Authors

Artem Spirin¹;  ¹ University of Tromsø - The Arctic University of Norway, Norway

Discussion

The official intervention into the memory of Sandarmokh, a renowned execution site of victims of Stalinist repressions in Karelia carried out since 2016, caused heated public debate. Many commentators explicate this case as an attempt to erase the memory of Stalin’s victims caused by the increasing repressiveness of the Putin regime and its amplified ideological downslide towards Stalinism. Construing this case as a multifaceted memory conflict, the article analyzes the strategies and tools used by the state-loyal mnemonic actors to reinterpret the established representation of Sandarmokh, particularly the narrative of Finnish atrocities committed under the military occupation of 1941-1944. To inform the study’s empirical base, I plan to analyze recent book publications on this topic and interview experts from the academia and journalist community. The working hypothesis to be testified is that the Russian state’s actions in Sandarmokh are part of a broader official endeavor to make memory politics in the border regions more coherent with the patriotic and state-centric historical master narrative.