Many historians argued that the meaning people make from events is just as

important as what actually happened. Humanities scholars are interested in the

significance of how and what people remember, even when memory is sometimes
unconsciously flawed, or in cases where people have different or conflicting
memories of the same event. What seems to matter most is how events and their
consequences have impacted personal individual or collective lives.

If we are interested in Holocaust study we can find a lot of stories told by the
survivors. But beyond this family history, it is the collective history of the Jewish
people passed through the most scaring period of the 20 thcentury.Remembering
historical acts of domination such as colonialism or political violence can therefore,
have a range of affective consequences on the individual and social consciousness,
from trauma to shame to anger to cathartic self-recognition.

The change in the governance system and revolutions also might become a painful
experience especially when the new established regime is relevant to undemocratic
governance and repressions. As an example of painful individual memory we can
take memory of political repressions in Soviet Union. Most of the countries
represented here witnessed this period and this human tragedy which is currently
being researched by many academicians in all post-soviet countries. At these times,
the repressed were called the enemies of the people. Punishments by the state
included summary executions, sending innocent people to Gulag (force labor camps),
forced resettlement, and stripping of citizen's rights. At certain times, all members of
a family, including children, were punished as "traitor of the Motherland family-
members". These political repressions created an atmosphere of widespread fear
and distrust towards the system.

Massive repressions and human rights violations might enable the transformation of
the individual memory to a collective memory. When painful historical events
happen, there is a before, and an after. Looking at the before could certainly help
people think about how to look at the after, or how to manage the after. This ‘after’
includes different elements: reconstruction from a purely material point of view, but
also psychological and emotional reconstruction. For example after the collapse of
Soviet Union we witnessed not only the shift from socialism to capitalism but also
the growing interest of post - soviet societies to develop democratic values in
respected countries. The recognition of the importance of the historical memory is
very significant in the process of the development of democracy in the European
eastern partnership countries.

Therefore all reforms and guidelines proposed or accepted shouldn’t be in conflict

with the collective memory and society perception. While understanding the
construct of social memory we will be able to find the solutions for the current
challenges and to transform them into opportunities. Only by understanding our
past, we are better able to understand our future. Memory when recording history is
important because it gives history a flow and an emotional meaning and knowledge
that you just cannot get from most basic historical documents.