A Monument for our Times? Commemorating Victims of Repression in Putin’s Russia

Abstract

Three decades ago, a civic movement arose in the USSR around commemorating Stalin’s victims. Yet only in 2017, following President Vladimir Putin’s approbation, was a central monument to victims of repression constructed. Analysis of the genesis and results of the design process for the new monument shows that memory discourses in Russia have been harnessed to a form that allows civic activists and state officials to express a limited consensus. The truncated nature of the competition and the jury’s safe choice, however, produced a monument unlikely to become a locus for popular or official remembrance.