Commemorating 1917 in Russia: Ambivalent State History Policy and the Church’s Conquest of the History Market Marlene Laruelle Pages 249-267 | Received 19 Feb 2018, Accepted 18 Jul 2018, Published online: 15 Jan 2019 Abstract Russia’s historical policy towards the centenary of 1917 was composed of several parallel strategies: diminishing the meaning of the event to avoid the head of state and other government figures having to take a stance; outsourcing commemorative events, with no pre-planned grand design; developing a reconciliatory narrative of the ‘Whites’ and the ‘Reds’; and allowing other actors to promote a plurality of contradictory readings of the events. Yet the space left by the state’s refusal to commemorate 1917 has been taken over by the Church, which, as today’s most active engineer of Russia’s historical policy, promoted a very clear pro-Tsarist narrative best embodied by the multimedia historical park ‘Russia—my history’ (Rossiya—moya istoriya). Purchase Full Article Online References 1. Berg, E . (2017) ‘Vystavku pod patronazhem episkopa Tikhona predlozhili izuchat’ shkol’nikam i studentam. Istoriki nazyvaiyut ee “propagandistskoi igrushkoi”’, Meduza, 11 December, available at: https://meduza.io/feature/2017/12/11/vystavku-pod- patronazhem-episkopa-tihona-predlozhili-izuchat-shkolnikam-i-studentam-istoriki- nazyvayut-ee-propagandistskoy-igrushkoy, accessed 10 November 2018. [Google Scholar] 2. Brundstedt, J . (2011) Forging a Common Glory: Soviet Remembrance of the Second World War and the Limits of Russian Nationalism, 1960–1991, PhD dissertation (Oxford, University of Oxford). [Google Scholar] 3. Fedor, J. , Kangaspuro, M. , Lassila, J. & Zhurzhenko, T . (2017) War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (London & New York, NY, Palgrave MacMillan). [Crossref], [Google Scholar] 4. Gudkov, L . (2004) Negativnaya identichnost’. Stati 1997–2002 gg (Moscow, NLO). [Google Scholar] 5. Gusman, M . (2017) ‘Sergei Naryshkin: revolyutsionnye sobytiya 1917 goda bol’she ne raskalyvayut obshchestvo’, TASS, 7 November, available at: http://tass.ru/opinions/interviews/4699298, accessed 10 November 2018. [Google Scholar]