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Dominika Czarnecka
memoration was doubled, the rank of the object became reinforced and the ideo¬
logical message intended by the authorities was made even more audible. Finally,
the process of othering the space surrounding monuments to Soviet soldiers was
influenced by the celebration of new political rituals in their vicinity.
During the first post-war years there was a change in the so-called ideological
layout of Polish towns. Ihis was achieved to a significant extent due to new monu¬
ments, among other devices. "Ihe ideological layout is a kind of interpretation of
history—sometimes radically different from the preceding one—and it assumes
being read through a specific prism. It denotes shaping the social memory, but also
shaping the social oblivion as to the symbols recognized as alien and hostile. The
town teaches us what is our and familiar, and what is foreign. About what is worth
remembering, and what should be struck out from the past. The town is a sym¬
bolic scene, on which certain symbols are inscribed, while other become destroyed”
(Zielinski 2007: 11). In this context, the monuments are seen as an integral part of
the socio-historical structure of the town, of its history and culture. The Otherness
of the monuments of the Red Army was deepened by the fact that they were im¬
posed on the Polish society by the Soviet Army and the communist authorities on
the basis of a top-down approach. The Soviet monuments, as the new symbols, not
only did not gain common social approval, but they were also used by the commu¬
nists to create ideologised and falsified memory. “By creating spaces for memory,
monuments propagate the illusion of common memory” (Young 1993: 6). The
monuments to Soviet soldiers replaced and contributed to the removal, and, finally,
eradication from social memory of material representations of the former familiar
(i.e. the monuments from before the Second Polish Republic), which embodied
important national values and traditions.
Conclusion
‘There are many reasons why man requires monuments. The fundamental question
does not lie in what these monuments are like but in what they represent and why
they are able to represent so differently, depending on when, how and who is look¬
ing at them. Images in their tenacious relationship with materiality possess the abil¬
ity to constantly create and transform the world. In post-war Poland monuments
to Red Army soldiers were supposed to provide a ‘tool’ with which to construct
a new reality, to revise the pre-war order, to create new stereotypes; finally, to shape
new categories and images of the familiar and the Other.
It is certain that monuments ‘speak’ to viewers in a coded language. The am¬
biguity and multidimensionality of the language constitute its richness, while at
the same time possessing power that is not entirely predictable. “Images are active
players in the game of establishing and changing values. They are capable of intro¬
ducing new values into the world and thus of threatening old ones. For better and
for worse, human beings establish their collective, historical identity by creating
around them a second nature composed of images which do not merely reflect the