More Shades of Grey
Notes on the Russia Memory Monitor
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In its “Memory Monitor 2023”, the Levada Centre examines historical awareness within Russian public opinion. The data provides insight into how Russia’s culture of remembrance has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the picture of history and society in Russia that author duo Lev Gudkov and Nataliia Zorkaia paints, is too strongly outlined in black and white. In fact, there are more shades of grey. You can only recognize them, however, if you take note of the counter-public sphere in Russia, which still exists to this day despite censorship and propaganda, and which is committed to a pluralistic view of history and efforts to come to terms with the past.
(Osteuropa 5/2024, pp. 139–146)