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Monuments for Posterity

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Antony Kalashnikov challenges the common assumption that Stalinist monuments were constructed with an immediate, propagandistic function, arguing instead that they were designed to memorialize the present for an imagined posterity.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 16, 2024

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This video is a transcript of an interview discussing a book by Anthony, which examines the significance of Stalinist monuments and their role in shaping national memory and identity in the context of the Stalinist era. Anthony recounts his initial impressions of Moscow's monumental architecture during a visit as a teenager, highlighting how it contrasted sharply with his small hometown in Canada. He reflects on how these monuments, constructed during a time of crisis, served to present a narrative of strength and grandeur intended for future generations, framing Stalinism positively despite its repressive history.

Anthony outlines the three key characteristics of Stalinist monuments: they were built with a future audience in mind, focused on memorializing the present rather than the distant past, and aimed at collective remembrance of the Stalinist era. The interview delves into how the monuments acted as symbols of national identity and unity amid significant social upheaval caused by rapid modernization and the trauma of World War II.

In the discussion, Anthony explains that the culture of monument-building was highly participatory, with public input playing a role in their design and construction. However, during the war, the state lost some control over this process as spontaneous public constructions emerged, leading to a clash between state-sanctioned narratives and grassroots memorialization.

The significance of these monuments extends to contemporary society, as they continue to influence Russian national identity and perceptions of the past. While the book aims to analyze the style and form of these monuments, it also connects historical findings to current discussions around commemoration and the legacy of Stalinism. Ultimately, Anthony urges readers to critically assess the enduring impact of these monuments on collective memory and identity, especially in the post-Soviet context.

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This book sort of came out of a experience

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that I had visiting Moscow as a teenager.

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I had, grown up in a Russian speaking family in,

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Edmonton in Canada.

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Uh, and, back in 2008, my parents decided

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to take my brother and I to see our historic homeland.

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And, this was one of my first times outside of Canada.

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And what impressed me the most about Moscow, was sort

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of its monumental architecture.

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Uh, it's, it's towering high rises.

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It's splendid, subway stations.

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It's, imposing statuary. It's stately boulevards.

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This seemed to be a city that really, spoke

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to its world historical importance in a very confident way.

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And, I dare say that my prairie hometown never seemed

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so small and inconsequential as it did, back then.

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Uh, as I went to college

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and learned more about, Russian history, I realized

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that, the constructions

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that I was most impressed about in Moscow

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had all been, built.

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In fact, in the Stalinist period,

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Stalinist architecture, is of course very

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colorful, very ornate.

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It's sort of a mixture of, neoclassical,

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neo baroque, neogothic influences.

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And this is in, in market contrast to the sort of gray, drab

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or concrete, prefab architecture

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that we typically associate with, with, with

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what we know as Soviet architecture in general.

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Um, Stalinist monuments were also built on, on a sort

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of overpowering scale, which I actually,

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at the time found, quite awe inspiring.

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And finally, Stalinist monuments seemed

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to tell a story about, about this time,

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about the people that lived there.

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Uh, and this once again was in contrast with the sort

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of muteness of the functionalist architecture

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that succeeded it.

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As I learned more about Stalinism, though, I began

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to wonder whether to some extent I had fallen victim

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to some sort of sleight of hand.

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Of course, we know how Stalinism,

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how the Stalinist regime airbrushed photographs, how it,

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curated the archives, to consign those

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that had fallen on the wrong side of the powers that be

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to oblivion.

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And I wondered that perhaps the converse was also true.

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Uh, perhaps these monuments had been built precisely

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to give future generations a good witness about this era,

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to frame it for a posterity as a truly

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glorious and great time.

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So this was a question that I was able to,

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formally pose, in my research,

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and which ultimately culminated in this book.

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Monuments that were built

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during the Stalinist era had at least three, important

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and very distinctive characteristics.

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First of all, they were quite self-consciously oriented

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towards a future audience rather than on contemporaries.

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Uh, they, they were explicitly framed as a sort of a gift

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to posterity.

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Secondly, they tended to memorialize

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the present rather than the, the distant past.

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And insofar as the distant past was, was memorialized.

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It was sort of, framed by, by the present.

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And finally, staus monuments grew out of a project

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of collective remembrance.

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They were, they were about memorializing the era as a whole,

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even, when they used specific events

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or individuals as examples.

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These were still ultimately, to,

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immortalize the glorious Stalin era.

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And I think we can appreciate the contrasts with

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how we might think of a, of a monument today, right?

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When we, when there's a public discussion about,

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commissioning a new monument, we'll talk about its value

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to the community here

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and now, we won't really talk about

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how we're building this for posterity.

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Um, this monument that we build will typically memorialize

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a figure from the past.

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Uh, it would be very uncommon for us to,

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build a monument to a, a, a, a person who's still living.

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And finally, this monument would,

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would memorialize a specific event or a specific individual.

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It would rarely be framed as one, commemorating that

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epoch in its entirety.

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So what we're talking about under Stalinism is a very,

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sort of narrow, subset of monuments,

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a monumental form that emerged in the late 19th century

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that crested in the interwar period,

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and which fell off shortly

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after the second World War in the Soviet Union.

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And, in fact, globally as well.

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So what we can immediately note,

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and this is very intriguing about Stalinist monuments, is,

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is that they were commissioned, built

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and unveiled in a time of a very profound crisis.

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So, to, to give you some examples, the Palace

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of the Soviets,

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this was the central construction project of, the 1930s.

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It was supposed to be, the new sort of,

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government house.

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Uh, it was supposed to be the largest

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and, tallest building in the world.

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And,

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the competition sports design were in fact launched,

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amid the debacle of the forced collectivization,

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in the course of which millions of people,

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were starving to death

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In a manmade famine.

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Uh, the third phase of the construction

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of the Moscow subway,

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this was carried out in the early disastrous years

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of the Second World War.

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Uh, in fact, some of the decorations, like the mosaics

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for these subway stations had to be airlifted out

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of the besieged

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and blockaded, city of Lenin grad, in early 1943,

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in the postwar period, a string

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of high-rise buildings were commissioned in Moscow.

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And in fact, their commissioning, came,

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right at the height of the post-war famine.

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So these were hardly times of, of confidence, hardly,

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times of, optimism.

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So I guess the, the big question here is what

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function did these monuments play,

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and what was their connection to this, this time

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of crisis and anxiety?

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And as I argue in the book, these future oriented monuments

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materialized and supported a fantasy of national endurance,

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of national survival.

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So if we think of a nation as the bearer

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of a common identity, then we can appreciate

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that this identity largely relies upon a chain

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of intergenerational memory.

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This chain

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of intergenerational memory extends backwards into the past,

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but also forwards into the futures

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to future generations, to posterity.

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So in this sense, the fantasy of a posterity that

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remembers the present was a key component of this hope

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of national endurance.

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Now, why was this so important in the 1930s and 1940s?

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In specific, I think we can point

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to at least two sets of causes.

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So first of all, we can look at the social dislocations,

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that were induced by the Stalinist program

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of rapid modernization of this breakneck drive

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to industrialize the country.

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Now, in the course of this program, which was, launched

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with the first five year plan in 1928, millions

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and millions of peasants were uprooted from the countryside

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and brought to labor in the rapidly expanding cities.

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And in doing so, they really left

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behind their traditional social milieu,

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their traditional values, their traditional identities,

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their traditional family ties.

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And in this context, the national imagination

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provided a way of anchoring, identity,

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of fostering a stable new community

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among atomized individuals

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that had just recently arrived into the city.

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Building monuments for posterity gave the impression

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that this new national community was indeed solid,

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was indeed enduring

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and stable, in a time of quite, rapid social change

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and, flux of, of, of various identities.

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The second set of causes that we can look at is,

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the anxieties, that were

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the, the, the, sorry, the, the, the anxieties that came out

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of the, the devastation

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and the trauma of the Second World War.

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So, in some sense, memory is a sort of crutch for

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symbolic immortality, right?

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A person might die, but they'll live on, in memory.

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But in a broader sense, I think, the fantasy

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of posterity, remembering the present, it

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provided a sort of hope of a war already won.

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Uh, there will be a posterity to do the remembering as such.

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And this was very important in the context of a war

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for national survival.

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So we really shouldn't be fooled

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by the bombastic optimistic character

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of Stalinist monuments.

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This only actually underscores their fundamentally

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compensatory character.

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These monuments we're trying to convince the public

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that memory lives on that intergenerational ties do endure,

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and that the nation will survive.

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Uh, despite the trials

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and tribulations of the present, the public is actually,

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quite involved in this process of monument construction.

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Um, in fact, the public, is

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involved in competitions, for these monuments.

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They submit, their own draft designs, even in con in,

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in competitions which are specifically restricted

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to professionals, only only professional

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architects can submit designs.

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You'll still get hundreds

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and hundreds of designs coming from the public.

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Um, monument builders are also getting letters from the

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public, that are proposing design changes to monuments,

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that are proposing their own sort of ideas.

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Uh, the volume of, of, of these letters is so great

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that they actually sometimes complain to the party.

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Uh, they complain to the government commissioning bodies

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that they're simply overwhelmed by the public response.

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The public also writes letters to newspapers.

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Uh, it writes letters to the party proposing new monuments.

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It's very much enthusiastic about

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this Monument construction program.

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Um, now in the Second World War,

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an interesting thing happens

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as the state loses its monopoly on monument construction.

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Um, the public starts

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to spontaneously build its own monuments, primarily to,

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to fallen servicemen, but also general war monuments.

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Uh, this is carried out by local institutions like,

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local Soviets, local collective farms, local mil

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or individual military units.

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Uh, they'll construct, their own monuments.

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And the government, is very, suspicious of this,

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spontaneous grassroots monument building drive.

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The government, of course, has its own program of

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how the nation should be framed, how,

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it should be portrayed,

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and how, I mean, in general, how the era, can

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and can't be memorialized.

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So in the, in the post-war period, it moves

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to rapidly claw back,

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its monopoly over representing the nation in monuments,

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and it in fact deconstruct demolishes certain monuments

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that were built spontaneously, most notably,

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monuments to the Holocaust.

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Um, at the time, Jewish victimhood is not

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recognized as specifically Jewish in the official,

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discourse of the state.

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Uh, Jews are a constituent nationality in the Soviet Union,

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but they make up a greater Soviet whole.

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And so when they're framing the war,

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in memorial objects, they're very careful to talk about sort

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of Soviet victimhood as a whole, without

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recognizing the specificity of, Jewish victimhood.

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So that's one area in which,

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there is a big clash over definitions of, the nation,

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between the public and, the Soviet leadership.

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But in general, this idea of future generations, this

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idea of posterity is very intentionally, crafted

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as an open-ended concept.

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So people will be able to project whatever they want

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into these, empty signifiers.

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So, the Soviet National Project, at the time is

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of course, somewhat contradictory.

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There's, the idea of a Soviet nation,

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but there's also the idea of constituent,

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nations within the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian nation,

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you know, the, the, the Kazakh nation,

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and so on and so forth.

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So, when, when they're building a monument

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for future generations, anybody is free to sort

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of project whatever they want to see into that category.

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Is that going to be a Soviet nation as a whole?

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Is that going to be, you know, a Russian nation,

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or, or whatever they wish?

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And I think that this open-ended framing,

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is very consciously, done in order

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to accommodate these types of, diverging viewpoints,

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as we saw in the Soviet case.

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It's this, context of crisis, of devastation,

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in which utopian, hopes sort of narrow to the endurance

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and the survival of the nation.

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And I think that this, this connection between,

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pessimism or, or,

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or at any rate, narrowed hopes for a progressive future,

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that this actually applies,

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across the world in the interwar, period.

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Now, first of all, overblown monument building ambitions.

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Were not exclusive to the Stalinist Soviet Union,

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nor even to its fascist cousins, at this time.

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So in, in Great Britain, for instance,

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there's also this push to build,

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permanently build for the ages.

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Uh, we can see this, embodied, for instance,

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in the design of the Senate House of the University

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of London, which was constructed in the mid 1930s.

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Uh, now this building, specifically used stone

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load bearing walls in contrast, to the more,

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common use of farrow concrete at the time.

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Uh, and, and this was done specifically in order

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that this building, be able to stand

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for at least 500 years in the,

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in the United States.

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This requirement for, structural permanence for

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for long-term structural permanence was explicitly written

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into the competition briefs for the most important projects

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of, the 1930s.

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Um, buildings like the Federal Reserve,

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like the National Gallery of Art, in Washington,

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DC like the Hoover Dam, for instance.

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And in general, all across the west

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and in the Soviet Union as well, there's,

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a very cutting edge research program into how to build,

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per durably.

16:42.455 --> 16:45.755
People are working on things like non corrosion,

16:45.825 --> 16:47.715
non-corrosive, lacquers.

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They're working on superior grades of steel

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and concrete that can be used, for, for monuments.

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And last, for, you know, hundreds of years,

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they're developing, canvases that will be impervious

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to sunlight, that will be moth resistant.

17:03.315 --> 17:06.595
They're developing paints that won't be electrostatic,

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and thereby they won't attract damaging dust particles.

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They're selecting stone,

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for each particular geographic locale with a view

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to the climatic conditions there,

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and how to make, you know, which monument,

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should use which stone in order to guarantee

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that it lasts the longest in that particular,

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geographic locale.

17:30.505 --> 17:34.805
So I would argue that across, the sort

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of liberal democratic authoritarian divide in,

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in the global interwar period, there's this,

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this growing anxiety, that,

17:45.335 --> 17:46.885
fuels monument building.

17:47.025 --> 17:49.965
The, the interwar years were, of course, a very dark time.

17:50.545 --> 17:53.965
Uh, the world had just emerged, from the carnage

17:53.965 --> 17:55.285
of the first world war.

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And there was of course, the looming threat

17:57.785 --> 18:00.595
of its repetition in Europe.

18:00.855 --> 18:05.475
Uh, post-war austerity, soon gave way, to,

18:05.595 --> 18:08.675
a global, economic great depression.

18:09.725 --> 18:13.225
So the outlook on the future was fundamentally pessimistic.

18:14.005 --> 18:17.345
And as I try to argue in the book, the fantasy

18:17.765 --> 18:19.545
of enduring nationhood,

18:19.755 --> 18:23.385
which would be anchored in in monuments for posterity,

18:23.635 --> 18:27.465
tried to address and alleviate some of these anxieties.

18:27.645 --> 18:31.505
I'd like to sort of take a new, look at the style

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and form of Stalinist Monumentalism.

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I look at discussions within the art

18:36.445 --> 18:37.985
and architecture communities.

18:38.565 --> 18:42.545
Um, I try to sort of assemble the outlines of a Stalinist

18:43.205 --> 18:47.185
design theory for future oriented monuments.

18:47.605 --> 18:50.185
Uh, as I mentioned, Soviets,

18:50.425 --> 18:53.585
monument builders were quite conscious of their, mission

18:53.725 --> 18:56.585
of building for, future generations.

18:57.085 --> 19:00.345
And to this end, they really, thought hard about how

19:00.445 --> 19:03.745
to make these monuments not only physically permanent,

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but also how to make them appealing,

19:06.535 --> 19:09.225
distinctive eye-catching understandable

19:09.685 --> 19:10.945
for future generations.

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Second, the book really tries to use monuments

19:16.305 --> 19:20.365
as an entry point, to think about the Stalinist,

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culture of time and,

19:21.585 --> 19:24.405
and the culture of time in the interwar period more broadly.

19:24.745 --> 19:27.885
And I've already spoken about, some of the ways,

19:28.025 --> 19:31.165
in which, the book, tries to do this.

19:32.445 --> 19:35.825
But finally, I think that the, the findings really have,

19:35.945 --> 19:37.705
a contemporary relevance as well.

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Uh, Stalinist architectural monuments continue

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to stand quite prominently in the post-Soviet cityscape,

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in Russia at least, they continue to resonate

19:49.175 --> 19:52.225
with the sort of, status nationalist,

19:52.375 --> 19:55.305
perhaps even imperialist, discourses.

19:57.225 --> 19:59.805
And what's interesting about these objects is that

20:00.305 --> 20:02.085
by being sort of material

20:02.425 --> 20:06.205
and tactile, they have the potential to speak louder

20:06.715 --> 20:10.125
than the sort of abstract textbook narratives

20:10.265 --> 20:11.965
of Stalinist crimes.

20:13.165 --> 20:14.945
So, a few years back, for instance, there was,

20:14.945 --> 20:17.865
there was a poll among Russian youth,

20:17.965 --> 20:22.625
and, many respondents, said that, you know, yes,

20:22.695 --> 20:26.425
they know about, the terrible things that happened,

20:26.425 --> 20:27.785
during the Stalin period,

20:28.245 --> 20:31.505
but hey, at least Moscow has the most beautiful

20:31.525 --> 20:33.145
and best subway system in the world.

20:34.915 --> 20:38.015
So I think in, in, in an important sense, these,

20:38.405 --> 20:40.855
remaining Stalinist monuments continue

20:40.855 --> 20:45.095
to immortalize their era as a time of greatness

20:45.275 --> 20:47.015
and, national rebirth.

20:48.405 --> 20:51.345
And I think that appreciating their production history

20:51.965 --> 20:54.065
can potentially help us resist some

20:54.065 --> 20:55.145
of their seductive power.

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