SOVIET PERIOD OF HISTORY AND HOLOCAUST IN ORAL HISTORY STUDIES: BETWEEN OFFICIAL AND PERSONAL MEMORY

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the mechanisms of action of individual and collective memory on the features of remembering/ forgetting / interpreting complex pages of history. The use of oral historical memories has allowed to trace the level of influence of stereotypes and dominant (official) historical narratives that were formed both in the Soviet period and in the independence era. The methodological basis of the study is the tools of oral, social history and the history of everyday life. Scientific novelty. The article is written on the basis of oral historical evidence. The article focuses on the issues that break stereotypes about Jews formed during the Soviet period. The collected evidence constitutes an important source of information that explains the peculiarities of the formation of social memory and political factors that determine the agenda of historical policy in a given period. 
 Conclusions. The article considers several blocks of problems that reflect the most typical stereotypes, fixed at the level of consciousness, behavioral attitudes, partially presented (or omitted) facts from history, which to some extent destroy them. The memoirs used in the article, which were collected in the framework of the project "Voices" in 2020 in Zhytomyr region (in which the author has participated), reflect the similarity of general ideas, assessments, tone, and memory stereotypes about anti-Semitism, the legitimacy of the Holodomor’s status of the genocide directed exclusively against ethnic Ukrainians, the role and place of Jews in the victory over Nazism, the peculiarities of evacuation, and the issues of preserving and honoring the memory of those killed during the Holocaust. At the same time, those memoirs demonstrate the differences between collective and individual memory, which preserves plots that to some extent destroy stereotypical attitudes that have long been ingrained in the mind and, accordingly, influenced the formation of social memory. The analysis of the interviews shows that oral history has significant source potential for studying various issues and sections of Soviet and modern history that await their researchers.