Culture of Memory and Public Flistory
In the past two decades, the concept of «historical memory», «culture of memory», «culture of history», «memory and commemoration practices» are included into the popular topics of the interdisciplinary research. Interest to memorial researches and commemorative practices has become so wide and public that has penetrated into curricula and programmes of schools and universities. Training of specialists of this direction is carried out in many large institutions in Europe, North America and Australia. Russian reality is different from the global trends. While in other countries, cultural issues of historical memory are the subject of the dialogue between historians and the public, sometimes, between the public and historians, in Russia the politicians, the government and the state take the role of mentors in matters of memory and history. The appearance of public history was directly related to the cultural processes of the second half of the 20th century and with the revival of interest in the historical memory. Under the name of Public history there is a wide range of new knowledge or new interpretations of documents and artifacts that occur beyond the boundaries of academic history. Journalists, politicians, media commentators, film directors, artists, bloggers have access to the past and often interpret it in the unusual and original form. In general, the progress of public history at the turn of the 20-21st century demonstrates the growing interest of general reading public and audience in historical subjects. Yet the public history has not yet formulated its subject with clear disciplinary boundaries.