Public legal support for state administration in the field of historical memory protection in the Russian Federation

• Published in: Право и политика no. 7; pp. 145 - 159
• Main Author: Denisov, Yurii Petrovich
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.07.2025
• ISSN: 2454-0706; 2454-0706
• DOI: 10.7256/2454-0706.2025.7.75034

The subject of the research is social relations in the area of public legal protection of historical memory. The object of the study is a set of legal norms that ensure state management in the field of the protection of historical memory in the Russian Federation. The author conducts a comprehensive study of Russian memorial legislation, beginning with an analysis of the constitutional foundations of public legal protection of historical truth and memory of ancestors, and concluding with an analysis of strategic documents that define the vectors of Russian historical policy, approved at the level of subordinate regulation. Special attention in the article is given to the study of norms establishing administrative liability for offenses that encroach upon historical memory in the Russian Federation, norms regulating administrative and managerial as well as administrative and protective relations aimed at preserving and strengthening the historical memory of the Great Patriotic War, and norms aimed at protecting cultural and historical heritage. The research is based on a systemic analysis that allows for viewing public legal support of state management in the field of protecting historical memory in the Russian Federation as a system, that is, a set of inextricably interconnected and interacting elements that form a unified whole. Alongside this, the study employs formal legal, historical-legal, and comparative-legal methods. The main conclusions of the research are as follows. Firstly, to date, a sufficiently complexly structured system of public legal support for state management in the field of historical memory protection has been established in the Russian Federation. Secondly, public legal support for state management in this area is characterized by legal uncertainty in the categorical and conceptual apparatus. Thirdly, the key value-meaning dominant in regulating the protection of historical memory in the Russian Federation is the formation, preservation, strengthening, and transmission of the image of the Great Patriotic War as the most important historical event of the 20th century. Fourthly, the legal norms ensuring state management in the field of the protection of historical memory can be divided by the nature of their action into “negative” and “positive” norms. Furthermore, fifthly, they can be classified according to the criterion of the direction of action into norms aimed at protecting intangible historical memory and norms aimed at protecting tangible cultural and historical heritage.