Launching a new theme in the 2004 first issue of Ab Imperio, we asked ourselves and our authors whether empire has memory. If one regards memory – in the broadest sense of the word – as the actualization of a personal experience of the past, is a common perception of past events in a multiethnic polity possible? Is there an alternative to destructive conflicts triggered by the legitimatization of plural memories, which co-exist, in an open or suppressed form, in the “imperial” space? To put it differently, is it possible to attain accord between remembering subjects?
On the basis of Ab Imperio’s four thematic issues in 2004, we have to concede that we cannot offer definite answers to this question; instead, we would like to suggest reformulated versions of our initial questions. The problem apparently is not whether a particular “imperial” memory exists but rather in the fact that the imperial situation with multiple versions of memory that have to coexist in a forced or voluntary symbiosis is encountered more often than the simplistically understood situation of a monolithic and mobilizing “national memory.” If we agree that the idea of only one “political subject” is a “phantasy… that is always at odds with the empirical reality of conflicting social identities and interests,”^[1] then the conflict condition between subjects of memory appears to be universal. Indeed, as a rule, one group memory is formed and preserved in the process of interaction with other group narratives of memory (dialogue/rejection) as well as in the process of an internal dialogue. It is exactly the situation of some normative version of memory’s triumph that is to be considered problematic and unique, very much like the society which functions as the only political subject and the only public sphere would require a special analysis. There has been insufficient research into mechanisms of change of universalizing narratives of memory. In principle, a monological “national memory” is exactly one of the many responses to the dilemma of imperial situation, for it is brought forth to suppress the destabilizing polyphony for the sake of one and the only version of the past.
The condition of multiple memories, in its turn, is as natural as it is dangerous and, in its extreme, destructive. Hence is the importance of institutions and practices that format the memory, first of all and above all, historiography (the dependence of the strategies of remembering on ideological and institutional factors in particular in the post-Communist societies is explored in Stefen Tröbst’s article in the Methodology section in the current issue). Moreover, the reverse side of the democratizing potential of memory which equalizes all “subjects of remembering” from the point of view of individual versions of the past and their legitimacy is the cruelty and totalitarian character of the victorious version. Whereas historians, even if only a minority among the professional community, can find common language across the barriers of memory, “rank and file” subjects of memory, especially if the latter is traumatic and divisive, are not prepared for a compromise with the past. This paradox is only too well illustrated by Ronald Suny’s reflections on the problems of Turkish-Armenian dialogue about the Genocide.
As the various articles and publications in the AI issues of this year demonstrate, memory can serve both as a potent source of intergroup conflict in the present (2/2004), and as a factor that can mobilize and unite communities (3/2004). In our present issue we are concerned with a somewhat different aspect of memory. We are looking into the situations, when altered political circumstances, disappearance of former conflicts and/or some participants in these conflicts generate memory’s adjustments.
Along with our authors, we have to admit that the most widespread and “achievable” version of the reconciliation of conflicting memories presumes a staged “dialogue of memories,” a kind of an imperial condition, where the dominant subject speaks on behalf of all participants in this dialogue. That was the process that brought back the memory of Jewish presence in Europe to the post-Holocaust European context, and we can observe similar processes in the post-Soviet space today (see interview with Jan Gross and the articles in the History section). When there remained practically no European Jews as noticeable subjects/carriers of a living collective memory, there appeared an option for constructing such a version of the Jewish past which could be painlessly inscribed into new national narratives of history and narratives of memory.
The classic German situation of “overcoming the past” testifies to similar processes: as witnesses of and participants in the war depart, a new situation, the situation of “reconciliation with the past,” augurs a different period, – those who live in today’s Germany need such a memory and such a past that would make their lives morally comfortable and dignified. On behalf of disappearing carriers of living memory of fascism, they started speaking about the intimate side of the war, about German sufferings and victims, thus making peace with the past of which they were expected to be bashful, and reinforcing the memory which had been marginalized in public consciousness and professional historiography (see N. Frei’s article). An additional impetus to these processes was given by Germany’s unification and by the search for new foundations of German nationhood.
Reconciliation with the past in the positive sense of the term means expansion of the boundaries of memory and multiplication of actual subjects and topics of the past. Quite often this leads to one’s acceptance of personal, group, or national guilt and moral – sometimes, legal and financial, as is the case with restitutions and reparations – responsibility. How realistic is a successful realization of such a project of reconciliation – not on the level of professional historiography and official policies – but on that of mass consciousness and collective memory? And in what form is this project possible apart from the “empire of memory,” for in memory as in historiography multiple versions of remembering must be subject to some single and organizing logic of the narrative, they must not disintegrate into separate stories of the past. Otherwise, the subject of memory itself disintegrates into multiple subjects and looses ability to act collectively and consciously.
This collision is illustrated by the forum on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as an object of memory and historiographic reflection: the Grand Duchy changes its historical silhouette and mythological functions depending on the paradigm in which it is remembered, the “imperial” or the “national.” The latter paradigm has its own variants associated with peculiarities of Lithuanian, Ukrainian, or Belarusian national projects.
Finally, a separate topic of this issue is the “Soviet legacy,” which often emerges as the Soviet “imperial memory.” Our authors touch on different Soviet mnemo-projects, such as the “Soviet people” (P. Varnavskii) and “nations-collaborationsists” (E.-B. Guchinova). Other articles discuss how a common Soviet past which exists today in different versions of memory necessarily unite people who had experienced it (E. Kхresaar), or explore a particular historical junction – the period of perestroika – as a moment of memory (the forum in the sociology, ethnology, and political science section section).
A separate group of texts focuses on A. D. Sakharov’s constitutional project, viewed as an attempt to overcome the Soviet past but bound by the discursive framework of that very past.
The editors thank Alexander Filiushkin for his superb organization of the forum on the Grand Duchy of Lithuania as an “imperial” locus of memory, and Johanan Petrovsky-Stern, who kindly agreed to comment on articles dedicated to the return of memory about the Jewish presence in post-Soviet Eastern Europe.

Editors of Ab Imperio:

I. Gerasimov
S. Glebov
A. Kaplunovski
M. Mogilner
A. Semyonov