‘“New Memory Truth Mode”’ [Rev. on: “I know you can’t write like this”: The Phenomenon of the Blockade Diary, comp. A. Yu. Pavlovskaya, ed. N. A. Lomagin. St Petersburg, 2022]

Abstract

The review analyses a set of diaries of residents of the besieged Leningrad prepared by scholars of the European University in St Petersburg. Despite a considerable significance of historical sources to the researchers, the objectives that the authors of the reviewed volume set out to achieve were only partially fulfilled. The compilers of the volume too sharply contrasted a “new regime of the truth of memory” and the “truth of history with its claim to objectivity and coherence of narrative”, actually refusing to examine the published sources and accepting them uncritically as the exhaustive truth, which inevitably leads the reader into the false perception of the completion of the study of the Leningrad siege. It can be assumed that the authors of the volume did not set themselves a task of identifying the circumstances behind the texts of the diaries. It remains unclear why the participants of the project avoided mentioning “simpler principles” of the inclusion of certain diaries in the collection. Although one of the authors attempted to identify a kind of “laboratory” for the creation of the diary, this attempt cannot be recognized as successful. The compilers of the volume delegated the responsibility of commenting on the texts of the diaries to readers. In fact, they relinquished their roles as researchers. Repetitions in the few commentaries, inconsistencies in the accompanying notes to the diaries and in the authors’ articles indicate that the authors of the volume acted in haste. There is no doubt of the authors’ genuine interest in the history of the siege, but in this case it is difficult to find an explanation for inaccuracies in relation to well-known facts.