Myths and Reality of Collective Memory

Collective memory is an essential element of public consciousness, shaping the attitude to the past. The narratives of collective memory are created under the influence of a number of factors: sociopolitical context, information flows, group communication, individual experiences. Political actors compete in the struggle for collective memory, conduct commemoration: select episodes, reconstruct the past, create simplified mythological images of events. Commemoration is always a political process, based on ideological principles that serve to legitimize the political regime. Conductors of commemoration are mnemonic actors who compete among themselves and use various channels of public communication. A special role in the formation of the trace in the memory belongs to the media, the information flows produced by them. The information impact is primarily on the surface level of public consciousness, the communicative layer of memory, forms new mythological images. The narratives of the cultural layer of memory, the value level of consciousness are much more stable and resistant to the effects of mnemonic actors.