Symbolic plasticity and memorial environment: the afterlife of Soviet monuments in post-Soviet Kyiv

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the afterlife of the most prominent Soviet monuments in Kyiv to survive the first wave of demolitions during the early 1990s. It shows how some of them evolved into symbols of solidarity with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which made them targets of attacks during the Euromaidan Revolution of 2013–14. In an attempt to trace the changing meaning and public resonance of Soviet monuments, the author develops Jan and Aleida Assmann’s concept of “mnemonic energy,” which monuments emit. Specifically, the article puts it in dialogue with notions of “symbolic plasticity” and “memorial environment,” both proposed here for the first time. The author argues that these characteristics of Soviet monuments, which take into account changing social practices at their respective sites, ultimately determined their fate in the post-Soviet period. The author also tests Michael Taussig’s notion that monuments always contain within themselves a suppressed counter-narrative, which can be revealed when they are toppled, accepting it with the proviso that alternative readings need not be singular or stable.