Revisiting the Past: History and Historical Memory during the Leningrad Blockade

TitleRevisiting the Past: History and Historical Memory during the Leningrad Blockade
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2011
AuthorsAlexis Peri
JournalSoviet & Post-Soviet Review
Volume38
Issue2
Pagination105-129
ISSN10751262
Abstract

This article examines the everyday practices of historical reflection, recollection, and reconstruction as revealed in diaries of the Leningrad Blockade. In particular, it focuses on how Leningraders who chose to keep diaries of their experiences worked to make sense of the siege by situating it historically and comparing it to two other historical moments, the blockade of Petrograd during the Civil War and the siege of Sevastopol' during the Crimean War. Their evaluations of these historical analogies were based on a combination of personal and collective memories as well as on their understandings of state-sanctioned accounts of these events. Ultimately, these historical reflections alerted the diarists to what they came to see as the unique and incomparable aspects of Blockade.

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DOI10.1163/187633211X589097
Short TitleRevisiting the Past