SUMMARY:

The author explores ways in which collective memory of the Russian civil war was constructed. In the early 1920s the Soviet state appealed to new images of the past, which later became an inalienable part of the political rhetoric. This appeal was based on the myth of the civil war and revolution as a universal instrument of mass mobilization, regime consolidation, and of manipulation of collective memory and identity. New historical images were translated to the masses through celebrations, street re-naming, recollection campaigns, as well as through a conscious falsification. As a result, a new “mnemo-landscape” emerged. According to the author, mythologizing the past was not exclusively the business of the state, it found a response among the masses and became part of the popular survival technique. The masses utilized the new myths and standards of political rhetoric in their ideological opposition to the state.