The Intergenerational Transmission of Memory: Soviet Photographs and Practices

Sarkisova Oksana, and Olga Shevchenko. In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2023. 488 pp. $49.95. ISBN 978-0-2620-4827-9. From a personal perspective, this beautiful and extensively researched study came at a serendipitous time. In the summer of last year, at the request of my paternal grandparents, I began digitizing their photo archive. My grandparents were moving and did not want to carry their physical albums with them. In preparation for this undertaking, my grandmother spent weeks meticulously organizing her photograph archive into thematic folders. The photos were methodically ordered by thematic group ("grandchildren," "early married years," and so on). After I finished that project, my mother asked me to digitize her photographs. While my grandmother's chosen organizational technique disrupted the chronological and temporal ordering of her family albums in favor of specific topoi, my mother opted for a purely chronological approach: she wanted her photographs grouped in digital folders in the exact order they were presented in physical albums, by year and date. When asked what I should do with the photographs after scanning, both my grandmother and mother sort of shrugged and for the most part both said "bin them," without a second thought about the materiality of the photographs they were so willing to discard. As a historian of photography, I was aghast at this suggestion, so I now possess the entire photo archive of my father's parents, my parents, and a good portion of my maternal grandparents' photographs which my mother inherited when they passed away. These thousands of photographs are now overflowing from my closets, cabinets, and drawers, and yet, even though I know they exist in digital form, I cannot bring myself to abandon the original prints, some of which are from the late nineteenth century (FIGURE 1). Coincidentally, I mentioned reading In Visible Presence to my mother-in-law, and she proceeded to send me several photos of my father-in-law's grandparents and family members, who fled Tatarstan after the Bolshevik Revolution, fearing persecution as reasonably wealthy Muslim merchants and imams of Turkic origin. Their original surname, Mushayev, was changed to Yushayev and many other iterations before arriving at the Arabic "Almadani" (the surname Al Madani originated in Iran and Medina, Saudi Arabia, in the eleventh century from tribal affiliations, to which my father-in-law has no ancestral relations), out of fear that they would be discovered and returned to Bolshevik/Soviet authorities in their long migration to Turkey and then on to Syria. I couldn't help but think of these processes while reading In Visible Presence. One of the spectacular merits of the book (apart from the exhaustive undertaking of hundreds of hours of interviews in various cities across the former RSFSR) is how it stretches in multiple thematic directions in ways that, as I indicated above, resonate in distinct ways to different readers. As the authors point out, the 259 black-and-white photographs included in the book, as well as the text itself, "may lead their viewers, and by extension, the readers of this book, to unexpected places" (p. xxiii). The text, by virtue of the scope of the project, is not dissimilar to the narrative arc of the oral interviews conducted by Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko: it covers a wide range of themes, topics, and genres, and explores how they relate to intergenerational, collective, individual, and institutional memory, encompassing trauma, silences, memorialization, and nostalgia. This "liquid time," as explained by scholar Marianne Hirsch and reinterpreted by the authors themselves, indicates that the value of photographs "'are not fixed into static permeance; rather they remain dynamic, unfixed, as they acquire new meanings in new circumstances' … [which is] enhanced by medial transformations" and the distance between the Soviet past and the present.1 The authors tackle how these transformations and the gulf between past and present impact memories and family histories through the intergenerational transmission of stories through photographs. This transmission is likewise not static, nor is it straightforward: domestic photographs play a role "in people's efforts to control and shape the outlines of their life story … [and can morph] dramatically as different generations take on the role of custodians of the family history" (p. xxiv). In a prophetic application of the Soviet aphorism "our future is set in stone, it is our past that is unpredictable," intergenerational photo archives and memory transmission may not determine the future, but they do indicate that, through the interpretation of family photographs, the past and memory are fluid concepts. This is the case not only for individuals, but for regimes as well: in post-socialist space, the government of the Russian Federation is in an ongoing process of negotiating and renegotiating what vestiges of Soviet collective memory are "safe" under the guise of patriotism, and those that are not (echoing the selection of which Imperial cultural icons were acceptable to the Bolshevik cum Communist Party, and those which were not). These are incredibly agenda-driven and selective curations that aim at reducing critical public memory projects and paper over the pluralistic and controversial recollections and images (or their absence) of individual family archives and intergenerational memory. There exists a tension between the state's "mining of history" in the formation of a "correct" narrative and shaping personal memories, and the formation of a linear, teleological master narrative of state glorification (through exhibitions like "Rossia: Moia Istoriia") (p. 10). The aim is to discourage "ambiguity, contestation, revision, or multiple subaltern histories," again, not dissimilar to the rewriting of Russian history according to the logic of Marxist-Leninism and subsequent revisions since (p. 10). This paradox between the public and private is replicated in albums and memorials (particularly gravestones) through the inclusion of institutionally mandated ID photos, studio portraits, and school class photographs, the latter becoming widespread by the 1960s. As the authors point out, by the early 1970s, 38 of every 100 families had a camera or cameras, and that number only increased throughout the late Soviet period. Furthermore, as Sarkisova and Shevchenko explain, every family they interviewed had "at least one person in their extended circle of relatives and friends who was an occasional photographer, with a working knowledge of taking, processing, developing and printing photographs" (p. 39). But many of the Soviet-era photograph albums share the same general importance of "ideologically marked spaces: at a Party meeting, by a war memorial, or at a demonstration … [including] the saturation of spaces with portraits and sculptures of Lenin, references to the Revolution, and other agitational materials" (p. 67). Thus, the narrative of family albums, either consciously or subconsciously, echoed the public idealization and veneration (if only in a performative manner) of the state master narrative and official history. This brought the public into private space and private space into public vis-à-vis including "public" identification photos in personal albums, and then reentering them into such public spaces as gravestones, which include ID photographs, and practices like participating in the "Immortal Regiment." Mobility and destruction serve as other overarching themes of the text including authority over (inheriting) or independence from (creating their own albums) the family archive. But either way, both involve "negotiating the spheres of domestic authority," a duty that often fell on or was embraced by the senior matriarch of the family (pp. 110–11). Those of a younger generation who had not, or have not yet, inherited the family archive create their own albums, which often include reprints of original photographs and repurpose older images into their own archive and organizational framework. Furthermore, in inheriting photographs, successive younger generations participated in "liquidation": as interviewee Liza explained, her grandfather destroyed photographs containing subjects he could not identify (p. 118). This use of Soviet rhetoric—"liquidation"—with regard to the family archive speaks to the silences inherited from previous generations and how successive heirs of family archives create their own narratives and meaning. Yet the absences in albums, moving from generation to generation, disrupt the spatial and temporal framework within family archives. They indicate individual interference with family photo collections between Stalinism and the present day, and for those who do not chronologically organize their photographs, these absences or photographic manipulations are interspersed with vacation photographs and celebrations such as marriages, births, and the like.2 Regarding silences, one aspect that was particularly prevalent in the text was the issue of collusion: in many cases Soviet citizens were made complicit in their own subjugation through semi-legal or illegal practices in order to survive, provide their family protection, or obtain sought-after goods. Furthermore, there were those who joined the Communist Party for personal gain and participated in state violence out of motives as varied as self-preservation, promotion, or networking opportunities. These silences among family photographs in front of monuments and memorials, and in identification photographs both expose and mask the fraught intergenerational relationships with Soviet power, punctuated by trauma that is understood but generationally distant. In a way, almost everyone who lived through Soviet socialism not only is or was a victim of state violence (even if in intergenerational memory only), but was also involved in perpetuating the status quo for personal and familial stability. For families that sought out the lost genealogies of those missing from family archives, "these searches were frequently couched in reparative terms that acknowledged, explicitly or implicitly, the damage done to families by the various forms of state-induced violence" (p. 223). For younger generations with their "temporal remoteness and physical separation" from the past, existing photographs and silences offer an opportunity to reimagine the meaning of extant images, as well as memories associated with incomplete archives and silenced memories (p. 222). This fragmentation is further illuminated by the story of Renata Efimovna's photo archive: she was arrested after being reported by her roommate and imprisoned for three months when she was young. While she chose to highlight her "open, trusting, laughing, and joking younger self," for her son Maxim, who learned of his mother's arrest and rehabilitation in the 1990s, Renata's imprisonment confirmed and reaffirmed his feelings about Soviet power and informant networks, which, as he put it, were fairly obvious by the 1980s when he was at university (p. 228). Maxim's daughter pushes further, indicating that the family archive and photographic "silences" of Soviet socialism were associated, for her and most young people, with "material shortages, deprivation, and violence … [lacking] the nostalgic halo" of previous generations (p. 229). Thus, the meaning and perception of photographs or their absence significantly change through intergenerational transmission. In this way, photographs serve as prompts for difficult discussions about collective trauma processing which was either aborted or never fully realized during the Soviet period. That which is "not shown" in domestic photographs also prove to be points of memory prompting. But, and "furthermore, in the course of time, any photograph can suddenly disclose new meanings, and even substitute eyewitness experience" (p. 245). Such was the case with individuals like Vera Leontievna, who had no actual personal memory of traumatic events like the Novocherkassk Massacre. But hearing about the tragedy from her brother and friends, she reinscribed meaning to her school photos because one of her classmates was killed in the massacre. Thus, the memories surrounding her group class photograph acquired new meaning based on the retroactive knowledge of an event which she did not witness, but heard about as a third party. Yet, the Novocherkassk Massacre still radically reshaped her memory and description of her school photographs. In many cases family archives demonstrate that individual and collective memory go beyond the private/public dichotomy. Instead, "the memory of events that resonate on the level of local communities are entangled in complex relationships with state-initiated memory projects, having the potential to enhance, modify, accommodate or subvert" generational and intergenerational transmission (p. 253). This is accomplished through a photograph's inclusion in local or federal memorials, museums, and domestic archives, which thus in turn contain a "reservoir of meanings" in which "local memories" are anchored in the familial landscape and explain everyday experience in relation to "disruptive events" in "familiar localities" (p. 254). In this manner, domestic photographs function as a personal cult of memory that is unique to each individual. Meaning is inculcated with "knowing silence," the transmission of photo archives from family member to family member (mobility), and the layered understandings or applications of memory (p. 326). Such is the case of the Immortal Regiment placards. As the authors explain, originally a grassroots initiative to save May 9 from the carnivalesque bombastic displays of Putin's government, journalists in Tomsk wanted to bring "Victory Day 'back to life'" in 2012 by turning to family photographs of those who served in the war (p. 350). The initial procession in Tomsk involved around six thousand individuals, and a local photo studio helped enlarge and mount old photographs of Great Patriotic War veterans. The movement spread rapidly between 2013 and 2014 "to over four hundred cities and towns across five countries" (p. 351). By 2014 the movement was effectively hijacked by Putin's United Russia Party, which began to dictate the narrative thrust of the original, spontaneous memorialization of family photos. The Moscow 2015 procession was the first in which Putin himself participated, but the Immortal Regiment marches draw on a rich background of Soviet and Imperial Russian traditions: the portraits of political leaders, the Boards of Honor of outstanding employees, and the Procession of the Cross in Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, participants tended to highlight the differences from these other forms of idolatry: it was this large mass of unknown heroes, rather than any one individual (Stalin), who led the Soviet Union to victory in World War II. The singularity of the individual placard and the plurality of the thousands displayed in marches reinforce the idea that personal memory and personal photographs play a momentous role in how individuals conceive of their relationship to the past. The performative aspect of the Immortal Regiment is itself a form of restoring intergenerational connections and reinforcing certain familial narratives through a shared sense of pride, duty, and unity through collective and individual memory. But once the movement was coopted by the government, the narrative was set: it is a "tightly controlled, authoritative narrative of the war that did not allow any acknowledgement of the indignities and inequities that marked the solders' experience in the trenches" (p. 387). In this way, the Immortal Regiment, an initiative to rehabilitate familial and collective memories of those who actually fought in World War II, turned into another version of the travelling exhibition "Rossia: Moia Istoriia." While these memorial marches are cathartic, at this point they ultimately (in my opinion as an outsider) do more to reassert state authority and militancy than to actually honor those who participated in the victory over Nazi Germany, or to recognize the shared trauma of World War II, even if they are abreactive on an individual level. Sarkisova and Shevchenko's In Visible Presence was an ambitious undertaking from the start, given the nature and scope of the project, in that post-Soviet domestic photo archives often lack chronology and contain immense gaps and silences related to the violence perpetuated by the Bolshevik and then Soviet regimes. The authors, however, are able to tackle these challenges through the framework of their research: in focusing on intergenerational memory transmission through the medium of photography, they address how photographs shape and reshape memory, but also show that photographs themselves do not possess a fixed meaning or interpretation throughout their (after)lives.