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Вспоминая август 1991-го: Теледокументалистика как инструмент формирования памяти о политическом событии
The article addresses the role of the documentaries demonstrated on Russian TV in constructing the mediatized cultural memory about one of the turning points of the recent history, the failed attempt of the group of Soviet leaders, who composed the State Committee on the State Emergency (GKChP), to remove the president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev from power on 19-21 August, 1991. On the basis of analysis of the documentaries that were screened at the federal channels on the jubilee anniversaries in 2002-2021, it reveals the evolution of interpretations of the August coup in the most popular media. The article presents the methodology of studying documentaries as tools of cultural memory that focuses both at the content of media texts and the creative methods of its articulation.
In a lack of other formats of official commemoration of the anniversaries, the documentaries screened on the federal TV channels appeared major tools of constructing memory about the August coup d’état in 1991. The article follows how the presented narratives of this event changed from one round number anniversary to another. The films that were screened in 2001 continued the official narrative developed in the 1990s by representing the failure of the coup d’état as a victory of democratic forces. However, already in 2006, the focus of representation shifted from the democratic revolution to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in the subsequent years the August coup d’état was invariably interpreted as a turning point on a way to this sad ending.
By using the partly common stock of video materials, the documentaries constructed the canonical set of images that became associated with the August 1991 coup d’état. However, there were evident lacunas in this set of images. At the federal TV, the events that were considered as a trigger of the collapse of the Soviet Union were presented as a story that took place in Moscow. Stories of the politicians who were involved in the conflict in 1991 over time completely substituted the perspectives of ordinary participants.
It is concluded that because of the genre features, e.g., using original audio and video materials, including testimonies of the participants and observers, documentaries are particularly effective in constructing public memory about historical events. By the same reason, they typically present more than one perspective, which provides documentary some freedom of interpretation.