Sergei Loznitsa’s films are here analyzed as deconstructions of Soviet documentary film image and its combination of “certainty” (dostovernost’) with “poetry of truth” (poesiia pravdy), an impossible synthesis in film aesthetics between the ideological dogma and collective experiences during and after Stalinism. Both in his documentaries filmed in situ and in his archival compilations, non-acted as well as acted historical productions, Loznitsa recomposes Soviet propaganda and unmasks the claim to historical testimony inherent in all cinema as technology and image. His critical position vis-a-vis post-Cold war European memory politics and unresolved differences with current memory politics in wartime Ukraine are (post-)European rather than post-Soviet issues, but there appears a continuity here that requires further discussion. 

In two separate occasions in 2024, filmmaker Jessica Gorter’s The Dmitriev Affair (2023) and 900 Days (2011) were screened at Zita Folkets Bio in central Stockholm. Even though the films attracted a considerable audience, and both screenings were followed by a director talk and comments by experts, there remained that uncertain feeling that we do not fully know or understand what we are seeing on the screen or hearing in Jessica’s conversations with the film’s characters. Jessica Gorter’s direct style in documentary film-making addresses the repressed, vanishing, and already almost nonexistent counter-memory of the witnesses. By taking an angle beneath the veneer of official celebratory histories, she effectively undermines stereotypes, images, and rhetorical figures in the established narratives concerning Putin’s Russia and its historical memory. The problems of the documentary as such raise several questions, as does the role of documentary cinema supporting counter-memory that is being actively suppressed by a political regime that uses the past as a war weapon and an instrument of internal political repression. One question that arose in the discussion was how the loss of history is conducive to the eventual loss of democracy, Russia’s condition nowadays appearing a warning. Not to repeat the misfortune of Cassandra whose warnings no one could understand, we decided to publish an abridged version of two long conversations we had with Jessica, with whom we have become friends: We hope to continue working together after those memorable events in Stockholm. As the initial idea came from Irina Sandomirskaja, she felt free to enlarge the transcription with some further comments.

An important part of Viktor Shklovsky’s legacy remains neglected by scholars of formalism and questio-ned for political reasons: his controversial critical and political interventions, as well as his work in propaganda onbehalf of the Stalinist regime. Personal memories of Shkovsky and whatever is available in his publications fromthat period all convey a sense of compromising uncertainty. I am suggesting that his work during that period hasspecial value, even though it arises from the shadow of a doubt that surrounds his private and public images asa Stalinist opportunist. Based on his earlier theoretical findings and his practical and critical competence in lite-rature and film, Shklovsky found original analytical tools to reflect temporality, historical experience, and (Soviet)subjectivity under political violence. His profound critical revision of his early theoretical postulates in the light ofhistorical experience gained during this controversial period is relevant nowadays.

Under det senaste decenniet har begreppet ”kulturarv” tagit en allt större plats i den offentliga debatten. Samtidigt är kulturarv ett märkligt begrepp, som antyder att kultur kan ärvas som om det vore ett ting och att det därmed finns en sorts arvs-kultur. 

Den här boken handlar om kulturarv, men den handlar inte om kulturarvets eventuella fördelar inom minnes- och identitetspolitik. Inte heller är boken tänkt som en kritik mot hur kulturarv kommer till användning i praktiken. 

Vad som orienterar föreliggande reflektioner är snarare frågan vad ett arv är, vad en kultur är och vad en arvs-kultur kan tänkas vara samt vilka värden och värderingar ett sådant arv förutsätter?

Boken tar sin utgångspunkt i dessa frågor samt i ett pågående samtal mellan Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, professor i filosofi och Johan Hegardt, som är docent i arkeologi.

Ett särskilt förord har skrivits av Irina Sandomirskaja, professor i Cultural Studies.

Bokens bilder är tagna av Esther Shalev-Gerz och Jochen Gerz och föreställer deras konstverk Monument against fascism.

When utopian desire for the future is lost and uncertainty in the present increases, the political signigicance of the past ands its social value dramatically increase. Alongside, and in between, history and memory -- Modernity's two meganarratives of the past --there evolves still another mode of transmission of the past and its accomodation in the present. In this book, this third mode, restoration, is analyzed as a professional practice and part of museum science as well as, in a wider meaning, as a third discourse critically opposed both to history and memory. Restoration is a domain of practical measures and strategic manipulation with material and value-related constitution of historical artefacts undertaken for their enrichment with symbolic and material value. In a broader sense, restoration is analyzed as a symbolic machine for the appropriation of the past by the present and the use of the past for the present moment's own purposes.  Restoration's imagination, techniques, and institutional practices play an important role in the creation of national and imperial  ideologies of history, mass movements of historical monument preservation, and commercialization of cultural heritage, the patrimonializartion of the past in symbolic commodity exchange. Special attention is given to specific strategies of the desirable past within the framework of the symbolic political economy of socialism,  in Soviet restoration and more generally, in the evolution of the Soviet cult of the historical monument.