Our conception of the past, its heroes and anti-heroes, of our
present-day selves, as well as the basis for our understanding of future
trends, is set by official historiography and the state's politics of memory.
They exist alongside the personal memory of individuals and collective memory
of social groups, which is reflected in memoirs and numerous oral history
sources that often preserve a different understanding of historical events.
Political strategies to visualise history, memory and ideological
guidelines have always been and remain the strongest ways to influence an
individual's subconscious, the formation of their beliefs, perception of
reality, and evaluation of actions and historical facts. All these strategies
appeal to a person's outlook and feelings. Reinforced by numerous rituals and
ceremonies, such as laying flowers, raising the flag, pretentious patriotic
speeches next to monuments to the fallen and music performed by brass bands,
they are firmly imprinted into memory for a long time.
Political strategies for visualising history, memory and ideology
Cities are able to express and transmit certain ideologies and value
systems to their residents. Scientists and thinkers call this ability symbolic
urban space. The main components of this space are city planning, architecture,
place names, monuments and the elements in the design of streets, squares and
buildings, including outdoor advertising.
The state, in all its manifestations, has always had a monopoly on
forming symbolic urban space and filling it with content. The authorities would
take particular care in monitoring the implementation of official historical
memory policy through targeted measures. Recently, society started to get
involved in this process, at least at the level of public debates.
If you do not take into account such global elements of the city's
symbolic space as its planning and architecture, since that is a separate topic
for analysis, then the main strategies of the state in visualising its
policies, forming an official historical memory and broadcasting certain
ideologies to society are the erection/dismantling of monuments, museification
of the historical memory, i.e. creating and supporting various museums, and
naming/renaming urban objects. This set of measures worked just as well at the
times when Ukrainian lands were part of other states – the Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth, the Russian or Austro-Hungarian Empire and the USSR – as it does
today. Authorities in other European countries acted in the same way in both
their own cities and towns, and in colonised territories. This is common
practice for any state.
If we recognise that other states followed a colonial policy in relation
to the Ukrainian lands, their natural resources and population, we understand
that the construction of monuments to czars and emperors, the museification of
battlefields where these czars were victorious and the naming of streets and
squares as a reminder of the territory’s provincial status compared to the
imperial centre were commonplace for the coloniser and a necessary action. The
same thing happened when Ukraine was part of the USSR. Through monuments to the
"Leaders of the International Proletariat" and the
"International Revolutionary Movement", by creating a new type of "revolutionary
museum" and developing a new technique of constructing expositions and
excursions based not on artefacts, but their ideological interpretation,
through numerous street signs with the names of questionable heroes or
information about the "3rd Soviet Lane", "5th Communist
Alley" or a "Red Policeman", the government imposed on society
its vision of the history, present and future of the community that found
itself under its leadership. In this way, the authorities tried to visualise
the way each citizen should picture their past and future and imprint it into
their heads. The monumentalism and gigantomania of the Soviet era were intended
to testify to the immutability of the situation and its eternity in time and
space, which was in turn supposed to lead to the belief of every citizen in the
stability of their lives "forever and ever".
When Ukraine at last gained independence, its authorities should have
also taken care of the visual markers from past eras in good time. That is what
happened in Central Europe and the Baltic States, which is why they have
managed to develop their own states over the past quarter-century and we have
not. Ukrainians still do not know what sort of state they are building, what
their national interests are, who can be considered the spiritual leaders of
the nation, in which direction they would like to go or which values are
fundamental to them. That is why the visualisation of the official policy in
such a state – one that cannot decide on its own priorities – looks rather
strange. Some regions carried out decommunisation almost 20 years ago, leaving
a minimal number of monuments and place names as witnesses of the colonial
past. Others, even with a legal basis in the form of the Law on Decommunisation
passed in May 2015, continue to manipulate, for example by changing the name of
a district or street after Felix Dzerzhinsky (an initiator of the Soviet Red
Terror) to that after Vladislav Dzerzhinsky, his less “prominent” brother who
was a doctor – such was one of the latest tricks by the Kharkiv city
authorities. Following in their footsteps, Volnovaklha Town Council in Donetsk
Oblast renamed the local Monument to Chapayev (Vasily Chapaev was a military
figure of the Russian Empire and the Bolshevik Russia) into the Monument to a
Cossack.
European experience of decommunisation
In order to be convinced and confident in one’s actions, it is important
to have an idea of how others acted in similar circumstances. We can say that
Ukraine is lucky in this sense, as there are numerous positive and negative
experiences in Europe. In contemplating how the Hungarians, Czechs, Poles or
Lithuanians freed themselves from the imposed idea of Communist paradise, it is
possible to both adopt their methods and avoid falling into the same traps.
The civilised way in which European cities removed their monuments and
symbols of the hated regime, which Central Europeans associated exclusively
with the figure of Stalin, was preceded by traditionally spontaneous and
emotional actions that could be called "acts of vandalism". For
instance, in the spring of 1956, with revolutionary fervour and on a wave of
reprisals against the Soviets in Budapest, the Hungarians demolished the most
hated symbol of Soviet presence in Hungary, a symbol of the harsh regime and
neglect of the Hungarian people's own ideas about their "bright
future" – the Stalin Monument, leaving only his boots.
The Czech struggle against the Soviet presence, the historical
development and way of life that was forced on them – for the freedom and
independence of their country – did not avoid a "war" against
Soviet-era monuments either. Most of the monuments to Czech communist leaders
suffered the same fate: activists painted their hands red to symbolise the
blood of innocent victims. The dismantled monument to staunch Czech Stalinist
Klement Gottwald that stood in the town of Blansko, near Brno, can serve as an
example. Today, the Czech Republic battles with the remains – so to speak, the
relics – of the communist past through desacralisation, decoding meanings and
ridiculing these monuments. That is exactly what they did with the monument to
communist president Antonín Zápotocký. The sculpture of the politician in his
native village, practically the only one remaining in the Czech Republic, was
painted red and white (red jacket and white shoes). Social network users
commented on this piece of news with a sense of humour: "At least Mr.
Antonin won’t get cold in the winter". The white shoes of the statue could
be interpreted as an overt allusion to the direction in which the Czech
Republic's communist past should go – into oblivion.
However, the most ambiguous and controversial event was the appearance
of a pink tank in Prague. This was the Soviet IS-2 (Joseph Stalin), installed
on Kinských Square in the Prague district of Smíchov to commemorate the city's
liberation by the Red Army in 1945. It took place on the night of 28 April
1991. A large finger suggesting an obscene gesture was erected on top of the
tank's turret. According to the "author", famous sculptor David
Černý, his goal was to make fun of the symbols of Soviet military monuments,
which were interpreted as a threat to use force against the civilian
population. The Soviet tank was imprinted in the Czech consciousness as a
symbol of the suppressed Prague Spring in 1968 and the subsequent period of
Soviet occupation, which then ceased to be an attribute of the liberation from
Nazism. Following an official protest from the Russian government, the tank on
the square was returned to its original state. However, as a sign of protest
against this decision and the arrest of the sculptor, who was charged with
disorderly conduct, 15 MPs took matters into their own hands and painted the
tank pink again. Černý was subsequently released, and the tank was removed from
its pedestal and transported to the Military Technical Museum in Lešany near
Týnecnad Sázavou. Later, David Černý made a proposal to set up the pink tank as
a permanent monument in Prague, but Prague City Hall refused to implement his
idea under pressure from Prime Minister Miloš Zeman and Russian Ambassador
Vasily Yakovlev.
Unfortunately, the civilised methods of liberating European cities from
the monuments and names that symbolised the communist period of the twentieth
century actually differ from the image presented to us. The outdoor Memento
sculpture park in Hungary, Grūtas Park in Lithuania and the Socialist-Realist
Art Gallery in Poland originally had very different goals to the ones they
follow today. Their initiators almost unanimously declared the need for these
parks, so the younger generation could have a look, be horrified and strive to
make sure those totalitarian times never return. In reality, all these centres
gradually transformed from cultural and educational facilities into purely
commercial, tourist organisations. The youth of Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Poland and Lithuania does not visit them. Without a special tour and
explanations, a young person born during independence is unable to understand
what the horror of the communist era was and what these ugly sculptures in the
park, the red bunting on the museum walls or the ridged glasses and aluminium
utensils in the cafe signify. Representatives of the older generation that
sometimes visit use these museums as a place for nostalgia about the past. At
that, they are often nostalgic not for the demonstrations, queues, shortages or
total unification and regulation of life, but for their own youth. For this
reason, the parks and so-called Museums of Communism have turned into objects
that serve only the needs of moneyed tourists from Germany, France and Great
Britain, for whom these are places of entertainment, rather than reflection. Is
this sort of "civilised decommunisation" really necessary in Ukraine?
Liberation of city space as a condition for the liberation of
consciousness
Therefore, if we want to decolonise our territory and liberate the minds
of people who live there from their stereotypes and inferiority complex, it is
necessary to accept that decolonisation is primarily a return to one's true
self. So we must learn to be honest and responsible to ourselves, and only then
to the next generation.
The mechanism of liberating consciousness, starting mental evolution and
transitioning from stagnation to progress is very easy. Education, the development
of multiperspective approaches to the study and appraisal of the past, and the
formation of critical thinking should come to the fore. Next, the need should
arise for a clear hierarchy of relationships between society and the
authorities, the constant tenet of which should the thesis that an MP or civil
servant is just a representative of a "customer service department"
that is designed to meet the needs of society. However, Ukraine’s diverse and
politically polarised society should be given a unifying idea, such as "a
society of equal opportunities", "a spiritually healthy society means
a prosperous state" or "self-fulfilment is the key to a healthy
society". Even more important is the emergence of the firm belief that
only civil society can be the driving force behind any change and, therefore,
must be cultivated. Under such conditions, the state will be forced to abandon
its addiction to monuments as part of its historical memory policy. The need to
glorify individuals or certain events will disappear by itself. Spiritual
values should take centre stage, not the ambitions or wallets of certain
persons.
The design of urban space should be defined by notions of beauty,
aesthetics and harmony, not the political and ideological principles of government.
However, this process cannot begin without liberating the symbolic space of
modern towns and cities from the visual markers of past eras. We must learn to
be a lizard that, when losing its tail, does not weep for it, museify it or
build a monument to it, but continues to move forward, confident that a new one
will eventually appear, which will equally be useful for only a certain time. I
am not calling for the demolition of all monuments or displays of our attitude
towards them using paint and ridicule, although this is also sometimes
necessary, in order to prompt society to discuss certain pressing problems. We
should not go to the other extreme and send everything that was created between
1922 and 1991 to museums, because that would turn them into scrapheaps.
Instead, a certain amount of this rubbish should nevertheless take its place in
museum collections, so that historians, art experts, philosophers, sociologists
and cultural anthropologists will have sources for their research. It is
equally impossible to nod and remain silent when statements about the completed
decommunisation of place names are used to cover up a real conservation of the
Soviet past in the worst sense of the word, because this is the result of a
desire to preserve and prolong the old ideological guidelines, foreign beliefs
and imposed ideas. We must find the strength and will inside ourselves to shake
off the shadows of the past once and for all. The visual markers that shape the
space of our towns and cities should trigger positive emotions in us and meet
our need for information about valuable events in our national history, as well
as encourage us to understand mistakes made in order to avoid them in the
future.
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