SUMMARY:

Introduction to the publication of archival documents on the history of Kazan University focuses on the attempt to commemorate the bicentennial of the University by writing a historical narrative of its development. According to the authors, the history of Kazan University underwent profound ruptures and the continuity of historical narrative is impossible to achieve. Collective essays on the university history produced to commemorate the institution’s bicentennial became an object of heated debates among members of the University community, especially in the light of the struggles for the right to trace the origins of departments and chairs from the original 28 chairs founded in 1804. Especially, the text on the last decade of the University history proved to be highly controversial. There emerged a spontaneous movement to create different histories of various departments and schools within the University. The history of the University now proved that memory of the University’s communities is highly divisive.
In an attempt to write a synthetic and all-inclusive history of the University, the authors attempt to see the main focus of their work in what they identify as “the University style” or a cultural code of the University. It is this cultural code that the authors believe can be imposed upon the variety of sources and materials in order to help create a narrative of the University history. The University is further treated as a place of memory, while different aspects of the self-representation of the University community are reconstructed on different levels of the cultural code. The authors explore instances of “forgetting”, whereby particular events, perceived as shameful within the cultural code, have been obscured and removed from the University’s past. Given the University location as the easternmost institution of higher learning, the authors discuss orientalist tropes in the cultural code of the school. They also explore memory of women in the University. Discussing the structure of memory, the authors note its asymmetric character: the pre-1917 period is characterized by the proliferation of memoirs, whereas the Soviet period is dominated by official documents. Nevertheless, during the Soviet period memoirs of the University graduates were collected through a librarian’s initiative and the authors make use of these materials to discuss the role of the University in the progressive narrative of the making of Soviet personality. The authors further discuss different places of memory of the University, including the figure of the rector and various personalities associated with the school (including that of V. I. Lenin), and commemorating practices (monuments and museums) on the University campus.