Memory of the Russian Civil War as Part of a Public Debate in the Digital Space

The article presents an empirical study of the collective memory of the Civil War in Russia based on an analysis of online comments. The purpose of the work is to describe the construction of narratives about the Civil War in a networked community. The objectives of the study include checking the applicability of the theory of cultural trauma to describe the memory of the Civil War, studying the dynamics of memory and building links between the past and the present in competing narratives. The theoretical framework of the study was the main methodological programs of modern studies of collective memory, primarily the process-relational theory of collective memory of D. Olik and the theory of cultural trauma of D. Alexander and R. Ayerman. The network community formed around the Internet newspaper "Lenta.ru" was chosen as the main object of analysis. For analysis, we took articles published from December 2016 to November 2019, and devoted to modern assessments of the events of the Civil War. The results of the study show that constructing according to the model of cultural trauma is characteristic of the anti-Soviet narrative about the Civil War. At the same time, the neo-Soviet narrative is oriented towards triumphal memory, which is manifested in the attitude toward normalizing the Civil War. Building links between the past and the future makes historical narratives part of ideological discourses that focus on contemporary politics. Memory acts as a set of codes, a common symbolic environment in which a public discussion about politics is conducted.