suggested citation: M.L.Maniscalco, La ‘guerra delle memorie’: identità e trauma nel conflitto russo-ucraino, lceonline (www.lceonline.eu), 1/2025, I/Saggi e contributi, p. 1 ss.
key words: public memory, sociocultural trauma, identity politics, nationalism, war, Russia, Ukraine
abstract: The paper compares the path of construction of two opposing public narratives that accompanied the process of reorganization of the institutions and social fabric of post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine. Memory and sociocultural trauma sociology represents the key to understanding the traumatic legacy of the Holodomor and other tragic events of the Ukrainian past, as well as the anomic disorientation and the identity crisis of the Russian population due to the dissolution of symbolic reference points due to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the difficult transition period that followed. The reconstruction of the identities of the two countries on the basis of a divergent perusal of the past, in other words the ‘war of memories’, has meant that the ongoing conflict does not only concern the identity of Ukraine, but also that of Russia. Putin’s imperial project can’t do without Ukraine, considered an essential part of the Russian world both for the common past and for security; in turn, Ukraine, for its own traumatic past and for its security, wants to be part of the West and especially of the European Union. A just and lasting peace appears difficult to achieve.
