Perestroika and the Stalin Question': The Emergence of Memorial

Under the circumstances where the new Soviet leadership made attempts to reform the Soviet system, some younger fellows made publically an issue of erecting a monument to pay a tribute to the memories of the innocent victims of Stalin's terror. Having been fillip the suppressed memory of Stalin's victims, the 'Memorial' movement sought to uncover a historical truth about the savage political persecutions in the era of Stalin's 'personal cult' and to enhance democratical consciousness in the Soviet society in order to prevent such tragedies from repeating. Inevitably the movement was at loggerheads with the official claims on the legitimacy of the Soviet Union and the official line of the Soviet Union. Therefore, the Memorial movement was confronted with the oppression by the Soviet government. In coping with the hindrances, it underwent the internal conflicts between the radicals and the moderates. In this process, however, the Memorial movement transformed from a movement for petitioning the Soviet government to erect a monument to a independent social movement for erecting a memorial monument on its own initiative. Finally the movement developed into an independent social organization opposed to the Stalinist 'totalitarian' regime. Such a development went in concert with the public opinion and other social movements overcoming restraints on the part of the 'totalitarian Soviet State. The anti-Stalinist and anti-totalitarian aspects of the Memorial movement contributed to creating a social atmosphere that made it possible to dismantle the Communist Party's monopoly of political power. To a certain degree such an atmosphere led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.이 논문은 2003년 한국학술진흥재단의 지원으로 연구 되었음(KRF-2003-072-AL2001