2022 Issue №3

The article analyses how the terms “memory wars” / “memorial wars” are applied in the contemporary research papers on conflicts of collective perceptions of the past. The author shows that in the late 1990s and early 2000s the concept was not yet associated exclusively with the political sphere, within which different social groups were producing historical narratives, but in the 2000s and 2010s modern understanding of the phrase “memory wars” was already established and since then it has become common in contemporary studies of collective memory to reveal its conflicting nature. It is noted that in the studies of clashes of historical narratives an active attention is paid to the content of the processes under the study, against which the attempts to give a strict definition to the term “memory wars” are noticeably rarer. The use of the “memory wars” concept shows that it has not yet received proper understanding as an element of categorical apparatus of memory studies and the issue of its relevance to the objectives of the contemporary research deserves special attention.

The proposed article attempts to determine the possibilities of reducing the level of contradiction between a person’s need for security and the a priori conflictogenic state of the system of international relations, which is in a state of permanent variability. Assumed as methodological “keys” of the study, preference is given to the methodology of the anthropological measurement of international relations, which allowed us to conclude that the anthropology of international relations does not deny the role of the state, but only checks its functions in order to avoid their hyperbolization and contribute to the transformation of an individual into a priority object of security. Another theoretical and methodological basis was the theory of Securitization in Policy Analysis, which contributed to the formulation of a conclusion about the contradictions that arise between the process of ensuring national security and the need for human security when one has to be sacrificed in favor of the other. Yet another theoretical basis for the article was by A. Maslow’s theory of the hierarchy of needs, which caused an objection from the author of the article to the well-known American researcher over his thesis that the need for security rarely acts as an active force. The main argument of the author of the article is that the need for security, transforming into a desire for security, turns into a completely active, if not aggressive, force, a priori creating conflict situations. An analysis of the evolution of paradigms for ensuring security in the international relations system concludes that a successive series of world orders resulted from wars that ended in peace, in which a causal relationship is found between the instinct for self-preservation and aggressive actions, between the need for security and trying to satisfy it by any means. In order to achieve the goal of the study, a solution is proposed to the complex task of maintaining an acceptable level of human security, possible under the condition of close interaction with the state.