SUMMARY:

The article treats representations of history in Russian advertisements, primarily in the television ads directed at a society lacking a common historical memory and stereotypes. Therefore Russian advertising culture is explicitly ideological and far from the standards of political correctness. The image of the “glorious Russian past” is mostly confined to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the notion of “empire.” Against this background the article interprets the search for the considerably less clear semantics of the word “Russian” in the ads. Another trend is represented by the attempts to rehabilitate the problematic Soviet period. The images referring to this period stand for stability, tradition, and genuine humanity and are opposed to the western values of individual success and rationality. The author establishes the basic dichotomy of Russian advertisement culture – between “the past as history” and “the past as memory” (which corresponds to “popular history” versus “collective memory”).