The Heroic Executioner: Malevolent and Benevolent Perpetrators in Russian Museum Exhibitions on the Soviet Terror
Journal: Heritage Memory and Conflict
Year: 2026

The cosmopolitan memory culture or the moral remembrance paradigm, which typically addresses memories of human rights atrocities and often focuses on the binary relationship between victims and perpetrators. However, recent scholarly developments, including Michael Rothberg’s theorization of the implicated subject, have complicated this dichotomy. Drawing on ethnographic research from 15 museums focused on Soviet terror across five Russian regions, I introduce an additional layer to this framewo