Лингвистика и межкультурная коммуникация. 2013. № 3 Konstantin Romanov FAMILIAL MEMORIES AND SEARCH FOR IDENTITY IN MICHAEL IGNATIEFF’S “THE RUSSIAN ALBUM” AND “TRUE PATRIOT LOVE” A famous Canadian historian and politician Michael Ignatieff is a descendant of an ancient Russian noble family and Scottish aristocrats. <...> His two books The Russian Album, 1987 and True Patriot Love, 2009 retell the story of several generations of his family who lived in Russia and Canada of 19th and 20th centuries. <...> Канадский историк, журналист и политик Майкл Игнатьев происходит из древнего русского дворянского рода Игнатьевых, а также шотландской аристократической семьи Грантов. <...> The former leader of the Liberal party of Canada, Michael Ignatieff is known as an author, academic and politician. <...> A descendant of two noble families — Scottish and Russian — Michael Ignatieff in his books is reflecting on his familial past in 19th and 20th century Canada, Britain and Russia. <...> The fact that most of his ancestors portrayed in The Russian Album, 1987 and True Patriot Love, 2009 were heavily involved in political life, makes their memories and reflections a significant part of national history. <...> As the author has mentioned in several interviews family history has always reinforced and enriched his own sense of identity. <...> This paper analyses the major common themes of both narratives that haunt the author. <...> Wars and conflicts, capitalist imperial expansion, industrialization of the West and Bolshevik revolution in Russia caused mass migration. <...> In both The Russian Album, 1987 and True Patriot Love, 2009, Ignatieff conveys the message that emigration has become one of the major trends of the 20th century, “a normal condition of existence”1. “This century has made migration, expatriation and exile the norm, rootedness the exception”2. <...> Immigration is one of the main burdens in both books, but the two families had quite different reasons to leave their countries: Grants most likely immigrated to Canada for financial reasons and the Ignatieffs left Russia after the Revolution under threat of political persecution. <...> Among the major themes that haunt both families military conflicts play the major role. <...> The attitudes that family members express towards wars are quite different and often <...>