Yulia Pyankova, M.A.

PhD Candidate in History

Contact

Universität Regensburg
Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies
Landshuter Straße 4
93047 Regensburg
Germany

+49 (0)941 / 943-5487 yulia.pyankova@geschichte.uni-regensburg.de

Doctoral Project

The Symbol is Born: Commemoration of Contemporary Russian Assassinations

I analyze the commemoration of two significant women of contemporary Russia: a politician, Galina Starovoytova (1946–98), and a journalist, Anna Politkovskaya (1958–2006). When assassinated, they were prominent figures of democracy, renowned both in the country and abroad. The killers were found and sentenced to years of imprisonment. The masterminds of the crimes remain unknown.

Research questions: how and with what commemorative tools do real figures transform into symbolic ones? How does their myth exist and develop over time, and what does the narrative represent?

Using theoretical frameworks of memory studies, rituals, and performance, I concentrate on official websites dedicated to Starovoytova and Politkovstaya as online archives and urban spaces that include sites of memory in Moscow and Saint Petersburg where they lived, worked, or were assassinated, cemeteries, parks created and named after them, and monuments to the victims of political repression. Together with digital commemoration, outdoor practices transform communicative memory into a cultural one. They enrich the cultural layers of the city and ensure memory preservation.

Identification or disidentification with the victims are the main approaches to commemoration and expressing solidarity (The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Penetrators, by Michael Rothberg). I aim to understand what these women represent for the public and how people relate to them through the visual embodiment of death, issues of gender, privacy, publicity, and war by analyzing Starovoytova's and Politkovskaya's funerals, documentaries, theater performances, and other forms of artistic practices that connect their legacy to new generations.

These practices make the annual commemoration of Galina Starovoytova and Anna Politkovskaya a thread connecting the Russian past to the present. Time passes, and the symbol is born out of the memory that attempts to overcome the grief and find a moral compass in dark times.

Keywords: commemoration, digital memory, sites of memory, assassination, symbol, art, performance, Russia