THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE RUSSIA’S CITIZENS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF CURRENT SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT

Analyzing the data of the long-term sociological research, the author analyses the influence of the current socio-political circumstances on the perception of historical periods and personalities by the Russia’s citizens. The author argues that despite citizens sympathize with some historical and socio-political achievements and attributes of the post-Soviet society, the Soviet period of the state’s history provides the main components of the national myth to many persons in Russia. Even the most popular present-day attributes of the national greatness, such as military successes and the annexation of Crimea, significantly concede to the achievements of the Soviet era. As it is noted under the influence of shortage of relevant examples of civil consolidation, Russians are attracted by nostalgia for the period of soviet economic stability, social order and solidarity. In the absence of a critical historical assessment and under the influence of both foreign political isolation and a fall of the living standard, many citizens used to look for the foundations of a civil community in the Soviet past, idealizing and mythologizing it.

Identity, memory, post-Soviet nostalgia, mass consciousness, historical memory