Problems of Preservation and Interpretation of Soviet Memorial Heritage in Lithuania

The article is based on the author’s report ‘Soviet/Russian memorial heritage in the Baltic countries: the limits of reinterpretation and dialogue’ at the conference of international dialogue platform for interaction of the scientific and expert community ‘Baltic Platform’ in December 2024 in St. Petersburg. The author examined the processes of struggle against the Soviet memorial heritage in Lithuania using the example of the discussion around sculptural compositions in the public space of Vilnius. The first wave of ‘wars with monuments’ in the 1990s did not touch that part of the Soviet memorial heritage that was not directly associated with Soviet or communist ideology. The debate, that emerged in early 2010s and focused on the problems of preservation or dismantling of these monuments, demonstrated how the dissonant Soviet heritage is being instrumentalized and securitized. As a result, the monuments are not only the symbols of the Soviet period of history, but they are also placed in the context of today military and political tensions. Deconstruction of the narrative, transmitted by the dissonant Soviet heritage, almost always starts to mean the destruction not only of the monument itself, but also of the former collective memory, for the purpose of constructing a new identity. At the same time, while national authorities pursue the policy of historical revisionism and destruction of the Soviet monuments, various social groups over the course of several years have proposed other strategies for preserving the Soviet heritage, including its artistic reinterpretation. A study of these art projects and the public reaction to them showed that such reinterpretation was not enough to limit or remove the dissonant potential of these monuments. At the same time, the dismantling of these monuments did not stop attempts to reinterpret their symbolic space and did not destroy social memory of them.