SUMMARY:

In his article, Nikolay Koposov explores in great detail the process of adoption of the “memorial law” in Russia. He suggests that this legislation reveals interesting processes of political struggle in contemporary Russia that may not be visible at first sight. The author also scrutinizes the logic of the legislation’s reliance on the verdict of the Nuremberg tribunal and suggests the legal and logical collisions that result from this reliance. The article places the Russian memorial law in the context of the evolution of post-Soviet historical memory about Soviet history and in the larger context of global trends of the emergence of historical memory as a form of identity and identity struggles. The author suggests a new classification for studies of post–cold-war historical memory, which includes not only identitarian politics in the West but also the politics of history in the post-Soviet space.