ABSTRACT
A more open-ended mode of engaging with Soviet-era family photographs is offered by Memorial, the internationally known human rights organization that conducts a yearly essay competition entitled, An Individual in History: Russia, The 20th Century. The goal of this competition, which is jointly funded by Memorial with the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Germany, is to encourage schoolchildren to critically assess the Soviet past through an examination of their own family history and domestic archives. The chapter focuses on the place of family photographs in communicative memory, taking inspiration from the work of oral historians who explore the complexity of the relationship between photographic images and their commentators. It addresses the subject in the spirit of Martha Langford's "oral-photographic framework", delving not into the images themselves but rather into what transpires between the viewer and the photographs when these images are looked at, commented on, and interacted with.
