Historical memory and its institutionalization in cultural heritage sites on the example of Russia and Germany

The World Cultural Heritage (WCH) status is awarded to sites on the basis of criteria that record the specific historical segment to which the site belongs. In the paper, the author analyses the role historical memory plays in the process of applying for the status of the WCS object. The main question is whether the recognition of the status of WHС is a way to show the value of preservation of historical memory or not. The author uses expert interviews with representatives of the city administration, local businesses, employees of the tourist centers, and local activists, collected in two Russian (Veliky Novgorod and Pskov) and two German cities (Wismar and Stralsund) as sources for the study. The research has shown that obtaining the status of WHС is aimed among other things at preserving historical memory. However, this is not a primary goal of the actors. The initial purpose of obtaining the status of the WCH for the city administration in Russian cases was to fulfill the order given from above. For German cities, the status of the WCH was primarily of symbolic value; it confirmed that those cities located on the territory of the GDR had the same cultural value as the cities on the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany.