The article is devoted to the study of historical memory. The authors examine the historical memory in the system of historical consciousness, identifying a number of important elements and addressing the mechanism of its formation. Considerable attention is paid to the relationship between interpretations of historical events and historical science. The article shows how interpretation affects the historical memory of the people, and that not any interpretation of historical events is acceptable and becomes a part of the historical memory. “Rewriting of history” has a number of reasons: ideological order, and change the hierarchy of values, and the discovery of new facts etc. “Radical rewriting” of history as well as its interpretation in black and white colours, are ambiguous and not always has a predictable effect on historical memory. To solve the problem, the authors refer to specific examples of interpretation of history. The article shows what guided historians of Europe when writing European history. The authors also refer to the historical memory of the Russian people, showing varied interpretation of collectivization and industrialization in Russia and affected the changed perceptions about these important events of Soviet history.