Retrospective Aspects of "Institutional Memory" in Texts of Socialist Realism

Abstract

The politics of memory is recognized as a conceptual factor in determining true national identity. Anthony Smith claims that "an ethnos cannot exist without a shared historical memory; memory is a condition for its further existence". The Soviet political elite tried to introduce the markers of socialist identity, to create a new "institutional memory", whose primary objective is to "create the meaning of the past, to spread it to the masses and society". When analyzing the aspects of the Soviet model of reality, the data of literary texts, which offer first-class material for the study of "institutional memory", are noteworthy.