Mark von Hagen: History and Historical Memory

Extract

As Paul Goble pointed out, it is hard to give historical perspective to recent facts. My own comments started out as a footnote or paragraph for a piece I prepared for The Harriman Institute Forum on the current political situation and the Soviet historical profession, in which I mentioned that Soviet historians put the nationalities issue, among others, high on their agenda for opening up the past. Presumably, they are trying to make themselves into a force for reformist politics on the nationality question. In some important ways, the nationalities offer all sorts of important changes to the picture I presented for the central Russian dialogue on history.