Medieval Events and Heroes in Soviet Tear-Off Calendars

Abstract

The focus of the article is Soviet tear-off calendars (one of the most mass print publications of the 20th century), which are regarded as sources of the formation of historical consciousness and instruments of the memory policy. The authors show that despite of origination of the tradition of publishing mass calendars in pre-revolutionary Russia, there are serious differences between the format of the pre-revolutionary calendars and Soviet ones. The Soviet tear-off calendar, unlike the calendars circulated before 1917, became rather a propaganda instrument than a reference tool, along with textbooks, Party literature and other products of ideological content. The main subject of research in the article are the events and heroes of the Russian Middle Ages, the interpretation of their images on tear-off pages. The authors compare tear-off calendars with other sources of formation of historical representations and put forward suggestions on the specific role of calendars in the system of Soviet historical policy. In particular, the article argues reasonably that the picture created by calendars is not likely to reflect (form) adequately a map of the memory of Soviet society. On the other hand, the data cited indicate that the Soviet calendars served as a significant strengthening in the public historical consciousness of places of consensus, primarily of the “military-patriotic” kind, that is, those places of memory that did not evoke the “ideological allergy” of authorities, such as the Battle of Kulikovo, Alexander Nevsky, the Battle of the Ice, the Battle of the Neva. The article shows that tear-off calendars is important source for studying the historical policy of the Soviet era, which the authorities surely tried to form not only (and not so much) in relation to the Middle Ages.