The Mobilized Middle Ages in Historical Memory

Abstract

This article summarizes and reviews the intermediate results of one of the modern projects on the study of historical memory in the Eastern European and Balkan regions called “The Mobilized Middle Ages”. The author identifies strengths and weaknesses of the project, the extent to which the goals originally stated in the project have been achieved. The author pays special attention to the criteria for the selection of subjects for the articles of the project, to the research methods, to the selection of sources, and to the applicability of these sources to the problems of the project. The article compares the project “The Mobilized Middle Ages” and other projects on the study of historical memory in Russia at the beginning of the 21st century, provides a brief analysis of the historiography of recent years on the perception of the era of both early and late Russian Middle Ages in the memory of Russian society in different historical periods. The article defines the general aspects and specific features of the project “The Mobilized Middle Ages” and of its previous research projects, articles, monographs. The author draws attention to the importance of involving sociological scholarly methods in such studies, and comes to the conclusion that projects similar to “The Mobilized Middle Ages” enable to examine the existence and the transformation of the plots in the historical memory of the people.