ABSTRACT
When they came to power, Bolsheviks attempted to construct their own version of history. Their first endeavor was to construct memoirs of the October Revolution. It was organized and conducted under the supervision of a special committee called “Istpart.” It was the first large-scale project that laid the groundwork for shaping the USSR as “Empire of Memory” (according to Serhy Yekelchyk). The goal of the chapter is to analyze the practices of construction of memoirs of the October Revolution during the 1920s. Its main focus is on the guidelines for memoir writing formulated by the party commission, as well as on characterization of the questionnaires for participants of the revolution. The chapter also presents a generalized description of other Bolshevik methods of “correcting remembering” of the October Revolution—for example, the October Revolution celebration anniversaries. In addition, the chapter illustrates the level of compliance with recommendations for writing ego-documents, using the examples of memoirs published in Ukraine, in Istpart’s publications and local newspapers.
