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.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Arutunyan, A., 2009. The Media in Russia. Maidenhead: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill.
Becker, J., 2004. Lessons from Russia: A neo-authoritarian media system, European Journal of Communication, 19, pp. 139–63.
Blei, D. M., 2012. Probabilistic topic models, Communications of the ACM, 55, pp. 77–84.
Bullough, O., 2014. Vladimir Putin: The rebuilding of ‘Soviet’ Russia, BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26769481 (accessed 10 April 2014).
Bykov, D., 2006. Puti istorii neispovedimy, Nezavisimaia Gazeta, http://www.ng.ru/ng_exlibris/2006-08-17/2_19aug.html (accessed 23 March 2014).
’Dorogim chitateliam ot dorogoi redaktsii.’ 2014. http://lenta.ru/info/posts/statement/(accessed 20 March 2014).
Dyck, A., Volchkova, N. and Zingales, L., 2008. The corporate governance role of the media: Evidence from Russia, Journal of Finance, 63, pp. 1093–1135, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6261.2008.01353.x.
Elder, M., 2012. Polishing Putin: Hacked emails suggest dirty tricks by Russian youth group, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/feb/07/putin-hacked-emails-russian-nashi (accessed 7 October 2014).
Etkind, A., 2013. Mourning and melancholia in Putin’s Russia: An essay in mnemonics. In Fedor, J., Rutten, E. and Zvereva, V. V. eds, Memory, Conflict and New Media: Web Wars in Post-Soviet States. London: Routledge, pp. 32–47.
Gehlbach, S. and Sonin, K., 2014. Government Control of the Media. Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Available at http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract = 1315882 (accessed 17 May 2014).
Gessen, M., 2012. The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Granta Books.
Halbwachs, M., 1950. The Collective Memory. New York: Harper and Row.
’Iz materialov aktsii “Sviaznoi Prezidenta”.’ 2007. Polit.ru, http://polit.ru/article/2007/03/30/svaznoj/(accessed 8 December 2014).
Jarausch, K. H. and Geyer, M., 2003. Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories. Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Jockers, M. L., 2013. Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kansteiner, W., 2002. Finding meaning in memory: A methodological critique of collective memory studies. History and Theory, 41(2), pp. 179–197.
Klishin, I., 2014. Maksimal’nyi retvit: Laiki na Zapad, Vedomosti, http://www.vedomosti.ru/newspaper/articles/2014/05/21/lajki-na-zapad (accessed 29 September 2014).
Kratasjuk, E., 2006. Construction of ‘reality’ in Russian mass media news on television and on the internet. In Schmidt, H., Teubener, K., and Konradova, J. Control+ Shift. Public and Private Usages of the Russian Internet. Norderstedt: BOD-Verlag, pp. 34–50.
Ledeneva, A. V., 2013. Can Russia Modernise?: Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lipman, M., 2005. Constrained or irrelevant: The media in Putin’s Russia, Current History, 104, pp. 319–24.
Marina-nashi@yandex.ru. 2007. ‘tekst ot Vasiliia’, Slivmail.org (accessed 12 March 2014).
Medialogia, 2013. Federal’nye SMI — mai 2013, http://www.mlg.ru/ratings/federal_media/2500/2013/5/.
Milov, V., 2009. Putina est’ kem zamenit, Gazeta.ru, http://www.gazeta.ru/column/milov/2938068.shtml (accessed 24 March 2014).
Mostovshchikov, Y., 2012. ‘4 fevralia 1990-go: kak progibali vlast’’, New Times, http://www.newtimes.ru/articles/detail/49020 (accessed 24 March 2014).
‘Ne dai nam bog doiti do sobytii 1991 ili 1993 goda!’, 2012. Komsomol’skaia Pravda, http://www.kp.ru/daily/25822/2799703/(accessed 29 September 2014).
Nelson, R. K., 2011. Mining the dispatch, Mining the Dispatch, http://dsl.richmond.edu/dispatch/pages/about (accessed 13 January 2013).
Oates, S., 2013. Revolution Stalled: The Political Limits of the Internet in the Post-Soviet Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pasti, S., 2005. Two generations of contemporary Russian journalists. European Journal of Communication 20(2), pp. 89–115.
Pasti, S., Chernysh, M. and Svitich, L., 2012. Russian journalists and their profession. In Weaver, D. H. and Willnat, L. eds, The Global Journalist in the 21st Century. London: Routledge, pp. 267–82.
Popular Memory Group, 2011. Popular memory: Theory, politics, method. In Olick, J. K., Vinitzky-Seroussi, V. and Levy, D. eds, The Collective Memory Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 254–61.
’Putche prezhnego’, 2011. Grani.ru, http://grani.ru/Politics/Russia/activism/m.190864.html (accessed 2 March 2014).
Reddaway, P. and Glinski, D., 2000. The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracy. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.
’Rossiiskie provaidery blokiruiut dostup k “Graniam”, Kasparov.ru, i EJ.ru.’ 2014. Grani.ru, http://grani.ru/Society/Media/Freepress/m.226645.html (accessed 14 May 2014).
Sakwa, R., 2011. The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism and the Medvedev Succession. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, B. M., 2013. Words alone: Dismantling topic models in the humanities, Journal of Digital Humanities, http://journalofdigitalhumanities.org/2-1/words-alone-by-benjamin-m-schmidt/(accessed 24 November 2013).
Seddon, M., 2014. Documents show how Russia’s troll army hit America, BuzzFeed, http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/documents-show-how-russias -troll-army-hit-america (accessed 29 August 2014).
’Shestvie 4 fevraliia 1990 v Moskve i drugie mitingi 1990.’ 2011. YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= b5-fOxwn-hg (accessed 16 May 2014).
Stalin, I. V., 1923. Zakliuchitel’noe slovo po organizatsionnomu otchetu TsK na XII s”ezde RKP(b) 19 Aprelia 1923 g., Marxists.org, http://www.marxists.org/russkij/stalin/t5/concluding_word.htm (accessed 25 April 2014).
Szostek, J., 2014. Russia in the News of its Neighbours: Cross-Border Media Influence in Ukraine and Belarus. University of Oxford.
Toepfl, F., 2011. Managing public outrage: Power, scandal, and new media in contemporary Russia, New Media & Society, 13, pp. 1301–19.
Traynor, I., 2000. KGB veteran says Putin’s rule is return to Soviet Era, The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/24/russia.iantraynor (accessed 10 April 2014).
Underwood, T., 2012. Topic modeling made just simple enough, The Stone and the Shell, http://tedunderwood.com/2012/04/07/topic-modeling-made-just-simple -enough/(accessed 8 November 2013).
van Dijck, J., 2007. Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Yao, L., Mimno, D. and McCallum, A., 2009. Efficient methods for topic model inference on streaming document collections, Proceedings of the 15th ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, pp. 937–46, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id= 1557121 (accessed 7 January 2014).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 Rolf Fredheim
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fredheim, R. (2016). August 1991 and the Memory of Communism in Russia. In: Hajek, A., Lohmeier, C., Pentzold, C. (eds) Memory in a Mediated World. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137470126_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137470126_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-56640-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-47012-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)