Abstract
The article is devoted to the analysis of how two large narratives describing the historical and cultural heritage of the Northwest Caucasus — Kuban and Adygean — use strategies of memory and oblivion. Individual and collective memory (social memory, political memory) are not only in a mental relationship with oblivion — they jointly determine the rhythms of our consciousness. Moreover, it is not remembrance, but oblivion that serves as the main modus of life for man and society. Forgetting is a general name for a significant number of strategies aimed at silence, concealment, erasure, rewriting, loss. But oblivion also makes possible the incomplete concealment of the past, its return to individual and collective memory (Ricoeur). It is very important to understand not only how memory works and remembering occurs, but also how oblivion shapes our historical memory. Turning to oblivion is inevitable with historical trauma, which splits the memory of the victors and the vanquished. Classics of the theory of historical memory note that the vanquished write history better than the victors: their historiography turns out to be more complex and meaningful. The statist, official narrative objectifies the event in such a way that its course is described correctly, but the meaning and context are completely ignored. The historical trauma of 1864 turned out to be stronger than the structures of imposed political memory. The presence of a strong common experience caused by war and ethnic cleansing unites people more than triumphs and borders (Renan, Assmann). The Kuban historical and cultural heritage is formed through direct operations of concealment and ignoring, which give rise to the mythology of a wasteland or terra nulius. The modern memory policy should not be in open conflict with history (as a field of scientific knowledge) and must provide a prominent place for local and group histories in general history.
Published Version
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