“One Name, One Life, One Sign”: The Resistant Memory Commons of the Last Address Project in Russia

Abstract: This article examines the Last Address Project, a crowdsourced civic initiative that commemorates individual victims of Soviet political terror by attaching small metal signs to façades of victims’ last known residences. The analysis develops the notion of resistant memory commons, defined as an aggregate of reclaimed and newly created mnemonic resources, ways of mobilizing them in commemorative practices, and communities formed around shared remembrance. In the neo-totalitarian political climate of contemporary Russia, Last Address not only makes the record of Soviet political violence publicly visible but also fosters a conversation around the traumatic national past and knits a social fabric around resistant practices of commemoration and witnessing.