The last years have seen on those territories that were occupied by the Red Army at the end of the Second World War increasing activities to remove, transpose or transform Soviet war memorials.
Whereas the Tallinn "Bronze Soldier" has been surely the most prominent case, not least due to the riots and cyber-attacks that accompanied its removal in 2007, there have been various political strategies and social performances connected to these monuments, which differ according to place and time. In Poland, a revision of the law on the prohibition of communist propaganda has led to a wave of monument removals in 2017.
Due to the fact that these Soviet war monuments are only rarely acknowledged as pieces of art or subjects to monument protection, they have received only little coherent or transnational research, so far. Based on examples from Poland and the Baltic States, the presentation will first give a short typology of their dedications and different forms as well as of periods of their erection, which spans over almost the entire socialist period, and shall then attempt to systematize the various ways the monuments were treated since 1989. If one applies Reinhart Koselleck's well-known statement that the relevance of war monuments depends on their impact on identity building among the survivors, one shall also describe and analyze such performances and social actions stimulated by the monuments. What is specific in this case is that these monuments commemorating the Red Army generally served a double function of not only commemorating the victory over Nazi Germany and the fallen soldiers, but also claiming to determine the post-war political order. Actions connected to these monuments encompass a wide range of activities and dealings from leaving the monuments untouched on the one hand to their traceless eradication on the other, and include for instance unintended or intended neglect, disparagement or dismemberment, but also references to their original function of commemorating the dead.