Abstract

The article analyzes the direction in the development of historical science at the turn of the twentieth-twenty-first centuries, associated with the socalled “memorial boom”, which determined the appearance, in the 1980-1990s, of a special area of “memory research”, memory studies, in the subject field of history in general and the history of Russia in particular. The evolution of this area of historical knowledge was undoubtedly influenced by the emergence of new electronic means of storing and transferring information, as well as the forms of representation of the past and digitalization of sources of different types and species. The result of these processes was the formation of the category of “sources of historical memory”, whose development requires solving a number of important theoretical and methodological problems. The methodological and source critical aspects of the study of historical memory are of the greatest interest to the historical community. So, in order to select from various bodies of sources of different types and species those that can be included in the structure of sources for studying historical memory, one should apply the criterion of their informative potential, which permits to “see” the past, enrich historical knowledge with emotional and psychological perception of the image of the past. An important thesis of methodological nature is the recognition that the work of the historian also involves the function of imagination, not being limited to reconstructing events, but supplementing them with “seeing” and “presenting a vision” derived from memory sources. In this regard, the source researcher gives considerable significance to the problems of interaction between the forms of representation of the past and the informative potential of the source in the context of modern practices of memory studies, the hierarchy of sources of historical memory (written-text, audiovisual, monumental) based on the criterion of the importance of certain types, kinds and sets of sources for studying the rich spectrum of problems in memory research, as well as for a general assessment of the cognitive potential, limits and possibilities of this category of sources. The article shows the dangers posed by the manipulation with the images of history and falsification of sources related to the study of historical memory, the significance of the scientific-historical approach, which helps to save our past from oblivion, without distorting or “renovating” the memory of the past in its diverse representations.