Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways in which the two museums of Blagoveshchensk, Russia and Heihe, China, collaboratively omit traumatic events from their displays of the past in an effort to foster goodwill, thereby functioning as aspirational and programmatic sites

Paper long abstract:

The twin cities of Heihe (China) and Blagoveshchensk (Russia) are located right opposite each other across the Amur river. From the early 1960s to the late 1980s, the Sino-Russian border was hermetically sealed and the two cities transformed into sites of relentless propaganda, suspicion and occasional clashes.

Since the normalisation of Sino-Russian relations in the early 1990s, the two cities have sought to emphasize commercial and cultural collaboration. The museums found in the two cities both dedicate considerable wall space to aspects of their mutual history that paint Sino-Russian relations in positive ways. Thus both museums have several rooms retracing their joint collaboration against Japan during WW2 or the exchange of personnel in the 1950s and early 1960s. Great emphasis is also placed on recent sociocultural exchange, with numerous photographs of smiling Russians and Chinese partaking in sports and arts events. However, despite featuring highly in personal accounts of Russian and Chinese interviewees, a number of historical episodes are conspicuously absent; notably the massacre of thousands of Chinese in Blagoveshchensk in 1900, or the attack by Chinese troops of Soviet border guards in 1969.

This paper explores the ways in which these two museums collaboratively omit traumatic events from their displays of the past in an effort to foster goodwill. In skipping over two difficult decades and emphasizing the immediate present the two museums are strongly aspirational and programmatic. In doing so, they maintain a socialist tradition seeking to describe reality as 'on the cusp of becoming'.