Annotation
In East-Central Europe, in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, dealings with the communist past are only seemingly explicit. The popular and public discourse defines the second half of the twentieth century as an era of oppression and unwanted foreign rule; for states that have ‘rejoined Europe’ in the recent decades, it is seen as an atrocious period best ‘left behind.’ This class examines the urban heritage of the second half of the twentieth century in contemporary East- Central Europe.
The class explores the urban, cultural, and political negotiations of the communist urban and ideological past and the processes of reconciliation seemingly missing throughout the societies of the former Soviet-ruled Eastern Bloc. Through the examination of the region’s communist urban heritage, this class explores the creation of post-communist national and urban identities and the socio-cultural negotiations of the twenty-first century.
This class aims to reach a dual goal: it will outline the urban treatments of Soviet-era monuments in the post-communist and ‘once-again-European’ East-Central Europe, and it will examine the discourse on the treatment of the Cold War era’s political and urban heritage in the twenty-first century. We will look to answer the questions of who built these monuments and who they were for, what have they signified, if razed who demolished them and why, and overall, what is the meaning of these processes in the region eager to forget its communist past, yet not ready to acknowledge its multi-fold meanings.
This class will explore the ever-growing scholarship on communist urban and architectural heritage, it will examine the details of the creation and design of monuments during the second half of the twentieth century, and we will explore scholarly and popular literature, films, and photographic documents. Case studies: Monument to Stalin on Letná and Ivan Konev sculpture in Prague, Liberty Statue, Stalin Memorial, and Memento Park in Budapest, the Palace of the Parliament in Bucharest, paneláky in Bratislava, Buzludzha monument in Bulgaria Bulgaria and the Monument to the Soviet Army in Sofia, and Riga’s Academy of Sciences. (This list is not exhaustive.)