| Abstract | This article addresses the relations between the official "politics of memory" and historical research in the Soviet Union and postcommunist Russia, with particular attention to the 1917 revolution. The myth of the Great October Socialist Revolution was the founding myth of the Soviet Union, the great myth of the establishment of a new society and a new state. Historical study of the revolution was subject to strict ideological control, but after 1956 the destalinization processes enabled certain Russian historians to write academically important works despite the continuing censorship. Paradoxically, after the demise of the Soviet Union, much less work has been done on the history of the revolution, which can partly be explained by the new "politics of memory" in contemporary Russia, linked to the quest for a new national identity. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
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