The revival of the Russian Cossacks as a mechanism for the reconstruction of cultural memory
The problem of the revival of the Russian Cossacks is reviewed in the constructivist paradigm in the context of cultural memory on the material of related scientific literature, Internet resources (interviews, speeches and addresses of participants of the revival of the Cossacks, posts on their personal pages and in their communities on social media, articles on the official website of the MOKO VKO “CKV”) and the experience of the author’s participation in the Cossack restoration movemen during 2016-2020. The circumstances of the problem are determined by assigning the material to the types. These types are the concepts: the essence of cultural memory (J. Assmann); the relations of cultural memory with other forms of memory (A. Assmann); some of the main components of the specifics of the revival of the Cossacks’s contemporary memory (trauma and nostalgia, the memorial aspect of the postmodern culture, the maintenance of memory in the post-agrarian society, the “memorial boom”, the integration). Through the formulation of questions and the selection of concepts for the study of the circumstances, directions for the study of this problem are proposed. It is revealed that: the revival of the Russian Cossacks is a mechanism of the reconstruction of its cultural memory, reassembling, adapting and reactualizing it in accordance with the current state of the Cossacks and the conditions of its existence; in the process of this revival, there is a trend towards integration of the cultural memories of local Cossack communities, due to: O.V. Rvacheva noted in this connection the presence in the memory of all Cossack communities of a common actual trauma of Soviet decossackization, giving the cultural memory of the Cossacks a new common historical perspective; integration of their cultures. The problem is relevant and important as a phenomenon of the “memorial boom”, which shows the presence of an appeal to the memory of the past in the modern culture.