ABSTRACT
The revolutionary theme gradually loses its relevance as a resource of the collective memory in Russia. Political parties differ in understanding the most important memorable dates. The parties that use it in politics of memory are the Communist parties. However, despite the preservation of the October revolution as a founding constituent myth, the differentiation of communist forces leads to the formation of parallel images of the revolution. The general political trend towards rejection of revolutionary changes manifested most clearly after the mass protests of 2011–2012. It can be stated that for the right-wing and centrist parties the revolution is an undesirable event and ‘uncomfortable past’. Treating the revolution as the destruction of order and historical continuity, they seek to achieve public consensus through the practice of forgetting. The rejection of the perception of revolutionary action as an integral part of one’s own past is combined with a political trend towards nostalgia for the Brezhnev’s era and it leads to the paradoxical formula ‘The Soviet Union, but without revolution’.
