The Civil War (1918-1922) in the historical politics of Russian political parties.

Timshina Ekaterina Leonidovna PhD in History Associate professor, Department of Linguistics for State Administration Personnel, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation 119571, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Prospekt Vernadskogo, 82 str.1 k.timshina@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

In any political discussion, one can find an appeal to the events of the past and their consequences, while the reliability of the facts presented often does not matter significantly, giving way to the expediency of the moment. In the modern world, political parties with their extensive propaganda capabilities have become one of the main mnemonic actors. For many parties, historical narratives are an additional opportunity to stand out in the political field and attract new supporters. A striking example of when political movements managed to make their ideas about the past dominant in public discourse was the "memory wars" in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics.

In the process of adapting historical events and processes for political purposes, their primitivization inevitably takes place to a certain "myth" ? a template that can be easily conveyed to the layman. In the process of modification, logic, scientific methods of analysis and historical objectivity are replaced by emotionality, a request for justice and other methods of manipulation that can cause a quick response from an ordinary voter. As a result of such actions, a collective memory may be formed in society that differs from real events. To study the phenomenon of substitution of historical memory of society, the experience developed in the process of studying the perception of the past by large communities is suitable.

Collective memory research is a prime example of an interdisciplinary field in science. Historians, philosophers, economists, sociologists and cultural scientists have turned to the study of the memory of the past. The different genesis made it difficult to develop a unified methodological approach. The research uses the terms "culture of memory", "collective memory", "symbolic politics", "historical memory", "historical politics", "politics of history", "politics of the past", which are quite similar in meaning, but not always identical. To study the struggle of political parties in relation to the events of the past, it seems appropriate to use the term "historical politics", in the definition of the Russian researcher A. Y. Bubnov: "any purposeful activity for the political use of the past, including both the activities of the authorities in the field of national and state identity, and the struggle in the public field of influential public groups for the assertion of their versions of the interpretation of the collective past" ^{[1, p. 6]}.

The emergence of the direction of research on the memory of large communities in historiography is traditionally associated with the works of the French philosopher M. Halbwaks "The Social Framework of Memory" (1925) and "Collective and Historical Memory" (1944) ^[2-3]. However, the real dawn of the field of historical memory research occurred several decades later, when the works of J. Le Goff, P. Hutton, J. Assman, A. Assman and P. Bourdieu ^[4-8] laid the methodological foundations for further development of research on collective memory, including the political use of history and the peculiarities of the formation of "myth".

In Russia, large-scale research on collective memory began after the collapse of the USSR. The authors focused on the history of the "memory wars" in the post-Soviet space (A. I. Miller, G. A. Bordyugov ^[9-11]) and the complex problems of developing state historical policy in the Russian Federation (O. Y. Malinova, N. E. Koposov ^[12-14]). It is undeniable that the state authorities have the widest range of opportunities to form and convey to citizens their ideas about the past, which is due to access to legislative regulation and control over the formation of historical images, influence on the education system and the media. The ideas of political parties about the past have remained much less studied. From the studies in which political organizations are considered as actors of historical politics, it is possible to note the cycle of works by O. Y. Malinova on the construction of the mnemonic image of the "dashing 90s". in the party discourse ^[15-16]. The problems of the modern collective view of the Civil War are considered in the empirical studies of A. Y. Bubnov on the example of the competition of "red" and "white" narratives in the space of online discussions ^[17-18].

The purpose of this article is to study the attitude of modern Russian political parties to the events of the Civil War in Russia (1918-1922). The object of study is the historical policy of political parties, the subject is to establish the attitude of the leading political parties of Russia to the events of the Civil War, the analysis of the image of the past formed by them, the perception of key personalities of this era. The main sources were official documents of the parties, election programs, speeches and publications of party leaders, books, materials from official websites. More than 70 parties are registered in the Russian Federation, but most of them are not widely popular, and therefore, for the purposes of this article, the number of parties is limited to participants in the last two election campaigns to the State Duma. It should be noted that some of these parties do not have a clear relationship to the past, for example, the "highly specialized" political associations "Greens", "Green Alternative", "Russian Party of Pensioners for Social Justice" did not broadcast their attitude to the past, focusing on modern environmental and pension problems.

The development of the state historical policy in relation to the events of the Civil War took place slowly, with repeated changes of vectors and has not been completed so far. For any society, large-scale civil conflicts are traumatic and divisive events for a long time. In some cases, when building a subsequent state historical policy, they can become one of the pillars of support, close in importance to the "founding myth". The most striking example of such an adaptation of the past is the American Civil War (1861-1865), which in modern American society is perceived as a struggle for the ideals of freedom, the unification of the nation and, in fact, the birthplace of the modern state. A similar important role was assigned to the Civil War in the memory policy of the Soviet Union. Shortly after the Bolshevik victory, the process of building a commemorative infrastructure around the October Revolution began, the most important part of which were the events of the Civil War. In the early years of Soviet power, pre-revolutionary history was pushed into the background, so the main moral guideline for a Soviet person should have been the exploits and deeds of the Red Guards. The accelerated and successful construction of the Soviet "founding myth" predetermined the special place that the Civil War occupied in the Soviet ideological pantheon, and the rigid framework within which the memory of it developed. According to a number of researchers [for example, 19, pp. 78-79], during the reign of L. I. Brezhnev, a gradual replacement began as the main symbol of the heroic past of the events of victory in the Civil War for victory in the Great Patriotic War. Although this thesis is largely true, especially in terms of the ruthenization of the memory of internal conflict, the importance of the Civil War in the system of mnemonic values remained.

The real desacralization was the era of Perestroika. The memory of the red heroes of the Civil War turned out to be one of the most vulnerable and fragile parts of the Soviet mythological complex. The policy of glasnost removed the previous framework of memory and allowed for a wide discussion of the problem of the red terror and subsequent repressions against many Bolshevik war heroes. Another direction of debunking was the introduction into public circulation of the version about active German assistance to the Bolsheviks on their way to power and the interpretation of this support as national betrayal and a "stab in the back."

After the collapse of the USSR, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation enjoyed the support of about half of the population and made efforts to preserve Soviet mythologies in public memory, especially the memory of the global and civilizational significance of the Great October Socialist Revolution. The Communist Party continued to cultivate the image of the revolution as an unquestionably progressive event – the beginning of a historic breakthrough that allowed the USSR to become a superpower. On the issue of the Civil War, aware of the political risks, and against the background of the threat of new social conflicts in an unstable post-Soviet society, the party resorted to the figure of silence.

In contrast, the liberal authorities broadcast the image of the revolution as a catastrophe that led to a civil war, the victory in which the Bolsheviks tore the country out of the global civilizational mainstream. The maximum emphasis was placed on the thousands of victims of the post-revolutionary conflict. The authorities have developed the idea of transforming November 7 into a new holiday – the "Day of Consent and Reconciliation". The content of the memorial date changed: instead of the victory day of the revolution, it turned into a day of mourning and commemoration of all victims of the Civil War, regardless of the side of the conflict. However, the authorities quickly lost interest in the idea of general reconciliation, the topic was not developed in the public field, there were no monuments uniting the memory of the dead on both sides, like the Spanish Valley of the Fallen, although projects of such a commemoration were discussed.

The election of Vladimir Putin as the country's leader led to a change in state historical policy. The government has tried to unite the pre-revolutionary and Soviet past, emphasizing that the modern Russian Federation is the historical successor of both the Russian Empire and the USSR. The emphasis in the new eclectic memory policy was on positive historical events, tragic or controversial events were overshadowed. This fate befell both the 1917 revolutions and the subsequent Civil War. In 2004, November 7 ceased to be a public holiday, the initiative on the day of reconciliation of the parties to the Civil War (1918-1922) was finally buried, and the federal authorities began to popularize the newly established holiday ? National Unity Day (November 4). Although the events of the Time of Troubles (the civil war in the Muscovite Kingdom) served as the basis for the new holiday, there is practically no mention of internal conflict in the descriptions of the holiday. Attention is focused on the struggle of the troops of the Second National Militia with the Polish interventionists for the liberation of Moscow, i.e. confrontation with the external enemy and national unification against it. The issue of the appearance of Polish troops in Moscow and the activities of the Seven Boyars was practically not touched upon in state narratives.

The state policy of memory in relation to the heroes and events of the Civil War also turned out to be in a state of stagnation. Practically no attempts were made to formulate the position of the authorities both towards the war as a whole and towards individual personalities. If, starting with Perestroika, there was an almost mechanical "substitution of signs" from plus to minus for the Bolsheviks and vice versa, then starting in the 2000s, the authorities began to avoid unambiguous formulations of their position. Discussions about the attitude towards the White Movement after the unveiling of monuments to Admiral Kolchak in Irkutsk and General Markov in the Rostov region, memorial plaques of Kolchak and Mannerheim in St. Petersburg, disputes about the need to rename the Voykovskaya metro station, remained separate outbreaks in the media space, and were usually initiated by actors unrelated or loosely connected with the state. Even when the decision on the commemoration was made at the state level (for example, the renaming of Rastorguyev Island to Kolchak Island in 2005), the emphasis was placed on the return of the historical name given by the discoverers, without assessing the role of the admiral in the White Movement.

It was expected that the celebration of the centenary of the February and October Revolutions in 2017 would trigger the activation of state historical policy and lead to a clear formulation of the position of the authorities in relation to both revolutionary events and the tragic post-revolutionary conflict. As a result, the anniversary of the revolution took place "quietly and imperceptibly", the events organized by the authorities were as neutral as possible. The main content of the few commemorative events was the formula of "consent and reconciliation" (only unlike the 1990s without a critical refrain in relation to the Bolsheviks) and the need to preserve unity in the present so as not to repeat the mistake of the ancestors. As Russian President Vladimir Putin noted in his message to the Federal Assembly on the eve of the jubilee year, "It is unacceptable to drag splits, anger, resentment and bitterness of the past into our lives today, in our own political and other interests to speculate on the tragedies that affected almost every family in Russia, no matter on which side of the barricades our ancestors turned out to be then. Let's remember: we are one people, we are one people and we have one Russia" ^[20].

The anniversary of the end of the Civil War also passed unnoticed. The main and, in fact, the only commemorative event was the opening of the monument to the "Sons of Russia who fought in the Civil War" in Sevastopol. Russian Russian Army was originally planned to be opened in Kerch and timed to coincide with the centenary of the Russian exodus (the evacuation of the Russian army of P. A. Wrangel and its supporting population from Crimea in November 1920), as a result, the monument was opened late in Sevastopol on April 22, 2021 with the participation of the chairman of the Russian Military Historical Society V. R. Medinsky. In the media and official statements, it is mentioned that the monument was erected in connection with the centenary of the end of the Civil War in 2020. Apparently, in the state historical policy, the choice of the date of the end of the conflict will shift towards the bright and widely known, thanks to literary and cinematic works, Russian exodus. In historical studies, the date of the end of the Civil War is considered to be the entry of Bolshevik troops into Vladivostok on October 25, 1922, and not the Crimean evacuation, which ended the war in the European part of the country.

United Russia continued the President's proposed policy of smoothing out contradictions according to the formula of "consent and reconciliation" with the imperative to prevent the recurrence of tragic events in the present. As the secretary of the General Council of United Russia A. A. Turchak noted: "It's time to understand and reconcile, to pay tribute to those who fought ? each for his part ? for a better future of our country, and always remember those events so that this could never happen again" ^[21]. In the narratives of the party in power, the Civil War is often combined with the October Revolution and is regarded as its consequences. In 2014, the chairman of the United Russia Party, D. A. Medvedev, called the October Revolution "a day of tragedy that largely predetermined the future history of the country and the Civil War" ^[22]. In the year of the centenary of revolutionary events, he combined the consequences of the revolution and the civil war into a single negative result: "the revolution is an obvious example of how, with the loss of stability, the foundations of the economy were essentially destroyed and prospects for economic growth were lost for many years" ^[23].

The first deputy head of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, A. K. Isaev, focused in detail on the periodization of the events of 1917 and the Civil War in the article "The Great Russian Revolution is one of the greatest events of the XX century", published in Rossiyskaya Gazeta on the anniversary of the revolution. In his opinion, the isolation of the February and October revolutions and the Civil War as separate events is not correct, these are stages of one long process – the Great Russian Revolution of 1917-1921 ^[24], while the politician did not explain the reasons for choosing 1921 as the year of the end of the revolution. In his next article, in the same Rossiyskaya Gazeta, he writes about the end of the Civil War already in 1922 ^[25], the publication does not continue the idea of combining events under the "umbrella" of one term – the Civil War is considered as a separate event. The term "The Great Russian Revolution" used by A. K. Isaev is not an innovation, it has been widely discussed by professional historians and used in foreign historiography. A few years before the anniversary of the revolution, it was used in the draft concept of a unified history textbook prepared under the guidance of academician A. O. Chubaryan ^{[26, p. 40]} and caused a public outcry, but it was extremely rarely used by politicians, including representatives of United Russia, who preferred more established and familiar definitions for society. Russian Russian Revolution anniversaries in 2017 and the Crimean evacuation in 2020 were a good opportunity to introduce the generalizing term "The Great Russian Revolution" into historical politics, but the party in power settled on the formula of "consent and reconciliation", and the article "The Great Russian Revolution ? one of the greatest events of the XX century" remained a unique example of its use in a party publication. In addition to the unveiling of the monument to the "Sons of Russia who fought in the Civil War", United Russia practically did not offer additional commemorative events, except for supporting the idea in 2019 to honor with a minute of silence the memory of all those who died in the Civil War on July 17 (the date of the execution of the royal family).

The proposal for a memorial day for the dead was put forward by the LDPR and, if representatives of United Russia carefully formulated their position, not directly linking the Civil War with specific events and personalities, then representatives of the LDPR condemned any revolutionary changes and pointed out that the fault at the beginning of the Civil War lies entirely with the Bolsheviks. The February Revolution was within the framework of the evolutionary vector of movement from absolutism to constitutional monarchy, which was carried out by most European countries, but V. V. Zhirinovsky's associates define the Bolsheviks' coming to power as the main trouble of the XX century, because of which all the other tragedies of the century occurred: "Do not think that the revolution ended on October 25, 1917. It continued into the civil war, it turned into Stalinist terror, it turned into the Great Patriotic War, it turned into the politics of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin... and today Ukraine is smoking – it is a continuation of the October Revolution" ^[27]. The policy of the Bolsheviks with their uncompromising position and repression after coming to power made the outbreak of an internal war inevitable. V. V. Zhirinovsky places personal responsibility on V. I. Lenin. According to the head of the LDPR, he is the sole initiator of the October Revolution: "Lenin and his group… After all, he demanded an armed uprising. Trotsky supported it at the last stage. <...> As it was, the entire Central Committee was against it. What kind of armed uprising, why on earth? ^[28]. Zhirinovsky considers Lenin a criminal, and for his anti-state slogan "Let's turn the imperialist war into a civil one." The leader of the LDPR repeatedly pointed out Germany's interest in the successes of the Bolsheviks (Lenin and his associates were not arrested and interned as subjects of the Russian Empire, but were sent home), in fact supporting the conspiracy theory about the organization of the October Revolution by the German Empire ^{[29, p. 75]}. However, despite the criticism, Zhirinovsky gave the position to the determination and thirst for power of the Bolshevik leaders, against such people the old elites had the chances of a domestic dog against a wolf ^{[29, p. 74]}. Russian Russians consider the main victim of the Civil War to be the Russian people, advocating the creation of an organization for the study and museification of the genocide of Russians in the twentieth century, one of the elements of which was the post-revolutionary conflict (in the terminology of the party "terror in 1918-1924"). The LDPR also negatively assessed the role of the Entente countries during the Civil War, since the allies benefited from the sale of surplus weapons, they expected to enrich themselves at the expense of Russia and were interested in maximizing the reduction of the Russian people. These theses fit into the consistent anti-Western position of the party, which is confident in the presence of centuries-old confrontation between the collective West and the Russian people. The LDPR also criticizes the leaders of the White Movement for the lack of a real and formalized socio-economic policy and reliance on the Entente countries, which are more interested in plundering Russia rather than the real victory of anti-Bolshevik forces, while the personal qualities of white leaders (for example, A.V. Kolchak) are rated quite highly ^[30].

Another national conservative party, Rodina, approached the revolutionary events and the Civil War from similar positions. Only, unlike the LDPR, the main negative event of 1917 was considered not the October Revolution, but the overthrow of the monarchy. As the chairman of the party A. A. Zhuravlev noted, "October 1917 was a direct consequence of the bourgeois February Revolution, when the liberal elites of the Russian Empire betrayed national interests" ^[31]. Despite the critical negative attitude towards the Bolsheviks, the leaders of Rodina, like their colleagues from the LDPR, noted practicality, discipline, and the ability to manage in crisis situations, which predetermined the victory of the Communists – "the Russian liberals did not have a single chance to stay in power after February. And those whom they called Bolsheviks turned out to be much more successful, impudent and purposeful managers, politicians who stopped at nothing, they took maximum risks and won as a result" ^[32]. The main culprit of the extremes of the Civil War on the part of the Reds, such as terror, hostage-taking, repression, "Homeland" calls V. I. Lenin. For example, a member of the Political Council of the party, V. V. Aksyuchits, evaluates the leader of the Bolsheviks as an "ideological maniac" aimed at "total destruction", an "evil genius", the owner of "bestial cruelty" and "absolute cynicism" ^[33].

Despite the criticism of the Bolsheviks, responsibility for unleashing the Civil War, first of all, rests with the liberal elites who seized power in February 1917. Although the Rodina party defines itself as a right-wing conservative association, it has a negative attitude towards supporters of the anti-Bolshevik camp of the Civil War. For example, the chairman of the Economics Council of the Rodina party, M. L. Khazin, believes that the defeat of the Bolsheviks would have predetermined the coming to power of "capitalist compradors" aimed at selling off Russia: "a classic example is Alexander Kolchak, who joined the British service, who began to take Siberia and the Far East from Russia for British money" ^[34]. Another area of criticism was the unjustifiability of a brutal domestic policy, if the "red terror" has its own explanation and a narrow, targeted focus on "specific characters, historical enemies", and the number of its victims is most likely greatly overestimated, then the "white terror" seems blind and massive ("Kolchak massacred entire villages in Siberia simply because that he didn't like that some people left those villages for the Reds" ^[35]).

It is in the Bolsheviks that Rodina sees patriots-statesmen interested in saving and reviving the country. All the red "excesses" of the Civil War are attributed by the ideologists of the party to the conscience of individual personalities (V. I. Lenin), which allows the party, without contradicting its conservative beliefs, to support and highly evaluate the achievements of the USSR during the reign of I. V. Stalin.

The position of the liberal parties PARNAS and Yabloko, which are critical of the political structure of both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union due to their authoritarian nature, is directly opposite to the ideas of the Motherland. Both parties praised the results of the February Revolution. According to the co–founder of the Yabloko party, G. A. Yavlinsky, "February is not a prelude to October and not a prologue to disaster. From the point of view of the elites, it was an urgent attempt to bring the government out of a state of degradation and save the situation in the country, from the position of society – a belated but decisive denial of political obscurantism, irrationalism, corruption and hope for a breakthrough to political modernization, a just system" ^[36]. Although the new rulers made mistakes, in general their actions were for the benefit of Russia and in the long run would lead to its prosperity. According to representatives of Yabloko, the last legitimate regime in Russia was the Provisional Government. The February Revolution was the overthrow of power, but since a democratically elected Constituent Assembly was subsequently planned, the new government was legitimate. The party considers the October Revolution to be a coup d'etat. According to the degree of negativity of the attitude towards her, the position of the Yabloko members can only be compared with their ideological opponents from the LDPR camp. The two parties are also related by faith in the theory of the German trace in the Bolsheviks' rise to power: "The Bolshevik government, self-styled "Soviet", was born out of a coup d'etat committed by a group of left-wing radical extremists who used financial assistance from Germany, which was on the verge of defeat in the First World War, to realize their goals. The main result of the coup is the destruction of all the positive experience of Russian statehood (from jury trials and local governments to institutions of property, inheritance, the credit and financial system and freedom of the press), state terrorism, stratocide, and the dispersal of the All—Russian Constituent Assembly" ^[37]. Even at the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2011, Yabloko introduced into the election program the intention to "recognize at the state level the illegitimacy of the violent change of power in Russia in 1917, restore the historical and legal continuity of the Russian state, interrupted by the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in 1918," at the next Duma elections, Yabloko not only refused The USSR was convinced of the legality of its creation, but also opposed its regime to the rest of civilization – "The Bolshevik dictatorship stopped the natural historical development of our country, for many decades tore Russia away from the common path of civilization development for the whole of Europe" ^[38]. The basis of the historical policy of the Yabloko party was the idea of a century-long movement in the "wrong direction" and the need to start all over again from the place of error, the only way to return to the general civilizational road, "we must return to the "February" understanding of the rejection of autocracy" ^[36]. Accordingly, Yabloko placed full responsibility for the outbreak of the Civil War on the Bolsheviks, whom it defines as "rebels" and "extremists". Since the party sees legitimacy exclusively in the Provisional Government and the Constituent Assembly, it practically does not formulate its position towards the leaders of the White Movement, although with rare mentions the attitude towards them is generally positive, especially towards the heroes of the initial period, such as General Kornilov and the participants of the "Ice" campaign.

Despite the ideological closeness between the Yabloko and PARNAS RODPS (both parties advocate systemic decommunization in the issue of historical policy towards the 1917 revolution and the heroes of the Civil War on the part of the Bolsheviks), the People's Freedom Party believes that, in fact, since the February Revolution, the victory of the Bolsheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries (PARNAS unites the two parties as the united revolutionary force) was a foregone conclusion even without a Civil War. "The elections to the Constituent Assembly, held quite freely in November 1917, clearly showed that the revolutionary path was then preferred by four-fifths of our citizens who voted for the Bolsheviks, Socialist revolutionaries and political parties close to them" ^[38]. Having equated the supporters of the RSDLP(b) and the Socialist Revolutionaries as revolutionaries, the modern Party of People's Freedom believes that the Constituent Assembly would not become a panacea for the establishment of authoritarianism, but would lead to it through a democratic procedure. In fact, if the Constituent Assembly had continued its work, the result would have been the same as after the October revolution. PARNAS sees the reason for the majority of the population's trust in revolutionaries in the populist promises of the Bolsheviks, corresponding to popular aspirations – "the people followed them, hoping for an improvement in their lives, for achieving greater truth and prosperity, and were completely deceived" ^[39]. Like the LDPR, PARNAS sees in the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks all the subsequent problems of the century. "The Russian Revolution caused various totalitarian/authoritarian regimes to come to power in the 1920s and 50s all over the world - fascist in Italy, Nazi in Germany, Francoist in Spain, Kemalist in Turkey, Baathist in the Front East. The Second World War was largely the result of the Bolshevik victory in Russia in 1917-22." ^[40] PARNAS found a conscious and thinking part of society, ready to fight heroically for freedom, in the ranks of the White Guard ^[39]. The People's Freedom Party became the only party that unequivocally supported the side of the "White Cause" in its narratives. Although the opponents of the Bolsheviks represented diverse forces and were unable to develop a unified program during the Civil War, PARNAS presented them with a united front, giving them their modern views.

The left–wing political party "Just Russia – Patriots - For the Truth" (social democratic by its own definition) Like representatives of Rodina, she pointed out that the Bolsheviks were forced to occupy power due to the accumulation of a critical number of mistakes by the Provisional Government and its inaction on key issues, the Communists turned out to be a cohesive force capable of filling the power vacuum and proposing an implemented program. The "point of no return", when the coming to power of the RSDLP(b) became inevitable, the leader of the "Just Russia" sees no earlier than the beginning of October 1917 ^{[41, pp. 25-26]}. Assessing the events of the Civil War, the leader of the just people suggests not to look for the culprits and, reflecting on the results of the war, focuses on the "great exodus" of refugees and irretrievable victims. "First of all, the greatness of October is a tragic greatness. He marked the beginning of the great tragedy of the Civil War, great in duration and sacrifice. One can endlessly speculate about who first started the terror, but the history of the Civil War was marked by both white and red terror, and as a result, the enormity of human casualties on both sides was truly demonic ^[42]."

If the majority of parties assess the Civil War from an emotional point of view, focusing on thousands of victims, internally displaced persons and damage to the state, then the New People party considers the Civil War as a phase transition event ^[43], generally favorable for the successful development of society. The terms "phase of development" and "phase transition" were introduced within the framework of the theory of the world historical process, developed in the 1990s by the historian-orientalist I. M. Dyakonov ^[44], on the development of which, apparently, the historical policy of the "New People" is based. The concept aroused interest in the scientific community, but, in general, it was received skeptically. According to the theory, human communities go through different phases of development, with the accumulation of economic, technological, social and other prerequisites, a transition to the next level takes place. The transition from one phase to another is defined as "overcoming the phase barrier". Societies that have failed to make a phase transition find themselves in a stage of stagnation and degradation, and lose their competitiveness. If such a transition is carried out within one generation, then overcoming the phase barrier is considered successful. Accordingly, the Civil War in Russia is regarded by the "New People" as a successful transition to the phase of industrial society. The transition to the post-industrial phase, which began in the 1990s, was not completed for Russia (the party considers China and South Korea to be examples of successful overcoming of the barrier), which predetermines the current stagnation^[43].

The Communist parties advocated the preservation of Soviet mythologies: The "Communists of Russia" and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, however, the Civil War in their narratives has lost the central place it occupied in the USSR. The "Communists of Russia", who actively defend the memory of the October Revolution (up to prosecution for denying the storming of the Winter Palace and the shooting of the Aurora) and using the achievements of the Stalin era in their propaganda, at the same time practically do not mention the Civil War in their narratives. With rare appeals, the emphasis is not on internal conflict, but on confrontation with foreign forces, for example, a quote from the party's program: "The young Republic of Soviets withstood the Civil War imposed by international imperialism" ^[45].

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, like their competitors from the "Communists of Russia", very carefully refers to the history of the Civil War. For example, in the party's Program, in which the history section occupies a significant place, the events of the Civil War are omitted ^[46]. In Soviet historiography, the February Revolution was interpreted as an inevitable event on the way to the October Revolution and was defined as a progressive phenomenon, with some reservations. The inability of the Provisional Government to carry out radical reforms was linked to its class interests. The Communist Party noticeably transformed the Soviet narrative, regarding the February Revolution as a seizure of power by "liberals", which put the country on the brink of disaster: "The bourgeois Provisional Government of Liberals is coming. They are the same talkers who are not able to solve any problems. <...> The Bolshevik Party led by Lenin, in fact, saved a country engulfed in anarchy and disintegrating before our eyes" ^[47]. If modern liberal parties prove that the October Revolution led to a Civil War, then the Communists believe that the actions of the Bolsheviks saved Russia from destruction and they are not responsible for the outbreak of the conflict. The Communist Party places the main blame on foreign powers, primarily the Entente countries, without whose participation and material and financial support individual civil clashes would not have turned into a full-scale war ^[48]. The end of the Civil War of the Communist Party traditionally for Soviet historiography refers to the capture of Vladivostok on October 25, 1922.

As part of the commemoration of the red heroes of the Civil War, the Communist Party stands for the preservation of Soviet monuments, plaques and geographical names. Another area is the fight against attempts to perpetuate the memory of the heroes of the White Guard. The Communists do not find positive examples among the anti-Bolshevik camp. The Communist Party has been most active and consistent in its opposition to Admiral Kolchak's comment. Waves of critical publications were associated with the release of the feature film "Admiral" and the installation of a memorial plaque in St. Petersburg. The main imperative of numerous articles against perpetuating the memory of the commanders of the white army, including Kolchak, is their participation in anti-national terror and collusion with foreign powers [for example, 49-52]. To strengthen their theses, the Communists compare the leaders of the white movement with Vlasov and foreign agents, considering them the same traitors.

The idea of building a monument to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the Civil War in Sevastopol was no less negatively received by the Communist Party. The Communists regarded the opening of the monument as desovietization and the introduction of an additional split in society, and not reconciliation, as announced by the organizers of the construction. As an alternative, it was proposed to perpetuate the memory of the heroes of the city's defense against the Nazis or to use funds for communal needs.

The civil war in the narratives of political parties is generally not an independent direction, but is linked to other topics: most often it is an assessment of the 1917 revolution, as well as a comparison with the tragic events of 1991 or 1993, the orange revolutions in the post-Soviet space and the risk of potential confrontation in the present. The main thesis uniting all parties is not to allow the recurrence of civil conflict in any form in the present and future.

With regard to the war itself, several approaches can be identified, mainly related to determining the guilty party to the conflict, both in terms of initiating the war and at the beginning of terror. The parties of the Communist wing insist on the complete guilt of the anti-Bolshevik side, the parties of the liberal part of the political spectrum (and partly the LDPR) accuse the Bolsheviks of unleashing the conflict, the rest are inclined to the position of "everyone is to blame." Although almost all parties state the incompleteness of the conflict between whites and reds in the present, it should be noted that this is usually a turn of the discussion to emphasize the risk of loss of civil consent in modern society.

Some parties (the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Communists of Russia, LDPR, Rodina) note significant foreign interference in the course of the conflict, without which the Civil War would not have received such a scale and duration. The rest of the parties are focused on the internal nature of the war.

If in the 1990s the prevailing approach was the mechanical replacement of the sign from "plus" to "minus" and vice versa in assessing the personalities of the Civil War, then in modern political discussion, the appeal to personalities is extremely rare. The generalizations "Bolsheviks", "whites" and similar synonyms are usually resorted to, the parties to the conflict in party narratives are usually faceless. The most mentioned and at the same time controversial figure is V. I. Lenin. The Soviet narrative of the leader of the revolution has undergone a noticeable transformation, even parties on the left of the political spectrum consider him primarily as a patriot and savior of the state, not a revolutionary. In parallel, an element of the conspiracy theory about his agent connection with the German Empire continues to circulate among liberal and conservative politicians. Despite the surge of public interest in the leaders of the "white cause", political parties practically do not address their personalities. A. V. Kolchak is in the lead in the frequency of mentions, which is primarily due to public discussions after the release of the feature film "Admiral" and individual commemorative events around his figure.

The historical policy of reconciliation (it is necessary to remember the tragedy, but not to choose a side, not to argue and not to look for blame), developed by United Russia for the anniversary of the revolution and the end of the Civil War, has not yet found a response from most political parties, which remained in their own positions, but it should be expected that this approach will become the basis of the state historical politics.