‘We must teach the carriers of this bitter memory to speak’: Russian War Veterans and Narrating Russia’s Post-Soviet Conflicts

Julie Fedor, University of Melbourne

What is the role played by collective memories and narratives of recent wars in Russian society, and how are these formed? In this lecture, Julie Fedor will examine a number of initiatives aimed at re-shaping the narratives of Russia’s recent and current wars with a focus on the experiences of veterans, including state-sponsored projects aimed at fostering the production of war prose and poetry and elevating the status of veterans in society.

Julie Fedor is Associate Professor in History with the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne. She has published extensively on memory and authoritarianism in post-Soviet Russia, as well as on the history of the Soviet state security services. Fedor is General Editor of the Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society (JSPPS), Journal of Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society - Zeitschriften (ibidem.eu).

For online attendance, please use this link.

The lecture is organized within the framework of the research project Memory Politics of the North 1993–2023 | UiT and the research group The Presence of the Past: Peoples, Politics and the Uses of History in the High North (PrePast) | UiT.

All welcome!