From the Bronze Soldier to the “Bloody Marshal”: Monument Wars and Russia’s Aesthetic Vulnerability in Estonia and the Czech Republic

Abstract

The article analyzes historical monuments as instruments of Russia’s attempts to impose its aesthetic hegemony in the post-Communist world. Drawing on case studies from the Czech Republic and Estonia, it argues that this hegemony is precarious and vulnerable due to inability to deal with the inherent ambiguity and complexity of historical events and figures. The Russian approach regards historical truth in absolute terms and is underpinned by a zero-sum game understanding of historical narratives. It does not tolerate a multiplicity of perspectives on history and has no appreciation for postmodernist deconstruction of historical symbols. This conflicts with a more diverse, reflexive and inclusive politics of memory as an intrinsic element of cityscapes of Prague and Tallinn where some of the controversial monuments connected with the Soviet occupation have been removed. Russia’s reaction to these changes reveals an inherently vulnerable nature of its aesthetic hegemony which is deeply dependent on recognition of the absolute nature of its historical truth that the monuments are supposed to embody.

Russiskspråklige i Estland: En minoritet uten agens

“…Siden hendelsene rundt bronsestatuen er godt beskrevet i tidligere forskning (se f.eks. Kaiser, 2012;Kazharski & Makarychev, 2022), vil jeg her først og fremst fremheve de aspektene som kan sees i lys av vårt kvadratiske samspill.…”

When Monument Battles Go Digital: Russian–Ukrainian Conflicts over Material Heritage on Telegram

“…In the wake of Black Lives Matter, and especially following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, anti-racism protesters across the United States and elsewhere in the world have expressed their indignation over the persistence of racial discrimination by attacking, altering, or removing monuments associated with slavery and racial injustice, from statues of Christopher Columbus in the United States to statues of the English slave trader Edward Colston in the United Kingdom (Green, 2021;Rigney, 2022) and King Leopold II in Belgium (Stanard, 2011). Prior to that, over the course of the late 1980s and the 1990s, a wave of monument battles swept through Eastern Europe, as newly appointed democratic governments sought to symbolically mark their rejection of the authoritarian past by tearing down communist-era monuments (P. C. Adams & Lavrenova, 2022;Kazharski & Makarychev, 2022).…”

“…Prior to that, over the course of the late 1980s and the 1990s, a wave of monument battles swept through Eastern Europe, as newly appointed democratic governments sought to symbolically mark their rejection of the authoritarian past by tearing down communist-era monuments (P. C. Adams & Lavrenova, 2022; Kazharski & Makarychev, 2022).…”

“…This is largely because arguments relevant to understanding digital monument battles can be found across a range of scholarly debates-on monuments and conflicts, on digital memory and heritage, as well as on digital activism-which often remain disconnected. On the one hand, the fast-growing literature on "monument wars," "de-commemoration," and "urban fallism" (T. Adams & Guttel-Klein, 2022;Frank & Ristic, 2020;Gensburger & Wüstenberg, 2023;Kazharski & Makarychev, 2022) regularly refers to the mediated nature of toppling but does so only in passing and without examining the significance of digital media in this context. On the other hand, scholarship on digital media and memory, and especially on digital memory conflicts, has grown significantly over time (Benzaquen, 2014;Makhortykh, 2020;Rutten, 2013), yet has little to say about how such online mnemonic battles interface with contestations over material heritage.…”