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376 Dominika Czarnecka which could have influenced the process of othering of the monuments. All that appears to be further away is seen as less known, more unapproachable, and, consequently, increasingly Other. The height at which the statues were placed was also of some significance. It was a completely novel solution to situate statues of Red Army soldiers on high pedestals. It was the elevation reserved earlier for saints and national heroes, while soldiers used to be commemorated by modest, nonfigurative memorials, not infrequently related to tombs.'° “Upward movement’ modelled on the solutions coming from “the homeland of the proletariat” was a conscious allusion to the power of empires, but it was also related to the spatial patterns worked out by most cultures, in which the vertical axis always played the most important role: “Whatever is superior or excellent is elevated, associated with the sense of physical height. Indeed ‘superior’ is derived from a Latin word meaning ‘higher’. (...) Of monuments this is perhaps invariably true: a tall pyramid or victory column commands greater esteem than a shorter one” (Tuan 1987: 54-55). On the one hand the height reflected the relationships of power and subordination, and on the other hand constituted an effort directed at endowing visual representations with an element of the sublime. The figures of Red Army soldiers placed on high pedestals could only be seen from below. In this mutual relationship between the viewer and the object, a sense of elevation of the object was created alongside a sense of belittling the role of the viewer. The viewer took the position of one who sees less and thus knows less, which in practice denotes someone of lesser importance. Emphasising a viewers hierarchy of importance could have influenced the othering of the monuments. It also appears that the size, and consequently, the monumentality of these statues held some importance. The more the size of the object exceeds the normal size of the human body, the more alienated such an object appears (Fig. 159). Statues of the Red Army soldiers were always presented with the soldier in Soviet army uniform. The uniform, on the other hand—often inspired by folk and historical motifs—is often seen as a specific visual message, the basic aim of which is to manifest the fact that a soldier dressed in this particular manner is the protector of a given country (Rotter 2013: 419). Foreign uniform might have been evaluated as one of the signs of Otherness. The affiliation to the Soviet Union was additionally emphasised by other signs, such as the hammer and sickle, the red fivepointed star (for example on soldiers’ belts and hats), the USSR’s national flag. The figures of Red Army soldiers were ‘armed’, most often with Soviet-made Papashas, although communist propaganda promoted these monuments (or figures) as “symbols of peace”.'' Gun barrels were most often pointed upwards, in a gesture of victory and triumph, or pointed forward communicating both power and readiness '0 "This was related to the popularisation of the idea of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which emerged after WWI (Skiba 2004). "This is why certain conceptions used the motifs of a child, a dove or an olive branch.
