Report by Tessel Janse, PHD Candidate (Cultural Studies) and art critic. AICA Netherlands.
How can societies, whether postcolonial or post-Soviet, contend with built heritage, historical figures and monuments that symbolise a past oppressive regime? What space for debate is there when this precise heritage is the site of ongoing struggle, and subject to taboo, erasure and amnesia as well as contemporary imperialist aspirations? In the fourth edition of Ruptured Histories, moderated by AICA Poland president Arkadiusz Poltorak, AICA international invited artists, curators and art historians from post-Soviet and post-Stalinist Europe to reflect on the ways in which heritage from the Soviet era sits uncomfortably in the current political landscape, but is nevertheless part of the history of post-Soviet nations. They shared examples of their own initiatives in developing cultural practices that attribute new meaning to that which is not easily forgotten, but also refuses to align with new national narratives of independence and overcoming the past. As Russia uses their presence to legitimise invasion, the discussion on whether to topple or preserve becomes a sensitive but urgent topic for artistic engagement.
In the first contribution, Ukrainian art historian Yevheniia Moliar drew from the challenges faced in her PhD research on the preservation of Soviet cultural heritage, and from her work with DE NE DE, a DIY-collective that invites artists to recontextualise this heritage. Especially following the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine, the process of decommunization is accelerated in response to Russian appropriation of material traces of Soviet times to support its claims over territories. The government, more often than not, interprets decommunization as demolition, and in the political climate of Ukraine appreciation of this highly charged heritage is minimal. Moliar pushed back on both Russian appropriation and Ukrainian demolition by arguing that Soviet heritage is an important part of Ukrainian history, and that contemporary policies to wipe clean the uncomfortable aspects of history echo the censorship of the Soviet era. She argued that there is no homogeneous Soviet heritage that is inherently Russian. Rather, various countries like Georgia, Lithuania and Ukraine had their own specific artists and schools which resulted in similar but differentiated expressions of Soviet visual culture. Decommunization, according to her, should be achieved through recontextualising museum collections, Soviet buildings, and statues to demonstrate the workings of propaganda and the manipulation of national histories. Both the Sergei Prokofiev Museum in Sontsivka and the former Mykola Ostrovsky Memorial Museum in Shepetivka, now the Museum of Propaganda, have complicated the stories of these cultural figures by showing how the archives were manipulated to pose them as heroes of the Soviet Union. In doing so, these museums play a key role in educating the public on the instrumentalisation of narratives, and in challenging repressive tendencies in Ukraine as well as Russian claims of belonging.
Nikita Kadan, interdisciplinary artist interested in the politics of Ukrainian modernism, similarly challenged decommunization and the problematic equation of communism with Russian imperial culture. His research on Kharkiv as the capitol of Ukraine during the 1920s shows that the country had its own brand of communist avant-garde art, but decommunization and its non-distinction between different hubs of cultural development result in the abandonment of this Ukranian heritage. Kadan introduced his reinterpretations of the work and life of Ukranian painter Vasyl Yermylov. These reinterpretations involved the creation of speculative monuments that were never realised and exist only in virtual reality, such as Monument to the Chairman of the Globe. As a monument to Russian poet Velimir Khlebnikov, based on personal exchanges between the Yermylov and Khlebnikov, it attests to the mutual dialogue between Ukraine and Russia that goes beyond colonial oppression and victimhood, and instead draws attention to Ukrainian agency and cultural exchange. Thus, when communist heritage is treated with attention to detail and complexity, it offers opportunities to celebrate Ukraine’s artistic movements and historical figures instead of merely erasing a large part of the 20th century that is perceived as shameful and inconvenient.
Following these two Ukrainian perspectives, the seminar moved to Azerbaijan with artist and curator Sabina Shikhlinskaya. Born and raised in the Soviet Union and trained in Soviet art institutions, she experienced first-hand its collapse and the subsequent transformation of Azerbaijan. Her interests focused on understanding where political pressure on art and culture comes from, and how artists can refuse ideology even after communism. Following independence in 1991, Azerbaijan rigorously erased all sculptures, monuments and Stalinist and later Soviet modernist architecture, either by demolition or by replacing façades. A new architectural boom, financed by the revenue from oil, ensured that all reminders of the Soviet period disappeared, as if it had never existed. Shikhlinskaya became fascinated with how the years between 1918 and 1991 could be memorialised in the face of this erasure, and how one could conceptualise heritage that is, indeed, difficult but also forms the roots of contemporary Azerbaijan. The work she shared focused on Nargin, an island in front of the bay of Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital city. Ruins on the island are silent witnesses to several layers of history. Since the late 19th century it was a Russian penal colony, later a prison camp under Stalin, and then a Soviet military base to protect sea access to Baku. Practically a cemetery to Turkish, German and Austrian prisoners of war who are possibly still missing to their families, it is still protected by the military but ambitious plans for commercial development are underway. Thus, the island’s historical significance is at risk of being erased. In collaboration with artists and curators from throughout the former Soviet Union, she illegally stayed at the island for a week in 2003, to document its traces of the past and make them tangible through artistic interventions. After fifteen years of keeping silent, she now presents archival research of the island and the documentation of this informal residency in virtual exhibitions to show the bullet holes and writing of prisoners on the walls, and in doing so preserve a piece of the puzzle that many would rather forget.
Tblisi based art historian and curator Lali Pertenava explained that in Georgia, it is not so much the case that Soviet architecture is demolished for ideological reasons, but rather that except for a few iconic buildings, it is not valued or protected, and investors replace Soviet built environment with high rise buildings. The Zavko building for instance, formerly the Soviet army headquarters in Tblisi, was invaded by squatters for over two decades and then purchased by a bank. Now it has been demolished to make way for a combined commercial and residential complex. The disappearance of Soviet architecture inspired Pertenava to initiate a community project involving her own apartment building for the 2018 Tblisi Architecture Biennale. Titled Building Block 76, for two days it opened up seven private living spaces to visitors, as the background for art exhibitions. Though it drew many visitors, Pertenava noticed a problematically romanticised attitude towards Soviet times. She described the exoticisation of Soviet buildings, which are now often appropriated for depoliticised enterprises like hotels and bars, as a form of capitalist self-colonisation. This sits awkwardly within a political present in which Soviet policies like propaganda and censoring cultural expression merge with dystopian commercial development.
Finally, Dr. Kinga Siewior approached the preservation of heritage from a Cultural Studies perspective, sharing insights from her research on ways in which communist heritage is dealt with in Poland and throughout Central and Eastern Europe. Firstly, Siewior qualified the notion of difficult heritage to include public spaces where monuments or buildings were removed during the 1990s, but are still very much present in the collective memory. In other cases, such as the Palace of Culture in Warsaw, removal is not an option because the buildings are so entangled with the local infrastructure that demolition would have a large impact on the surrounding neighbourhood. In those cases, removal is not as straightforward as it seems. Resignification means that buildings that were once a symbol of greatness now become monuments of communist oppression or tombs to forced labourers who died on the construction site. Reinterpretation allows for the telling of new stories. Recontextualisation, on the other hand, assigns objects new roles as material for contemporary artists, such as the Lenin statue in Odessa that Alexander Milov transformed into Darth Vader. Or it quite literally transports monuments to new contexts, such as in museums. A final option identified by Siewior is commercialisation and depoliticization, a trend with younger generations especially before the war in Ukraine where socialist design was valued purely for its stylistic properties. Siewior as such provided an overview of various options for engaging with difficult heritage and the challenges to unified or ruptured histories they present.
In the discussion, it was emphasised again that there is no such thing as one communist or post-Soviet identity, and differentiation should be made between different countries, cultures and histories. Kadan argued that any government’s reflex to separate itself from Russia by erasing all Soviet heritage and establish its own independent identity of resistance, echoes 19th century conceptions of nation-states as culturally homogeneous with heroic narratives of overcoming oppression. This inevitably leads to repression of the complexity of the past. Postcolonial theory teaches us that exactly this collective amnesia allows colonial power structures to haunt the new nation: a lack of critical engagement with uncomfortable histories of collaboration, censorship and oppression of the many by the few, means that these can continue to exist in ghost-like form. New regimes put on a different face but operate with the same tools, and when opinion makers, media and the government fail to trace the continuities in history it is up to artists and thinkers to challenge blanket histories, and, as Kadan said, foreground unofficial, complex and individualised histories over the official narrative.
According to him, we cannot ‘cancel’ the Russian past, but during the war we do need to boycott Russian cash flows, cultural institutions and initiatives to show that life does not continue as usual. This call to challenge continued Russian influence and denounce its contemporary imperialism was strongly echoed by Pertenava and Shikhlinskaya, who detailed that though former Soviet countries differ, they have a common ideology based on the experience of and resistance to Russian oppression. Interestingly, both Shikhlinskaya and Kadan’s contribution showed that when freedom of expression is limited either because platforms do not exist due to war and destruction, or because it contradicts official narratives, artistic interventions in the shape of virtual exhibitions and monuments provide an opportunity to reach audiences throughout the former Soviet Union and beyond.
Participants all agreed with the term ‘difficult heritage’, subscribing to its uncomfortable place in the public sphere and in collective memory. However, in line with the various trajectories of Soviet history, terms used for past oppression varied between speakers and geographies, ranging from post-Soviet to post-communist or post-Stalinist, or naming the Soviet era as Russian occupation. Speakers also showed varying ease with defining their respective histories through the lenses of (post)colonialism or decolonisation, the overarching theme of AICA’s Ruptured Histories webinars. Though there is much to be gained from connecting (post)Soviet societies with the tools for analysis offered by postcolonial theory, differences also exist regarding, for instance, the absence or presence of racial difference and the varying structures and motivations behind (colonial) occupation. These differences and convergences underlined David Chioni Moore’s call for a debate on whether the ‘post’ in post-Soviet is the same as the ‘post’ in postcolonial. Altogether, this fourth edition of Ruptured Histories showed the need for further exploration of how and where these perspectives can learn from each other in post-oppression nation-building, the resistance to continued abuses of power, and in grappling with uncomfortable material and immaterial heritage and the entanglements and aspirations that are projected upon it.
The recording of the webinar is available here.