Politics of memory vs historical memory: the Napoleonic wars and the First World War anniversaries

The era of the Napoleonic wars and the First World War were the key stages of the emergence of the modern world order and the formation of national consciousness of many peoples. The consequence of two epochs was the formation of basic national and supranational historical myths, the development of a politics of memory and politics of history. The central points of interaction and conflicts of politics of memory and the natural process of condensation of historical memory of the past were and still are the anniversaries.
The proposed project aims to identify the origins and sources of the national memory of the peoples of the main participants in these military conflicts (Russia, France, Germany and the UK), show forms, methods and evolution of images of war, to trace the features of construction from the power of historical myths about the war, the reformatting of those images, to identify the specificity of the interaction or conflict of the authorities and the public (including the historical society) in the period of the anniversaries of wars, as well as goals, forms and results of the anniversaries.
The project is also of great practical importance because its realization will help to reveal the opportunities and limits of use anniversaries to generate images of the past, not in conflict with the authentically established historical reality, which in turn will help in building not illusory, but scientifically sound national historical perspectives and the politics of history.