On The Issue of the Concept of “Regime of Memory Politics”: Methodological Analysis

Abstract

This article deals with the problems of methodological understanding of the "regime of memory politics" concept, which has recently become one of the central categories of memory studies and the subject matter for a number of foreign and domestic researchers. The purpose of the research is to present the features of the methodological analysis of regimes of memory politics developed in the works of M. Bernhard and J. Kubik, O. Yu. Malinova and D. E. Letnyakov, as well as outline the methodological framework of the author's approach to the typology of such regimes. The research methodology is based on actor-centered, narrative, discursive, and agonal approaches to the study of this concept, special attention is paid to the problem of typology of memory regimes. Some criteria used within the framework of the narrative approach in the analysis of Soviet and post-Soviet history are critically examined. An important methodological role in the process of historical concretization of the presented approaches was played by the research guidelines contained in the collective monograph "The official discourse of the Russian politics of memory on the Soviet past: Interpretation strategies, actors, commemorative practices" (Ekaterinburg, 2022). The article describes in detail such key notions of modern concepts of regimes of memory politics as mnemonic warriors, pluralists, abnegators, and prospectives; reveals the features of their configurations in hegemonic, agonal, democratic, and other memory regimes. It also defines the concept of the "state regime of memory politics", which emphasizes the dominant nature of the official power discourse setting the main trends in the ways of interpreting the past and implementing commemorative practices. In the final part of the study, the author's model of typologization of regimes of memory politics is proposed