Personified images of the supreme power in late imperial Russia as reflected in Soviet memoirs between the 1950s and 1960s (Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II)

This article examines the personified representations of Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II in Soviet memoirs between the 1950s and 1960s by focusing on how the recollections of those who witnessed the Russian Empire through its final upheavals shaped the perceptions of the last Russian emperors through the lens of Soviet ideology and personal experience. The mechanisms underlying both positive and negative portrayals of the monarchs and reflecting the interplay between the political landscape of the time and the personal experiences of the memoirists are outlined. The formation of the Soviet historical consciousness under the conditions of a shift in the historical memory paradigm during the Khrushchev Thaw is traced. It is concluded that Soviet memoir literature of the studied period departed from the earlier established confrontational narrative on key figures of the Russian autocracy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.