We Were Hungry, but We Were Also Free: Narratives of Russia’s First Post-Soviet Decade on Instagram

Makhortykh, Mykola (2023). We Were Hungry, but We Were Also Free: Narratives of Russia’s First Post-Soviet Decade on Instagram. In: Robbe, Ksenia (ed.) Remembering Transitions: Local Revisions and Global Crossings in Culture and Media. Media and Cultural Memory: Vol. 38 (pp. 205-232). De Gruyter 10.1515/9783110707793-009

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The first post-Soviet decade occupies an important place in the Russian collective memory. Associated with the transition to democracy, but also economic hardships and violence, it constitutes a complex amalgamation of traumatic and nostalgic recollections. The ambiguous role of the 1990s memories is further complicated by their intense instrumentalization by the Kremlin for consolidating the public support as well as their counter-instrumentalization by the civil society for criticizing the revival of authoritarian tendencies in Russia. Under these circumstances, it is important to understand how the remediation of narratives about the first post-Soviet decade is influenced by social media platforms capable of both countering and reinforcing hegemonic discourses about the past.
With this aim, the chapter examines how trauma and nostalgia associated with the 1990s are remediated via Instagram. Using a sample of Instagram data, it examines whether memory remediation on the platform reflects the above-mentioned intense politicization of nostalgia and trauma associated with this period and how this remediation is affected by the consumption-oriented nature of Instagram. The chapter’s findings demonstrate that Instagram is primarily used for showcasing cultural products associated with the 1990s and expressing a yearning towards childhood and teenage years that coincided with the post-Soviet transition. Despite the absence of explicit political statements, however, nostalgic content on Instagram can still be seen as a form of challenging the hegemonic narrative of the 1990s as a time of misery and hardships.

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