The Social Existence of the Archive in the Light of the Challenges of Modern Society

Ginatulina Ol'ga Aminovna ORCID: 0000-0002-9497-5452 PhD in Philosophy Associate Professor of the Department of Humanities and Socio-Economic Disciplines of Perm Institute of the Federal Penal Service of Russia 614012, Russia, Perm Krai, Perm, ul. Karpinsky, 125 kylikbitva@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Due to the development of post-industrial society, modern technological capabilities, the influx of information, the archive as a traditional social institution, acting as a place of collective memory of society, faces certain challenges. At the same time, historical memory performs significant functions for the life of society, can both consolidate the people and separate them, both support the existing socio-economic situation and oppose ^[1].

Maurice Halbwax is a classic researcher of the problems of historical (collective) memory. He believed that historical memory as a phenomenon goes beyond the existence of an individual. The source of its formation is not related to specific individual characteristics. This does not mean that, in an ontological sense, collective memory exists as something independent, no, its carriers are individual individuals, but the sources of formation lie outside of them. Traditionally, these sources were the objective events of the life of society themselves, which then received a subjective assessment in consciousness ^[2].

Today, through the information opportunities that modern society opens up to us, any person can act as a subject of the transmission of historical data. Information in the Internet space is being chaotically, uncontrollably replenished, and this process is going on permanently with great speed. The information there does not comply with the requirements that are imposed on scientific facts, the data is not structured, often not verified, and even false. Social networks are widely used as a tool for information replication. Initially, social networks were created to support communication at the household level. However, now information of various levels, including scientific and historical, is circulating in social networks. Scientists have analyzed information resources in social networks to reflect the image of the Great Patriotic War. The study showed that there is no certain logic and structure of the formation of the image of the Great Patriotic War. There is no ideological component ^{[3, 108-111]}. The goal of content creators is to attract attention to their groups by any means, using yellow media technologies, including in order to increase the number of views and thereby provide themselves with commercial benefits. The authors of the content do not set themselves the task of distorting information intentionally for some ideological purposes, it turns out spontaneously, since their actions are guided by economic benefit, the logic of a specific historical epoch, which aims to develop momentary temporary needs and contradicts the logic of the main development of mankind. This trend is dangerous. The greater the correspondence between public consciousness and public being, the more it can adequately respond to the challenges of history. In this case, we are talking about the distortion of historical facts in order to make a profit. The authors of the study note that inauthentic photos and captions to them are often posted in order to touch the emotional component of the personality and attract the audience.

In addition, methods that were previously available only to professional historians, in connection with the declassification and digitization of archival data, penetrate into the environment of ordinary people ^[4], which reduces the objectivity of assessments that are fixed in collective memory. All this leads to a memorial boom, which makes it difficult to distinguish scientific data from non-scientific ones. The answer to this challenge will be the creation of a unified network of archives both nationally and globally. On the one hand, this will allow archives to keep up with the times, increase their prestige, and on the other hand, it will help society to separate objective data from replicated yellow information. However, this creates incredible technological difficulties for the archives, which, in conditions of lack of human resources, requires support at the state level. At the same time, it is very important not to lose its traditional essence to archives and not turn into a technological archiver only ^{[5, 94]}. From time immemorial, the archive performed significant functions for society: ideological, communicative, social, memorial and others.

However, the trends existing in the modern world have complicated the functioning of archives in this area. The refusal to search for objective truth, relativism in connection with the crisis of modern society levels the authenticity of any data. There is a problem introduced by postmodernism about the free interpretation of meanings and the mixing of information. As the world has become multipolar, as well as economic, environmental, interethnic and other global problems have worsened, a number of scientists have become disillusioned with the ability of classical science to reach the truth and use it for the benefit of society. Any opinions received the status of acceptable. This is especially evident in historical science due to its specificity. However, the wide spread of subjective interpretations of historical events leads to the fact that their true meaning is lost, leveled ^[6]. This problem is aggravated by the technical possibility: anyone can post a post and there is no way for the consumer to verify the authenticity of the information, the truth is mixed with half-truths and outright lies and gets an independent existence, as it were. As a result, historical images aimed at the formation of values such as duty, honor, courage can also be easily assimilated by the younger generation, but not perceived as something real, thereby turning into simulacra. In this context, the function of the archive in providing objective data seems irreplaceable. Classes with students of all levels and forms on the basis of the archive allows the younger generation to form critical thinking and helps to navigate the flow of unfiltered information ^[7].

Further. The existence of the archive as a social institution acting as a guarantor of historical memory is under threat. As already noted, the role of the Internet and electronic communications is constantly increasing in modern society. As a result, archives lose their privileged position as monopolistic custodians of information and become one of the many players in the information field. At the same time, they significantly lose to electronic resources in terms of convenience and efficiency of searching for the necessary information. Thus, archives are gradually being pushed to the periphery of the information space. However, archives have a huge potential to become drivers of the development of the information society. In the social environment, there is a constantly growing interest in finding and preserving personal history, defining oneself through one's past. In such conditions, it is difficult to overestimate the possibility of archives to preserve and provide objective evidence of certain events. The effective realization of this potential in modern conditions requires an increase in the role of the information component of domestic archives. In practice, this means changing the approach to the organization of archives and their management ^[8].

Also, with an increase in the volume of information, there is an inversely proportional decrease in reliable data for the reasons described above. In this regard, it is necessary to raise the status of the archive as a guarantor of objective truth, independent of the immediate needs of ordinary people. A number of researchers do not see this as a threat, believing that such a phenomenon as distortion of historical facts has been observed throughout history. In different periods, we can observe how entire historical layers are given oblivion and, conversely, the events of bygone days are reanimated in the memory of peoples. Or in different historical epochs, the same events receive the opposite assessment. For example, a monument to Pyotr Stolypin was erected in Saratov. Once he was called Stolypin the hangman, and now he is in the city center in the image of a reformer hero ^{[9, 47]}. Yes, this is the case, history is being rewritten with obvious frequency. But at the same time, it should be emphasized that no matter how individual historical figures with power would like to embellish history and create a new image of reality, this would be impossible if at a certain historical stage of development it did not correspond to the tasks of the time itself. What is it about? That the feelings, views, moods prevailing in a certain historical epoch regarding history can be artificially created and distorted, but only those that ultimately contribute to the tasks of this historical segment take root. Otherwise, the society does not function stably, may be discarded in development at earlier stages or disappear as a separate unit. The epoch, which was called the Renaissance, openly articulated that it was intended to revive the ideals of Antiquity. However, in reality we see how the figures of the Renaissance appealing to the values of Antiquity and fiercely criticizing the dark Ages (although drawing a lot from there and not openly admitting to themselves), in fact, do not return us literally to the dawn of humanity, but recreate in memory a new image of Antiquity, which serves the tasks of the Renaissance. Which one exactly? To restore a person's faith in his own power, to liberate a person, to create an ideal of a universally developed individual. And if we take root even deeper into the social being, it turns out that these new ideals were also demanded by the epoch not by chance, but served the birth of new capitalist relations in society. After all, the market, which will develop in the future, demanded new qualities from people even then, namely activity, entrepreneurship, individualism, so they were cultivated, including by creating a certain image of historical memory.

Since historical memory is an element of public consciousness, it is characterized by subjectivism, distortion by virtue of its nature, and not only because of the purposeful rewriting of history to achieve practical results. As an example, we can cite the situation with the German historian Harald Welzer and an eyewitness to the bombing in Dresden during World War II. Witnesses of the tragedy claimed that American planes flew very low and hunted people, while the historian proved on the basis of technical data that this simply contradicts physical laws, and therefore impossible. Of course, the eyewitnesses had no purpose to distort the information, moreover, after the historical investigation, they remained true to their false memories. These distortions are natural and natural due to human nature and have taken place throughout history. These inaccuracies are explained by the psychology of the individual.

It is necessary to take into account the fact that historical memory, although it is an element of public consciousness, it also has an objective basis. And the more this objective basis is manifested, reflected in the collective consciousness, the more effectively society will function. In this regard, the role of the archive in preserving and providing objective data, based on the analysis of which it will be possible to make scientifically sound predictions about the development of a particular social element or society as a whole, seems exceptional. In this way, the archive can act as an objective basis for the so-called "historical policy". For the first time this term was used after the Second World War in Germany to reduce the responsibility of the German people for the crimes of the Third Reich. Further, historical politics has gained popularity in Poland since 2004, when a group of initiative historians developed a historical concept of their state in order to minimize and falsify history. After that, the historical policy began to spread widely in other states. Historical policy is not limited only to the function of preserving one's own cultural identity within the state. Its tools are used for the so-called consentient war, which is the defeat of the values of the peoples of other opposing states by distorting historical facts in the public consciousness ^[10]. Today, Russia is facing a new wave of concienal aggression, where the distortion of the role of the Soviet state in the world liberation movement during World War II is used as a weapon. In this regard, the activity of the archive in order to preserve historical memory is relevant. However, this issue requires comprehensive measures of interaction of the archive with other social institutions.

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