MEMORIALISING THE ROLE OF THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES IN MILITARY CONFLICTS OF THE 20TH CENTURY: NARRATIVES AND ACTORS

The authors focus on the intelligence services’ historical narratives about the role and significance of counterintelligence and intelligence officers during the Great Patriotic War (more broadly, in the history of Russia), embodied in monumental structures (monuments, memorial complexes, etc.) and related rituals. The study aims at analyzing the narratives of the special services employees about the Great Patriotic War which is the main object of the symbolic politics of domestic special services. For this purpose, the authors consistently examine the process and content of historical narratives, their goal-setting, expressed in monumental objects and related rituals. Based on the methodological developments of the “third wave” of research on the history of memory, the paper considers the commemorative practices of Russia’s security services, which, as mnemonic actors in the field of Russian symbolic politics, interact with other state and public institutions, primarily with the Russian Orthodox Church. As a result of the study of open sources, as well as the authors’ systematization and analysis of monumental objects erected by the state security agencies in various regions of Russia in honor of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, a conclusion is made about the noticeable intensification of activities of the special services in this direction since the early 2010s, and the resource content of this process.