Boj o pomníky v postkomunistické Evropě
The Battle Over Monuments in Post-Communist Europe

Summary/Abstract: cross post-communist Europe, monuments have become battlegrounds where history, identity, and geopolitics collide, revealing how stone and bronze can ignite conflicts that outlive the regimes that built them. The study traces how public statues—once instruments of state ideology—now serve as contested sites in the struggle to reshape political memory, from Prague’s debates over Soviet figures like Marshal Konev to Latvia’s dismantling of Soviet memorials against the backdrop of a divided society. It shows how monuments anchor symbolic landscapes that influence where citizens protest, how nations interpret their past, and how external powers—especially Russia—weaponize historical narratives to project influence. Through case studies of the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Moldova, the authors illustrate divergent paths of decommunization shaped by ethnic composition, historical trauma, and geopolitical orientation. In ethnically homogeneous Czechia, debates over communist‑era monuments reveal an uneasy, slow reconciliation with the past. In Latvia, where a large Russian‑speaking minority maintains alternative memory traditions, removing Soviet symbols has become a flashpoint intensified by the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Moldova’s public space reflects unresolved identity struggles, as Soviet nostalgia, Romanian cultural ties, and European aspirations coexist and compete. Together, these examples underscore that altering a monument is never merely a civic act but a reconfiguration of collective memory and political space whose consequences extend far beyond the square where a statue once stood.

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