Why digital memory studies should not overlook Eastern Europe's memory wars

Ellen Rutten

pp. 219-231

in: Uilleam Blacker, Alexander Etkind, Julie Fedor (eds), Memory and theory in Eastern Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Abstract

In both Russia and Ukraine, millions of Internet users engage in virtual, combat-like quests for "what really happened" in Soviet history. Embracing digital discourses of hostility and nationalism,¹ they endlessly debate conflicting memories of the countries' "chosen traumas"² in blogs, Twitter, and on other social media. Using digital memory—the name commonly given to commemorative practices as they are mediated online—as the guiding tool, this chapter tackles war-like memory practices in Russian and Ukrainian new media, focusing in particular on social networking sites. Eastern Europe is a geopolitical territory where cultural memory is particularly important and volatile, and its ongoing memory wars and their important subcategory, web wars, deserve thorough study.