet Union. According to the author, the powerful body of testimony and evidence surrounding the injustices of Soviet Union premier Joseph Stalin's regime is at odds with the Russian government's attempts to rehabilitate a version of its image. It is suggested that these two ideas could not coexist without a systematic forgetting or alteration of memory in Russian society. Topics discussed include totalitarianism, public spaces, and affective states such as terror and paranoia.

This article considers the interrelationship between a homeland and its diasporic communities from the point of view of the homeland. In particular, it examines the policies adopted by Russia and Israel toward the same group; that is, the Russian-speaking Jews who have immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union. The article demonstrates how the construction of this migrant population as diasporic community of the 'homeland' gives rise to unexpected challenges to the symbolic definition of the 'nation.' These challenges add a new perspective in this regard, rendering tenuous the claim of the nation to primordiality, constancy, and coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying a historical phenomenological approach to emotionally charged political events like the Russian Civil War can enrich understanding by adding the study of myths and images, as preserved in collective and individual historical memory, to attempts to reconstruct the facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the reasons for the insignificant role that crimes committed during communist rule play in contemporary Russia. It argues that attitudes toward the Soviet past are a matter of politics and values much more than of knowledge. While the official historical memory and master narrative are not inclined to give an objective assessment of the Soviet period, the Russian public at large also does not want to make Soviet crimes a focal point in collective remembrance. Unwillingness to admit a society's own responsibility inevitably leads to its solidarity with the undemocratic power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how Russians see their historical past and how they interpret their own and others' actions based on the analysis of current Russian historical discourse, particularly that of Joseph Stalin. It attempts to demonstrate that the forms in which Russia is trying to come into terms with its Soviet past are crucially conditioned by images that stemmed from the collective memory of the people.

The article discusses the extent of civic commitment and political culture of Estonia. According to analysts, the beginning of the 1990s saw the country face a gloomy post-authoritarian future in the shadow of its mighty neighbor, Russia. The author says that if civic commitment did not survive in this generation, Estonia's culture could have been weakened, since it would be less clear how Estonia's collective memory had formed and survived.

DESPITE THE RECENT demise of the Soviet Union, democracy is increasingly less evident in the views and actions of Russia's political elite. This is quite evident in Moscow's construction of new public monuments to glorify historical figures or in the rebuilding of monumental Church buildings destroyed during the Soviet era. Aside from the enormous cost of such building programs at a time of a widening social gulf between the haves and the have nots, these buildings and monuments are conspicuous by their ugliness and their remarkable ability to ignore the historical models which some of them are supposed to replicate. The lack of attention to public opinion and the small circle of official public artists and architects reveals both the corruption rampant in Russian society and the profoundly antidemocratic tendencies that now predominate. [Moscow, public art, politics, collective memory, contested history] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]