The Rise and Fall of Monuments

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The Rise and Fall of Monuments Author(s): Charles Merewether Source: Grand Street, No. 68, Symbols (Spring, 1999), pp. 182-191Published by: Jean SteinStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25008505Accessed: 14-08-2015 05:15 UTC

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CHARLES MEREWETHER

We are living in what could be called a "memorial

age." On the one hand, new monuments are being built to commemorate and question violent events

of the past. On the other, monuments are being destroyed as a way of symbolizing the end of an era. Their destruction represents a desire to put the past

behind. But is this possible? The most recent

widespread expression ofthis desire has been the

toppling of monuments throughout Eastern Europe

and the Soviet Union after I989, which came to symbolize the fall of Communism. More often than

not, the toppling of monuments occurs after the overthrow of a state, and for this reason among

others, monuments are part of the turbulent legacy of the past; they cannot stand outside history. To ignore or attempt to erase this legacy through the

destruction of monuments is to risk engaging in a

dangerous form of historical revisionism. What is a monument? Monuments make certain

historical claims based on a conservative impulse to

commemorate an epoch, ideology, event, or figure. Monuments construct and preserve a record; they are symbols intended to stand over the vagaries of

memory and apart from the contingencies of

history. They are literally larger than life, and lend a

sense of permanence to an idea, or a regime, by

seeming almost part of nature. The emperor or

general on his horse, the leader with his arm raised to the sky-these images are all part of an

iconography of triumph that projects the past onto the future, from one generation of people to the

next. Monuments celebrate-and try to ensure-the

reign of the perpetual present. In the state's eyes,

the monument functions as both a physical representation of the leader and of those who later claim his mantle. The state seeks legitimization through representation; its authority is embodied in its representations of itselfand in its hegemony over competing images (and therefore ideologies). The

Polish-born artist KrzysztofWodiczko, who has

had a long-standing interest in the rhetorical power

of monuments, has said, "Individuals don't own

images, the State does." The state's attempt to

control how events and figures are represented is

part of its spectacle of power. As the French

philosopher Guy Debord suggests in his book

Society ofthe Spectacle, this spectacle is "the existing order's uninterrupted discourse about itself, its

laudatory monologue. It is the self-portrait of

power." Wodiczko and other artists have attempted

to draw attention to this discourse by exposing the

violence inherent in the construction ofthese

monuments.

183



CHARLES MEREWETHER

Can the destruction of monuments really be commemorative? Russia has always been occupied and preoccupied by its monuments, and has a

history of destroying them. With the advent of the

Soviet State many monuments were destroyed, renamed or built. On April I2, I9I8, under Lenin,

the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree ordering the Tsarist monuments to be replaced

before the first anniversary of the October

Revolution. After Lenin's death, Stalin set up a

Committee for the Immortalization of Lenin's Memory, which was responsible for the "correct

manufacture of busts, bas-reliefs and pictures showing V. I. Lenin." In the I920S and I930S

Bolsheviks destroyed old churches and renamed Moscow streets in order to obliterate the past.

The first act of the perestroika years was to give

streets back their old names and pull down

Soviet monuments. The way a society thinks about its monuments

reflects the way it deals with its own history. In

recent years, the question ofwhat to do with the

monuments of Communism has preoccupied historians, politicians, and artists throughout former Communist countries. Some call for their

swift destruction, others for their conservation; still

others, like Wodiczko, believe they should neither

be destroyed nor conserved, but somehow altered,

in a manner that suggests the passage of history.

Muscovites were faced with this question shortly

before midnight on August 22, I99I, in the

aftermath of an aborted Communist coup against

former Soviet President Gorbachev, when a group

of pro-democracy Muscovites tried to dismantle the

larger-than-life-size bronze statue of Felix

Dzerzhinsky. Born in Lithuania in I877 to a Polish

landowning family, Dzerzhinsky was the founder, in

N9U7, of the Cheka (Commission for Combating

Counter-revolution and Sabotage), a precursor to the KGB. (Lenin defined the Cheka as a "special

system of organized violence" established to impose a proletarian dictatorship which, under the leadership ofDzerzhinsky, would seek to exterminate the middle class.) Dzerzhinsky has been both reviled as a symbol of the tyranny of

Communist repression and defended for his love of

R.ussian street children, whom he rescued and for whom he built special orphanages. Although he acquired the nickname "Iron Felix" for his fanatical

party loyalty, incorruptible asceticism, and priesthood of terror and ruthlessness, a I989 edition of the State-published guidebook to

Moscow describes him as an "eminent Party leader,

Soviet statesman, and a close comrade of Lenin."

The monument to Dzerzhinsky, built by the once revered sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich in I956, resembled the KGB itself-an organization cloaked in secrecy. Like a mask, the monument hid as much

as it revealed. The monument itself is unremarkable. There are no distinguishing gestures or purposeful expressions, as is the case with many

Lenin monuments. Rather it is characterized by

equanimity and constraint. In front ofLubyanka,

V~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~V

184



the KGB headquarters on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad a prominent square in the center of the city-this nondescript monument had become a looming presence-a symbol of the KGB and a reminder that the organization functioned outside

Lubyanka's prison walls, in a public sphere. Earlier in the day protestors had painted the

words "EXECUTIONER" and "FELIX, THIS IS YOUREND" around the base. They then climbed onto the statue, wrapped a chain around its neck,

like a noose, and attempted to topple it with the

help of a small bus. The monument could not be uprooted that day, but eventually Russia's new leader, Boris Yeltsin, ordered its removal. The

monument was temporarily placed in a quasi

"sculpture graveyard" in Gorky Park along with other uprooted statues, including those of Lenin, Stalin, Mikhail Kalinin (the second head of the

Soviet state), and Yakov Sverdlov (one of the

creators of the Communist Party apparatus). KGB Lieutenant Colonel Oleg Tsaryov said in

I99I, however, that the removal of the Dzerzhinsky

monument was an "act ofvandalism and

disrespectful of history." He added, "Ofcourse, you can always find people who overdo it. That's how it

was in the Stalinist period, too." The monument's

removal was a moment of triumph for many not

directly involved as well. Soon after learning of the

toppling ofDzerzhinsky's statue, Father Gleb

Yakunin, an Orthodox priest and the leader of the

radical reform movement ofDemocratic Russia, remarked, "This is the fruit of our victory! It

symbolizes that we are now dismantling the system

and will destroy the enormous, dangerous,

totalitarian machine of the KGB." Or as Anatoly

Malykhin, a leader of the Russian coal miners' labor

movement, noted, "This is a normal procedure of

purificaton. It is neither revenge nor a reward. It is

IM.E



PAGE 182: Dzer hinskyStatue,Moscowl991.

PAGE 184: In accordance with a decision by

local authorities, workers dismantle a statue of

Lenin in Riga, Latvia, August 25th, 1991.

PAGE 18 5: Komar& Melamid,

ProjectforMonumental Propogando, 1991.

RIG HT: Angry Sovietdemonstators usingcranes

pull down a statue of Felix Dzerzhinski, founder

ofthe KGB security police, outside the KGB's

Lubyanka headquarters, August 22, 1991.

PAG E 1 88: Lenin Monu ment, East Berlin.

PAGE 189): KrzyzstofWodizcko, Projections, 1990.

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CHARLES MEREWETHER

a restoration ofjustice. We are cleaning away the waste from our lives."

But the former Soviet dissident artists Vitaly Komar and Alexis Melamid, who live in New York, think otherwise. In a I993 interview with Lawrence

Weschler in The New Yorker, they spoke about the "old Moscow technique" that either "worships or destroys." It is like a form of patricide in which one leader displaces the one who preceded him. "Each time it is history, the country's true past, that is conveniently being obliterated," they said. In I992,

Komar and Melamid had decided to make an open

call in the New York art magazine ArtForum, asking

artists to submit proposals for saving and transforming the monuments rather than destroying them. In their statement, the artists wrote (not without irony), "History should be preserved for future generations. But these monuments are not just history for us, they are our lives. It's not so much the monuments themselves

we want to preserve as the beautiful sweet world of

our childhood." And in their resulting catalogue article: "Soviet monuments loomed over our childhood, we fear we may vanish with them. That is why we are trying to prolong their existence." The

sense of loss that gives rise to their irony brings to

mind the Russian historian Andrei Zorin's remark that Russia had "always sacrificed its heritage in order to build a new utopia." It was precisely the

class of thinkers, poets, and artists to which Komar

and Melamid belong that people such as Dzerzhinsky were most active in eliminating, and it is some of these people who now seek to break the

cycle by not eliminating the monuments. But why preserve monuments? What value do

they hold, especially if they symbolize repressive regimes? Eastern Europe's division over the handling of its monuments is directly related to the

question of how to handle the inheritance ofa monumental and oppressive history. In some sense, the monument is not only symbolic of a larger violence that has been inflicted on society; in fact, violence is inherent to its conception. Many monuments either commemorate those who have fallen in batde or celebrate a victory or conquest. They therefore mark a moment oftransition or change between the past and the future that is gained through violence. To destroy or erect a monument implicates its destroyers in its violence.

Revenge begets revenge. Wodiczko, who for several years has been projecting counterimages onto existing memorials, commented, "Watching the

monuments to Lenin being destroyed made me think that there should be a public discussion before any of this is irreversible. The sculptures are witnesses to the past, memorabilia of the monstrous past."* For Wodiczko, "the past must be infused with the present to create a critical history."

* "A Conversation with KrzysztofWodiczko," by Bruce W. Ferguson in Instruments, Projections, Vehicles. (Barcelona: Fundaci6 Antoni Tapies, I992).

j~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .. .. ..... . .:

.. . . .....''

188



His belief that the monuments must be transformed into a reflection of historical change is related to Michel Foucault's concept of countermemory. Countermemory would unveil or expose the initial events of the construction of

monumental history and its subsequent effects; it involves breaking the claim of permanence by giving voice to, and somehow embodying, historical change. The problem with monumental history is that it confuses the past with the future, while

THE RISE AND FALL OF MONUMENTS

critical history calls upon and judges the past in order to measure the service it renders the present. It conceals its own historical conditions and is, as

Nietzsche suggests in his book Untimely Meditations, "quite incapable of distinguishing between a

monumentalized past and mythical fiction, precisely because the same stimuli can be derived from one world as from the other." Wodiczko has

remarked that "My projections ... are works of

critical history ... But they have to revive

monumental history in order to turn it into a critical history. By illuminating it, no matter what I project, no matter how critical I want to be, I bring to it its

former glory, its presence. It still reemerges from the darkness as a glorious symbol, as Nietzsche

would say, giving us 'a sense that grand things did

happen."' The monument to Peter the Great recently

commissioned by Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, and erected on the banks of the Moscow River by

the sculptor Zurab Tsereteli, is an example of

Nietzsche's monumental history. The statue, which marks the three-hundred-year anniversary of the Russian navy, depicts Peter waving atop a

miniaturized eighteenth-century Russian navy vessel crashing through rough waves. The thirty story structure, the cost ofwhich was estimated at $25 million, provoked a wave ofprotest. A poll found the public against the project by a ratio of 2 tO

I; many see the commission as an act of favoritism

on the part of the mayor. Soon after, an obscure

group called the Revolutionary Military Council made an attempt to destroy Tsereteli's statue. This

same group protested against calls to remove

Lenin's body from its mausoleum. In April I997, the group claimed responsibility for the destruction

of a statue of Nicholas II that was built on the

anniversary of the Tsar's coronation. A second

189



CHARLES MEREWETHER

statue of Nicholas II was blown up early in November I998. Referring to these incidents, as well as to Dzerzhinsky's statue, Gennady Melnik, a spokesman for the Moscow regional police department, said, "We don't respect our own history and, like savages, tend to take revenge on statues."

Alexei Komech, an architectural historian and the head of the Russian Art Research Institute, has noted that the recent rebuilding ofMoscow has led

to the "substitution of historic sites with modern reproductions and theatrical imitations." One example is the reconstructed Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Originally built in I882 near the Kremlin, the cathedral was demolished in I93I to make way for a proposed Palace of Soviets. Under the direction of the architect and sculptor Boris Iofan, the Palace

of Soviets would have included a statue of Lenin modeled on the Statue of Liberty. The plan was abandoned and the space finally filled by a public swimming pool in I96I. Komech says that Mayor

Luzhkov simply does not recognize the difference between reproduction and restoration, between a copy and the original. "He thinks if he pulls down

an old building and puts up a modern copy in its

place he is restoring the past. In fact he is falsifying

it. " For Andrei Zorin, however, the boom in

monument building is a form of conservation that

accepts successive changes: "We see an

unprecedented attempt to reconcile the Russian and

Soviet past in a country that has always sacrificed its

heritage in order to build a new utopia." Zorin believes that the future of Russia lies in living with

competing legacies symbolized by monuments. "This is part of the new national idea. Peter the

Great is God and so is Dzerzhinsky; Stalin's

wedding cakes [skyscrapers] are wonderful and so

is the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Solzhenitsyn

and his idea of repentance are not popular, however. To recall bloodshed and injustice is as rude these

days as to shout in a silent room."

In I992, in the square where the Dzerzhinsky statue had once stood, a monument to the victims of totalitarianism was unveiled. And in July, Yanis Bramzis, a Cossack, erected a cross on what had been the statue's pedestal. By I997, a plain granite boulder had been brought from a prison camp in the Arctic Circle and placed in front of the KGB headquarters with the inscription "In memory of the millions who died in the political terror of the Soviet era."

On December 2, I998, a motion to reinstate the statue ofDzerzhinsky was successfully put forward by the Agrarian faction, a Communist splinter group, and supported by the Communists and nationalists who dominate the State Duma, the Lower House of Parliament. Nikolai Kharitonov, leader of the Agrarian faction, noted that "replacing the statue will reassure the nation that the Russian

government is dedicated to the ongoing struggle against crime. Dzerzhinsky will serve as a symbol in

the fight for order in society." Yuly Rybakov, an

independent deputy and member of Russia's Democratic Choice Party, argued against the reinstatement of the monument: "Dzerzhinsky was one of the most horrible butchers in history, with a

multitude of innocent victims on his conscience. How can we possibly reinstate his statue in the

center of the Russian capital?" For Rybakov, the fact

that such monuments continue to occupy the city is

a kind of recurring nightmare. It is as if the

symbolic power invested in the monument goes beyond itself, and takes on a phantasmagoric

afterlife. This power has to do with the strange

temporal presence of monuments; they contain an

absolute force, belonging to the present and the

19o



THE RISE AND FALL OF MONUMENTS

past. In his book The Power ofthe Image, the French historian Louis Marin suggests that the power of a portrait ofa king or emperor gains its authority from living beyond its subject. It assumes authority from that subject, as if it has overcome death. It is this uncanny power, this force that haunts those

who live, that people try to destroy. Or, as Wodiczko has noted, speaking of his projections:

"I wanted to break the distance from the monument by creating something frighteningly real and living, like a ghost haunting the

monument.... There are things the city doesn't want to talk about, and these are meaningful

silences, which must be read. My projections are attempts to read and carve those silences into the

monuments and spaces, which propagate civic and dramatic fictions within the social sphere."

In iggo Wodiczko produced a pair of projections in former West and East Berlin, one on the Huth-Haus in Potsdammer Platz, the other on the Lenin

monument in Leninplatz. The Leninplatz monument was transformed into a consumer with a shopping cart filled with electronic equipment.

Not only does Wodiczko appear to be suggesting the transformation of a Communist utopia under Lenin into a post-Soviet culture of consumption, but he also transforms the spectacle, and spectral power, ofworld Communism into one of a world telecommunications network. Within a year the

monument was dismantled and removed-a victim ofan iconoclastic backlash against communist rule. The act of erasing the past had won the day.

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The Rise and Fall of Monuments