Military memorial heritage as a social phenomenon and an international legal problem: on the way to a solution
Authors:   Institute of Social Memory of the Academy of Military Sciences of Russia, Moscow, Russia International Institute of Energy Policy and Diplomacy of MGIMO University of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Moscow, Russia, Uzhanov Alexander E. 
Published: January 2025

The article considers conceptual approaches to understanding the problem of international legal protection of Soviet monuments, war graves and places of memory of the Great Patriotic War (objects of war memorial heritage, hereinafter - WMH), which are associated with the formation of a new sub-branch of international law - war memorial law. The necessity of introducing the concept of “war memorial heritage” into the legal turnover is substantiated, the mechanism of normative-legal protection of the objects of IMH is proposed. Some sociological and socio-legal aspects of the formation of a special International Convention “On the Protection of War Memorial Heritage of World War II” are outlined, as well as a number of its legal aspects, worked out in social practice with the help of the tools of people's diplomacy during the International Relay of Memory and Gratitude “Homeland of the Feat - Homeland of the Hero”.
This article discusses conceptual approaches to understanding the problem of international legal protection of Soviet monuments, military graves and places of memory of the Great Patriotic War (objects of military memorial heritage(MMH)) in the form of the formation of a new sub-branch of international law - military memorial law, the necessity of introducing the concept of "military memorial heritage" into legal circulation is justified, a mechanism for the legal protection of objects of MMH is proposed. The article outlines some issues of the formation of a special International charter "On the protection of the military memorial heritage", and also reveals a number of its legal aspects, worked out in social practice by the tools of public diplomacy during the International Relay of Memory and Gratitude "Motherland of a feat - the Homeland of a hero". The material for the study is the works of Russian and foreign scientists and social practitioners in the field of historical and social memory, considering monuments and places of memory symbolizing the exploits and victims of the Great Patriotic War as objects of a specific heritage of civilization that require special legal protection at both national and supranational and international levels. The experimental project in which the first regulatory standards were worked out in the field of perpetuating the memory of the defenders of the Fatherland in the projections of a number of inter-municipal agreements is the Russian electric power industry and the distribution grid complex. By the methods of included observation and independent legal expertise, during the implementation of more than 20 inter-municipal agreements established on the basis of the exploits of citizens of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War (40 villages and cities with a population of 2 million people), as well as by monitoring the situations with the preservation of monuments in more than 200 villages and cities of about 10 countries of the world, several norms have been worked out-regulators for the future international legal act in the format of a Charter (or Convention), their description is given and the author's version of the proposed structure is formulated.