In Search of Russian Antiquity - The “Conservative Turn” and Memory Politics in the Regions of Central Russia

This book, based on extensive first-hand research conducted between 2020 and 2024, places “Russian antiquity” in the center of analysis, and addresses memory-making in the regions. The author seeks to examine how public history is managed in Old Russian cities, who the mnemonic actors are, which narratives are institutionalized, how cultural heritage is reinterpreted, and how federal and regional historical narratives interact. How did existing approaches to the past contributed to legitimization of aggressive wars and the federal government's assumed right to arbitrarily initiate conflicts and compel citizens to participate in them? The book focuses on the period from 2012 to 2022, which saw the strengthening of personalist authoritarianism in Russia accompanied by a “conservative turn” whose roots lie in nineteenth-century nationalism. The book includes case studies of 12 regional capitals founded before 1584 (the year of Ivan the Terrible’s death, his rule marked the emergence of the centralized Russian state).