Introduction

Major social and political transformations always provoke new readings of the past and a search for new dominant historical narratives and commemorative practices. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, struggle over the legacy of the past in Eastern Europe entered a vigorous phase and was stimulated by new authorities’ and political elites’ need for legitimisation of their rule. ¹ As ‘[q]uestions of how the nation is imagined, and who lays claim to defining and defending it, are intimately intertwined with questions of history and historical representation’, the post-communist ruling elites tried to determine which historical memories were articulated and enacted. ² The revising of the commemorative landscape according to new historical narratives included changing the country’s official name and coat of arms, modification of the calendar of nationally celebrated holidays, the renaming of public spaces, opening museums and erecting monuments. Memorials commemorating gratitude to the Red Army for liberation were usually the first to be pulled down. As the presence of the Red Army in Eastern Europe during 1944–45 had assisted the process of building communist states, challenging narratives commemorating the Red Army as an ally and liberator was thought to be one of the primary objectives for the new political elites. Katherine Verdery noted insightfully in The Political Lives of Dead Bodies: ‘Because political order has something to do with both landscape and history, changing the political order, no matter where, often means changing the bronze human beings who both stabilize the landscape and temporally freeze particular values in it.’ ³