This article presents a study of the social organisation of the national memories of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia (the Baltic states). It draws inspiration from and expands the scope of the application of Eviatar Zerubavel's largely unexplored methodological tools for the study of calendars. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is threefold. First, this paper offers an application of the above tools to the case of the Baltic states. Second, by doing so it provides an overview of comparative patterns within Baltic calendars. Third, it is argued that by exposing the social organisation of national memory, this approach offers insight into silences, providing an entry point for an engagement with amnesiology, as coined by Liedeke Plate.
This article is dedicated to the absent presence and mnemonic remains of the socialist-era monuments in eastern Europe. Mnemonic remains is a metaphor I employ in this paper to direct our attention to the physical absence of monuments after their removal. But it also speaks of a monument’s role in absentia, its continued existence in and its effects on the collective memory beyond its physical presence. The phenomenon, sporadically acknowledged but rarely subject of investigation in academic literature, is explored and illustrated through the lens of the removed V.I. Lenin monument in Riga. The absent monument, I contend, performs the function of a phantom monument, exerting mnemonic agency beyond its physical presence through its representational value for other memory projects. This is highlighted through the study of the proposed and completed, but never unveiled, monument to Konstantīns Čakste on the site of the former Lenin monument in Riga.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.