The XX Congress of the CPSU in the historical memory of modern Russia

The historical significance of the «phenomenon of the XX Congress» has been the subject of active scientific research, socio-political discussions for seven decades, and occupies an important place in the collective historical memory of the Soviet period. Depending on the paradigmatic, ideological and methodological preferences in historiography and public consciousness, the XX Congress of the CPSU is assessed as a historical event that became either a trigger for modernization processes, or a response to a public demand for the urgent need to purify socialism from deformations, or the beginning of the dismantling of «true» socialism, a harbinger of the approaching collapse of the Soviet system. The paper analyzes the place occupied by the XX Congress of the CPSU in modern historical memory, draws attention to three planes in which semantic and explanatory concepts and narratives (historiographical, educational, socio-political) are created and transmitted, and to the space of historical memory measured by opinion polls (public consciousness) reflecting this content.