After Stalin's death in 1953, the Soviet Union dismantled the enormous
system of terror and torture that he had created. But there has never
been any Russian ban on former party functionaries, nor any external
authority to dispense justice. Memorials to the Soviet victims are
inadequate, and their families have received no significant
compensation. This book's premise is that late Soviet and post-Soviet
culture, haunted by its past, has produced a unique set of memorial
practices. More than twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, Russia remains "the land of the unburied" the events of the
mid-twentieth century are still very much alive, and still contentious.
Alexander Etkind shows how post-Soviet Russia has turned the painful
process of mastering the past into an important part of its political
present.