Characteristics of the Structure and Content of Russian Perceptions About Political Repression


Abstract: Historical perceptions determine social identity, are linked to group behaviour, and form the basis for the norms and values of society as a whole. This paper considers the factors influencing the perception of historical events and describes various social perceptions of mass violence and war. To identify and analyse characteristics of the structure and content of representations of political repression in the 1930s, we exploited the structural approach of J.C. Abric. The results showed that perceptions of repression are stable, consistent, and associated with negative sensations. The structure of their representations differs between males, females, and over generations. We also examined specific features of the image of the victims of repression. The immediate affective reactions of respondents showed emotional tension and acutely negative sensations, which can lead to inward resistance and reluctance to provide information about repression. These reactions also represent an obstacle to adequate thinking about the reality of the repression. This effect provokes disassociation from the victims of repression, even including members of the respondent’s families. The inability of respondents to cope with negative sensations forces them to establish distance between the categories “My family” and “Victims of repression,” even in cases where these categories overlap.

Keywords: representations; the structure of representations; the core and the periphery of representations; representations of repression

1. Introduction
A social representation is a network of ideas, metaphors, and images, which also incorporates emotions, attitudes, and beliefs (Moscovici 2000). Social representations should not be considered as models of logical and consistent thinking. Instead, they may be full of contradictory ideas. Social representations refer to a mental construct that captures a society’s collective thinking. As S. Moscovici (2000) has argued, social representations are always influenced by the overall vision which a society defines for itself, and are played out at the group and society levels. Social representations are not only socially determined: they are also the result of group discussion, and are instruments for naming and categorizing everyday group interests, thus shaping the world outlook and communication among members of a community (Moscovici 1973).

Martin Bauer and George Gaskell (1999) have emphasized that the formation of social representations should be presented in a temporal context. New social representations are always linked to older ones. Therefore, social representations have their history, and as existing concepts are used for incorporating new events, they also have a future. This is why social representations are the objects of change. As new social representations are developed, older ones may lose their social relevance and sink into oblivion (Páez et al. 2016); however, some concepts can be so strong in the minds of a group’s members that they become almost integral to the mindset of the entire society.
Social representations of a people’s history have important implications for a group’s social identity. As has been shown by B. Doosje et al. (1998) and E. Dresler-Hawke (2000), the relevance of positive and negative aspects of a group’s history can influence a sense of collective shame or guilt.
Social representations of history contain markers which denote heroes and villains, create roles, impart legitimacy, and pre-determine the responses of policy-makers. So, in Professor N.E. Koposov’s view (2011, p. 52), “the peculiarity of current historical politics is largely rooted in two important features of contemporary memory: ...the criminalization and victimization of the past – the view of history as a chain of crimes and the desire of human collectives to present themselves as their victims." The scholar argues that the paradigm of this attitude to the past was shaped during the era of catastrophes and "global atrocities," often committed in the name of the future. The World Wars, the Holocaust, and the Gulag became symbols of the memory of the twentieth century. These events created an essential matrix of a narrative of the past—its criminalization. This paper aims to consider the factors influencing the perception of historical events, describe different types of public perception of mass violence, and present the results of an empirical study of the structure and content of social perceptions of political repressions of the 1930s.

History defines the trajectory of individual identity. As J. Liu and D. Hilton (2005, p. 537) have argued, “A group’s representation of its history will condition its sense of what it was, is, can and should be, and is thus central to the construction of its identity, norms, and values.”
Every person builds individual representations of historical events, based on the books they have read, history lessons, the narratives of their parents, films they have seen, and so on. Shared representations (Moscovici 1988) promote effective communication and coordinate social behaviour (Lau et al. 2001; Liu et al. 2002), while differences in social representations can trigger misunderstanding and distrust (Huang et al. 2004; Liu et al. 1999).

Similar social representations of different historical events can resolve existing conflicts and challenges from the perspective of “what happened” (Devine-Wright 2003; Liu and Hilton 2005; Pennebaker et al. 1997). In the opinion of Bronislav Malinowski (1926), history provides us with “underlying myths,” which can be used for establishing the basis of social order.

Most often, social representations of historical events are centred around conflicts. According to J. Liu’s findings (1999), politics and wars constitute about 70% of the events considered most relevant in world history. The findings of his research also showed that social representations of history had the following specific features:
·    World wars, and the individuals most influential in the course of history (e.g., Hitler), are perceived as unequivocally negative.
·    Representations are, to a great extent, Eurocentric (i.e., they relate to people and events which took place in Europe).
·    Considerable attention has been paid to the advancement of science and technology, which is crucial for historical developments (see also Kennedy 1987).
The theory of social representations can be considered as an alternative means of explaining and interpreting the processes of learning, and has been successfully employed in exploring national cultural, social, and psychological characteristics (Jodelet 1989).

Several significant factors affecting the social representations of history can be singled out.

....