PART IV

Meetings of Generations: Teaching the Young to Remember

Помните!

Через века,

через года,–

помните!

О тех,

кто уже не придет

никогда,–

помните!¹

A group of cynical young searchers for war artefacts outside modern St Petersburg is suddenly transported back through time to besieged wartime Leningrad. Their experience of the fear and hardship of soldiers in the trenches builds up cross-generational empathy and even love, which changes their moral perspective on the war. This is the fictional story-line of the film My iz budushchego (We are from the Future), 2008, drawn to my attention by eight younger interviewees, who claimed that it had influenced young people in Novorossiisk.² The film addresses the fact that some of the younger generation in Russia are becoming more diffident about the war with increasing temporal distance from historical events. At the same time the number of veterans and participants in the war is decreasing inexorably, rendering direct transmission of memory to the young less viable. Rather than letting the war myth fade into history, however, the town of Novorossiisk appears to be promoting social cohesion within the framework of a new state war cult through a series of educational measures designed to effect the successful transmission of the agreed local war myth from generation to generation.

Novorossiisk is typical of many towns across the country, where the effects of the Putin-era war cult are widely visible – indeed inescapable – in schools and on days of remembrance. This final part assesses the effectiveness of the intergenerational propagation of the war myth by an examination of the various mechanisms deployed by different social groups within the community of remembrance to educate the younger generation individually and collectively. This analysis of the relative influence of the various agencies promoting remembrance permits the construction of a hierarchical model of social interaction demonstrating the complexity of the memorial influences on society in general and young people in particular.

It is difficult to imagine the propagation of the war myth without interaction between members of the community. Different ‘frames of remembrance’ and ‘spheres of influence’ around a young citizen exist through agencies such as the state, the family and mainstream educational establishments.³ Each individual is influenced by the various overlapping social circles of which they are a member, for example in the case of young people the school, youth club, local library or their own immediate and extended family, whilst they are also influenced more remotely by national and local mass media. A spectrum of different agencies of influence, from the individual to the state, may thus be invoked, incorporating a multitude of voices often reinforcing each other, but possibly varying in their attitude to memory. Each one of these agencies may offer a slightly different reading of the war myth, but, when put together, they establish a largely coherent overall narrative. However, it has long been recognised that the individual may not realise the full influence of these groups on the shaping of communal identity or even individual memory.⁴

The education of the young in the war myth takes place both formally and informally – in educational institutions, within the family and in the wider social circle. The aim of the final three chapters is to identify the most effective means of propagation to the younger generation, those who will in the future potentially bear responsibility for further transmission of the war myth. The formative influence of older generations on the young in the propagation of historical memory through conservative and conserving institutions, such as the family or museums, is well documented in scholarship, where the normative transmission of systems of beliefs and practices is recognised as the root of social cohesion.⁵ I have observed that this is reinforced in Novorossiisk by a tendency for what I term ‘reverse propagation’, where the young transmit back the memory message to their elders, a spontaneous phenomenon which serves to consolidate and maintain the myth. In contrast, more modern influences such as the mass media and films may sometimes undermine the consistency of transmission, while a rejuvenation of the message has already been observed in ritualistic tradition.

Successful cross-generational transmission of memory depends on effective communication between generations, the opposite of any possible generation gap in society that may cause intergenerational tension and lack of understanding. In contrast to Western society, the postwar leaders of the Soviet Union vaunted the absence of a generation gap, actively encouraging ‘meetings of generations’ (vstrechi pokolenii) whereby the moral education (vospitanie) of young people was formally effected by their elders, often citing examples of wartime heroism and patriotism.⁶

Individual and collective remembrance of the war is propagated today at the confluence of generations, thanks to the renewed deployment of veterans in the vospitanie of the young alongside continuing moral and historical education by family members and teachers. The very act of transmission of the war myth serves to reinforce the identity of all citizens of Novorossiisk with respect to the Malaia zemlia campaign, linking them in a quasi-familial chain of memory to the landing troops.