Page 373 [373]
The Familiar Converted into the Other
public debate took place when it was most necessary, i.e., before the Soviet monu¬
ments were officially unveiled. Naturally, every new object was commented on in
the media, but as a result of censorship the comments were exclusively positive,
with no polemical voices.
The majority of the Red Army monuments in central locations in Polish towns
were erected during the first decade after the war, especially in the late 1940s (the
year 1945 holds the record in that respect). It does not mean that in the following
decades no more such monuments were erected, although the number of such
initiatives decreased over time. This was for numerous reasons, one of the most
significant being the fact that within the public space hundreds of such objects
already functioned (Fig. 158).
It is extremely hard to establish—if it is possible at all to establish this fact—
when the process of othering of the Soviet monuments started. In my opinion,
this moment came in 1945, with feelings deepening gradually over the next sev¬
eral years, something that was not unrelated to the quickening sovietisation of the
country. In 1944 the first, then still rare, monuments to the Red Army were erected
in Polish territory, connected, as a rule, with soldiers’ graves. Despite hostile ac¬
tions already then undertaken by the Soviet army against the Poles in the eastern
regions of the Second Polish Republic, Red Army monuments were not attacked
and Soviet soldiers were, at least officially, accepted as allies in the battle against the
German occupying forces. It does not alter the fact that at that time many com¬
munities in Poland were already afraid of Stalin’s plans. In 1945, contrary to Polish
hopes of gaining full sovereignty, Stalin managed to establish fully subordinated
communists in Poland, creating an illusion of autonomy and independence for the
sake of the international arena. The “liberating” Red Army, instead of withdrawing
from the “liberated” areas after the German armies were defeated, turned into yet
another occupying force. In June 1945, the Soviet authorities decided to create and
station the Soviet Armys Northern Group of Forces in Poland. The major action
of erecting monuments to Soviet soldiers was officially initiated in the summer of
1945. Almost simultaneously, the attacks against the Soviet monuments began.
It happened that they took place on the same day the monuments was officially
unveiled, or even before that. This would suggest that the process of othering may
start even before a monument statue begins to function in the public sphere as
a rightful monument. The process of othering depends not only on the characteris¬
tic features of the material representation (although these may reinforce or weaken
it), but also on the totality of social and political conditions. The otherness appears
as a certain type of evaluation. For the communists, from the moment of their
construction, the monuments to Soviet soldiers represented the monuments of the
familiar. For the anti-communist opposition and a significant part of Polish society,
the monuments to the Red Army very soon started to function as monuments to
the occupiers, propagating images of the Other.
371