Memorial Culture of a Multi-Ethnic Society as a Factor in Ensuring Regional Security (Using Example of the North Caucasus)

The relevance of the chosen topic stems from the presence of a traumatic past in the ethnic variants of memorial culture in the North Caucasus regions, which creates the basis for the persistence of a traumatically divided society as a threat to regional security. In the context of increasing geopolitical instability, the need for solidarity in North Caucasian society is growing, which is difficult to achieve without a scientifically grounded “processing of the difficult past” with the aim of developing narratives that consolidate regional society. The aim of this study is to analyze the scholarly publications containing manifestations of local memorial cultures of the peoples of the North Caucasus and identify opportunities for introducing consolidating adjustments to ethnic variants of memorial culture that contribute to ethnopolitical stability and regional security. To understand the “traumatic historical” localized in the ethnic variants of regional memorial culture, A. Assmann’s ideas on “overcoming the past” were used. The heuristic value of the results of discourse analysis of the texts of academic articles by North Caucasian historians was expressed in the discovery of memory nodes as points of intersection of cohesive narratives that contribute to the formation of a generalized context for a higher-level memorial culture. It is substantiated that, under these conditions, “working on the past” through the prism of “overcoming the past” is feasible to develop constructive conclusions on key historical events as factors in regional security and the cohesion of North Caucasian society.