MILITARY COMMEMORATIVE PRACTICES AS A COMPONENT OF THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE ABOUT SECOND WORLD WAR

Abstract

The analysis shows that military commemorative practices, as a component of the historical memory of the Ukrainian people of World War II, are sufficiently diverse and mainly aimed at uniting society around key issues of state formation. It is established that the essential feature of commemoration is the creation of shared memories through the elaboration of rituals of perpetuation (worship, celebration, etc.) of certain persons and events, the construction of “places of memory” (P. Nora). Commemoration, which is defined as the purposeful process of preserving the memory of events significant to the nation, is realized through commemorative practices – a set of ways that contribute to the consolidation, preservation and transfer in society of its historical past. The most common commemoration practices are the erection of monuments, the creation of museums and memorials, commemorations at national and local levels, commemoration of historical documents, and more.Accordingly, in the context of the formation and reproduction of the historical memory of the Ukrainian people, the militaristic commemorative practices of World War II are divided into three groups, depending on the level of memory and the peculiarities of historical development. In particular, the first group is represented by local forms of militaristic commemoration, initiated by family members, friends and veterans themselves, who collectively represent a group’ collective memory of a war that proclaimed the nation’s reconciliation with its heritage, military losses through the expression of grief, and mourning (accounts for the 40-50s of the twentieth century); the second group is a commemorative practice, the creation of which was initiated by the central authorities (president, parliament, government) and contained a collective memory of war at the national level, which was accompanied by the heroization and symbolization of the Great Victory (in the 1960-1970’s); the third group is represented by sources of personal origin, capable of actualizing the representations of war on specific examples, there is a combination of elements of the previous groups (periods) when, together with the ideological onset of the state on social (historical) memory, the expansion of memory space into everyday life, there is an attempt to return personal memory, inherent in the early (post-war) period, when the emphasis is on sacrifice, not just on the heroization of the events of World War II.