Anti-crisis resource of memory policy in Ukraine

Abstract

The proposed article considers the politics of memory as a tool for overcoming crises in contemporary Ukrainian society. In an open information society, memory is a resource of social dialogue, which provides the construction of a conventional grand narrative, multilateral communication of different groups and segments of the population, the search for opportunities for understanding and reconciliation. There is still no general public consensus in Ukraine on the „alien”, anti-Ukrainian nature of imperial and communist power imposed from outside. Political discussions continue on the interpretation of the Russian imperial and totalitarian Soviet past between the bearers of different conflicting models of memory – neo-Soviet, national-state and liberal. In the post-Maidan period, Ukrainian society is testing a wide range of mnemonic tools of historical policy related to the realities of hybrid warfare and the need to change the emphasis in the language of memory. Decommunization has become an essential step towards the dialogic practices of commemoration and departure from the speculative verbal-symbolic arsenal of post-truth. The implementation of new accents of memory policy is organically connected with digital mobility, which provides alternative platforms of mnemonic practices and expands the possibilities of recalling, remembering, reassessing the events of the past in virtual communicative discourse. The author substantiates the thesis about the ambivalence of memory policy in Ukraine, argues that the Russian cultural and informational influence negatively affects the processes of implementation of constructive directions of memory policy in Ukraine, the establishment of national dialogue. Key words: memory policy, social dialogue, hybrid war, commemoration, postmemory, post-truth, digital mobility.