ERIC Number: EJ1314062
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2021-Mar
Pages: 20
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-2041-6938
EISSN: N/A
Memory Makers of the Great Patriotic War: Curator Agency and Visitor Participation in Soviet War Museums during Stalinism
Hasselmann, Anne E.
Journal of Educational Media, Memory and Society, v13 n1 p13-32 Mar 2021
In the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Soviet museum curators began to establish a museal depiction of the war. This article analyzes these early beginnings of Soviet war commemoration and the curtailing of its surprising heterogeneity in late Stalinism. Historical research has largely ignored the impact of Soviet museum workers ("muzeishchiki") on the evolution of Russian war memory. Archival material from the Red Army Museum, now renamed the Central Museum of the Armed Forces, in Moscow and the Belarus Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War in Minsk documents the unfolding of locally specific war exhibitions which stand in stark contrast to the later homogenized official Soviet war narrative. Yet war memory was not created unilaterally by the curators. Visitors also participated in its making, as the museum guestbooks demonstrate. As "sites of commemoration and learning," early Soviet war exhibitions reveal the agency of the "muzeishchiki" and the involvement of the visitors in the "small events" of memory creation.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, World History, War, History Instruction, Museums, Archives, Exhibits
Berghahn Journals. 20 Jay Street Suite 512, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Tel: 212-233-6004; Fax: 212-233-6007; e-mail: journals@berghahnbooks.com; Web site: http://www.journals.berghahnbooks.com
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Russia
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A