Distancing from the Soviet Past in the Post-Soviet States: Factors of Variability

The given thesis is a deep analysis of the state historical policy in the post-Soviet bloc states through the vector of distance from the Soviet past. In the framework of this work, two research tasks are carried out: 1) to identify “hard” and “soft” types of distance from the historical heritage of the USSR with the help of distance indicators; 2) to investigate what factors have influence on the variability of distancing in the resulting cases. To accomplish the first task, a compilation and analysis of academic sources was implemented with the aim of identifying tools for rejection soviet herritage, as well as were analyzed legal acts, information from official websites of the state, materials from news agencies with elements of discourse and content analysis. Further, with the help of the case study, extreme cases of distance were analyzed on the subject of the influence of variation factors.