In the paper, an analysis is carried out on the commemorative practices of the formation of historical consciousness on the basis of studying and constructing memory about the Russian Civil War in Altai Krai (south of Western Siberia). The separation of the periods of the 1960s and 1970s–1980s is determined by the succession of generations. The sources of the research comprised the materials from the central (the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, the State Archive of the Russian Federation) and regional state archives of Novosibirsk Oblast and Altai Krai, and holdings of the museum of the Barnaul Civil Engineering College and author's field materials. As theoretic-conceptual approaches, the biographical method was used, which allowed it to reveal the traits of the Soviet man as a construct of the Soviet era, and the principle of regionalism for the analysis of anthropological aspects in particular socio-cultural conditions. In the research, the conceptual framework of the scientific field of ‘anthropology of memory’ was employed: social, historic and cultural memory, communications, and commemorations. The comparison of the social practices shows that at the first stage, owing to the veteran cause, military-revolutionary events were selected for the formation of historical consciousness. Another aspect of work was popularisation of the partisan movement through communicative channels: meetings, gala evenings, interviews, public rallies, and other collective forms of communication with rural community, youth and government. A comparison of the work of ‘fathers’ and ‘sons’ showed that the succession manifested in the strive to eternalise and popularise memory of the heroes of the Russian Civil War; translation of military-revolutionary events from social memory into cultural memory in the form of monuments and memorial places became a new tendency in the work on perpetuating the memory.

Keywords: the Civil War, social, historic and cultural memory, communications, commemorations.

 

Funding. The study was carried out within the framework of the Russian Science Foundation № 23-28-01443, https://rscf.ru/project/23-28-01443/.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Accepted: 30.05.2024

Article is published: 15.09.2024