VYTAUTO DIDŽIOJO UNIVERSITETAS POLITIKOS MOKSLŲ IR DIPLOMATIJOS FAKULTETAS SOCIALINĖS POLITINĖS TEORIJOS KATEDRA
Rolandas Vytautas Lingys
DABARTIES PAMINKLAI: PERMAININGUMO PROBLEMATIKA SOVIETINIŲ PAMINKLŲ ATVEJU
Magistro baigiamasis darbas
Socialinės ir politinės kritikos programa, valstybinis kodas 621L20008 Politikos mokslų studijų kryptis
Vadovas Doc. dr. Jay D. Mininger ______
(Moksl. laipsnis, vardas, pavardė) (parašas) (data)
Apginta Prof. dr. Šarūnas Liekis ______
(PMDF dekanas) (parašas) (data)
Kaunas, 2014
Summary ...... 3 Introduction ...... 4 1. AEOLIAN HARP ...... 7 1. 1 Psychoanalytical and historical plain of perceiving soviet monuments and memorials ...... 8 Psychoanalytical facets of monuments and memorials ...... 8 Historical facets of a monuments and memorials ...... 9 1. 2 Critique of conceptual and functional aspect of memory and remembrance ...... 11 Critical issues on collective memory...... 12 Critical issues on remembrance ...... 13 Prosopopoeia: Functional status of monuments and memorials ...... 16 1. 3 Monumentum tantum: Generic being of monuments and memorials ...... 18 The origin of the image of weaving ...... 18 Qualities of being Art or not-art? ...... 20 Issues of soviet monuments and memorials as within Benjaminian notion of a ruin ...... 23 Carceri d'Invenzione: mutable facet of soviet monuments and memorials ...... 26 1. 4 Basic thesis: the proposition for critical understanding of soviet monuments and memorials 30 2. CRYPTOGRAM OF DOMINATION...... 31 2. 1 Renaming – official editing ...... 32 2. 2 Reformation: reconciliation as advertisement ...... 36 2. 3 Demolition as barbarism ...... 39 3. DISPLACEMENT OF SOVIET MONUMENTS AND MEMORIALS ...... 41 3. 1 Reorganization through inversion: Mimetic aspect of displacement of soviet monuments and memorials ...... 42 3. 2 Fetishism of cultural commodities and displacement practices ...... 44 3. 3 Commodified historification: parks for soviet monuments and memorials ...... 45 4. SPORADIC IN TIME AND DISPERSE IN SPACE ...... 48 4. 1 Aura as an inapproachable cult-image of a ruin ...... 48 4. 2 Problematic issues of a ruin as a potential of a cult image ...... 50 4. 3 Sporadic dimension and disperse spatially ...... 51 5. FETISHIZATION OF THE MATERIAL AS ACTS OF VANDALISM ...... 52 Conclusions ...... 56 Biobliography ...... 58 Appendix ...... 61
2
Summary
Mutability Issues on Remembering in the case of Soviet Monuments and Memorials.
For more than two decades we live after a massive geopolitical change caused by the collapse of the soviet regimes. However, relics from the recent past are still around as, and the material ones are sometimes causing increased socio-political attention. This thesis is consist a cultural critique of one particular group of residues from the past - soviet monuments and memorials. Due to intension of analyzing today’s political realm within memory and remembrance, soviet monuments and memorials are addressed through their general facets. This way, by invoking theoretical models from the critical theory of the Frankfurt school, general facets are tackled with the theoretical analysis of the case in the relation to socio-political spectrum. Therefore, a theoretical critique of the ossified image of soviet monuments and memorials is introduced. Practical relevance of this thesis reside in the current ‘problematic’ factors such as erosion and vandalism of monuments and memorials. Consequently, this thesis investigates how soviet monuments and memorials in today’s socio-political realm are operating as monuments of the present.
Santrauka
Daugiau nei porą dešimtmečių mes gyvename po milžiniško geopolitinio pasikeitimo sąlygoto sovietinės sistemos žlugimu. Tačiau praeities liekanos yra vis dar aplink mus, o materialiosios liekanos neretai sulaukia ir padidėjusio socialinio-politinio dėmesio. Šis tyrimas yra nutaikytas į vieną išskirtinę praeities liekanų grupę,- sovietinius paminklus ir memorialus. Siekiant išanalizuoti šiandieninę politinę sritį atminties įamžinimo aspektu, sovietiniai paminklai yra tyrinėjami dėka savo bendrųjų savybių. Tokiu būdu, pasitelkiant Frankfurto mokyklos kritinę teoriją, bendrieji aspektai yra nagrinėjami teorinės analizės būdu siejant juos su socialiniu-politiniu spektru. Taigi, pristatoma sovietinių paminklų kaip sukaulėjusio vaizdinio teorinė kritika. Praktinis šio darbo aktualumas yra pagrįstas tokių dabartinių „probleminių“ veiksnių kaip sovietinių paminklų ir monumentų savaiminis nykimas ir vandalų išpuoliai. Dėl minėtųjų priežasčių, šis darbas teoriškai nagrinėja kaip sovietiniai paminklai ir memorialai šiandieninės socialinės-politinės aplinkos atveju gyvuoja kaip dabarties paminklai.
3
Introduction
This thesis tackles the topic of soviet monuments and memorials today and the different socio-political factors that they face. Often just forgotten, edited in the past, being in decay or vandalized, from time to time these objects reappear in the spotlight of the socio-political realm and raise intriguing and problematic issues within cultural discourse. However, within the predominant sociological discourse on this issue, soviet monuments and memorials are often approached with a strict preconception of a somewhat static mode of their being in relation to the society. Therefore, in the case of soviet monuments and memorials, a more insightful theoretical critique is offered here to address key social-political issues that underlie common facets of these monuments and their theoretical re-interpretation.
The relevance of this research ushers from the notion that all cultural objects have a political importance, whether it is explicit or not. Therefore, this thesis proceeds from the presumption that socio-political aspects go beyond the limits of politics into the realm of aesthetics. By focusing on the aesthetic aspects of cultural transformation, this thesis on the critique of post-soviet cultural politics of monuments and memorials discloses additional profound aspects of the socio-political situation we face today.
The main object of critique is soviet monuments and memorials built in the former USSR and Socialist states in Europe in the period of 1945-1990. With the intention of applying socio-political critique, the category of monuments here implies statues, buildings, or other structures erected to commemorate a notable person or event.1 Moreover, due to this thesis not being orientated toward critique of art per se, further insights on particular monuments are addressed as illustrative elements of the aesthetic and socio-political realms.
This thesis understands the negating of soviet monuments and memorials as instrumental ‘interventions’ and critically addresses instrumental reason and action towards them as being: false, even senseless in relation to art, as well as, moreover, the social-political present. The objective of this thesis is built upon Adorno’s notion of works of art being known as cognitive in themselves.2 Therefore, the main objective of this thesis is an interpretation of soviet monuments and memorials in their contemporary status, as being mutable (i.e. capable of or tending to change in form or quality or nature), and, accordingly, being comprehensible as monuments of the present.
Accordingly, the tasks of the thesis consist of:
1 monument – Oxford dictionaries
locating common factors of soviet monuments and memorials today; making significant connections between soviet monuments and society; analyzing aspects of monuments and memorial that confront the present; placing an emphasis on how contemporary issues related to soviet monuments and memorials are decided upon (or not), resolved (or not), etc.
Consequently, the aim of this study is a critique of the ossified image of post-soviet monuments and memorials that is dominant today. The substantial and basic thesis of this study is soviet monuments and memorials being organic and mutable within the socio-political realm.
The theoretical relevance of this research is strictly based on a lack of critical theory within studies of this particular culture industry and thus a need for a new and better conceptual understanding of the issues of soviet monuments and memorials. By seeing clearly the ambiguous and complex facets of these issues as just that—often ambiguous and complex—a more relevant knowledge on monumentalizing practices might better be capable of creating positive change and understanding of the socio-political realm. Additionally, the thesis addresses some of the current ‘problematic’ factors such as erosion and vandalism, which equally grounds the practical relevance of this thesis.
This thesis presents a normative look at a series of post-soviet monuments and their contemporary status, drawing theoretical models from the critical theory of the Frankfurt school. Because of the objects of the research are generally identified as art on the basis of a reference to a definition of art found in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, this thesis is conducted within a kind of normative methodology.3 It engages in philosophical interpretation of the ‘truth content’ of soviet monuments and memorials. However, due to the problematic aspect of perceiving and recognizing these objects essentially as works of art within the critical theory, this is substantiated by the idea that: “grasping truth content postulates critique.”4 Moreover, the thesis will not systematically engage in Adorno’s thoughts on the truth-content of works of art because of its persistence to “conceive aesthetic knowledge as philosophical insight”.5 This thesis resists the classic hermeneutic temptation to read plain socio-political details towards soviet monuments and memorials as symbols, with the intention of finding some sort of hidden meaning. Therefore, cultural critique through aesthetic theory serves as the most relevant approach to the issue.
Due to this pursuit of cultural critique, as well as the aforementioned methodological and theoretical grounds, this thesis consists of certain theoretical focal points. The most useful material for the thesis
3 “The separation of the aesthetic sphere from the empirical constitutes art.” Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. 4 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 128. 5 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. 5 was the theoretical and philosophical insights on image, memory, weaving and interruption of happenings from Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator: An introduction to the translation of Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens”, “On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, “On the Image of Proust (1929-1934)” and certainly “Theses on the Philosophy of History”, as well as “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.6 Furthermore, for the critical conceptualization of a ruin, aura, and origin Benjamin’s points from “The Origin of German Tragic Drama” and “The Arcades Project” were insightful. Further, Theodor W. Adorno’s theoretical conceptualization is emphasized in an attempt to critically assert soviet monuments and memorials as works of art or not-art, and the theoretical qualities of being works of art. For this approach, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory is helpful and appropriate, especially when it leads towards critique based on what he calls a double reflection and art’s relation to politics in a broad sense.7 Moreover, an important insight on the relation between subject and object in the realm of the culture industry is used from Adorno’s essays “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening” and “Culture Industry Reconsidered”.8 The additional conceptual key terms false projection and advertisement are embraced from a jointly written work (with Max Horkheimer) The Dialectic of Enlightenment.9 Other notable authors whose ideas are evoked within this cultural critique are, among others, Reinhart Koselleck, Andreas Huyssen, Frank R. Ankersmit, Maurice Halbwachs, Zygmund Bauman, and Leonidas Donskis. Secondary literature generally consists of S. Jarvis insights on Adorno, and H. Harootunian’s, G. Didi-Huberman’s, P. Simay’s, thoughts on Benjamin’s theory.10 Notwithstanding, further theoretical insight of this thesis and its critical theoretical conceptualization is presented subsequently.
The structural layout of this thesis gives a coherent study of the current case of soviet monuments and memorials. The first chapter “Aeolian Harp” is dedicated to providing a theoretical introduction of the case and conceptualization of the remainder of the thesis. It supplies the theoretical kernel of the entire study, which substantiates not only concepts invoked, but also eventual critique attained. Consequently, in order to impart a coherent flow to the study, the substantiation of the following chapters, namely “Official editing”, “Displacement”, and “Erosion”, is broadly presented in the last section of the previously mentioned opening chapter “Aeolian Harp”.11
6 Benjamin, W. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. 7 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. 8 Theodor W. Adorno - The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. ed. J. M. Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. 9 Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. 10 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998; Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin. London, New York: Continuum, 2005. 11 1. 4 Basic thesis: the proposition for critical understanding of soviet monuments and memorials 6
1. AEOLIAN HARP12
The following chapter of this study is dedicated to enlighten basic theoretical grounding of the subject matter and to introduce key theories as temples to the following chapters dedicated to critique of particular cases’ of politics towards soviet monuments and memorials. To begin with, this part consists a survey of key theoretical issues within a field of memory, history and politics. Firstly reviewing psychoanalytical and historical facets of politics of the past, this chapter presents the popular understanding on issues of monumentalizing. Following setting comprise with separating conceptual and functional aspects of memory and remembrance, from generic/organic being of monuments and memorials. The former subchapter presents key authors and ideas concerning collective memory and remembrance within sociological, socio-political and somewhat humanitarian discourses. It consists references to M. Halbwachs, B. Anderson, Z. Bauman, L. Donskis, F.R. Ankersmit, R. Koselleck, A. Huyssen. Then the following subchapter entirely based on critical theory tackles the generic/organic dimensions’ of perceiving monuments and memorials. In particular, it is dedicated to discuss notions such as the origin of the image, qualities of being art or not-art, aura and its loss, being a ruin, and mutability. For this task, thoughts of W. Benjamin, T.W. Adorno come as the fundamental grounds of the critique this study undertakes. As secondary literature, G. Hartoonian’s, G. Didi-Huberman’s thought on Benjamin’s theory and S. Jarvis notes on Adorno. Ultimately this chapter ends with a further inquiry of the basic thesis of current study, giving a key the proposition for critical approach of soviet monuments and memorials.
12 Mutability by Percy Bysshe Shelley
We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon; How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver, Streaking the darkness radiantly!—yet soon Night closes round, and they are lost forever:
Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings Give various response to each varying blast, To whose frail frame no second motion brings One mood or modulation like the last.
We rest.—A dream has power to poison sleep; We rise.—One wandering thought pollutes the day; We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep; Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:
It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free: Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but mutability! 7
1. 1 Psychoanalytical and historical plain of perceiving soviet monuments and memorials
In our everyday life, monuments and memorials do not take primary role – we walk by them usually not even remotely affected by their existence. However, it seems that the significance of their existence toward us is intensely focused at the moment they are built, ritualistically approached, edited, displaced, vandalized or demolished. Only then, we perceive them overstepping the line of mere observation, we feel them, engage with them, as if just then these monuments indicate their existence. However, a slightly different mode of interplay is brought to light when the subject turns towards the so called unwanted past, which in this case is a story of Soviet system and its material relics.13 The main issues here are tangible due to changes in a model upon which society was organized, therefore, the socio-political discourse within which it functioned.
As always and like everywhere else soviet monuments and memorials were objects that commemorate something, usually a person, a group of people or an event. Hither a point needs to be made, that in a case of a religiously secularized discourse of the Soviet system, art critics approach would underline some exceptions in the typology of monuments built. Taking into account, a socio- political aesthetic approach has to be focused towards the liaison aspect of this issue. Soviet monuments and memorials had to serve as memorable signs that in the silence of spiritual addressee, they could provide a secular expression of spiritual longing and mourning for the impossibility for the mythical return. On the other hand, the same soviet monuments and memorials dialectically had to state the inevitability of the entry into history with the unity of time and space attained. Furthermore, as the official socio-political discourse was stating the path towards communism. Therefore, soviet monuments and memorials had to interact within dialectics of nostalgia, no less than with dialectical materialism per se. Herein we need to underline, that the aforesaid might put us on the track to explain the reason, why an absolute majority of monuments built during the Soviet era were war memorials and statues of famous individuals or symbols? What was their function? This task might be easier to accomplish along the deeper understanding of what monument is and how it functions psychoanalytically, historically, socially, therefore, politically.
Psychoanalytical facets of monuments and memorials Due to the theoretical grounds of this thesis, psychoanalytical basis of understanding monuments is worth mentioning. One of the first direct cases involving memory and memorialization
13 Duncen, L. An Unwanted Past: Contemporary tourism and the heritage of communism in Romania, International Journal of Heritage Studies. Volume 6, Issue 2, 2000.
Furthermore, Benjamin’s note on Theodor Reik’s theory suggests the functional differentiation between remembrance [Gedachtnis] and memory [Erinnerung] where the former serves for protecting impressions therefore,- is conservative, and the latter – aims to disintegrate impressions, thus, is destructive.15 Accordingly, based on etymology, monument from Latin monumentum - memorial, from monēre - to remind, monuments are etymologically built for remembrance and have to function in a conservative way of protecting impression.16 With regard to psychoanalytic facet following study will tackle the historical intertextuality between modernity and the idealist conventions of humanism in the case of soviet monuments and memorials with present socio-political realm.
Historical facets of a monuments and memorials From the Manfredo Tafuri’s references to the city as an autonomous field of architectural intervention where he presupposes crisis of traditional notion of form.17 From this we can derive that monuments and memorials (generally built in cities) are being in perpetual crisis of traditional
14 Freud S. Five Lectures On Psycho-Analysis. Smith, I. (2000, 2007, 2010). Freud – Complete Works, p. 2212. 15 Benjamin, W. On Some Motifs in Baudelaire. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 160. 16 Monument, Oxford dictionaries,
Another trick that appeared in a socio-political notion of building monuments and memorials had to do with 20th century’s boom of democratization and functionalization. The homogeneous notion of history began to leave an increasingly growing footmark on the aesthetic socio-political field and monumentalization was further subdued by the sovereign’s power of conservative self-legitimizing discourse. In the practical sphere it shifted the remembrance “into an inner-worldly functional context that aims only at the future of the survivors,” moreover, this was done in a way to “attune the political sensibility of surviving onlookers to the same cause for whose sake the death of the soldiers is supposed to be remembered”.19 Furthermore, as a tendency appeared to insert monuments with official information, even the individual memory, was placed in a firing range of being altered to the socially constructed collective remembrance. Therefore, change monuments and memorials underwent resulted in them becoming a source of information and even more mesmerizing signifier of the homogenous dominating discourse. And all this went at the expense of aesthetic value. Theoretically it might be illustrated with the famous Benjamin’s quote on cultural treasures stating that: “[t]hey owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries”.20
As from the late 1960’s the focus toward social side in history studies appeared in ethnology, historians started to show their interest in research of social-cultural communication. Engaged in a chronic shift from history to memory, therefore, investigating identity which is performed in the present. In sociology, the notion of social memory became one of the main concepts studying commemoration and monument building practices. Contemporary structuring and constructive understanding of it can be easily expressed in Assmann’s bold assertion that “[s]ocial memory as the
18 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 291, 359. 19 Ibid, p. 291, 292. 20 Benjamin, W. Theses on the Philosophy of History, Thesis VII. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 256. 10 connective structure of societies”.21 Moreover, pointing to Koselleck’s anthropological understanding of historical time where “the past and the future are joined together in the presence of both experience and expectation”22 we engage in to the social aspects of history. At this point, because no legitimate sharp theoretical distinction can be made between these disciplinary fields, an approach invoking critical theory might help tackle this joint problematic. Referring to Habermas, a critical notion has to be maintained here, not to fall upon sociology’s aims towards explaining the course or anomic side effects which it as a discipline gained from the notion of the objective historical situation.23 Therefore, the metahistorical approach needs to be secured and open for the possibility of negative critique of socio-political discourses that are directed towards integration. Simultaneously, following subsection is dedicated to a critical delineating of categories that will be applied in the course of this thesis.
1. 2 Critique of conceptual and functional aspect of memory and remembrance
Beneath the historical present, however, lie the spectres, the phantoms, waiting to reappear and upset it.24
Harry Harootunian
Considering that the distinct feature in this thesis is cultural critique of the socio-political realm of soviet monuments and memorials today, critical review of relevant concepts has to be introduced. No doubt, that before moving forward we need to put in question the separation of otherwise fluid categories such as collective memory, historical memory, politics of memory; especially in the relation with collective remembrance, historical remembrance, politics of remembrance. Therefore, to conceptually establish theoretical grounds of this prospect, generic templates of how we might perceive past in relation with politics need to be asserted.
However, one particular aspect predominates above all the other, and its idea is based on the mechanic functioning of neurons in a human brain and result in the impossibility of pure act of recollection, therefore, fragile, dynamic and limited memory.25 Strangely enough, this coincides with what
21 Olick, J. K. and Robbins, J. Social Memory Studies: From “Collective memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices. Annual Reviews, 1998, Vol. 24, p. 105. 22 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 53, 126-127. 23 Habermas, J. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1, Reason and the Rationalization of Society, translated by Thomas McCarthy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1984, p. xii, 4-6, 24 Harry Harootunian, History’s Disquiet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 19. Pasinaudota iš Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 185. 25 J. Matias Palvaa, Simo Montoa, Shrikanth Kulashekhara, and Satu Palvaa, Human working memory is based on dynamic interaction networks in the brain. University of Helsinki, May 8, 2010. http://www.pnas.org/content/107/16/7580.full 11
Benjamin calls the art of repeating stories and the process of weaving and spinning <…> while they are being listened to.26
When it comes to thinking about memory, a vast number of theoretical approaches are giving even greater amount of possible interpretations. Given the fact that we need to establish a field of the theoretical analysis of the monuments and memorials, we initiate it from a generalized approach towards most common sociopolitical aspects concerning memory, remembrance and history. Therefore, with situating some of these other theories on memory, we need to critically overview issues of collective memory and remembrance in the relation with perceiving present socio-political mode of soviet monuments and memorials.
Critical issues on collective memory Collective memory, like any other mode collective, requires the support of a group delimited in space and time. The earliest known reference to collective memory dates back to the beginning of 20th century.27 However, one of the most influential, interpretations of collective memory were made by Maurice Halbwachs, accordingly his theory is worth to be taken into account…
Halbwach emphasized collective memory being socially constructed, therefore, applying this term for the current thesis start to appear problematic. And this problrmatic aspects becomes clear him stating that “[w]hile the collective memory endures and draws strength from its base in a coherent body of people, it is individuals as group members who remember”.28 Therefore, a lack of antagonism appears within being a group member that, according to Halbwach, presupposes the collective memory (which per se is definitely not static). Moreover, presupposing the socially constructed conciliatory notion of collective memory, Halbwach approaches another key concept – history. At this point, his theory employs collective memory (as natural continuous thought) as a catalyst which “<…> retains from the past only what still lives or is capable of living in the consciousness of the groups keeping the memory alive.”29 Therefore, Holbwachs notion of history giving as a consolidated image of the past will definitely be dismissed in the following thesis.
Another sociological approach is given by Benedict Anderson, who in his thoughts on memory and forgetting not only gives a chronological development of the concept of memory but also, its role in
26 Benjamin, W. The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov, Ch. VII. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.P. 91. 27 “the dammed up force of our mysterious ancestors within us” and “piled up layers of accumulated collective memory” Olick, J. K. and Robbins, J. Social Memory Studies: From “Collective memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices. Annual Reviews, 1998, Vol. 24, p. 106. 28 Halbwachs, M. The Collective Memory. Harper & Row, 1980. p. 48. 29 Ibid, p. 80. 12 a development of identity. His statements are built on the same psychoanalytic notion with social aspect that the ‘forgetting’ of a secular continuity of time causes “a need of a narrative for ‘identity’”.30 Therefore again providing a finite homogeneous theoretical model of understanding, that cannot produce any insight on the issue soviet monuments and memorials are today in the relation with current socio-political reality.
From the social perspective, emphasizing the so called time–space compression Z. Bauman stresses out the problem of local communities losing their ability to produce senses and haggle with it.31 The same narrative of loss due to globalization is seen in his statement that technological abolishment of distances between time and space polarizes rather than homogenizes human existence.32 For this research, Bauman’s notion on globalization, based on some utopian practices from 1960s and 1970s seems as the other side of the coin with regard to Heideggerian dwelling. There is thus a trend to be taken into account, that issues of collective memory are doomed to implicating debates on nostalgia, as an affective yearning for a community with a collective memory. As S. Boym underlines, it is an abdication of personal responsibility, a guilt-free homecoming, an ethical and aesthetic failure33. Nevertheless, notion of memory politics prevail in the socio-political discourse. To illustrate it we can invoke a bolt understanding of memory politics from most recently published collective study on multi-stratum of memory:
“Memory politics – public or private, conscious or unconscious, reaching a compromise or challenging use of images of the past in order to produce and retain certain 'regimes of truth' (Foucault) and moral order of society.”34
Critical issues on remembrance In his article with a somewhat provocative title To Be or to Forget: Politics of remembering vc. Politics of Forgetting, Donskis tackles problematic aspects of politics of remembering within modernity. Continuing the same neoliberal approach, Donskis emphasizes politics of remembering as ‘remedy for the malaise of forgetting, oblivion, and insensitivity, as long as it serves as a framework for dissenting thought and state’35. In the case of this particular research, Donskis liberal notion of politics of remembering having to sustain “<…> the legitimacy of two or more opposed modes of
30 Anderson, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso, 2006. p. 205. 31 Bauman, Z. Globalizacija: Pasekmės žmogui. Vilnius: Strofa, 2002. p. 8-9. 32 Ibid, p. 33. 33 Boym, S. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001. p.xiv. 34 Čepaitienė, R. Miestas kaip ideologinis tekstas // Atminties daugiasluoksniškumas: miestas, valstybė regionas. Vilnius: Lietuvos istorijos instituto leidykla, 2013. p. 61. 35 European Memory: A Blessing or a Curse? ed. Leonidas Donskis and Ineta Dabašinskienė. Europe and the Balkans international network. T. 32. Ravenna: Longo, 2010. p. 15. 13 memory and narrative” becomes irrelevant. As it was presented in Koselleck’s study of war memorials, an absolute majority of monuments and memorials are signifiers of the dominant historical remembrance, therefore – not only unitary but arbitrary and selective as well.36
What is important, is that in today’s post-modern pluralistic neo-liberal yet, socially constructed discourse on this issue, memory politics and politics of remembrance are usually appearing as synonyms. It indicates that the subordination of current problematic is losing its theoretical grip even on a basic conceptual level, therefore, entering the sphere of vaporized yet unitary loose interpretations. Therefore, with regard to the theoretical grounding of this research being based on critical theory of the Frankfurt school, this thesis will contain previously mentioned differentiation between remembrance [Gedachtnis] and memory [Erinnerung]. However, it will/we need to question this binary perception by addressing monuments as material outcome of politics of remembrance having a complex relation with the destructive power of memory. Especially, when collective memory along with historical memory fall under subversive collective techniques of identity formation, or what Foucault called new forms of subjectivity executing memory politics / a constant discursive subjugation by the subject-matter of memory politics.
As a result, this thesis invokes Koselleck’s notion of space of experience and the horizon of expectation as coexisting parts of historical time that “cannot therefore be related to one another in a static way.”37 Furthermore, for the clearer dialectical interpretation, we need to combine these Koselleck’s thoughts with what Benjamin’s insight into Proust emphasizes as voluntary and involuntary recollection losing their mutual exclusiveness.38 This intermingle gives a first glimpse of the issue on monuments of the present disrupting the classical psychoanalytic reasoning of memory being sterilized by a large measure of consciousness hereby producing remembrance. Therefore, referring to Benjamin’s thought on Baudelaire, an aesthetical question arises: “<…> how lyric poetry [at this case – monumentalizing practices] can have as its basis an experience for which the shock experience has become the norm.”39
Moreover, at this point we need to consider what kind of conceptual specifics are palpable within this scope that might suggest critical approach towards today’s socio-political realms in the case of soviet monuments and memorials as residues of past. As it was stressed above, the main issue of the
36 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 285-326. 37 Ibid, p. 127. 38 Benjamin, W. On Some Motifs in Baudelaire. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 160. 39 Ibid, p. 162. 14 collective memory turning into historic memory and memory politics is the positivist presupposition of objectivity. Therefore, historical memory and especially memory politics are a result of a reduction.
Referring to Benjamin, collective memory is a deep collective level of within experience transmitted by society’s members. On the other hand, we need to underline the problematic issue of Benjamin’s theory proposing a shared, prediscursive level of collective experience.40 Therefore, without any theoretical consensus existing, the notion of memory and politics continues to be considered provisory.
Consequently, this thesis will not follow Halbwachs conception of collective memory because of its positivist and presupposing homogenous subordinate aspect towards remembrance. Instead, the concept of collective remembrance will be evoked for its relevance to the aesthetic approach of socio- political problematic of soviet monuments and memorials today. The reason for such a conceptional choice is tangible in the following thought by Halbwachs:
“A remembrance is gained not merely by reconstituting the image of a past event a piece at a time. That reconstruction must start from shared data or conceptions. These are present in our mind as well as theirs, because they are continually being passed back and forth. This process occurs only because all have been and still are members of the same group. This is the only way to understand how a remembrance is at once recognized and reconstructed.”41
Precisely the variability of remembrance sets it free for the possibility of being actualized in space (experienced) and positioned in horizon (expected).
Aforementioned problematic interplay of memory and politics might be interpreted as a dialectical linkage of collective and historical memory with the memory politics. The latter was established in Benjamin’s notion of what has been becoming the dialectical reversal – the flash of awakened consciousness42. According to Benjamin it already happened in Copernican revolution, when politics attained primacy over history. Considering the subject-matter of this thesis, a potential correlation with an aesthetic notion of double reflection starts to appear as legitimate theoretical turn in studying the issues of soviet monuments and memorials as residues of the past.
Consequently, the latter critique of soviet monuments and memorial will pursue the dialectic side of the latter within functional status of monumentalizing and issues on identity.
40 Rosen, M. Benjamin, Adorno, and the decline of the aura, The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory. (ed. Fred Rush). Combridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. p. 46. 41 Halbwachs, M. The Collective Memory. Harper & Row, 1980. p. 31. 42 Benjamin, W. The Arcades Project. trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. p. 388-389. 15
Prosopopoeia: Functional status of monuments and memorials After conceptually establishing problematic issues of interrelated categories and in what way they are relevant for current thesis, subsequent theoretical critique toward functional status of soviet monuments and memorials today has to be invoked. Especially when the notion that their political function consists a demand for identification is more than obvious. Consequently, subject of identity and its relation with the functional status of monumentalizing practices might help to position theoretical grounds of this thesis.
The problematic aspect of identity politics in monumentalizing were addressed by Koselleck, who presented a notion of the double process of identification defining a gap between the past event and the visual interpretation of what a monument offers. Furthermore, according to him: “More than anything else, memorials erected permanently testify to transitoriness.”43 In the case of soviet monuments and memorials, the official idea focused on commemorating and uniting all ethnicities/nationalities, therefore, contributing to the ideological goal of creating so called homo- sovieticus. This policy was fully enacted with commemorating the victims of the Nazism, as the prior were subsumed by the category of ‘soviet citizens’. This was an aspiration of identification that went beyond the boundaries of ethnicity or nation-state and made possible further development of ritualistic aspect beyond factual monument’s consideration. Aforementioned inclusion rests upon Koselleck’s notion of a double function of war memorials, continuing the history of victors that they become the protectors of the defeated, therefore focusing toward the commemoration of ‘liberators’ or ‘survivors’.44 However, this research will go beyond this binary mode with the intent to pose a critical theoretical analysis on the issue of functional status monuments and memorials ostensibly hold.
As it was emphasized by Koselleck, memorializing practices in the West went through identity formations of the survivors and the democratization and functionalization.45 A deeper insight of what is on stake is found in Ankersmit’s notion on democratization or privatization of the historical subject. Hence, functional status of monumentalizing practices appears interior to the antagonism that occurs within the notion of history between objective past as a unity and a quasi-collective knowing subject.46 Accordingly, in the case of a decomposition of a quasi-collective knowing subject as embodied by the discipline of history, a new postmodern composition took place where historical
43 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 288. 44 Ibid, p. 307. 45 Ibid, p. 287-292. 46 Ankersmit, F.R. Historical representation, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 151-152, 154. 16 memory, started to gain qualities of a quasi-collective knowing subject. This is what Ankersmit presents as personalization or privatization of our relationship to the past.47 What is important here is that the privatization of society’s relation to the past was subordinated by the identity politics and akin social studies.
Seemingly, the same position is expressed by Huyssen, discerning the understanding of memory practices into two notions –political and cultural.48 For our consideration, this simplistic division is irrelevant because it does not engage in a critique of culture industry and its affect to different memory practices being persuaded. Moreover, this Huyssen idea structurally correlates with Koselleck’s notion of space of experience (which might be interpreted as a field of political memory practices) and horizon of expectation (as a horizon of cultural memory practices). Notwithstanding the continuum of the same stereotypical somewhat apocalyptic thoughts on globalization etc. Bauman, Donskis, Huyssen’s fascination on Lübbe’s notion the shrinking extension of the present gives opportunity to tackle issues on identity. In his reference to Lübbe, Huyssen underlines the decrease of stability or identity within the advanced consumer capitalism that “<…> prevails over the past and the future, sucking both into an expanding synchronous space, the weaker its grip on itself, the less stability or identity it provides for contemporary subjects.”49 Interestingly enough, all previously interpretations somewhat correlate to what Einstein theorizes as time being the fourth dimension of space, where past and future are all “now” or what in today’s physics is known as Minkowski spacetime.50
Therefore, the socio-political aspect of functional status that monuments and memorials uphold is undoubtable and significant through the means of predicating a quasi-collective knowing subject. At this point we return to Koselleck and designate it as the element of prosopopoeia where somebody absent or imaginary is represented as uttering. However, we should not succumb to Koselleck’s positivist boldness emphasizing Mourning Parents by Käthe Kollwitz as a monument capable of outliving its own raison d'être [reason for existence], furthermore, being somewhat apolitical due to
47 Ankersmit, F.R. Historical representation, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 151-152, 154. 48 •Politically – many memory practices counteract the triumphalism of modernization theory in its latest guise of the discourse of “globalization.” •Culturally – memory practices express the growing need for spatial and temporal anchoring in a world of increasing flux in ever denser networks of compressed time and space. Huyssen, A. Present Pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2003. P. 27. 49 Ibid, p. 23. 50 Žižek, S. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism. London: Verso, 2012. p. 27; “Minkowski space.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 16 April 2014 at 00:45. Web 5 May 2014.
1. 3 Monumentum tantum: Generic being of monuments and memorials After ascertaining the theoretical grounds of functional status of monuments and memorials we reached facets that are deeply rooted with an opposite – organic dimension of monuments and memorials. Taking on a critique of constitutional, fundamental, and integral facets of being a monument will not only theoretically ground this study and introduce its main conceptualization but will also constitute its basic thesis and further direction studying soviet monuments as monuments of the present.
The origin of the image of weaving Shifting towards Frankfurt school’s critique, the pivot aspect of soviet monuments and memorials (or at this case, any kind of monuments and memorials) can be named in Benjaminian notion and need be referred to as their origin – “that that which emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance”.54 This concept perfectly illustrates the historical and political character within which the majority of monuments are being built. Referring to Benjamin the origin of this nature can be deduced to an act of weaving: “For here the day unravels what the night was woven”55. By invoking
51 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 295, 308-312. 52 Horizon of expectation as “<...> the future made present; it directs itself to the not-yet to the non-experienced, to that which is to be revealed.” Koselleck, R. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. p. 259. 53 “The more monuments there are, the more the past becomes invisible, and the easier it is to forget: redemption, thus, through forgetting.” Huyssen, A. Present Pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2003. p. 32, 167; Robert Musil, “Nachlaß zu lebzeiten,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, ed. by Adolf Frisé (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1978), 506- 9. 54 Didi-Huberman, G. The Supposition of the Aura: The Now, the Then, and Modernity. // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 4 55 Benjamin, W. On the Image of Proust (1929-1934). // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.P. 202. 18 story of Penelope Benjamin captures the antagonist dimension where purposive remembering reveal the web and the ornament of forgetting.56 This notion perfectly points to aforementioned problematic of monumental invisibility. Moreover, following this assertion monumentalizing practices might be interpreted in the Benjaminian notion of weaving as a constant dynamic and fragile continuum of repeating stories.57
“For storytelling is always the art of repeating stories, and this art is lost when the stories are no longer retained. It is lost because there is no more weaving and spinning to go on while they are being listened to.”
Without the doubt the act of weaving consists of unraveling something that provisionally might be referred to as an image. In the case of monuments and memorials this correlates with the phenomenon of building discussed by Fritz Breithaupt and stating that “<…> within the phenomenon there is something nonphenomenal that does not appear, and within the event there is something that does not take place <…>” and “<…> history comes into play by delaying the appearance of this nucleus within the phenomenon <…>”.58 Therefore, after perceiving the images of monuments as somewhat not finite, we need further understanding qualities these images might have. In the case of soviet monuments and memorials today we have dialectic in images and dialectic of images that repudiate the organic notion.
The moment soviet monuments and memorials were built, they posed in standstill as a utopia, being dialectical images, therefore, referring to Benjamin, dream images. Furthermore, as Benjamin emphasizes “[s]uch an image is afforded by the commodity per se: as fetish.”59 The latter presupposes a new way of interpreting and understanding tendencies of soviet monumentalizing practices as part of the state operated culture industry. However, this research aims toward critical understanding of present situation of case above. Therefore, in subsequent chapters, with reference to Benjamin, soviet monuments and memorials will be juxtaposed to arcades having a variety of qualities that need further theoretical critique, especially, being the prostitute-seller and sold in one.60
Particularly for this thesis, the notion of monuments originating from the homogenous discourse as part of cultural industry is important. It presupposes that during socio-political changes soviet monuments underwent fluctuations that can be interpreted in categories beyond sociology and
56 Benjamin, W. On the Image of Proust (1929-1934). // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.P. 202. 57 Benjamin, W. The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov, Ch. VII. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.P. 91. 58 Hartoonian, G. What is the Matter with Architectural History? // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 247 59 Benjamin, W. The Arcades Project. trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. p. 10. 60 Ibid, p. 10. 19 political science. Accordingly, following study will present a critique of present soviet monuments and memorials as Benjamin’s images “wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation.”61 Moreover, questioning how soviet monuments and memorials underwent physical changes this thesis will tackle what Benjamin in his thoughts on constant movement of workers into Paris and to its outskirts calls melancholy image62. Questioning, how it is parallel with socio-political aspect of monument in decay? The ambiguity of origin as that which absolute primary at any instant of its historical deployment is within any form of linear transmission: “Tradition as a continuum ruins all that it transmits; it crystallizes the past considering every one of its moments as bygone.”63
Continuing the thought on dynamic and fluctuant character of the image we come to discuss aura. Referring to Benjamin’s anthropological look towards the image, aura produces “a whirlpool in the river of becoming [that] pulls the emerging matter into its own rhythm” <…> “to be recognized as a restoration, a restitution, and something that by that very fact is uncompleted, always open”.64 It is possible to argue that these monuments and memorials started to lose something they never fully had in the first place. However, the answer to this lies in further study of organic status of monuments and memorials.
Qualities of being Art or not-art?
To begin with, we need to note that all following interpretations/reasoning are given in a notion of having qualities of works of art, without asserting any concrete distinctions between works of art and other cultural products. This position is based on an idea that such a distinction would be “a subjective evaluation masquerading as an objective distinction; <…> the service of social elitism.“65 Accordingly, a correlating issue of the “death of the subject” as a result of elitist artistic reflection needs to be aware of as potentially corrupting the aesthetics of politics of remembering.
To begin with, we should question monuments and memorials being within the predicament of being works of art. Following Benjamin’s concept of work of art, monuments and memorials as signs of
61 V. Baudelaire, or the Streets of Paris. Benjamin, W. The Arcades Project. trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. p. 10; Didi-Huberman, G. The Supposition of the Aura: The Now, the Then, and Modernity. Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 8. 62 Benjamin, W. The Arcades Project. trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. p. 137. 63 Simay, P. Tradition as Injunction: Benjamin and the Critique of Historicisms // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 141. 64 Didi-Huberman, G. The Supposition of the Aura: The Now, the Then, and Modernity. // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 4 65 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 108. 20 anchored perceptions of space and time reveal their ritual function. Celebrating victories and losses they constitute the predominant discourse, therefore function consolidating masses and their historical memory, effecting the culture of memorialization as such. The case of soviet monuments and memorials indicate that this function was an important aspect of sustainability of socio-political sphere, resulting vast interest and investments from the central government. The ever increasing importance might be verified by the statute “On the protection and Use of Monuments of History and Culture” that has been a foundation for incorporating the theme of monumentalization into the Constitution of USSR in 1977.66 Moreover, identified as works of art, all monuments and memorials because of their functional status over collective memory and consolidating masses towards rituals of remembering have to be analyzed on the aspect of relation / interaction / interplay with the socio- political situation. This is where Benjamin’s concept of aura as a “unique phenomenon of a distance however close it may be” steps in.67
Regardless of the fact that specific cases of monumentalization will reveal diverse liaisons with soviet and post-soviet societies, several general aspects of in the reference to Benjaminian aura need to be addressed. As it was mentioned before, during the soviet era, almost all the monuments and memorials built had a specific role in generating the dominating historical discourse. This resulted in a massive subordination of monuments towards public holidays and commemoration celebrations, usually complemented with parades, public speeches in so called rallies organized around the thematically and therefore historically relevant places of remembrance generally marked by some kind of monument or memorial. Moreover, in the private life, the same ritualistic aspect of monuments resulted in an unwritten obligation for the newlyweds to visit some kind of a monument or memorial in an act of paying obeisance to and remembrance to the Fallen. This in soviet times generally accepted norm will be addressed further, analyzing current day situation of surviving soviet monuments. Hence, with a reference to what Benjamin called “authentic” work of art, soviet monuments and memorials despite their secularized nature [however there are researches that tend to underline the spiritual aspects of soviet regime, especially the communal aspect and its relations to
66 Статья 68. Забота о сохранении исторических памятников и других культурных ценностей - долг и обязанность граждан СССР. Глава 7. Основные права, свободы и обязанности граждан СССР, Конституция (Основной закон) Союза Советских Социалистических Республик (принята на внеочередной седьмой сессии Верховного Совета СССР девятого созыва 7 октября 1977 г.). Source: http://constitution.garant.ru/history/ussr- rsfsr/1977/red_1977/5478732/chapter/7/; Schmidt, A. J. The Impact of Perestroika on Soviet Law, ed., From Law in Eastern Europe. T. 41. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1990. http://books.google.lt/books?id=-e4u7YUiF3AC. p. 336. 67 Benjamin, W. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 223-224, 243. 21 protestant dogmas] played an important role haven been based on a ritual as the location of its original use value.68
As S. Jarvis emphasizes analyzing trust content and utopia in Adorno’s aesthetic theory, true works of art have no intension to “<…> assure us of anything, and certainly not of utopia <…>.”69 Therefore, the absolute majority of soviet monuments and memorials might be question because of their utopian intension prescribed in the context of the hegemonic utopian official discourse. On the other hand, it is important to highlight that chronic collapse of the dominating status of the soviet discourse caused what referring to postcolonial theorists and their theories of metonymic slippage, hybridization of codes or covert ridicule anthropologist Alexei Yurchak identified as heteronymous shift of the form of representation.70 On this basis causing monuments and memorials to become functionally “frozen” and context-independent forms in the face of socio-political changes of the sovereign. Practically this might be interpreted as a result of the ever more centrally orchestrated ideological rituals that especially became clear at the late period of soviet rule. On the other hand, quite differently situation might be interpreted referring to Adorno’s notion of relation between social and artwork:
What is social in art is its immanent movement against society, not its manifest opinions. Its historical gesture repels empirical reality, of which artworks are nevertheless part in that they are things. Insofar as a social function can be predicated for artworks, it is their functionlessness. <…> Their enchantment is disenchantment. Their social essence requires a double reflection on their being-for themselves and on their relations to society. Their double character is manifest at every point; they change and contradict themselves.71
Therefore, the idea of negatively embodied position of an artwork gives a theoretical basis to claim that by losing their premeditated and intentional ritualistic functionality, soviet monuments and memorials acquired qualities attribute to works of art. As Adorno remarkably expressed: “Ihr Zauber ist Enzauberung”: “the magic of works of art is a disenchantment.”72
Consequently, considering soviet monuments and memorials as art in their original intention, content, form and position within their contemporary being in space and time is controversial and exclusively depends on philosophical grounds. Especially, when we raise questions of artistic technique versus
68 Benjamin, W. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 224, 244. 69 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 105. 70 Yurchak, A. Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything Was Forever, Until It Was no More. University of California, Berkeley: Society for Comparative Study of Society and History, 2003. p. 481. 71 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 227. 72 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 116. 22 instrumental action, one can easily perceive soviet monuments and memorials being built upon real domination of nature, thus, in a sheer instrumental action. From the Benjaminian perspective this correlates with his thought “<…> that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. This is a symptomatic process whose significance points beyond the realm of art.”73
Nevertheless, this does not fully tackle the inner dimension of monuments and memorials within this simultaneous happening of being art and not-art, hence another theoretical concept is needed to delineate and move the analysis onwards. In order to retain previously mentioned Adorno’s notion, a concept of a ruin becomes helpful and more importantly - co-optive. To illustrate it we can give Hartoonian’s reference to Beatrice Hanssen, contrasting M. Heidegger’s and W. Benjamin’s thoughts on the Greek Temple where for Benjamin “the ancient temple no longer had any place. From now on, it could exist only in a ruin”.74
Issues of soviet monuments and memorials as within Benjaminian notion of a ruin
The first factor that is easily perceptual when taking into normative analysis the soviet monuments and memorials today is their ruination. Referring to Stephanie Polsky emphasizing Benjamin’s approach toward history as being on a level of matrixial and molecular, the concept of the ruin becomes useful for turning the analysis towards the question of possible generic aspects of monuments and memorials.75 Moreover, this coincides with what Jarvis underlines as a notion of “the irreversible character of cognitive, technical and historical development”.76
Due to above mentioned development and cultural-political changes underwent, majority of soviet monuments and memorials became subjects to an opposite ‘monolitic’ cultural politics. Paraphrasing Adorno, soviet monuments were forced into independence by self-preservation, however, at the same time shifting towards “<…> alienation from its purposes and from the people of whom it is composed.”77 This thesis will assert that in order to be able to pursue its goals appropriately, monuments and memorials enter into a contradiction with them by becoming ruins. At this point it is important to emphasize not so much the sense of monuments being made terrible because of their irrecoverable state of devastation and destruction. Vice versa, the analysis directs toward an attempt
73 Benjamin, W. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 221. 74 Hartoonian, G. What is the Matter with Architectural History? // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 195, 250. 75 Polsky S. Down the K. Hole: Walter Benjamin’s Destructive Land-surveying of History // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 83. 76 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 106. 77 Adorno, T.W. Culture and Administration // Theodor W. Adorno - The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. ed. J. M. Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. p. 110. 23 to highlight their literal physical composition and how it is changed then afterwards perceived during the time. Hence it is said that subjectivity in history is in constant process of disintegration as the material content in the process of ruination.78 Consequently, this thesis addresses soviet monuments and memorials as ruins in a Benjaminian notion being in decay of material, furthermore, with a sense of aesthetic appreciation which is bound with that sense of transitoriness that is essential to modernity.79 According to Benjamin, the form of the ruin has allegorical physiognomy of the nature- history present interior to it: “[i]n the ruin history has physically merged into setting.”80 Therefore, this notion will provide an important theoretical insight to soviet monuments and memorials that are in the guise where history assumes the form of the process of irresistible decay.
When monuments and memorials are becoming ruins the spell of self-preservation becomes tangible. Therefore, in becoming a ruin, monument can arguably gain a freely spontaneous element – an allusion of a possible future freedom, which allows us to think monuments and memorials as art. The same notion is expressed by Adorno analyzing the praxis between art and nature and emphasizing that in each genuine artwork something appears that goes beyond the appearance that they are.81 Therefore, what in his aesthetic theory Adorno calls a transcendence as “<…> a script without meaning or, more precisely, a script with broken or veiled meaning” yet again underlines desultory, hence, mutable facet of soviet monuments and memorials becoming ruins in Benjaminian sense.82 Likewise, this stresses out an issue of monuments and memorials being rendered as works of art. A liaison between being-becoming a ruin and being perceptible/ comprehensible as work of art becomes tangible precisely because of the previously mentioned transcendence, which, according to Adorno, is the quality of being art.
As it was examined earlier, the functionalist idea beneath monuments and memorials is a construction of identity, what critical theory presents as mimesis where “<…>the outside world is a model which the inner world must try to conform to.”83 When we tackle the question of aesthetics of ruins, first we need to note that monuments that are ruins already have their mimetic aspect toward society dissolved. Furthermore, with mimetic practices not running, a threat occurs to have an aesthetic relation shifting towards a false projection, however, this issue will be addressed in following chapters. On the other hand, even minor collective or historical remembrance play an important role
78 Vardoulakis, D. The Subject of History: The Temporality of Parataxis in Benjamin’s Historiography // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 124. 79 Hartoonian, G. What is the Matter with Architectural History? // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 183. 80 Benjamin, W. The Origin of German Tragic Drama, transl. John Osborne. London: Verso, 2003. p. 177. 81 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 78. 82 Ibid, p. 78. 83 Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. p. 187. 24 advertising ruins towards mimesis. Paraphrasing Horkheimer and Adorno we might state that all ruins are dependent on publicity “<…> which it needs because it cannot be enjoyed”.84 Therefore, a sense of aesthetic appreciation is vital for a ruin irrespective of the problematic in defining soviet monuments and memorials as works of art.
Moreover, taking into account Adorno’s notes on Kant and the factor of the fear of nature's force, natural beauty of a ruin might be considered.85 In its artificiality ruins tend to appear as the last heritage of an antiquity which in the modern world is only to be seen in its material form, as a picturesque field of ruins. Therefore, the question of beauty of a ruin tackles its material form. According Benjamin, being an allegorical physiognomy of the nature-history, a ruin therefore finds itself in the realm of things, however, being beyond beauty.86 As it was discussed above, the concept of a ruin is considerably related to the notion of immanent decay of material and aesthetic appreciation linked with the sense of transitoriness.87 At this point questioning the experience of natural beauty of a ruin oblige to refer to Adorno, stating that “[i]n the experience of natural beauty, consciousness of freedom and anxiety fuse.”88 Therefore, we might presume that the natural beauty of a ruin appears within a fuse of two major factors. Merging anxiety because of an imminent decay of material and consciousness of freedom resulting an aesthetic appreciation would result a natural beauty of a ruin, which, keeping up with Adorno’s thought, would have a quality of salutary fear within it.
This thesis is not aiming towards analyzing the changes of content or form of the soviet monuments and memorials in post-soviet sphere. Based on Gevork Hartoonian’s reference to Benjamin and the notion of durability of the work, monuments and memorials survive their time through the culture of monumentalizing.89 The idea beneath this research lies in analyzing the socio-political aspects of durability, as the factor of the culture of monumentalizing. Based on Benjaminian comprehension on interruption and epic theater, this research tries to shift position towards monuments and memorials away from the Aristotelian dramatic notion based on empathy. The main reason for this is substantiated on the notion, that from the socio-political perspective, collective memory like monuments and memorials (as somewhat its physical outcome) are not and cannot be accounted as some kind of a tangible idealized universal form. Consequently, we should focus on the element of
84 Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. p. 162. 85 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 99. – bloga Jarvis nuoroda, nes Adorno čia ne savo mintis pateikia, ne Hegel interpretuoja, o duoda nuorodas į Kanto filosofiją... 86 Benjamin, W. The Origin of German Tragic Drama, transl. John Osborne. London: Verso, 2003. p. 178. 87 Hartoonian, G. What is the Matter with Architectural History? // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 183. 88 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 65. 89 Hartoonian, G. What is the Matter with Architectural History? // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 194. 25 interruption of happenings as circumstances under which monuments and memorials function.90 Accordingly, taking into account the present situation of soviet monuments that in a broader sense might be interpreted as discovering the conditions of today’s socio-political life towards a domain of collective memory/monumentalizing.
In other words, this research will focus toward critical understanding of the tectonic aspect soviet monuments and memorial hold, allowing us to exceed all kinds of unities and continuities essential to the humanist discourse on monumentalizing.91 Therefore, the study aims to capture intrinsic facets of soviet monuments and memorials within present socio-political realm. Accordingly, distancing from the analysis of different stylistic types of soviet monuments and memorials conditions focusing towards problematic sociopolitical grounds of the conspicuous perceptions towards the latter. Or what in Benjamin’s words can be referred as cultural and intellectual [geistig] function.92 This study seeks to open up the realm of aesthetic illusion, which according Habermas emphasizing Nietzsche “<…> neither hides nor reveals, is neither appearance nor essence, but nothing other than surface.”93
The beautiful spell of self-preservation and self-destruction not only reflects the negative dialectical notion of being work of art, but gives a theoretical leap towards analyzing mutability.
Carceri d'Invenzione: mutable facet of soviet monuments and memorials
90 The task of the epic theater, according to Brecht, is not so much the development of actions as the representation of conditions. This presentation does not mean reproduction as the theoreticians of Naturalism understood it. Rather, the truly important thing is to discover the conditions of life. (One might say just as well: to alienate [verfremden] them.) This discovery (alienation) of conditions takes place through the interruption of happenings. Benjamin, W. What is Epic Theater? // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 150. 91 Hartoonian, G. What is the Matter with Architectural History? // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 194. 92 Ibid, P. 192. 93 Habermas, J. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. trans. Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987/1990. p. 93. 26
Here the destruction of the very concept of space merges with a symbolic allusion to the new condition being created by radically changing society.
Manfredo Tafuri on Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s Carceri d'Invenzione94
As shown in the above-mentioned various approaches to collective, historical memory several generic factors are made tangible.
Continuing the idea that every sovereign and different social-political situation effects changes in the official discourse building its version of memory policy, we inevitably come to a point, where monuments and memorials in general are addressed. This determines the fate of objects and their future position in the discourse of official memory politics. Therefore, at this point we might presume that the position today’s memory policy takes can be collated with Benjaminian notion of a collector with its dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order.95 From local collectors and different heritage policies in every country, to global collectors like UNESCO, policies are made to detect, evaluate, and protect specific objects of our present pasts. Moreover, in the micro level, collective memory faces far greater issues of a collector, having more intense linkage with events in the micro level, resulting so called dialectical tensions. For this reason, following chapters of this research will not only focus on soviet monuments and memorials emphasizing, analyzing and critically interpreting their functional, utilitarian value but will also inquire and interpret them as the scene, the stage, of their fate.
Referring to Benjamin’s statement that ”’[c]onstruction’ presupposes ‘destruction’.”96, questions on self-preservation and self-destruction lead towards the notion of mutability.
The presumption of politics of remembrance as part of socio-political issue of modern sovereignty opens up an opportunity of theoretical critical approach towards current day situation of monuments and memorials. By evoking Hardt's and Negri's theory we get that today’s historical memory finds itself interpreted as being in crisis “<…> in the continual conflict between <...> the plane of immanent forces of the desire and cooperation of the multitude and <...> the transcendent authority that seeks to contain these forces and impose an order on them.”97 It result is seen in a massive increase of the interest on memorizing, what Huyssen called memory syndrome within culture
94 Tafuri, M. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1976. p. 17-18. 95 Benjamin, W. A Talk about Book Collecting // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.P. 60. 96 Simay, P. Tradition as Injunction: Benjamin and the Critique of Historicisms // Walter Benjamin and History, ed. Andrew Benjamin (London, New York: Continuum, 2005). P. 147. 97 Hardt, M. and Negri, A. Empire. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2000. P. 201. 27 industry98. Producing an effusion of different historiography paradigms and social studies this crisis determined so called democratization or privatization of the historical subject. A cluster of researches made on subjects like collective memory, historical memory, cultural memory, memory politics, politics of remembering and forgetting, social aspects of memory, and even historical consciousness that end up adverting towards social-political issues such as identity, heritage. Therefore indicating abyssal social-political contradictions, instabilities, panic and anxieties within personalization or privatization of our relationship to the past. Previously mentioned crisis as fast changing tendencies of the politics of remembering in general points us back to theoretical analysis where communality as key aspect of monuments and memorials needs to be addressed.
All monuments or memorials are built/erected as signifiers of dominating discourse and serve not only for the rituals legitimizing and celebrating it but also for epistemological unification of a collective. After the collapse of the Soviet block and Soviet Union (or any radical political change in this case), monuments and memorials as official sites of memory politics faced direct or indirect changes themselves either in a relation with the society. At it will be set forth in this research, many of them were demolished, some edited, displaced of without any attention seceded from the grand narrative of history. Consequently, these tendencies, as social-political historical conditions within which monuments and memorials exist, are indisputably dynamic regardless of any attempts to staticize it. [more rhetorical possibilities on static vs. dynamic] Therefore, in a Spinozist notion this would be interpreted as element of Natura naturans - the ultimate extension and thought of any attributes that are dynamic and beyond all substances, as opposed to static Natura naturata.99
From the historical perspective, there are more than enough examples of monuments or memorials losing their original/official ground after major changes in sociopolitical sphere. At this point the case of Soviet era monuments and memorials was no different – a dominant power of discourse on the dimensions of time and space was undermined, thus, within the changes of sovereignty monuments and memorials resulted in degeneration factor being disclosed. But the issue might be reopened referring aforementioned Benjamin’s idea of origin, as that which emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance100. Furthermore, aforementioned Koselleck’s metahistoric sublimation of the space of experience and the horizon of expectation signifies variability of the historical time
98 Huyssen, A. Present Pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2003. p. 22. 99 Benedict De Spinoza, The Ethics, P29. // A Spinoza Reader: The Ethics and Other Works Benedict De Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley. Princeton University Press, 1994. p. 104-105. 100 Benjamin, W. The Origin of German Tragic Drama, transl. John Osborne. London: Verso, 2003. p. 45. 28 and its asymmetric manner.101 Consequently, a significant relation to the concept of corruption becomes substantial.
The new way of perceiving soviet monuments and memorials is interrelated to understanding late capitalism. Based on Adorno’s psychoanalytical interpretation, the notion of intimate entanglement between self-preservation and self-destructiveness.102 At this point Hardt’s and Negri’s notion of corruption, detached from the any moral aspects and with twisted references to Aristotle render the problematic aspect of monuments and memorials as being mutable as in a process of constant de- generation103. In the built form of monumentalizing practices it is significant within material facets of official editing, displacement, demolition or erosion. Moreover, enforcing the notion by which degeneration and corruption is also a generation, metamorphosis into something new, becomes a way to emphasize the mutable aspects of post-soviet monuments and memorials today. It exposes how memory practices through monumentalization locks us in Piranesi’s fictitious and atmospheric infinite "prisons" (Carceri d'Invenzione) where what has been is the center of that specific space of human existence.104 Therefore, Piranesi’s hermetic scenes indicate not only the crisis, but an imminent metamorphosis as well, which questions the mutable aspect of memory and monuments as its material expression. This is where the mutability aspect of monuments and memorials can be endorsed by Adorno’s idea of works of art having a cognitive content, therefore engaged in an ever- changing mode of existence. Moreover, referring to S. Jarvis interpretation of Adorno’s aesthetic theory, we can speak not just of mutability with a cognitive aspect, but of inert mutability.105
At this point we can also refer to Adorno, stating that “history alone frees the work from being merely something posited or manufactured” yet again endorsing the mutability aspect in perceiving monuments as histories crystallization.106 Especially when due to this facet soviet monuments and memorials as ruins gain a potential to exercise a determinate critique by their negation of their own existence.
Furthermore, taking into account the generic mutability aspect of monuments and memorials, and its multivariate manifestations thru the dimension of time and space, an element of freely spontaneous activity is and, in the course of this thesis, will be uncovered. The latter, from the perspective of aesthetic approach, endorses the Hegelian notion of the beautiful in art. Even though monuments and
101 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 127. 102 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 83. 103 Hardt, M. and Negri, A. Empire. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2000. P. 201. 104 Tafuri, M. Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1976. p. 18. 105 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 96. 106 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 133. 29 memorials are tied down for their realization to external sensuous material, the poetic dimension can be tangled by underlining their mutability or yet a problematic issue of ontological vacuum, therefore, what Hegel presents as being free in itself, thus negating itself in a classic Hegelian notion.107
<…> corruption appears in the functioning of ideology, or rather in the perversion of the senses of linguistic communication. Here corruption touches on the biopolitical realm, attacking its productive nodes and obstructing its generative processes. <…> at the base of all these forms of corruption there is an operation of ontological nullification that is defined and exercised as the destruction of the singular essence of the multitude.108
1. 4 Basic thesis: the proposition for critical understanding of soviet monuments and memorials
By invoking psychoanalysis and Wittegenstein’s notion on language, Žižek states: “that what we cannot speak about can be shown, that is directly rendered in/by the very form of speaking”.109 Accordingly, the importance at this case is to reveal the very form of speaking of these soviet monuments and memorials, hereby enlightening not only the mutable aspect of monuments and memorials, but specific facets on the present aesthetics of social-political towards them. After stressing out general aspects of these monuments and memorials, we can capture various categories of the dynamic nature of soviet monuments and memorials. What Žižek would underline as various distortions of our speech or what Ankersmit theorized as four types of forgetting and two types of trauma of sublime historical experiences.110 Notwithstanding, following the study invokes previously discussed organic qualities of monuments and memorials within Frankfurt school of Critical theory, especially in the notion of aesthetics and politics within culture industry. What in the case of soviet monuments and memorials will tackle a variety of present socio-political problems.
Acknowledging the unavoidable multiplication that occurs between the intrinsic laws of the art of monumentalizing and the reality of the present experienced within technical and aesthetic realms, this study is focusing to uncover generic factors of soviet monuments and memorials within present socio- political life. To begin with, it needs to be clear, that the current thesis is not indicating an ethical question towards soviet monuments and memorials, therefore, withdraws from environmental questions of heritage and preservation. It focuses towards the aesthetic question of how we should go
107 Hegel, G.W.F. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. // The Continental Aesthetics Reader. ed. Clive Cazeaux, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. p. 50. 108 Hardt, M. and Negri, A. Empire. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2000. P. 391. 109 Žižek, S. Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the shadow of dialectical materialism. London: Verso, 2012. p. 26. 110 Ankersmit, F.R. Sublime Historical Experience, Stanford: Standford University Press, 2005, p. 321-368. 30 about properly experiencing soviet monuments and memorials aesthetically and what is out of it. At this point we can underline that this thesis flips Robert Ginsberg’s suggestion that "a ruin might not have aesthetic value. It often is the wreck of a work that was of aesthetic value."111 In their original mode being built for the socio-political service soviet monuments and memorials had a lack of aesthetic value. Though, through the activization of their content and form within dynamic socio- political dimensions of time and space, bursts of aesthetic value might be tangible.
Consequently, the aim of this normative study is a critique of the ossified image of post-soviet monuments and memorials that dominates today. Substantial basic thesis of this study is soviet monuments and memorials being organic and mutable within socio-political realm.
Accordingly, this thesis focuses towards normative analysis of such constellations within the mutability aspect of soviet monuments and memorials. Therefore, the following chapters are based on a topography in accordance with the material condition of previously mentioned objects. It represent an aim to decipher the current normative status of monuments within today’s socio-political situation. Furthermore, taking into account what Adorno called facet of apparition of the artwork, following cultural critique is combined with aesthetic theory.112
Therefore, following study will be centered towards pivotal material aspects of today’s post-soviet monuments and memorials, focusing on a typology based on an idea of a fluidity of form as the sign of the absence of any ontology / ontological vacuum. Accordingly, the typographical layout of the following chapters of this thesis are based on the critique of the forms of appearance - ideas based on which monuments and memorials are configured today, thus containing socio-political experience sediment within. Also, the typographical layout is based on an inevitably historical mode of monuments as materials immanent to decay.
2. CRYPTOGRAM OF DOMINATION
The subject-matter chosen for this chapter is positioned toward critical study of practices that might be generally described as official editing. The idea beneath it consists presenting several cases of soviet monuments and memorials that have been altered in a couple of different ways. The main focus of this chapter are three synthesized modes of official editing: being renamed, reformed, or demolished. All of those thee cases differ in relation to the material state of these monuments and
111 http://aestheticstoday.blogspot.com/2014/02/some-thoughts-on-questions-by-robert.html 112 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 82. 31 memorials being altered. Moreover, it gives a deeper insight of socio-political forces at play within these happenings. This chapter presents a critique of a common visual signature of modernity that is found in various attempts to form or preserve nation-states assembling practically constant abundance of forms113. Several different interpretation are given from the position of changed dominating discourse in the question of editing monuments and memorials. The most radical ones of those interpretations underlined the need of correcting in order to make reparation, censure severely or adjust for in accordance with the socio-political changes. Usually this alteration or regulation was based on aspiration to achieve accuracy pursuant to the changes in collective memory and laying foundation to a new standard.
2. 1 Renaming – official editing
Within Koselleck’s notion on memorializing practices being based on identity formations of the survivors and the democratization and functionalization the conditions’ under which soviet monuments and memorials fell psychoanalytically might be presented as an anxiety (freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility).114 Accordingly, the idea of renaming soviet monuments was the last late reaction towards a different socio-political reality. Numerous historical studies were made dedicated to present changes of street names or other urban spaces like blocks, squares, parks or gardens: in Prague, 40 streets were renamed immediately after November 1989, and by the mid- 1990s around 300 had been renamed etc.115 However, practices of renaming monuments or memorials are rare cases due to the fact, that renaming as such is less that editing and more like reorganizing. Especially, when in the case of soviet monuments and memorials, renaming practices were aiming towards re-incorporating the object into a new thematic mode of a socio-political discourse. At this point, soviet monuments and memorials have one massive general facet. Directly or indirectly, openly or enclosed absolute majority of monuments were built for “soviet citizens” (aka Homo sovieticus), a semantic category under which every citizen fell and all socio-political groups or collectives dissolved. The perfect example of these issues are soviet monuments in memorials as places where aesthetic freezes “[B]y becoming what it is, art cannot be what it wants to become.”116, holding more or less frozen mode of communication with the society, nevertheless, effecting society through the
113 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 299-301. 114 Ibid, p. 287-292; Salecl, R. On Anxiety. Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. p. 32. 115 Pospiszyl, T. Iconoclasm. Atlas of Transformation.
Moreover, all soviet monuments maintained a homogenized horizon of expectation as “<…> the future made present; it directs itself to the not-yet to the non-experienced, to that which is to be revealed.”117 In the case of soviet state culture industry discourse this was its image of communist utopia. Within the semantic level, this facet of conceptualization was a result of secularized transcendence and emergence of the idea “dying for…”118. It can be easily illustrated in the monumental sculptural composition of Soviet citizens at Buchenwald, constructed in 1958. Monumental memorial built in the vicinity of the concentration camp’s mass graves on the south slope of the Ettersberg first and foremost served as a national memorial. Because of the aforementioned facet of “dying for…” its thematic focus was towards German Communist Party members of the resistance (Figure 2.1.1) Therefore, under the reinterpretation of death and a different representation of subjective mourning, it had to serve for legitimation of the Socialist Unity Party’s claim to leadership in the GDR. Moreover, this "Nationale Mahn- und Gedenkstätte Buchenwald" ("National Buchenwald Memorial") expanded to become the largest German concentration camp memorial, complete with exhibitions, an archive and a library (Figure 2.1.2).119 A similar case of such a grandiose mode is a memorial complex of Kaunas 9th Fort museum. Built in late 1980’s memorial complex focused on the same identity formation with secularized transcendence of soviet citizens. Moreover, like Buchenwald memorial and other similar structures, memorial complex of Kaunas 9th Fort museum span museum and its expositions together with monumental structure to produce a ritualistic notion which is tangible in their linear spatial genotype (Figure 2.1.3).
Hence, built in the soviet days memorials had to serve hegemonic discourse which (as capitalism in the Marxist point of view) had nothing outside itself, because all social-political life was dominated by it. Following this assertion, a ritualistic form of restriction is exposed which, as Foucault notes, cannot exist without the positive figures of exchange and communication working within it.120 Thus, aesthetically for the subject, the flow with the hegemonic discourse guaranteed the success referred and accepted as an objective criterion, even without truly recognizing oneself in it. The theoretical basis for this assertion is Adorno’s ideas on commodity consumerism when consumer is really worshiping the money that he himself has paid for the ticket. Therefore, the value of the hegemonic
117 Koselleck, R. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. p. 259. 118 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 288-289, 119 http://www.buchenwald.de/en/74/#sthash.ZfaekgvL.dpuf 120 Foucault, M., Diskurso tvarka. Vilnius: baltos lankos, 2001, p. 26. 33 soviet discourse had to exert its power in a special way in the realm of cultural goods, to exempt from the power of hegemonic discourse (as exchange).121 This was the backstage ideal, upon which the Memorial complex was designed and built.
Thus, aesthetically, the point was reached when the social compact harmonizes the contradiction and the appearance of immediacy takes possession of the mediated, exchange value itself.122 Also, the assurance of this infinite continuum (exchange value overriding the use value) had to be the hegemonic discourse and its constant ritualistic enactment. Even the linear spatial genotype, being a common factor of aforementioned memorials and many other like Jasenovac Flower Memorial, Jasenovac, Croatia, had to serve for this purpose. From the moment of the arrival it had to capture visitors within the linear spatial genotype, creating constant intense movement towards without any distractions possible. Therefore, referring to idea that art demands concentration from the spectator, memorial sites with monumental sculptures clearly pursued aesthetic appreciation.123 It might explain why with the hero cult of Socialist Realism its configurations kept clearly recognizable formal references to the nationalist-conservative memorial theme built from the beginning of 20th century: funerary monuments by Wilhelm Kreis etc.124 The most ambiguous illustration of it would be Jasenovac Flower Memorial, Jasenovac, Croatia (Figure 2.1.4) where an abstract modern monument was positioned in a same aesthetic pathway - a conservative linear mode.125
At the end of 1980’s under the ecstasy of liberation from the Soviet occupation, not only the official discourse changed, but the signs of the old regime were quickly removed. In the case of soviet memorial sites this situation caused great issues as the material substance of memorial monuments was stripped out of any soviet discourse leaving an architectural masterpiece, having no direct and evident ideological signs, literally untouched. A way of adjusting memory into an inner-worldly functional context was re-aimed at a future of the different contingent of the survivors, which in the case of monuments dedicated to the events of the Second World War meant recognizing multi- dimensional side of it. Taking into account the fact that post-soviet discourse allegedly had no utopian transcendence, the notion of “dying for…” was swiftly modified into “never again”. This might be easily illustrated with the example of memorial complex of Kaunas 9th Fort museum, Lithuania, where sculptural monument originally dedicated to the surviving soviet citizens due to official renaming laconically became a memorial dedicated remembering victims of the fascism, serving ‘for the
121 Adorno, T.W. The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. Edited and with an introduction by J.M. Bernstein. Routledge: London and New York. Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005. P. 38. 122 Ibid, P. 38. 123 Benjamin, W. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction // Benjamin, W. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 239. 124 http://www.buchenwald.de/en/531/#sthash.rKZPIEd4.dpuf 125 http://en.tracesofwar.com/article/4570/Extermination-Camp-Jasenovac.htm http://www.holocaustremembrance.com/media-room/news-archive/68th-anniversary-jasenovac-camp-breakout 34 remembrance of the victims of fascism’126. At this point, referring to Koselleck we get that monuments that were officially edited by renaming them at the same time were included in a new transcendental meaning alongside with a reinterpretation of death and a different representation of subjective mourning.127 However, practically this shift was never smooth, because of its superficial and one- dimensional mode. Without the old official hegemonic soviet discourse, symbolic ritual as form of political solidarity became impossible, revealing the shift towards becoming a ruin in a Benjaminain sense.
From the critical perspective, the problematic facet of renaming monuments and memorials is analogous to what Benjamin referred to as translation. Without any transcendent… and with a new transmitting function given they became incapable transmitting “<…> anything but information- hence, something inessential.”128 Therefore, the decrease of artistic qualities correlates with Benjaminian hallmark of bad translations. It is important to address that editing through renaming affected not only the discourse of the historical memory and the entire socio-political world of images, but also and most importantly – the rituals of remembrance. In the case of Memorial complex of Kaunas 9th Fort museum there are noticeable signs, that the monumental sculpture is not serving its memorial function – every other year, a new memorial plate is being built nearby, for the commemoration of particular group of victims (for example – Jewish prisoners from Munich, prisoners from Drancy, soviet prisoners of war etc.). Moreover, all the official events and commemorations are taking place aside the monument. Therefore, ignoring/muting its ideological past today’s official discourse resulted collateral problematic issues such as acts of vandalism like in the case of Buchenwald memorial or Kaunas 9th Fort memorial complex.129 However, issues of vandalism are more extensively tackled in the last chapter of this thesis.
Continuing with the notion of editing through renaming as translation, we need to emphasize Benjamin’s critical suggestions. Taking Benjamin’s proposition that the translator can reproduce essential substance only if he is also a poet we might address the problematic issues in practice.130
126 Kauno IX forto muziejaus oficialus elektroninis tinklalapis , Muziejaus istorija. Prieiga per internetą: http://www.9fortomuziejus.lt/istorija/muziejus/. Žiūrėta 2013.12.09. 127 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 291, 293. 128 Benjamin, W. The Task of the Translator. An introduction to the translation of Baudelaire's Tableaux Parisiens // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.P. 69. 129 Čižinauskaitė, G. Svastikų ataka prieš žuvusiuosius, Alfa.lt, „Lietuvos žinios“, Prieiga per internetą: http://www.alfa.lt/straipsnis/11035181/Svastiku.ataka.pries.zuvusiuosius=2011-04-12_14-39/. Žiūrėta 2013.12.09. Crawshaw, S. Curtain lifts on Buchenwald 'Gulag': After the SS came the KGB. Steve Crawshaw visits a site that poses difficult questions for Germans. The Independent. Sunday 11 June 1995.
One of the most wildly debated attempts to edit the monument by renaming is the case of The Green Bridge in Vilnius, Lithuania. Originally built 1952 it was named after Soviet General Ivan Chernyakhovsky and consists four statues representing social classes idealized by the Soviet authorities (soldiers, workers, farmers, students). In a notion of subordination of the structure, the name of the bridge was changed rapidly, leaving decorative soviet monuments intact. However, an increasing opposition towards it grew as monuments became the one of the last hallmarks’ of the monumental sculpture of the soviet socialist realism in the city. As the opposition and public outrage were accompanied with act of vandalism, the fact of bad translation became obvious. Going back to critique based on what Benjamin emphasized as a need of a poet for an essential translation, a material attempt was made in 2010, when artist Kunotas Vildžiūnas (co-author Martynas Lukošius) mounted an additional sculpture „Grandinė“ (The Chain). Three massive pieces of stainless steel hanged up under the bridge intend to supplement the negative dialectics of the soviet monumental structure in present day socio-political realm (Figure 2.1.5).131 This way the conflict of values, seemingly solved without any distruction (dismanteling), re-interpretation but with supplement.132
2. 2 Reformation: reconciliation as advertisement
This subchapter tackles one of the most problematic issues of soviet monuments and memorials being reformed in a material notion. The most important question here consists… One of the main causes of monuments and memorials receiving a great consideration of their material structure – architecture is the historical factor of monuments being built into open spaces and into the landscape. That, according Koselleck, became a common monumentalizing practice since the end of the 18th century.133 Primarily, taking into account the historical and political circumstances, there is no doubt that the policy towards soviet monuments and memorials had little to do with the intention of deliberate reconciliation. On the contrary, it is usually supposed that reformation practices toward soviet monuments and memorials were the result of art critics or historians, ostensibly emphasizing artistic qualities of these objects, however, a critique of socio-political realm reveal that it is far from it.
Underlining that the idea beneath the majority of monuments and memorials was and arguably still is, as Koselleck noted, a construction of identity, or what based on critical theory might be
131 The Chain (the Žaliasis bridge), Vilniaus ženklai.
One of the most spectacular reformations of soviet monument that took place in Central Eastern Europe happened in Budapest, Hungary. In 1947 a massive Liberation Monument (Felszabadulási emlékmű) was designed by Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl and built on the Gellért Hill, just in front of 19th century citadel.135 Designed and build for celebrating liberty of Hungary after the Second World War, a massive structure contained four monumental statues (Figure 2.2.1). Two monuments at the sides with mythological assertions, and a massive 26 meters high cascade pedestal in the middle. The central vertical structure of the obelisk-like memorial had a 6 meters high statue of a Red army soldier that was positioned in forefront of the higher pedestal with 14 m tall bronze Liberty statue holding a palm leaf. Because of its share size and positioning location upon Gellért Hill it made it a prominent feature of Budapest's cityscape. The aesthetic significance of this monuments was affirmed during the uprising of 1956, when bas-reliefs on two sides of the postament were torn down and destroyed but later have been re-carved again (Fugure 2.2.2).136
In 1989, when socio-political situation changed Red army solder statue (Felszabadító szovjet katona) was removed from the monument and transferred to Memento Park (Szoborpark Múzeum137). However, this haven’t solved the problem, one of the central attention points in the landmark was still causing debates on what should be done with its entire structure. This illustrates, that material reformation was not an answer, when in the collective memory current structure had to receive some kind of monumental rehabilitation. Action was taken in 1992 when artist Támas St.Auby received an official permission and transformed the Statue of Liberation on Mount Gellért into the “Statue of the Soul of Freedom 1992 W”.138 The main statue of the monument depicting Liberty was manipulated by draping a huge white cloth with who black blobs on it and stayed like a ghost for four days creating an image of “the ghost of Liberty over Budapest” (Figure 2.2.3).139
Important to note, that in his study of urban palimpsests Huyssen questions the monumental memory versus monumental forgetting, and tackles an incredibly similar case of editing a monument. In 1995 artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in polypropylene, making it invisible for
134 Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. p. 187. 135 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zsigmond_Kisfaludi_Str%C3%B3bl 136 http://vilagszabadsag.hu/images/17//szabadsagszobor4.jpg 137 http://www.mementopark.hu/?lang=en 138 Támas St.Auby, Culturebase.net: The internet artist database
It indicates that performances with the Liberty Statue in Budapest or in later case Reichstag in Berlin, are instrumental acts played in a theme of monumental self-preservation. In perceiving these actions as monumental self-preservation we get that in both cases, we had objects temporally gaining qualities of a ruin. However, in synthetically becoming ruins these monuments never gained a freely spontaneous element – an allusion of a possible future freedom that might allow us to think them as art. Therefore, we need to critically question the role, these acts of reformations played in a socio- political realm. Adorno’s thoughts on totalitarian ‘monolithic’ might help to underline the self- preservation aspect these acts had on monumentalizing:
“[a monument] is forced into independence by self-preservation; at the same time this establishment of independence leads to alienation from its purposes and from the people of whom it is composed. Finally – in order to be able to pursue its goals appropriately – it enters into a contradiction with them.”141
Therefore, the entire initiative to reform the monument can be interpreted as an attempt to enforce a new identity, keeping the same technique/form of mimetic practices with slight modifications. In a plain direct way the renaming appeared on the changed inscriptions in 1993. The original inscription: “To the memory of the liberating Soviet heroes [erected by] the grateful Hungarian people [in] 1945.” was replaced with a new one: “To the memory of those all who sacrificed their lives for the independence, freedom, and prosperity of Hungary.”142 Moreover, referring to Marcuse, these initiatives can be referred to as utopian conservation, because of transcending preservation (Aufhebung) of the reality principle instead of its simple negation: “The authentic utopia is grounded in recollection.”143 The question that remains unanswered is – if these temporary disruptions of mimetic practices are for the sake of their self-preservation, what is its propulsion?
As it was expressed earlier, monuments and memorials themselves are having little effect on the society unless they are incorporated in some kind of active discourse that they can signify. At this point, the historical memory have to be appreciated not just merely because of producing monuments and memorials, but also advertising them. With reference to Horkheimer and Adorno we can
140 Huyssen, A. Present Pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2003. p. 33-38. 141 Adorno, T.W. Culture and Administration // Theodor W. Adorno - The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. ed. J. M. Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. p. 110. 142 Boros Géza, Három radikális köztéri project: Bevezetés az utca művészetébe.
2. 3 Demolition as barbarism
The last subchapter on official editing as a practice towards soviet monuments and memorials underlines the most marginal feature of politics of remembrance – demolition or dismantlement. It goes without saying, that the practices critically laid out here are the extreme alteration of the material state objects. The main focus of this chapter are three synthesized modes of official editing: being renamed, reformed, or demolished. All of those thee cases differ in relation to the material state of these monuments and memorials being altered. Moreover, it gives a deeper insight of socio-political forces at play within these happenings. This chapter presents a critique of a common visual signature of modernity that is found in various attempts to form or preserve nation- states assembling practically constant abundance of forms147. Several different interpretation are given from the position of changed dominating discourse in the question of editing monuments and memorials. The most radical ones of those interpretations underlined the need of correcting in order
144 Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. p. 162. 145 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 74. 146 Jory, T. David Copperfield and the vanishing Miss Liberty: the Statue of Liberty will fade from view and reappear. The Kingman Daily Miner. 1983 April 8, Vol. 100, No. 134. p. 18.
Referring to Adorno’s thought that “the critique carried out by works of art is a critique of activity as the cryptogram of domination” the demolition of soviet monuments and memorials can be easily tangible as momentary bursts of artistic activity.148 There is no difficulty to illustrate this with photo or video images that later on became illustrations of so called ‘the dramatic events’. Even in present day situation, the fascination on demolition of monuments and size of their prominence characterizes the level of fetishization. The latest relevant example of this case is the demolition of Lenin statue in Kiev December 8, 2013 and the excessive prominence it received.149 However, as transient demolition as momentary burst of art’s generated critique is, simultaneously it slips and becomes something completely different – an act of false projection.
Acknowledging the mimetic aspect of soviet monuments and memorials systematically built for the legitimation and unification of collective memory/ historical memory toward producing an incorporated identification, the changes they undertook during the shift of the socio-political spectrum have to be called into question. Chronic collapse of the soviet regime and its official historical discourse resulted changes in practices of remembrance, new themes became parts of the discourse, structuring different collective memory, therefore, identity as well. Soviet mimetic practices gave way to the new ones, however, not without residues. The process which was already under go and originated earlier150 reached a breaking point that foremost resulted in inversion – soviet monuments and memorials became objects of a false projection.
Soviet monuments and memorials that for decades were part of dominating historical discourse, therefore, part of society’s everyday life and collective memory became irrelevant within the new socio-political situation. Consequently, it resulted parts of collective memory as one of the most intimate experiences of social-political life to become hostile. Referring to what Horkheimer and Adorno, this false projection lead to impulses being redirected and “attributed to the object – the prospective victim”, where the object at this case became soviet monuments and memorials.151 This paranoid state undoubtedly affected politics resulting various actions taken and not-taken towards it.
148 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 122. 149 Ukrainian protesters topple Lenin statue in Kiev, (Reporting by Pavel Polityuk, writing by Gareth Jones; editing by Andrew Roche). Reuters. Kiev, Sun Dec 8, 2013 4:22pm GMT. http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/12/08/ukraine-lenin- idUKL6N0JN0IU20131208 150 Yurchak, A. Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything Was Forever, Until It Was no More. University of California, Berkeley: Society for Comparative Study of Society and History, 2003. p. 481. 151 Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. p. 187. 40
The most illustrative recent events took place in Ukraine, when after the toppling down of Lenin’s statue in Kiev, a massive wave of mimetic demolitions took place that lead to more than a hundred monuments meeting the same fate (Figure 2.3.1).152
The practices of official editing of the soviet monuments might be referred to unconscious narcissistic fantasies with the intentions to transform the world rather than inflict injury on the subject.153 Thus, resulting constant socio-political changes, collective memory and its official side – historical memory are facing perpetual call to resist any topographical changes that might alter the specific identification. Referring to psychoanalysts N. Abraham and M. Torok, soviet monuments and memorials in so called post-soviet era can be interpreted as objects of the fantasy of incorporation within the process of topography being on the verge of being transformed.154 Here it is worth noting two interrelated procedures of the fantasy of incorporation: demetaphorization (taking literally what is meant figuratively) and objectivation (pretending that the suffering is not an injury to the subject but instead a loss sustained by the loved object).155
3. DISPLACEMENT OF SOVIET MONUMENTS AND MEMORIALS
The subject-matter chosen for this chapter is positioned toward critical study of practices that might be generally described as previously discussed official editing. However, displacement of soviet monuments and memorials has its own substantial differences from the official editing. The idea beneath this chapter consists presenting theoretical insight on the practices of re-incorporation of soviet monuments and memorials within the dimension of place. Accordingly, several cases of soviet monuments and memorials that have been altered through displacement are presented along the theoretical insight of socio-political forces at play within these happenings.
152 Watson, L. (2014) First the president, now Lenin: Stunning map reveals 100 statues of Soviet leader have been toppled in Ukraine. The Daily Mail, Published: 11:26 GMT, 25 February 2014 | Updated: 11:11 GMT, 26 February 2014. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2567388/Stunning-map-reveals-100-statues-Lenin-toppled- Ukraine.html#ixzz30monbu65 153 Abraham, N. And Torok, M. The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis (ed. Nicholas T. Rand). University of Chicago Press, 1994. p. 125. 154 Ibid, p. 126. 155 Ibid, p. 126-127. 41
3. 1 Reorganization through inversion: Mimetic aspect of displacement of soviet monuments and memorials
As it was mentioned previously the idea of constructing identity corresponds with what critical theory presents as mimesis.156 Therefore, the entire initiative to reform the monument might be interpreted as an attempt to enforce a new identity, keeping the same technique (form of mimetic practices) with slight modifications. Not like in the case of finite demolition applying practices of dismantling and displacement, officially motivated by preserving history, sets forth the subject of mimesis and continuum of mimetic practices.
Therefore, it becomes clear that mimetic practices are active not only within monuments and memorials, but also within places per se. An illustrative example is Lubyanka Square in Moscow, where up to 2nd of August, 1991, Yevgeny Vuchetich's monumental statue of the founder of the Soviet security service, Felix Dzerzhinsky (nicknamed Iron Felix) was standing. The significant thing is not the fact that the monument erected in 1958 was taken down during the political changes but the thematic inversion that took place instantaneously, resulting literally Orthodox cross taking Dzerzhinsky’s place (Figure 3.1.1), however, temporally, until the postament was dismantled.157 Important to note that close to the roundabout in which center place Dzerzhinsky’s statue was built, already in 30th of October, 1990 the a monument dedicated to the victims of the Gulag was placed. Therefore, at this case the question of the manifold of places within space opens a field on interpreting displacement through inversion. In the case of Lubyanka Square in Moscow it took less than three months.
A similar attempt of displacement emerged in Lithuania where almost a quarter of century being independent (post-soviet), it has no central monument for partisans who fought against the soviet regime in 1944-1956. However, actions towards it are taken in Kryžkalnis, more particular, in the exact same place where monument known as Kryžkalnis Mother designated for “Soviet Army – Liberator” was erected in 1972 (Figure 3.1.2). Although the monument had not direct soviet symbols, after political changes it was dismantled and taken to the graveyard of soviet monuments in October, 1990. It is important to underline, that just after the dismantling of the monument, a massive (matching the height of former monument) wooden cross on a vertical tree trunk was erected near former monument’s foundation (Figure 3.1.3). Indicating the preliminary displacement through inversion. Moreover, in 2010 the initiative was taken to build a massive (15 meters high) belfry – a
156 mimesis as “<…> the outside world is a model which the inner world must try to conform to”. Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. p. 187. 157 http://josephliro.wordpress.com/2013/01/27/plus-ca-change-monumental-art-in-russia/ 42 chapel decorated with stained glass, with even higher (16 meters) cross alongside the chapel, and nine concrete slanting planes for inscriptions of names of partisans.158 This opens an interpretive juxtaposition with what Huyssen called mimesis and cover-up of another site memory.159 Therefore, with the requisite monumentality to match the dimensions of previous monument, current socio- political discourse of remembrance indicate a place as a form, too grand to be left aside.
From ritualistic perspective, this stresses out the intension to ensure that the ritualistic side of monumentalization would start and end within the same form of ritualistic practices of remembering, just with the different content in mind. Furthermore, the practice of partial displacement oriented in the transforming the content, however leaving the form can be perceived in previously mentioned cases of soviet memorial places such as sculptures in the Buchenwald Memorial and Memorial Complex of Kaunas 9th Fort museum, etc.
On the other hand, there might be moderate, restraint displacements as well. No doubt one of the cases that, nevertheless, resounded loudly was the displacement of the Monument to the Liberators of Tallinn, (aka The Bronze Soldier of Tallinn) in Estonia (Figure 3.1.4). When in April 2007, the Estonian government relocated the Bronze Soldier and the remains of the Soviet soldiers to the Defense Forces Cemetery of Tallinn.160 Still, public unrest toward the official decision had risen, causing the events that became a regional political issue an received a name of The Bronze Night (aka. April Unrest or April Events).161 Interestingly enough, comparing with Lithuanian case of The Mother in Kryžkalnis, no other monumentalizing practice so far was taken in Tallinn; the site were the soviet monument once stood is now decorated with flowers (Figure 3.1.5).
Therefore, the question of alienation as the concept of the social relations of production, becomes important for the case. Referring to K. Marx we need to emphasize “the external, common medium and faculty of turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image”.162 Therefore, leading the issue of displacement towards inquiry of commodity facet. Furthermore, recruiting Adorno’s notion of: “<…> the compulsive mimesis of cultural commodities by consumers who at the same time see through them”.163
158 Stakauskas, A. Ant Kryžkalnio kalvos bus pastatytas naujas paminklas. AlioRaseiniai.lt
3. 2 Fetishism of cultural commodities and displacement practices
At this point it is important to note what perhaps has been already observed by the reader, that this research varies between two major poles of interpretations of artwork with its relation to mass culture – Benjamin’s and Adorno’s. Aforementioned theoretical variability is based on problematic issues identifying soviet monuments and memorials as art in relation to their former and current status. However, it is important to take into account Jarvis reference to Albrecht Wellmer, where the latter underlines lack of singling out any freedom in mass art and solely focus on reification and ideology in Adorno’s theory.164 Respectively, soviet monuments and memorials are basically utterly losing their artistic qualities, which emerges in theoretical dimensions of reification and ideology.
The reification hence, indicate soviet monuments and memorials functionally leaving the public domain which is an essential aspect of monuments and memorials per se, and entering the commodity sphere. Consequently, from being referred to works of art, they are reduced merely to being things, with mutability aspect restrained. That is where reification becomes evident when soviet monuments and memorials are contextually presented as if having concrete material existence.
However, despite the facet of displacement becoming a reification, monumentalizing practices do not cease to be engaged in political service. Furthermore, reification provisions it more shifting the memory into, what Koselleck calls, an inner-worldly functional context.165
The Second dimension upon which soviet monuments and memorials are losing their artistic qualities is the exceptional role of ideology. Foremost, we need not to disregard ideology affecting every other dimension of socio-political life. However, in this case it becomes increasingly important to notice that ideology resides not in monuments themselves, but in the material form as such. Žižek’s interpretation of ideology as a universal eternity, not always working as a meaning but as an empty container open to all possible meanings, fits here perfectly. Thus, any attempt of displacement enacts the container-like facet of places, making the latter sublime capacities for ideology to thrive. At this point we can emphasize Jarvis thought based on Adorno, stating that:
“The difference between works of art and non-artistic communicative artefacts contains a judgement on those artefacts which fail to become art, which are content to remain
164 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 79. 165 Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. p. 291. 44
commodities in the culture industry. The category of ‘inauthentic works of art’ is an empty set for just this reason.”166
To interpret the continuous building of monuments and memorials as exceptionally a politically ideological or propagandistic phenomenon would be missing a great deal of insight. Therefore, in the notion of Adorno’s critique of a commodity aspect in the culture industry, a self-propelled aspect of monumentalizing might become tangible.167 Perceiving soviet monuments and memorials as commodities of collective memory, fetishism of the former causes a relation between memories to appear in a form of a property of a thing, expressed as its exchange-value in the field of historical memory. This might explain the unceasing construction of monuments and memorials dedicated to the recurrent themes such as the Second World War, ethnic genocides, etc. Therefore, the sustenance of particular dominating discourse, grand narrative, in relation to the other variations of remembrance had not only politically ideological substance, but a commercial aspect as well.
Furthermore, continuing with the reference to Hardt and Negri stating: “Exploitation is the expropriation of cooperation and the nullification of the meanings of linguistic production.”168 the entire specter of collective memory and remembrance fall under it as part of antagonisms of synchronic reality. From this point view, any attempt of memory politics find itself in the crisis of memorializing past dimensions of time (what A. Huyssen called memory syndrome). Therefore, monuments and memorials that have been officially edited or displaced are showing attributes of even further socio-political exploitation of memory and remembrance. The commodity aspect of the reorganization might be perfectly illustrated with an anecdote photomontage showing Lenin’s Avenue near Moscow State University in 1991 and then, in the late 90’s (Figure 3.2.1). The billboard that has been erected in-between parallel streets stating “СССР – ОПЛОТ МИРА” (eng. “USSR – the bastion of peace”) and holding a massive coat of arms of USSR became a commercial billboard “ИНКОМ БАНК” (eng. “Income Bank”).
3. 3 Commodified historification: parks for soviet monuments and memorials
Another facet of monuments being altered through displacement is the creation of memory parks containing soviet monuments and memorials. Shortly after the collapse of the soviet system
166 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 110. 167 “A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour.” Adorno, T.W. On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening, Theodor W. Adorno - The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. ed. J. M. Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. p. 38. 168 Hardt, M. and Negri, A. Empire. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2000. P. 385. 45 with the discussion on the issue of soviet era monuments and memorials a phenomena of double historification appeared. It goes without saying that ideas on preserving inheritance of the soviet era were unwelcome by the majority, however, few enthusiasts took an effort to engage themselves in this. Currently, this subject matter consists of four major practical cases we should address as soviet memory parks for monuments and memorials. They were opened in Russia (The Fallen Monuments Park, since 1992), Lithuania (Grūtas Park, since 2001)169, Hungary (Memento Park since 1993)170, Poland (Museum of the People’s Republic of Poland since 2010)171, Bulgaria (Museum of Socialist Art, since 2011)172.
The educational aspect serves as an opposite to B. Brecht’s plays, where spectator is asked to critically observe the society portrayed in the play and compare it with his/her own world inspired to make change. Despite the fact that aforementioned memory parks have the educational aspect underlined as the essence of their being, further critical inquiry shows its inner ambiguities. Returning to previously mentioned facet of monuments having theoretical facets of being perceived as works of art, especially after the change of the official political discourse, ambiguities reside within objects truth content. Taking into account soviet monuments and memorials placed in history parks, we should asses the illusory character of its fetish character, and more importantly - enlightenment turning into mythology.173 In the case of The Fallen Monuments Park (Russia) and Grūtas Park (Lithuania), decisions for the final solution of soviet monuments was induced by the government. Therefore, aforementioned cases were first such actions within post-soviet and post-socialist counties.
However, with a massive cluster of objects, memory parks containing soviet monuments have problematic issues of presenting the artifacts. The presentation does not fit in clear conceptual thematic order and seems like a random burst of objects. Therefore, referring to Benjamin, the displacement practice at this point turns out to be a work of an uncanny collector, whose favorable prospect is tangible through: “the method of receiving the things into our space. We don't displace our being into theirs; they step into our life. [H2,3]”174 Furthermore, Adorno’s theory provides us with another perspective interpreting enthusiasm to gather soviet monuments and memorials for public display. The fact that such projects we implimented not by the state, but individual entrepreneurs-businessmen, (thus, the former passive compulsory consumers of the fallen soviet discourse), indicate the somewhat nostalgic pseudo-activity. Referring to Adorno, parks for soviet
169 Grūto parkas, official site:
Moreover, as it was mentioned in the previous chapters, issues of advertising are also at play when monuments and memorials are incorporated in any kind of discourse that they might signify. Therefore again, the notion of soviet monuments being somewhat dependent on publicity in order to be properly enjoyed becomes relevant.177 Moreover, this notion was solved with ever increasing musealization of soviet monuments and memorials, yet again, entering further with the advertising facet. Consequently, Soviet monuments and memorials become more than they were, by gaining new, educational meaning through the practice of spatial clustering. Incorporating soviet monuments and memorials into the commodity consumption of historical memory definitely influence the formation collective memory and the mode of this process lies within the theory of aesthetics. Perceiving the cluster of soviet monuments and memorials in a particular place as a concentration of specific theme of historical memory, raises the question of ritualistic aspect of such a theme-park of icons. More so, as Grūto parkas shows tendencies of further thematic enclosure of the subject visiting the place being able not only to walk and observe sculptures, but also to educate oneself in a museum and picture gallery, interact in club-reading, play in Luna Park, visit a mini zoo and dine in the same place.178 Besides, these theme parks of monuments and memorials presented without any thematic order in a random burst and lots of additional activities might remind us Benjamin’s account on “Cabinet des Mirages” at the Musée Grévin where countlessly shifting mirrors cause a variety of images to appear and disappear.179 The interactive style of aforementioned thematized parks suggest their greater immersion into monumental fetishism through commodification of soviet monuments and memorials.
175 Adorno, T.W. On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening, Theodor W. Adorno - The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. ed. J. M. Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. p. 52-53. 176 Ibid, p. 53. 177 “<…> publicity, which it [monument] needs because it cannot be enjoyed.” Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. p. 162. 178 Grūto parkas: sovietinių skulptūrų muziejus. http://www.grutoparkas.lt/?lang=gb 179 That the last but also the greatest work of this mirror magic is still around to be seen is owing, perhaps, more to its high production costs than to its drawing power and profitability, which today are already on the decline. This work is the “Cabinet des Mirages” at the Musée Grévin. Here were united, one final time, iron supporting beams and giant glass panes intersecting at countless angles. Various coverings make it possible to transform these beams into Greek columns one moment, Egyptian pilasters the next, then into street lamps; and, according as they come into view, the spectator is surrounded with unending forests of Greco-Roman temple columns, with suites, as it were, of innumerable railroad stations, market halls, or arcades, one succeeding another. A fluctuating light and gentle music accompany the performance, and coming before each transformation is the classic signal of the hand bell, and the jolt, which we recognize from our earliest trips around the world, when, in the Kaiserpanorama, before our eyes that were full of the pain of departure, an image would slowly disengage from the stereoscope, 47
4. SPORADIC IN TIME AND DISPERSE IN SPACE
This chapter will tackle soviet monuments and memorials that are today overgrown with grass and weeds, thus are obviously no longer used as part of the state rituals, and in some cases are in such a decay, that they are losing or already lost their material structure. For this reason, following analysis will be less inclined to focus on a single so called ‘unique’ aspects of artistic expression of soviet monuments and memorials, to ensure in-depth consideration of their actual qualities as cultural products in today’s society. There again, lies another reason not to fall into art criticism and to approach this subject-matter within aesthetic socio-political means of critical theory.
4. 1 Aura as an inapproachable cult-image of a ruin Monuments and memorials that are in decay have in themselves an attribute of fetish character of art. It resides within their being as ruins in Benjaminian sense, therefore, accordingly, within Adorno’s theory this correlates with arts claim to autonomy and “<…> being an and for itself, governed by its own law rather than by a law outside it.”180 One of the perfect illustrations of soviet monuments and memorials gaining fetish character of art are monuments from former Yugoslavia, dedicated for the theme of the Second World War and withholding inner aesthetic (due to its modern style) and material (due to erosion and decay) approachability issues.
The question, how former Yugoslavian monuments might be comprehended raises the earlier mentioned Benjaminian notion of the experience of the aura, specifically, his reference to inapproachability, as a primary quality of the cult image.181 In today’s post-Yugoslavian countries, the case of the mostly abandoned Second World War monuments from 1960’s and 1970’s shows signs of political, historical, thematic and aesthetical inapproachability. At this case, the political inapproachability might be interpreted as a void of official approach towards the physical remains of these objects, in any ways, discerned in chapters above. Therefore, the importance of the monuments left to decay has to be taken into consideration because of the theoretically substantiated notion of a ruin, which flourishes in the case of soviet monuments and memorials in decay. An insightful notion
allowing the next one to appear. [Rl,8] Benjamin, W. The Arcades Project. trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. p. 538. 180 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 116. 181 Benjamin, W. On Some Motifs in Baudelaire. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations. trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 188. 48 can be grasped within perceiving Yugoslavian monuments as ruins and addressing this with reference to Adorno’s remark:
“Of all the paradoxes of art the most inward is that through making alone, the production of particular works specifically formed in themselves, never through an immediate gaze, art hits upon the not-made, truth.”182
Hence, being a ruin induces the qualities of being perceived as works of art, especially when monuments that are losing primal situational discourse and are not incorporated within current culture industry. At this point we get that the socio-political realm of inattentiveness causes these monuments in decay to gain certain characteristics and qualities of being art. For further theoretical insight on interpreting monuments and memorials built in former Yugoslavia and now being in decay, Adorno’s thoughts on metaphysics of art become relevant:
“Truth content cannot be something made. Every act of making in art is a singular effort to say what the artifact itself is not and what it does not know: precisely this is art's spirit.”183
Probably this is the reason why the absolute majority of Yugoslavian monuments after the collapse of the socialist regime haven’t received any proper attention from any national governments re- evaluating their memory policies.
By being left to decay, soviet monuments and memorials are indication of what referring to Adorno might be called latent appearing as latent “<…> eruption of subject’s collective essence.”184 Therefore, the lack of attention indicate a (re-)emergence of aura as an unapproachable cult-image of a ruin. In questioning the issue of decay of soviet monuments and memorials, Wellmer’s notion on aesthetic modernism might help investigate it further. In this case, interpreting monuments that are in decay we need to underline their “<…> incorporating diffuse, non-integrated, senseless and excluded material <…>”.185 Thus, it is possible to argue that decaying monuments are in what Wellmer calls a space of domination-free communication. And this was the case of Yugoslavian war memorials up to the current decade, when individual and thematic tourism was not so outspread in the relation to relics of soviet and socialist past. Therefore, a point was initially reached with a (re-)emergence of aura as an unapproachable cult-image of a ruin.
182 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 104. 183 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 131. 184 Ibid, p. 131. 185 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 111. 49
4. 2 Problematic issues of a ruin as a potential of a cult image At this point, we need to stress out the issue of objects in decay gaining quality and potential to become cult images. Referring to Benjamin, this has to do with erosion that leads towards object becoming essentially distant – unapproachable:
“True to its nature, it remains ‘distant, however close it may be.’ The closeness which one may gain from its subject matter does not impair the distance which it retains in its appearance.”186
Moreover, the cult aspect is usually quickly subordinated to politics e.g. due to increasing public interest Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko Borisov transferred the ownership of the decaying Buzludzha monument (Figure 4.2.1) to the BSP Socialist party in November, 2012.187 However, the consumerist side of soviet monuments entering cultural production neutralizes this potential by (re- )incorporating it in consumer culture. As the example of this, recently published “research” that is basically a photo album Commemorate the Past or Celebrate the Future: Exploration of the Abandoned WWII Monuments of Former Yugoslavia by Sunčica Miloševic.188 Moreover, the re- incorporation of monuments in decay to the cultural industry suppresses their mutability and qualities of being works of art and ruins in an aesthetic sense therefore, disperses their potentiality of becoming cult images.
Aforementioned reincorporation into culture industry generally manifests through conservationist attempts as disruptions of the fetish character of art. In the case of soviet monuments and memorials in decay and being targeted by conservationist approach, a utopian notion arises. Referring to Marcuse, this transcending preservation of the negation of the reality principle sets forth the position: “<…> in which past and present cast their shadow on fulfillment. The authentic utopia is grounded in recollection.”189 Therefore, in aforementioned cases of thematic history parks, the diversity of attractions, activities and themes creates a noisy cluster, endeavoring to reach exalted state of recollection. Likewise, the intensions to preserve war memorials from former Yugoslavia have the same fetishized need for abstract, therefore, fully unapproachable cult image. Moreover, within Adorno’s theory, some of the practices towards soviet monuments and memorials seem to gain masochistic attributes by identification with power:
186 Benjamin, W. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations., trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 223-224, 243 187 Smith, G. Monument to a troubled past: Inside the enormous crumbling communist HQ Bulgaria cannot afford to maintain or demolish. The Daily Mail. 20 March 2012.
“Underlying it is the knowledge that the security of shelter under the ruling conditions is a provisional one, that it is only a respite, and that eventually everything must collapse. Even in self-surrender one is not good in his own eyes; in his enjoyment one feels that he is simultaneously betraying the possible and being betrayed by the existent.”190
However, due to inner generic factor, previously mentioned facets are in constant fleeing, therefore never gaining any complete qualities.
4. 3 Sporadic dimension and disperse spatially Soviet monuments and memorials facing erosion and decay are entering a sporadic dimension of their aesthetic existence, corresponding with their nature-like mutability.191 This sporadic dimension of monuments and memorials in decay correspond to Adorno’s notion of an inner transcendence of artworks beyond the appearance that they are:
Their transcendence is their eloquence, their script, but it is a script without meaning or, more precisely, a script with broken or veiled meaning. Although this transcendence is subjectively mediated, it is manifested objectively, yet all the more desultorily. Art fails its concept when it does not achieve this transcendence; it loses the quality of being art.192
Ironically, more than a few soviet monuments and memorials that are in decay, simultaneously are located in nature parks. This is the case of The Buzludzha Monument (Bulgaria) being part of Bulgarka Nature Park (Figure 4.3.1) and Sutjeska Memorial in Valley of Heroes Tjentište (Bosnia and Herzegovina) being part of Sutjeska National Park (Figure 4.3.2).
Paraphrasing Adorno: through being sporadic in time and disperse in space, what appears in soviet monuments and memorials is robbed of its being-in-itself, in which the aesthetic experience of monuments and memorials is fulfilled.193
190 Adorno, T.W. On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening, Theodor W. Adorno - The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. ed. J. M. Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. p. 56. 191 sporadic in a sence of occurring at irregular intervals; having no pattern or order in time. 192 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 78. 193 Ibid, p. 67. 51
5. FETISHIZATION OF THE MATERIAL AS ACTS OF VANDALISM
As it was mentioned in addressing soviet monuments and memorials that have been renamed, ignoring/muting its ideological past today’s official discourse resulted collateral problematic issues such as acts of vandalism like in the case of Buchenwald memorial or Kaunas 9th Fort memorial complex.194 This chapter is dedicated to theoretical critique of acts of vandalism. Moreover, it is investigated, can acts of vandalism be interpreted as part of sporadic aspect of monuments? - occurring at irregular intervals; having no pattern or order in time and being disperse in space.
An important aspect of acts of vandalism is that they can occur literally at any point of existence of an object. Thus, edited, incorporated, reorganized or in decay monuments and memorials become targets of vandalism. Studying this factor has a massive variety of psychological, sociological theoretical approaches possible, however, this this thesis focuses on a cultural critique based on aesthetic approach. At this point it is relevant to note Žežek‘s attention to Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the “sheet of time” which, according to Žežek, en-captures a magnetic attractor combining moments of past, present, and future into a complex field of multiple, discrete and interacting temporalities.195 Therefore again, soviet monuments and memorials being edited, displaced or in decay are always involved in mutability that is generic to their existence, thus becoming sheets of time within the socio-political realm. It goes without saying that at this point the question of trauma within the subject is most likely to appear within critical theoretical discourse. The act of vandalism due to trauma, invoking Žižek, indicates subject being “caught in an interactive loop between multiple traumatic sheets of time.”196 Quite similar understanding occurs referring to Ankersmit’s theory of four types of forgetting and two types of trauma of sublime historical experiences.197 Therefore, analyzing acts of vandalism from the subject’s perspective in critical thought we might focus on the traumatic aspect of this phenomenon.
As it was mentioned before, soviet monuments and memorials built after the Second World War had a tendency to shift the notion of victors to the protectors of the defeated, moreover, focusing toward survival rather than mass death. This tendency in the thematization of commemorated places of massacres is easily palpable within vast majority of soviet built monuments and memorials within all
194 Čižinauskaitė, G. Svastikų ataka prieš žuvusiuosius, Alfa.lt, „Lietuvos žinios“, Prieiga per internetą: http://www.alfa.lt/straipsnis/11035181/Svastiku.ataka.pries.zuvusiuosius=2011-04-12_14-39/. Žiūrėta 2013.12.09. Crawshaw, S. Curtain lifts on Buchenwald 'Gulag': After the SS came the KGB. Steve Crawshaw visits a site that poses difficult questions for Germans. The Independent. Sunday 11 June 1995.
From the Adorno’s perception of the subject, vandalization of soviet monuments and memorials might be interpreted as “eruption of subject’s collective essence” 199 Furthermore, in their primary mode being built, monuments have the initial notion of collective remembrance marked on them, thus, any reaction aimed towards it underlines the negative dialectic relation between individual and the collective. Hence, the acts of vandalism signal different, organic, and mutable remembering; moreover, rendering these monuments’ qualities attribute to aesthetic images. The dominating discourse on historical memory and history underlines the loss of the mimesis within the discourse of power and its effects. On the contrary, perception changes when focusing on an Adorno’s aesthetic approach of the same subject matter.200 Then, perceiving the functional and material decay of the soviet monuments and memorials as a result of functionally broken mimesis (its suppressed cognitive element), the decay, or a becoming of a Ruin imply the authenticity of art within these monuments. Vandalization can be interpreted as the realization of the dissonance of changed dominating history discourse after which, the exemplary status of the dead is lost. As a result, survivors (current society) cannot find themselves being in accord with a reason commemorated dead died for, therefore, causing anxiety (freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility) or what Hardt and Negri calls a black hole in the life of multitude as an outcome of corruption.201 Hence, conditions for the act of vandalism can be attributed to the ergosphere around such black holes in which it is impossible to stand still and the Penrose process202 which is considered a possible explanation for a source of energy of such energetic phenomena as gamma ray bursts. As a result, acts of vandalism can be seen in a juxtaposition with gamma ray bursts – extremely energetic explosions. An illustrative case such acts of vandalism happened in Sofia, Bulgaria, when monument to the Soviet Army became a black hole, consisting nothing in itself, however, through its ergosphere being around, making impossible for
198 http://www.buchenwald.de/en/74/#sthash.ZfaekgvL.dpuf 199 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. p. 131. 200 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 103, 116. 201 Salecl, R. On Anxiety. Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. p. 32. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. Empire. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2000. P. 389. 202 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_process 53 socio-political realms to stand still in relation to it and in an engaged with it. The result became fascinating: more than nine recorded attacks since 2011:
1. Pop-art composition, painted as comics characters with a quote: “In keeping with the times”, June, 2011 (Figure 5.1).203 2. Protests against ACTA (Figure 5.2).204 3. During the national day for the commemorating the victims of communism, February 1, 2013. Three of the figures of the monument were painted in white, red and green, the colors of the Bulgarian national flag. Another part of the monument, part of an engine, has been colored the same way (Figure 5.3).205 4. Soviet Army Monument Painted in Bulgarian National Colors again in May 8, 2012.206 5. In August 17, 2012 it was photographed with Pussy Riot masks (Figure 5. 4).207 6. In August 21, 2013 it was sprayed entirely in hot pink and tagged with the words “Prague ’68” and “Bulgaria apologizes” in Czech and Bulgarian, as in apology corresponding with the 45th anniversary of ‘Operation Danube’ – the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, when Bulgarian troops aided the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia (Figure 5. 5).208 7. February 23, 2014 it has been coloured in the colours of Ukrainian national flag and the inscription “Glory to Ukraine” (Figure 5.6).209 8. An inscription saying “Hands off Ukraine” was painted March 1, 2014 on the Soviet Army monument in Sofia. The slogan was triggered by the unanimous approval of Russia's upper
203 Russian embassy irate over pop art on Sofia monument. (AFP) – Jun 21, 2011. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g47- riOgM93v1VYOlLrDyqKEqGBg?docId=CNG.ded665ce519942066fc596f3278101ce.4d1&hl=en 204 http://www.bnews.bg/article-43863 205 Soviet Army Monument in Bulgaria's Sofia 'Decorated' Again http://www.novinite.com/articles/147463/Soviet+Army+Monument+in+Bulgaria%27s+Sofia+%27Decorated%27+Aga in#sthash.Wk0kMRpY.dpuf 206Soviet Army Monument Painted in Bulgarian National Colors http://www.novinite.com/articles/139145/Soviet+Army+Monument+Painted+in+Bulgarian+National+Colors#sthash.80 xuLnlA.dpuf 207 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-19295251 208 Hot Pink Vandalism: Bulgaria’s Soviet Army Monument Got Bombed, Again. By Marina Galperina, August 22, 2013. http://animalnewyork.com/2013/hot-pink-vandalism-bulgarias-soviet-army-monument-got-bombed-again/ 209 Bulgaria Soviet monument in Sofia gets Ukraine twist. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26346901 ; Dr. Kelly Hignett, Hot Pink Protest: Bulgarian Monument Repainted as ‘Artistic Apology’ for 1968 Czechoslovakian Invasion. The View East: Central and Eastern Europe, Past and Present. 2013.08.23. http://thevieweast.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/pink-protest-bulgarian-monument-repainted-in-artistic-apology-for-1968- czechoslovakian-invasion/ ; http://sofiaglobe.com/2014/02/23/ukraine-begins-work-on-national-unity- government/ukraine-soviet-army-monument-sofia-crop2/ 54
house on Saturday of the decision of President Putin to use military force on Ukrainian territory (Figure 5.7).210 9. On March 5, 2014, anti-communists vandalized a Cold War-era monument in Sofia, Bulgaria. Two of the figures were painted with the national colors of Poland and Ukraine. A slogan reads “Putin go home!” while “Katyn” refers to the location in western Russia where the Soviet NKVD massacred 22,000 Poles in April-May 1940 (Figure 5.8).211
On the other hand, vandal attacks against soviet monuments and memorials can be seen having a completely opposite result than the intension of vandals. Constant attacks not only might work as the factor for earning redemption, but also as an advertisement of monument itself because of it being dependent on publicity “<…> which it needs because it cannot be enjoyed”.212 Therefore, sense of aesthetic appreciation is part of acts of vandalism taken against these objects. The best example of soviet monument being re-incorporated into the culture industry through acts of vandalism as an advertisement is the aforementioned monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Another aspect how acts of vandalizing might be interpreted as bursts of becoming works of art in soviet monuments and memorials is the concept of truth. Taking into account Wellmers idea that truth of art “may only be explained by appeal to the complex interdependence of the various dimensions of truth in life-historical experience”.213 The best illustration at this point is the story of the pink tank in Prague, Czech Republic, when in a form of protest against the regime, it was vandalized by being painted pink. Originally this tank “monument” was placed in Prague in 1945 to commemorate the Red Army liberating Czechoslovakia from the Nazis, but since 1968, it largely symbolized the Soviet- led invasion that crushed the Prague Spring period of political liberalization. Monument currently named Soviet Tank No. 23 (Figure 5.1.1)vandalized by artist David Černý in 1991 when it was painted pink and topped with a giant, phallic finger. For a long time it was kept in a military museum, but in 2011 it was placed on a river bank with a whole horde of celebratory events planned around it.214 Furthermore, a similar vandalization occurred in Russia, when a similar act to the Prague’s Pink Tank happened in 2010 (Figure 5.1.2). A criminal case has been opened due to the disgraceful act towards a war memorial, however, without results.
210 'Hands Off Ukraine' Painted on Soviet Army Monument in Sofia. Novinite.com: Sofia News Agency. March 2, 2014. http://www.novinite.com/articles/158605/%27Hands+Off+Ukraine%27+Painted+on+Soviet+Army+Monument+in+Sof ia#sthash.RNh9Emxu.dpuf 211 Russia won't pull its troops out of Ukraine. http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2014/03/06/russia-won-t-pull-its- troops-out-of-ukraine 212 Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972. p. 162. 213 Jarvis, S. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. p. 112. 214 Marina Galperina, Vandalized Soviet Tank Sailed Down a Prague River in Triumph. June 21, 2011. http://animalnewyork.com/2011/vandalized-soviet-tank-sailed-down-a-prague-river-in-triumph/ 55
Concluding, acts of vandalism aesthetically predicate that these vandals are closer to acknowledgement of the artwork than the official discourse, ignoring its historical past. Referring to Adorno, we can presume, that vandal attacks target extra-artistic object with the model of expression which has historical processes and functions already sedimented in them and speaking out of them.215 Preconceived aligning of all the attacks on soviet monuments and memorials for the victims of the Second World War as anti-Semitic distracts from any real social issues and enforces psychologically extremely dangerous binary division,216 serving as a variant of social conduct217. While on the other hand, art confronts society autonomously as the surface of the mirror that someone is holding, giving us a second reflection218. However, the fact of lacking the official acknowledgement of the history of soviet monuments and memorials in today’s socio-political discourse, signals double edged problem expressed by Adorno: Through expression art closes itself off to being for- another, which always threatens to engulf it, and becomes eloquent in itself: This is art's mimetic consummation. Its expression is the antithesis of expressing something.219
Conclusions
After addressing critical theory to help develop and frame the common facets of soviet monuments and memorials, an inversion of typical monument theory was offered: the degeneration of objects that produces new life and generates a sociopolitical realm within the aesthetic notion of a ruin.
Editing practices within soviet monuments and memorials indicate their failure at becoming art, by being stuck in the mode of a non-artistic communicative artefact that dominates collective memory, and, therefore, identity discourse. Simultaneously, becoming self-preserving totalities without origin, edited monuments radiate their dominating discourse by being black holes that generate and de- generate memory. Moreover, the intrinsic ambiguity of these objects when perceived through double reflection has varying socio-political outcomes, such as: hiding under systematic illusion or becoming objects of false projection.
215 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. Newly translated, edited, and with a translator's introduction by Robert Hullot- Kentor Continuum. London, New York, 2002. p. 111-112. 216 Adorno, T.W. The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. Edited and with an introduction by J.M. Bernstein. Routledge: London and New York. Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005. P. 173. 217 Benjamin, W. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. // Benjamin, W. Illuminations. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 238. 218 Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. Newly translated, edited, and with a translator's introduction by Robert Hullot- Kentor Continuum. London, New York, 2002. p. 348. 219 Ibid, p. 112. 56
Underscored by the self-propelled aspect of monumentalizing, the displacement of soviet monuments and memorials is a negative continuum of mimetic practices. Displacement through reorganizing monuments into specialized thematic museums signifies fragmentation and reification of collective memory under the domain of the culture industry. Moreover, it correlates with the greater immersion into monumental fetishism through commodification of soviet monuments and memorials; thus we see a kind of enlightenment turning into a mythology of the ruin.
The case of soviet monuments and memorials being in decay indicates a (re-)emergence of aura as an unapproachable cult-image of a ruin. Furthermore, the socio-political realm of inattentiveness causes these monuments in decay to gain certain characteristics of art. Hence, through ambiguity the ruins gain some of the qualities of a work of art, and an extreme tension wrought by their inner truth content negating itself appears. At this point, by becoming sporadic in time and dispersing in space, soviet monuments and memorials designate the inner corruption of remembrance and collective memory; however, they simultaneously point towards a critical understanding of present.
Vandalism towards soviet monuments and memorials indicates an illusion of the non-identical; therefore, it can be perceived as bursts of aesthetic appreciation, and moreover as increasing the object’s qualities of being a work of art. However, acts of vandalism implicate soviet monuments and memorials as a mass culture that radiates a fetishization of the material, while nonetheless ambiguously being the denouement of the same mass culture. Furthermore, vandal attacks become a mimetic consumption of the ‘initial meaning’ soviet monuments and memorials supposedly had, and therefore they indicate the increase of an intrinsic consideration of possible socio-political changes.
When we assess soviet monuments and memorials as monuments of the present we underline that today’s socio-political present acts as an artist, variably manipulating the material that is engaged in constant mutability. Therefore, the mutability aspect of soviet monuments and memorials coincides with what Adorno’s aesthetic theory presents as the determinate negation of untruth within the truth- content of works of art. Accordingly, despite their mutability, when extrapolating the common aspects of soviet monuments and memorials as somewhat unique, an ambiguity nevertheless arises. Manifold mutability denotes the present socio-political realm, although it evaporates the present of the soviet monuments and memorials, causing blind spots in the field of spatialized time.
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Biobliography
Monographys
1. Adorno, T.W. Aesthetic theory. ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor. London and New York: Continuum, 2002. 2. Theodor W. Adorno - The Culture Industry: Selected essays on mass culture. ed. J. M. Bernstein. London and New York: Routledge, 2005. 3. Anderson, B. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso, 2006. 4. Ankersmit, F.R. Historical representation, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. 5. Ankersmit, F.R. Sublime Historical Experience, Stanford: Standford University Press, 2005. 6. Balibar, É. Politics and the Other Scene, trans. Christine Jones, James Swenson, Chris Turner. London and New York: Verso, 2012. 7. Bauman, Z. Globalizacija: Pasekmės žmogui. Vilnius: Strofa, 2002. 8. Benjamin, W. The Origin of German Tragic Drama, transl. John Osborne. London: Verso, 2003. 9. Benjamin, W. The Arcades Project. trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. 10. Benjamin, W. Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. p. 224, 244. 11. Boym, S. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001. 12. Jonutytė, J. Philosophy of History: Didactical guidlines. Kaunas: Vytautas Magnus University, 2013. 13. European Memory: A Blessing or a Curse? ed. Leonidas Donskis and Ineta Dabašinskienė. Europe and the Balkans international network. T. 32. Ravenna: Longo, 2010. 14. Habermas, J. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. trans. Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987/1990. 15. Halbwachs, M. The Collective Memory. Harper & Row, 1980. 16. Halbwachs, M. On Collective Memory, (ed., trans. Lewis A. Coser). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. 17. Hardt, M. and Negri, A. Empire. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press, 2000. 18. Hegel, G.W.F. Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. // The Continental Aesthetics Reader. ed. Clive Cazeaux, London and New York: Routledge, 2001. p. 50. [problematic reference] 19. Horkheimer, M. Adorno, T. W. Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972.
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20. Huyssen, A. Present Pasts: Urban palimpsests and the politics of memory, Stanford (Calif.) : Stanford University Press, c2003. 21. Kavaliauskas, T. Pokalbiai apie Rytų Vidurio Europą po 1989-ųjų :[pokalbių knyga] = Conversations about East Central Europe after 1989. Vilnius: Edukologija, 2012. 22. Kavaliauskas, T. Transformations in Central Europe between 1989 and 2012:geopolitical, cultural, and socioeconimic shifts. Lanham (Md.) [etc.] : Lexington Books, 2012. 23. Koselleck, R. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. trans. Todd Samuel Presner and Others. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. 24. Koselleck, R. Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. 25. Lopata, R. Istorija kaip politinio mąstymo veiksnys. Vilniaus universitetas. Tarptautinių santykių ir politikos mokslų institutas. Vilnius : Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 2012. 26. Marcuse, H. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Beacon Press, 1978. 27. Memory in a global age: discourses, practices and trajectories /edited by Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad. Houndmills [etc.] : Palgrave Macmillan, c2010. 28. Miloševic, S. Commemorate the Past or Celebrate the Future: Exploration of the Abandoned WWII Monuments of Former Yugoslavia. University of Cincinnati, 2013.
Articles’ in scientific journals
1. Yurchak, A. Soviet Hegemony of Form: Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More. University of California, Berkeley: Society for Comparative Study of Society and History, 2003. 2. Olick, J. K. and Robbins, J. Social Memory Studies: From “Collective memory” to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices. Annual Reviews, 1998, Vol. 24, pp. 105-140.
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3. István Mészáros (1970) Marx’s Theory of Aienation. Transcribed: Andy Blunden; Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton, 2006.
Articles’ in other scientific publications
1. Assmann, A. Miesto atmintis // Atminties daugiasluoksniškumas: miestas, valstybė regionas. Vilnius: Lietuvos istorijos instituto leidykla, 2013. 2. Riegl, Alois, “The modern cult of monuments: its essence and its development”, Kn. Price, Nicholas Stanley, Mansfried Kirby Talley and Alessandra Melucco Vaccaro (sud.), Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. [Getty Publications], 1996.
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Appendix
Figure 2.1.1
Figure 2.1.2 Buchenwalds memorial (aerial photo). Source: http://www.buchenwald.de/uploads/tx_wrmmediathek/Luftaufnahme_web_02.jpg
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Figure 2.1.3
Figure 2.1.4
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Figure 2.1.5
Fugure 2.2.1 The Liberty Statue (Hungarian: Szabadság Szobor), Budapest, Hungary. Source: http://bfl.archivportal.hu/data/gallery/images/beolvas%C3%A1s00117.jpg
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Fugure 2.2.2 The Liberty Statue (Hungarian: Szabadság Szobor), Budapest, Hungary. Source: http://vilagszabadsag.hu/images/17//szabadsagszobor4.jpg
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Figure 2.2.3 “The Ghost of Liberty over Budapest”
Figure 3.1.1 Former Dzerzhinsky Square and the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky (left) by a mob and replaced with a simple Orthodox cross (right).
Source: http://josephliro.wordpress.com/2013/01/27/plus-ca-change-monumental-art-in-russia/
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Figure 3.1.2
Figure 2.3.1 Map of demolished monuments of Lenin in Ukraine from December, 2013, to March, 2014. Source: https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak- prn2/t1/1911854_643353639033374_457047669_n.png
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Figure 3.1.3
Figure 3.1.4
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Figure 3.1.5 Tõnismägi, former site of the monument, May 27, 2007
Figure 3.2.1
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Figure 4.2.1 The Buzludzha Monument, in Buzludzha, Bulgaria. Source: http://www.buzludzha.com/images
Figure 4.3.1 The Buzludzha Monument, Bulgarka Nature Park (Bulgaria) Source: http://www.buzludzha.com/images
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Figure 4.3.2 Sutjeska Memorial in Valley of Heroes in Tjentište (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Figure 5. 1 Source: Jeruen Dery, Bulgarian Blitz-Boogie: Monument to the Soviet Army. http://www.linguist-in-waiting.com/2013/06/bulgarian-blitz-boogie-monument-to.html
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Figure 5. 2 Protests against ACTA: “And when the past and come out against this ... then you should save the future. Together against ACTA” says the message of the picture.220
Figure 5. 3 The monument to the Soviet Army, Sofia, Bulgaria.
220 http://www.bnews.bg/article-43863 71
Figure 5. 4 The monument to the Soviet Army, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Figure 5. 5 The monument to the Soviet Army, Sofia, Bulgaria.
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Figure 5. 6 The monument to the Soviet Army, Sofia, Bulgaria.
Figure 5. 7 The monument to the Soviet Army, Sofia, Bulgaria.
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Figure 5. 8 The monument to the Soviet Army, Sofia, Bulgaria. A woman walks past messages that read “Putin go home!”, March 5, 2014. Source: http://www.picsgen.com/repainting- history/
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Figure 5.1.1
Figure 5.1.2
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