The Soviet Legacy and Cultural Memory: Conceptualization and the Armenian Experience

Abstract This paper first provides a conceptualization of the current state of research of the Soviet legacy as a complex, multi-level phenomenon that includes a set of ideas, symbolic traces, social structures and practices. It then defines how this complex legacy is reflected in the cultural memory landscape of the Republic of Armenia. The paper draws upon existing literature and the author’s empirical material that includes observations and interviews in museums and surveys. The paper concludes that the “Soviet” is de-ideologized, dissolved in a broader historical perspective, identified with the longer Armenian-Russian entanglement, and contains a contradictory image of both safety and restricted freedoms.