The “medals not to be proud of...”: memory of the Caucasian war in social media

Abstract

The article examines the memory of the Caucasian War in the space of social media (VKontakte, Telegram, etc.) and the possibilities of its use as a symbolic resource in the process of radicalisation of local Caucasian societies. The total number of subscribers to the communities, channels, and pages studied is around 300,000 people. The conceptual basis of the paper is the relational approach to the concept of radicalisation. In addition, I consider memory as one of the symbolic resources that determine the process of radicalisation of a particular community, and refer to researchers such as L.-E. Cederman, J. Goodwin, and M. Sageman. The article examines not just the memory of the Caucasian War represented in the field of social media, but the several national images of the Caucasian War that have emerged in this field.