Annotation. The report was presented during the jubilee session of the Academic Council at the Russian Institute for Cultural Research. It addressed the issues of contemporary memory studies; the author analyses the history of nostalgia concept and existing approaches to its definition. The special attention is given to Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, which is analysed as an opposite one. Post-Soviet Russia and actual Russian experience of tackling the past and history provide for the empirical data of the study also based on the review of the sociological investigation into mass geopolitical orientations and perception of the 1991events in Russia.