Page 25 - Studia Universitatis Hereditati, vol 13(1) (2025)

or religious significance. This dissonance creat- (Huyssen 1993). Communities have respond-
ed conflicts in public memory, leading to a frag- ed to their history under/within Soviet authori-
mented understanding of history (Tunbridge ty, with parliament buildings serving as tangible
and Ashworth 1996). Along this line of thought, representations of a challenging past. As such,
we propose reimagining the architecture and these physical symbols of collective memories
spatial organisation of parliament squares as were contested in the processes of a new politi-
platforms for public dissent. We will see how cal consciousness.
they became privileged scenes where societies
elaborated on their troubled past. Memory pol- Methodology
itics relies on public visibility, which aims at fix- The spatialisation of political phenomena intro-
ing certain events or figures in a solid form made duces architectural studies to a sphere of map-
of stone or concrete. At the same time, memo- ping cultural heritage with a new perspective.
ry activism counters dominant narratives on Human and non-human actors, the crowd and 25
the same public ground, offering public expres- the parliament building, function as a whole
sions of critique in a performative dimension corpus to find their own reason for existence. In
(Gutman and Wüstenberg 2023; Huyssen 2003). this contribution we focus on the architectural
The protests analysed below, we argue, were col- memory and architectonic transformations of
lective expressions of this kind in a climate of parliament buildings analysed with large-scale
decommunisation. axonometric drawings. The axonometric gaze is
Nationalist discourses build societal uni- an abstract point of view, one that does not ex-
ty by inventing rituals, historical narratives, ist, one that the Modernist architecture adopt-
and collective memory to construct the myth ed because it was supposed to render the visual-
of the nation (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). isation of forms objective. The visibility of state
Throughout the post-Soviet countries, this ex- narratives was generally achieved through large
ploration is inseparable from the process of de- squares and boulevards that became scenes of The Critical Position of Soviet Parliament Buildings Today
communisation – a transformation that goes the nation-building process (Avcı Hosanlı and
hand in hand with navigating the delicate tran- Resta 2021).
sition from a multinational past to the crystalli- The axonometric views proposed in this
sation of distinct national identities, and strate- contribution serve the purpose of mediating the
gies for confronting the Soviet traces in the built Cartesian organisation of monumental build-
environment. Andreas Huyssen (1993) critical- ings with fleeting snapshots of moments of dis-
ly approaches the relation of monuments and sent. In other words, they show the fixed forms
memory from a paradoxical perspective, claim- of dominant narratives in contrast with the per-
ing monuments may stand to remember, while formative acts of dissent. We intend drawing
also becoming symbols of forgetting. In a sim- as an interpretative practice to observe and de-
ilar vein, the Soviet parliament buildings, with scribe historical facts, study the movement of
their interpretation and re-interpretation, have people across the squares, and understand the
been transformed into a tool for not only for- formation of groups and clearings according to
getting the Soviet past and its power, but also re- the spatial layout of the squares. Some of these
membering the great social movements when se- principles have already been implemented in
ceding from the union. Even if they belong to a what is called graphic anthropology (Ingold
traumatic past, the materiality of the parliament 2011). To examine how architecture conveys
buildings prevents the speedy flattening of the state narratives, we will analyse key moments of
historical dimension acquired through media rallies and protests as depicted in local media, in
images from obliterating the distance and the relation to the visual significance of parliament
forgetting that is needed to form social memory buildings. Published visual material, combined