Politically Useful Tragedies: The Soviet Atrocities in the Historical Park(s) “Russia — My History”

ABSTRACT Does the Kremlin have a coherent approach in the way it deals with the memory of the Soviet atrocities? If so, what does it consist in? In this paper, I address these questions by turning to a study of the “Russia—My History” chain of multimedia historical parks. I reconstruct the interpretation of the Soviet atrocities as it is (re)produced in the Moscow-located headquarters of the chain and the broader historical interpretation that this interpretation—at the same time statist and patriotic—is nested within. I argue that this interpretation is indicative of the Kremlin’s way of dealing with Russia’s difficult past, which consists in transforming it into a tool of ingenious political manipulation.