DOI article:
III. Utopias and Anti-utopias
DOI article:Boime, Albert: Perestroika and the destabilization of the Soviet monuments
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.51723#0222
ancient régime and constitutes a régénération of the
social self in relationship to the collectivity.
This new seif must then be realized in a different
kind of représentation, one that now seeks to estab-
lish links with some imagined past, freshly interpre-
ted, that préserves personal and collective nostalgia.
Although the sense of unlimited potentiality and
momentary euphoria that accompanies release from
authoritarian rule would seem to provoke visions of
a resplendent future, the dream must be historically
justified by a radical reinterpretation of the recent
nightmare.The desire for self-immortality is so power-
ful that it is unlikely that monument-making for the
sake of historical amnesia as well as of memory
will ever disappear as a form of human accomplish-
ment.2
Public monuments are the visible Coordinates
of a régime’s power, and each change in régime re-
quires a new set of Symbols. Some monumental icons
seems to defy this principle and outlast old régimes,
but this speaks to their signifying role in populär
culture or to their capacity to undergo successive
reinterpretations or recodings in new Systems over
time. In the purpose of the public monument is to
commemorate and of the official state-sponsored
monument to inscribe official monumental disrupts
that history and opens it up to a more inclusive in-
terprétation for the wider community.
Ideally, the opportunity would present itself to
create out of the old public space an authentic public
life where the competing rights and interests of dif-
ferent groups were at least recognized. Although for
future leaders the destruction is tied to their desire
to efface history and start with a clean slate, the tran-
sition phase involves the clash of competing ideas
within the public realm. The fractured or newly-ab-
sent public monument is a sign of this evolving so-
cial as well as political identity.
The symbolic erasure of the oppressive past is
not only a therapeutic action but a manifest sign of
readiness to grasp new human possibilités. The pub-
lic collaboration in statue-breaking or removal is
a concrète expression of participation in historical
change, more direct than passively experiencing the
alteration of site names. How else explain the wil-
lingness of the impoverished citizens of the ex-Soviet
Union and its client States to sustain the expenses
1. The 14-ton statue ofFelix Dzerzhinsky pulled off its pedestal
outside KGB headquarters late Thwsday night, August 22
1991
involved in the wrecking and hauling away of the
statues? Although the sense of change achieved
through the dismantling of statuary may in the long
run prove illusory, there is a momentary feeling of
self-realization in the collective act - a projection of
a larger vision and hope through consensus.
A broken statue may well be a more authentic
index of populär political sensibility than e new
monument erected by the succeeding government.
May we now expect a monument ordered under
Yeltsin to commemorate his putsch against the Rus-
sian Parliament and its unconstitutional dissolution
as the first step on the long road to building “demo-
cracy”? More likely, Yeltsin will want to record his
role in the August 1991 coup, perhaps representing
himself atop a tank - an ironie reprise of the image
of Lenin standing on an armored car. Yeltsin how-
ever, may hâve difficulty explaining away the fact that
212
social self in relationship to the collectivity.
This new seif must then be realized in a different
kind of représentation, one that now seeks to estab-
lish links with some imagined past, freshly interpre-
ted, that préserves personal and collective nostalgia.
Although the sense of unlimited potentiality and
momentary euphoria that accompanies release from
authoritarian rule would seem to provoke visions of
a resplendent future, the dream must be historically
justified by a radical reinterpretation of the recent
nightmare.The desire for self-immortality is so power-
ful that it is unlikely that monument-making for the
sake of historical amnesia as well as of memory
will ever disappear as a form of human accomplish-
ment.2
Public monuments are the visible Coordinates
of a régime’s power, and each change in régime re-
quires a new set of Symbols. Some monumental icons
seems to defy this principle and outlast old régimes,
but this speaks to their signifying role in populär
culture or to their capacity to undergo successive
reinterpretations or recodings in new Systems over
time. In the purpose of the public monument is to
commemorate and of the official state-sponsored
monument to inscribe official monumental disrupts
that history and opens it up to a more inclusive in-
terprétation for the wider community.
Ideally, the opportunity would present itself to
create out of the old public space an authentic public
life where the competing rights and interests of dif-
ferent groups were at least recognized. Although for
future leaders the destruction is tied to their desire
to efface history and start with a clean slate, the tran-
sition phase involves the clash of competing ideas
within the public realm. The fractured or newly-ab-
sent public monument is a sign of this evolving so-
cial as well as political identity.
The symbolic erasure of the oppressive past is
not only a therapeutic action but a manifest sign of
readiness to grasp new human possibilités. The pub-
lic collaboration in statue-breaking or removal is
a concrète expression of participation in historical
change, more direct than passively experiencing the
alteration of site names. How else explain the wil-
lingness of the impoverished citizens of the ex-Soviet
Union and its client States to sustain the expenses
1. The 14-ton statue ofFelix Dzerzhinsky pulled off its pedestal
outside KGB headquarters late Thwsday night, August 22
1991
involved in the wrecking and hauling away of the
statues? Although the sense of change achieved
through the dismantling of statuary may in the long
run prove illusory, there is a momentary feeling of
self-realization in the collective act - a projection of
a larger vision and hope through consensus.
A broken statue may well be a more authentic
index of populär political sensibility than e new
monument erected by the succeeding government.
May we now expect a monument ordered under
Yeltsin to commemorate his putsch against the Rus-
sian Parliament and its unconstitutional dissolution
as the first step on the long road to building “demo-
cracy”? More likely, Yeltsin will want to record his
role in the August 1991 coup, perhaps representing
himself atop a tank - an ironie reprise of the image
of Lenin standing on an armored car. Yeltsin how-
ever, may hâve difficulty explaining away the fact that
212