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ON THE QUESTION OF THE SECOND WORLD WARВ’S COMMEMORATION IN YAKUTIA (SIBERIA, RUSSIA)

S. I. Sivtseva

Abstract

The article studies some aspects of commemoration as exemplified by existing monuments, architectural objects of Yakutia devoted to the Second World War. The issue of commemoration has been studied by foreign researchers ?. Halbwachs, P. Nore, A. Megil, J.K. Olick, J. Robbins, G. Mink, L. Neumayer, E.-C. Onken, F. Martinez, K.L. Klein, A. Confino, ?. Assmann as well as by Russian scholars G. Okladnikova, E. Kandaryan, ?.I. Krasilnikova, ?.I. Miller, ?.V. Romanovskaya etc. However, there are no works on commemoration, commemorative practices applied to Yakutia. In her research, the author was guided by principles of the complex approach to the studied issue as the most important condition for the search for the historical truth while reviewing events and processes as closely connected with the certain historical environment as well as with general methods of historical analysis explained by specific features of history as the science. The author concludes that not only the government preserves and increases the historical memory but the impact of the community on its formation grows as well nowadays. And it is expressed in organization by the community of works for creation of new monuments and memorials using the non-governmental funds. The memory about the Second World War is the event that cements the multinational Russian society, and the meaning of historic sites grows for the population of Yakutia in due course as well as the urgent need in them grows too. We'd like to point out that modern monuments are different from the old ones made in the Soviet epoch. The character of almost all of modern constructions is not anonymized as they have name lists and many of them are filled by new names. And the monuments recently constructed for the non-governmental funds, such as ones to the victims of famine among the local population and to the Lithuanians forcibly displaced to Yakutia – has the somehow different message, they express the reproach to the government that allowed the tragic death of innocent people, mourning of innocently died compatriots.

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