Strategies of construction of memory and perceptions of "Soviet factor" in countries of Eastern Europe history (by the example Czechoslovakia)

Abstract

© Serials Publications.Actuality of the problem under consideration is stipulated by the necessity of rethinking the relationships of the USSR with the countries of Eastern Europe in the postwar period. The band "velvet revolutions" and the collapse of the USSR led to the collapse of the "socialist bloc". Changes in the political sphere gave special impetus to the scientific community. The purpose of the article is to disclose the strategy of constructing memory and perceptions of the role of the "Soviet factor" in the history of Czechoslovak post-war period by the leadership of the USSR. The leading approach to the study of this problem is a problem-based approach and historical-systemic method which allows not only to identify the individual elements of the strategy of "constructing the past", but to present them as a system. The article identifies and justifies the following strategies of "constructing the past": the strategy of criticism (negative attitude to the assessments of the recent past that do not fit into the discourse, actively introduced by the Soviet leadership), the strategy of substitution (an effort to substitute the evaluation of the recent past events to assess the opposite polarity: "occupation" into "brotherly help" and "heroic sacrifice" was the ultimate action of " provocateurs' scheme"), the strategy of exporting symbols (installations of monuments of Soviet leaders, the introduction of elements of Soviet political culture and traditions, new holiday dates, which didn't exist in the Czechoslovak calendar). The article shows that they penetrated not only into the minds of top political leaders of Czechoslovakia, but in the consciousness of ordinary Czechoslovak citizens. The article can be useful for historians studying the relations of the USSR with the countries of Eastern Europe in 1940-1980-ies (primarily the Soviet-Czechoslovak relations), as well as for researchers, whose subject of study is historical memory, in particular, the mechanisms of its construction.