ABSTRACT
The memory of the Time of Troubles is typically singled out as the central tenet of contemporary Russian memory politics in the period 2000–2012, in addition to the political establishment’s constantly shifting attitude towards Stalin and the Soviet past more generally. The chapter analyses two aspects that have thus far largely escaped scholarly attention: first, the evolution of the political usage of the memory over time and its relation to other circulating memories; second, the reception of the institutionalisation of the memory and its associated cultural products and attempts by other actors to subvert official memory culture. Outlining the remediation history of narratives associated with the Time of Troubles from the seventeenth century up to the present, the chapter examines the institutionalisation of the memory and the TV documentaries and film – 1612: A Chronicle of The Time of Troubles (2007) – produced to support it. The chapter concludes with a study of the film Boris Godunov (2011) as an example of a subversive remediation that aims to question official memory culture.
