January 23, 2012 // 12:00pm — 1:00pm
The destruction of the monuments of the Soviet past and a buildup of new monuments was supposed to be an indication of the new values that came to the post-Soviet societies after the collapse of the Soviet system. However, not everywhere and not always did it happen to be true. While in Poland the new monuments were accepted by the society in appreciative manner, in Ukraine, Estonia, and Georgia we watched the so-called phenomenon of “The War of the Monuments” when the removal of the old monuments and creation of the new ones was followed by protests and sometimes even riots. Around Russia many old monuments to Lenin remained at place while new monuments to the Russian tsars were erected. All of this basically resulted with a chaos of the views and attitudes and led to the devaluation of the monument as a symbol in the post-Soviet space.