Li Zhoru, PhD student at the Department of Sociology, Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia) and Deputy Secretary General of the World Association for Political Economy (WAPE) and Visiting Scholar at the Institute for State Security Studies, Nankai University (China), e-mail: liz@my.msu.ru
Part I establishes the theoretical and methodological scaffolding for analysing how contemporary Russia converts Victory Day remembrance into symbolic capital. Synthesising Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital with structuration and network-power approaches, the paper advances a tri-level ‘state – party – society’ model that maps the institutional pathways through which collective memory becomes a strategic resource. Key concepts are refined and working hypotheses set out concerning the link between ritualised memory, social cohesion and regime legitimacy. A mixed qualitative design — participant observation, document analysis and comparative discourse tracing — is justified, delineating validity boundaries. Thus, Part I supplies an analytically consistent framework and operational indicators for the empirical tests reported in Part II.
Keywords: collective memory, symbolic capital, institutional ritual, theoretical framework, methodology
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