Models of legal support for implementing the official remembrance policy in Russia and other European countries: Comparative analysis

Abstract

This article looks at the issues of legal support for implementing the official remembrance policy in Russia and other European countries. The evolution of remembrance policy is shown through the transition from the predominant role of religion to the incorporation of “memorial laws”. Factors that have led to the current revision of history have been identified. Common guidelines have been elucidated for all European countries regarding the historical past: they have been developed within the bounds of the United Nations and reflected in UN General Assembly resolutions, educational programs, international commemorative days, etc. It was concluded that European countries over the past three centuries have had a more or less similar way of emphasizing the main event, around which conceptual framework for the stances on history were constructed: at the end of the 18th century this was the French Revolution and in the 20th century — World War II. It has been demonstrated that the presence of numerous evaluations of such historically significant “points”, the use of the past to attain current political goals, the particularities of national laws, and the formation of new international unions have all led to the development of various models of legal support for implementing the official remembrance policy in Europe, which is reflected in the use of both different terminology and legal means. The categorization of protective, patriotic, post-traumatic, restorative and conciliatory models is proposed, which could be further split into subcategories. It has been highlighted how crucial legal instruments are to both stopping and averting the “memory wars” that many European nations are now engaged in.