Sergei Bondarenko, Report at the Intellectual Book Fair Non/Fiction (Moscow, December 2011): "The goal of this brief paper is rather simple: I will use a few incidents surrounding Lenin memorials across Russia to illustrate the work of monitoring the politics of history and to offer in connection with this a few potentially meaningful generalizations".

The third analytical report basing on the materials of the “Monitoring of the historical policy” covers the events of June 2011 (the total number of news items constitutes 78). Along with the thematic sections “Topic of the month”, “Memorable dates”, “Event”, “Special cases” and “Thematic index” this report was written involving a lot of topical materials on the main theme, which is formulated as “Nostalgia for the Soviet”.

Belorussian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War  is an environment of memory about the war; this environment is typical (for the national collections) and unique at the same time.

Memorial ensemble dedicated to the war of 1941–1945 was constructed in 1995 by the architect group under the guidance of the president of Russian Fine Arts Academy Zurab Tsereteli, but its designing was started earlier, in 1958. Discussion of construction plans aroused now more, now less interest in different years, but was most active at the end of the 50-s, in the 70-s and during the first half of the 90s. Recommencement and realization of this ambitious project in mid-90s became one of the signs of the retargeting of the country to an imperial direction.

The report for April 2011 is the first one in the series of monthly publications based on the materials of the monitoring of historical policy of International Memorial. The main objective of the monthly report is to single out basic trends in the discussions around history in the public space, enumerate the most important commemoration events  of the month, emphasize historical references in the speeches of politicians and public figures, note the reaction of the authorities and the society to “memorable dates” occurring during this period and eventually highlight some general key points – detect priority topics, instruments of preservation/construction of memory about the past and as far as possible define their place and role in the modern historical policy of Russia.

The May 2011 report based on the news covered by Monitoring of Historical Policy is the second analytical review of the project after its pilot April issue. This publication which summarizes materials for the month is targeted at drawing the reader’s attention to the most relevant materials with the key Topic, Event and Memorable Dates in the Russian historical politics over this period. The review ends up with Special Cases - these are examples of news items that were not included in the main columns but are worthy of the reader’s attention. This is because they illustrate broader trends that are emerging in the Russian historical policy or, conversely, are in the periphery and draw attention as marginal cases. The full list of news items for the month is published in a special Thematic Index.

Archangelsk court has delivered the decision on the “archive case” of the historian Mikhail Suprun and the police officer Alexander Dudarev. The case of Suprun, accused of “the breach of privacy, namely – of illegal handing of the archive data on the interned and repressed Germans to German Red Cross”, was closed due to the expiry of the period of limitation (the case was initiated in 2009).

Historian Nikita Petrov discusses conditions for historians working in archives today, while their colleagues in Archangelsk stand trial and the CIS considers adopting a uniform archival policy prohibiting the declassification of personal information. Could historians lose their profession, their freedom, or both?

Historical policy implies, by definition, that different political views will compete; but it requires the existence of a democratic society where the State does not have monopoly on history. In Russia, however, even in the absence of political competition and an opportunity to influence the political present, various parties are often competing in the struggle for the past.