Russia's Century of Revolutions: Parties, People, Places. Studies Presented in Honor of Alexander Rabinowitch

A Usable Past: Soviet Film and Post-Soviet Cultural Memory on the Russian-Language Internet

Russia’s Century of Revolutions: Parties, People, Places. Studies Presented in Honor of Alexander Rabinowitch. Michael S. Melancon and Donald J. Raleigh, eds. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers, 2012, 195–220.       A Usable Past: Soviet Film and Post-Soviet Cultural Memory on the Russian-Language Internet Sudha Rajagopalan In   Russia,   ever   since   the   internet   has   become   pervasive,   remembering   and   making   sense   of   history   have   become   everyday   preoccupations   outside   the   ambit   of   official   record-­‐‑keeping.   This   essay   explores   the   contemporary   cul– tural  memory  of  Soviet  cinema  in  the  new  digital  heritage  sites  and  spaces  of   the  Russian-­‐‑language  internet  or  Runet.  Here  individual  and  public  memory   intersect  and  are  negotiated  on  sites  created  for  the  purpose  of  remembering   and  commemorating  Soviet  cinema.  The  technological  affordances  of  digital   interfaces  (i.e.,  what  digital  media  makes  possible,  such  as  user  interactivity   and   access)   allow   the   expression   of   individual   memories   that   challenge   or   reinforce  predominant  public  memory  of  this  cinema.  Remembering  what  is   of  value  in  Soviet  cinema  is  a  means  to  reclaim  and  reconstruct  what  it  meant   to  be  Soviet  or  what  it  means  to  be  a  Russian  who  has  inherited  that  cinematic   legacy.     On  internet  sites,  those  who  frequent  and  write  posts  cherish  the  cinema   of  the  Soviet  era  not  only  for  its  artistic  accomplishments,  but  also  as  a  histor-­‐‑ ical  artifact  and  as  a  mnemonic  device  that  triggers  remembrances.  Cinema   memory  is  rarely  ever  about  film  as  text.  Rather,  remembering  films  becomes   a   pretext   to   reminisce   about   corresponding   aspects   of   everyday   life.1   Simi-­‐‑ larly,  the  memory  of  Soviet  cinema  on  these  sites,  embodied  in  hundreds  of   posts,  represents  a  register  of  four  aspects  of  Soviet  life:  of  Soviet  places  and   time;   of   events   as   they   happened   and   people   as   they   acted;   of   an   aesthetic   cultural  regime;  and  finally,  of  emotions  associated  with  cinema  of  that  age.   In  the  process,  remembering  Soviet  cinema  becomes  a  manner  in  which  inter-­‐‑ net   users   can   conditionally   and   selectively   sculpt   new   understandings   and   renewed  appreciation  for  a  contested  period  in  their  history,  as  they  attempt   to   create   a   “usable   past”;   that   is,   new   interpretations   of   the   past   that   allow   them  to  accommodate  some,  if  not  all,  features  of  Soviet  life  as  a  legacy  that  is   worthy  of  pride  and  emulation.   Implicit  in  this  analysis  of  cinema  memory  is  the  understanding  that  cul-­‐‑ tural  memory  is  a  practice,  a  discursive  process  in  which  the  past  is  continu-­‐‑                                                                                                                           1  Annette  Kuhn,  An  Everyday  Magic:  Cinema  and  Cultural  Memory  (London:  I.  B.  Taurus   Publishers,  2002);  and  Sudha  Rajagopalan,  Indian  Films  in  Soviet  Cinemas:  The  Culture  of   Movie-­‐‑going  after  Stalin  (Bloomington:  Indiana  University  Press,  2009).   196 SUDHA RAJAGOPALAN ously  revisited  and  reconstructed  in  a  manner  that  links  it  to  the  present.  Cul-­‐‑ tural   memory   draws   on   history,   personal   memory,   and   social   memory   (the   collective  body  of  memories  that  represents  a  society’s  understanding  of  its   past)   as   well   as   ideas   received   through   other   media.   In   this   sense,   cultural   memory  is  neither  a  finite  body  of  ideas  nor  is  it  passively  born  and  passed   on,  but  actively  performed.  In  the  age  of  digital  media,  this  performance  or   articulation  of  cultural  memory  happens  routinely  in  digital  sites  of  memori-­‐‑ alization,  such  as  social  networks,  blogs,  and  archiving  sites,  set  up  with  the   goal   of   sharing   narrative   memories   of   a   cultural   object   or   phenomenon—in   this  case,  cinema.   There   has   been   a   wealth   of   work   analyzing   the   reason   for   the   memory   boom,  or  the  surge  in  interest  in  memory  projects,  that  pervades  our  societies   today.  Marxist  cultural  critique  at  the  end  of  the  twentieth  century  suggests   that  the  age  of  rapid  technological  advances  and  instant  gratification  in  the   spaces   of   entertainment   and   consumption   have   made   history   all   but   disap-­‐‑ pear;  in  other  words,  it  has  become  simply  irrelevant  to  our  public  debates.   “Our   entire   contemporary   social   system   has   little   by   little   begun   to   lose   its   capacity  to  retain  its  own  past,”  claims  social  theorist  Frederic  Jameson,  attrib-­‐‑ uting  this  historical  amnesia  to  modern  media.2  Conversely,  in  this  age  that   appears  to  have  no  place  for  history,  we  are  witnessing  the  memory  boom  or   a  fever  of  remembering  and  revisiting  the  past,  facilitated  by  the  pervasion  of   digital  media.  Literary  scholar  Andreas  Huyssen,  who  has  written  extensively   on  memory  and  history  at  the  turn  of  the  twentieth  century,  considered  mod-­‐‑ ern  culture  to  be  “terminally  ill  with  amnesia”  and  suggests  that  the  current   memory  fever  that  has  us  commemorating,  re-­‐‑enacting,  and  reassessing  eve-­‐‑ rything   is   a   reaction   to   this   pervasive   amnesia...