Which History Matters? Surveying Russian Youth and Their Understandings of the Past Félix Krawatzek Centre for East European and International Studies, Berlin, Germany ABSTRACT To what extent do elite narratives about history shape what citizens make of the past? This article focuses on young Russians’ understanding of history and provides insights into the effects of memory politics in authoritarian settings. The research uses original survey data of urban youth and demon- strates that the regime successfully determines what events are considered important. However, con- flicts over their interpretation persist, particularly with regard to less emotionally charged signifiers and those to which respondents can relate personally. Given low variation by age, I suggest that we observe a period effect upon historical memory, rather than a generational effect. Introduction The political elite in today’s Russia takes great interest in the kinds of historical narratives that prevail across the country. 1 To this end, the patriotic education of youth and the strength- ening of its spiritual and moral foundation have been center stage for quite some time. Indeed, Olga Vasilyeva, the current minister of education, is valued for her historical work on the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the state. Meanwhile, she maintains decidedly pro-Stalinist views, arguing for instance that Joseph Stalin was a blessing because he revived the unity of the nation and its national heroes, and protected the Russian language and culture. She also cites American patriotic education as an inspiration for her ideas on school curricula that are aimed at fostering spiritual values among the young. 2 At the same time, Vasilyeva maintains close personal ties to the Russian Orthodox Church. A blend of conservative historical patriotism and religiosity charac- terizes the tone set by the educational institutions. The ideo- logically inflected teaching of history is a central component of today’s education in Russia, and is accompanied by larger society-wide initiatives such as the multimedia park “Russia— My History,” 3 or legal shifts such as a law prescribing how to interpret the Red Army’s role in the Great Patriotic War (Koposov 2017; Soroka and Krawatzek 2019). These prominent historical narratives created by the elite raise the question of the extent to which they are actually work- ing their way into citizens’ minds. Great resources are being allocated to shaping the reception of history and there is little public contestation of these narratives in Russia. To what degree do citizens themselves reiterate elite historical narratives and consider them as being pertinent for understanding their past? This article addresses this question of whether elite-driven initia- tives to shape memory penetrate citizens’ worldviews, thus shifting the focus away from existing scholarship’s prevailing emphasis upon the cultural production that stems from elites themselves. This alternative perspective enables us to gain a richer understanding of how citizens experience and interpret life in authoritarian settings, for while it is important to under- stand the interpretive “offer” provided by the elites, it seems equally important to understand what a country’s population actually makes of such narratives. Unfortunately, this bottom-up perspective remains underexplored, due to the difficulty of assessing in a representative way something as subtle as histor- ical memory. My research centers specifically on young people, who have been a focal point of the regime’s attempts to ideologi- cally shape Russian citizenry, particularly since the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004 (Krawatzek 2018). I rely on origi- nal survey data gathered in April 2018 among Russians aged 16–34, living in the country’s 15 largest cities. The question- naire includes a set of questions designed to draw out parti- cipants’ historical narratives in their own words, which this article examines. I argue that in important ways, the prevail- ing memories found across the country reflect the elite’s interpretive offer when it comes to the mnemonic signifiers themselves. However, a diversity of opinion surrounds less emotionally charged historical signifiers, such as the Revolution of 1917, and those to which respondents are able to relate via direct experience, such as the collapse of the USSR. Given the wide age range of the sample, I argue that we observe a period effect, as the variation within the sample is markedly low, rather than a generational effect, which one might expect to wash out over time. Conceptually, this article understands memory—assessed empirically through individual interpretations of a historical signifier—as a phenomenon that conveys the intersections CONTACT Félix Krawatzek felix.krawatzek@zois-berlin.de Centre for East European and International Studies, Mohrenstraße 60, Berlin 10117, Germany. This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. PROBLEMS OF POST-COMMUNISM https://doi.org/10.1080/10758216.2020.1753081 © 2020 The Author. Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.