HISTORICAL MEMORY RETENTION: CAPABILITIES OF CRIMINAL POLICY

Abstract

This paper examines the problem of criminalizing the distortion of historical memory. It largely concerns the Armenian Genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, as well as the events taking place during the Second World War. The work presents judicial practice of national courts and the European Court of Human Rights, which considered the material of such distortion. The authors study the criminal legislation of different countries providing for responsibility for the distortion of historical facts. The paper includes the results of Russian sociological studies on the need to introduce penal prohibitions for historical facts distortion. The findings of this research allowed the authors to conclude that it is advisable to contend with the phenomena under consideration through some social impact measures rather than with criminal legislation methods. Such measures are raising the legal culture of the population, increasing the number of academic hours dedicated to the problematic issues in the courses of history and social studies in educational institutions, organizing new and renovating and promoting existing museums and historical centers (especially such centers as “Khatyn”, Auschwitz, Yad Vashem holocaust remembrance center in Israel, the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan and others), providing open access to archive documents for not only scientists, but general public as well - by using modern means of communication.