Collective knowledge of public events: The Soviet era from the Great Purgeto Glasnost

We explore the knowledge of a probability sample of Russians in 1994 about nine events that occurred within the past 60 years. We consider three compe ting hypotheses about how knowledge relates to age: (1) adolescence and ear ly adulthood constitute a critical age for acquiring knowledge of public ev ents; (2) the unique content of an event creates age relations; (3) the pri mary influence on knowledge is a period effect. We also hypothesize that "y ears of education" has two different meanings in relation to knowledge: one about socialization that promotes state-approved images of the past, and t he other about development of a cognitive sophistication that challenges su ch images. Partial support for each hypothesis is reported. The relation of collective knowledge to collective memory is also considered.