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The Familiar Converted into the Other public debate took place when it was most necessary, i.e., before the Soviet monuments 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 several 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 actions 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 communities 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 characteristic 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
