August 1991 and the Memory of Communism in Russia

  • Rolf Fredheim
Chapter
Part of the Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies book series (PMMS)

Abstract

In this chapter I use quantitative methods to uncover how the memory of Soviet collapse has been invoked in recent Russian political discourse, in particular during the 2011–12 Russian electoral cycle. I draw on two data sources: on the one hand, I analyse patterns in half a million Russian newspaper articles, published in the period January 2003-May 2013, while on the other I explore email correspondence between members of the Russian political elite, leaked in early 2012. I analyse the data from three perspectives that allow for different levels of generalization: close readings, keyword search and through a topic model. Together these approaches show that images of Soviet collapse were downplayed in pro-Kremlin political rhetoric.

Keywords

Topic Model Latent Dirichlet Allocation Collective Memory Topic Structure Historical Analogy 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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© Rolf Fredheim 2016

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  • Rolf Fredheim

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