Russian and Ukrainian villages during the “Great Turning Point”: history and memory 

Irina E. Koznova, Doctor of historical sciences, associate professor, leading researcher of the sub-department of philosophy of culture, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences (building 1, 12 Goncharnaya street, Moscow, Russia), E-mail: i.koznova@mail.ru 

930.2 

DOI

10.21685/2072-3024-2021-4-10 

Background. For a long time the violent nature of collectivization was hushed up in the USSR, any mention of the hunger of 1932–1933 was prohibited. However, despite the prohibitions and censorship, the people’s memory of those years events and the repressions of the authorities was preserved. It was memory who influenced the individual and collective identity of the late Soviet and then post-Soviet society in Russia and Ukraine. This allows us to identify the key moments of memory, the interaction of its two types – communicative and cultural. Materials and methods. The main source is the memories of rural residents and townspeople-former peasants, Russian and Ukrainian citizens, as well as emigrants. They allow us to present images of the past and people’s experiences in line with socio-historical anthropology. Results. The formation of a retrospective view of the “Great Turning Point” in Russia and Ukraine is shown. Conclusions. The memory of collectivization in the Russian and Ukrainian villages has one basis, which testifies to the common fate of the peasantry, who found themselves under strong repressive pressure of the Soviet regime. The main translator of memory is family and kinship ties. In Russia, it is included in the context of the memory of the Soviet past. The “nationalization” of history in Ukraine is fixed in the memory of the hunger. 

Key words

memory, USSR, Russia, Ukraine, collectivization, dispossession, hunger 

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