Monumental art as a means of constructing historical memory in Soviet Ukraine

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the construction of historical memory in the Ukrainian SSR by means of monumental art. The relevance of this problem in the context of Russia's hybrid war against Ukraine is emphasized, in which the existence of the Soviet model of historical memory in society has long been the subject of manipulation and serves the purpose of justifying aggression against our state. Since the narratives of historical memory require external manifestation in works of art and the creation of appropriate places of memory, the latter often become important components of state propaganda for the creation of a single concept of collective memory. Therefore, the main task of the study was to show the role of monumental art in the context of memory politics in Ukraine during the Soviet era and the mechanisms of its transformation into a means of Soviet propaganda. In the research process, the methods of content analysis of archival documents and art analysis of monuments of Ukrainian monumental art of the second half of the 20th century were used. As a result, it is proven that in Soviet Ukraine, monumental art turned into an important element of state propaganda, which aimed to create such a concept of collective memory, which would be included in the general structure of communist ideology and justify the existing socio-political system. Most of the works of monumental art were aimed at building a certain cult, primarily the cult of work and the cult of achievements of the Soviet government, the cult of the "primacy" of Soviet people in certain spheres. Around the greatness of past victories, which were the foundation of the image of historical memory, it was easier to unite a large number of people and form a new Soviet identity. Directing the creative energy of Ukrainian artists to the service of Soviet ideology became possible thanks to the establishment of totalitarian control over Ukrainian artists by state institutions, which often completely destroyed the original authorial concept of the works, but turned them into an effective means of forming a distorted construct of a collective perception of the past.