| Summary: | <p>This dissertation analyses the current state of the krayevedcheskiy museums network in Russia against the backdrop of the historical development of a (post-) Soviet knowledge production system known as krayevedeniye. These museums constitute one of the largest cultural networks in the post-Soviet space, and their aim is to create a representation of the place in which they are located. In the dissertation I explore the principles underpinning the structure of their departments and uncover the common principles on which they are based, including those inherited from the period of Soviet governance. The research I present draws on two types of data: the archival documents of Soviet institutions supervising krayevedeniye which constructed the central ideology informing the curation of kraevedcheskiy museums’ expositions, and field data collected from 2014 to 2017 in seven regions and twenty-five regional and local museums, which allowed the common patterns of museum expositions and underlying theoretical principles to be excavated.</p>
<p>The main theoretical challenge of the thesis was to bring together relevant debates in geography and cognate sciences concerning wilderness and nature, post-colonial approaches to issues of domination and submissson and memory, including trauma, silences, erasing narratives and forgetting. I present a critical theory of krayevedeniye and place krayevedcheskiy museums in the context of museum studies. In order to bring these concepts together this study, I develop the concept of ‘common unsaids’, based on the Barthes’ myth-creation techniques, which have further been developed by Svetlana Boym. With the aim to contribute to debates around Soviet knowledge production, museum studies, representation of nature, and area studies, I analyse one of the largest museum network in the post-Soviet space. My intention is to broaden our knowledge of post-Soviet institutional development and to add new and important detail to our understanding of regional identity production in present-day Russia.</p>
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