CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2021
| Author | Tulubenskaia, Anna |
|---|---|
| Title | Soviet Political Repression in Moscow Museums from the 1980s to 2020: Transformation of Museum Practices and the Public Narrative |
| Summary | The research contributes to studies in Russian historical politics related to reconsideration of Soviet political repression by introducing to the field the museum studies perspective. Focusing on the collective memory of the late 1980s – 2020 and conducting the case study on four Moscow museums, the thesis traces the transformation of public discourses on the history of repression, major projects in late-Soviet – early-21st century Russian historical politics, introduction and silencing of the memory agents, and changes brought by these shifts to the constructed historical narrative. Dividing the research into two parts: the late-1980s-2000 and 2000-2020, it argues that transformations connected to monopolization of history writing process in Putin’s Russia changed the presentation of history of repression, subscribing it to the frames of Russian protective sovereignty. Cases of the Memorial Society Museum and Sakharov’s Center Museum illustrate the characteristic memory field of the 1990s, with the narrative about Soviet repression constructed from the perspective of the human rights violations and the democratization discourse. For the 2000s, the cases of Gulag History Museum and “Russia – My History” historical park show how the government-controlled agents’ overtake of collective memory creation process changed the narrative about the repression, denying repressive policies of the late Soviet Union, generalizing the victims to create the “national victimhood” and ascribing the responsibility for repression to “the other.” |
| Supervisor | Iordachi, Constantin |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2021/tulubenskaia_anna.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2025, Central European University