"The past never returns completely"

Interview with Olga Perezneva researcher about how war is changing cities. On the example of Kaliningrad, Shanghai and the former European colonies

Olga Treznva is a professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Amsterdam. For more than 20 years, she has been studying the urban environment and the formation of the historical memory of Koenigsberg after the city has become part of the USSR. Medusa talked with the researcher about how, with the help of architecture, a collective idea of ​​the history, trophies and difficulties of returning values ​​to former European colonies is changing.

-At your lectures, you explain that collective historical memory is formed, among other things, with the help of architecture, monuments and art objects. Can you name the most striking examples of the formation of collective memory in this way?

-Firstly, you need to decide on the concept of "bright." Rather, it makes sense to talk about effectiveness. Now in the humanitarian and social sciences it is customary to use the concept that the French scientist Pierre Nora, Lieu de Memoire - “place of memory” introduced. To make the place of memory effective, it must include three components. The first is materiality. The second - the place of memory should have symbolic fullness, have accessible meanings that will be read in this place. The third - such a place should have a functional role in the city, that is, it should be noticeable, visited.

To this classical definition of Pierre Nora, I want to add another component - “the will to remember”, that is, the townspeople should want to remember their past. It can manifest itself both at the level of state policy and at the level of activists and communities. The will to remember is what drives memory, because memory is a living phenomenon that cannot be mothballed and defined once and for all.

Therefore, from the most striking examples of the last two to three decades, I would bring monuments related to the Holocaust. They combine all four components, and in them I find the most interesting approaches to preserving the memory of historical events.

- What are these monuments?

—TH 2005, a memorial dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, which made a very high resonance in the communities of urban planners and designers and among specialists in collective memory, opened in Berlin. This is the field of standing, lying different -high granite parallelepipeds resembling human bodies. But the point is not only this. The stones are located so close to each other that, being in this labyrinth of different -high columns, a person can feel inconvenient to experience fear and thus live bodily empathy, similar to the experience of the victims of the Holocaust.

The most striking and memorable to me seem to be bodily activating places of memory, but the effect of this particular object [the memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in Berlin] turned out to be ambiguous: visitors, especially children, began to play with cubes. They began to climb on them, jump from one to another. This caused a split in public opinion: someone saw an insult to memory in this, and someone, on the contrary, greeted this, because children's games revived this place and brought into it a sense of life and the future. This uncertainty of functionality has reduced the effect of the place.

Another example is the National Monument of the Names in Amsterdam of the designer Daniel Libeskind, who created the Holocaust Museum in Berlin and the 9/11 museum dedicated to the events of September 11, in New York. The monument includes the names of 102 thousand victims of the Holocaust, among which not only Jews, but also destroyed Sinti and Roma (Gypsies). Their names, the dates of birth and death are engraved on a brick, a traditional Dutch building material. The passages of the monument are trotted with small white stones, so visitors can take a pebble and put it under the name of one of their relatives or acquaintances. Thus, one can note your involvement in the life and tragic death of this person.

Passing through this monument, you see not only bricks with the names engraved on them, but also a handful of white stones folded under each name. And this really causes a very strong impression and a feeling of empathy.

I want to give another atypical example of a non-vulnerable and monument method of preserving the collective memory. For several years the National Marine Museum in London has been organizing a ceremonial procession for the memory of the victims of slavery. The procession in which visitors to the museum and activists of the decolonization movement take part, passes from the museum to the Thames River. Its goal is to consolidate the memory of the victims of European colonial slavery, but not through the exposition, but through movement, a collective sensation and involvement.

- You are studying the historical memory of Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad). How did this topic interest you?

- When at the beginning of the two thousandth I began to deal with this topic, I was very interested in the seemingly paradoxical revival of the Russian pre -war history of Kaliningrad. The paradox was that the collective memory of East Prussia and Koenigsberg was created almost from scratch with the descendants of those who ousted the Germans and who survived a huge tragedy associated with Nazi Germany.

Of great interest in the pre-war history of Koenigsberg [in society] appeared in the 1990s, although individual lovers of German history were back in the 1950s. But there was no money for the reconstruction and conservation of historical heritage in the 1990s, so everything was made by small forces, often with the support of German funds. Thanks to them and with the huge support of local enthusiasts in Kaliningrad, the Cathedral was restored, and there are mothballed ruins of castles in the region, such as the castle in insturity, today's Chernyakhovsk.

- How was Kaliningrad turned into a Soviet city?

—Lays after 1945, during the Soviet Union, even the mention in the public sphere of belonging to the Kaliningrad region of Germany and the mention of the East Premesky historical period of the ad administrative was punished, the pre -war history was silent. One of the most striking examples is the performance of the local community (writers, architects, university workers) against the demolition of the Royal Castle in the center of Kaliningrad in the late 1960s. In 1968, more than 100 signatures were collected in defense of the castle. All subscribers were dismissed, and many of them were forced to leave Kaliningrad.

The authorities not only forbidden to print scientific research regarding the pre -war history, to mention it in newspapers and magazines, the city was also conducted by restructuring and reorganization of public places - this was especially true for buildings that had symbolic significance.

An active ban and demolition were not the only measures of erasing memory. A simple pragmatist also worked. German houses or ruins damaged by bombing were demolished - and in their place the city of a completely Soviet socialist appearance was built. Many of the remaining German houses were simply a little repaired, foundations and roofs were strengthened. So the old German houses became part of the new urban environment.

There is another point that is not completely meaningful and is still not inscribed in collective memory in Kaliningrad: the role of trophies and trophy property in the creation of new Kaliningrad. If you plunge into the archives and read historical literature on how the distribution of property took place in the territories transferred to the Soviet Union, it becomes clear that at some point all the Kaliningraders lived in someone else's house and used someone else's things. The confiscated German good served both “lifting” for families of Soviet immigrants and awards for exemplary work. This property was settled in the Kaliningrad region or fell into other regions of Russia. The question of what role this episode of history should play in the understanding of historical responsibility or the right to the city is not yet discussed.

- A trophy is one of the concepts important to you. What problems around him are you building?

- I think that trophy vases, tablecloths and furniture are stored in many Russian families. We have never been puzzled by the question of trophy. For example, we got a porcelain German figurine from my grandmother - and it seems interesting, pleasant and unusual to us. But what is the action behind this figurine? Under what circumstances did she get into the family? Whose grief is inscribed in it - and how?

Kaliningrad is originally a trophy city. At some point, I wondered how Kaliningraders perceive the concept of “trophy”, how it changes and why. I wonder what results can lead to a rethinking of the confiscation of German things regarding today's concepts of property and justice. While I have mixed finds.

On the one hand, it is obvious that in the Kaliningrad region there was a boom in collections and museums of the historical past of East Prussia. Now in the country there are almost two dozen private and municipal collections, which to varying degrees speak of the pre -war history of the region. The owners or curators of these museums argue that in reality it is impossible to talk about the historical gap that occurred in 1945: this is all one Earth, one place, one culture. This is a moment of feeling of involvement in the place, identification with it. This is such a local identity that crosses the boundaries of national identity for us. She does not completely cancel her, but nevertheless makes her more flexible (it is clear that not for everyone).

-Is there a “stitching” of two identities-past and real, two stories and the creation of something third?

-Yes, this is the creation of something third, and not a return to the previous one. Elements of pre -war history are rethought, reformatted and become the basis for a modern understanding of the local community, its identity. First of all, this applies to famous people of culture, politicians, writers who lived in East Prussia before the war, industrial history of the region, technological inventions made in Koenigsberg.

Thanks to such reflection, something new, more modern than strict orientation towards national identity is born.

On the other hand, in this topic there is an underwater stone that I am now trying to comprehend. This is the same trophy. A person thinks that his grandfather brought a closet from a neighboring house, that is, he took someone else's thing - but then everything was done, my informants tell me. It is normalized by selecting.

For me, this is a problem moment: such normalization makes me forget about violence and cleans the memory of unnecessary violence, about very specific families who were evicted from their own houses within 24 hours. People could take seven kilograms of things with them, everything else remained visitors. And [such normalization makes you forget] about those immigrants who tried to help suspend unnecessary evil and who underwent arrests and links for this.

-Kaliningrad is still perceived by some of its inhabitants as a trophy city?

-Yes, a certain contingent of patriotic Kaliningraders still considers this territory as a trophy. As a rule, such people make a link to the contracts of the Potsdam conference . These decisions have become a legal framework, which today legitimizes the right [Russia to] the possession of this territory. That is, [they believe] this is our place, it rightly has gone to us, it was supported by the world community, so we do not raise the question here.

But when it comes to specific collection things, I hear a lot of stories about how they were returned to the former residents of East Prussia, who came to museums or met with collectors in Kaliningrad. Many residents of this city share the idea that if the former owner arrives for a trophy, then he must be given. In fact, this is the idea that the former residents of East Prussia, who lived there and who had to leave, and the inhabitants of Kaliningrad are countrymen, they are equally involved in this place. As soon as the interpretative frame of fence is turned on, the return of objects [owners] becomes possible and normal. But, of course, at the level of the territory of the speech about the transfer of [lands] of Eastern Prussia, there can be no.

- Many countries of the world promise to return the cultural values ​​captured in the war to the countries to which they belonged. Why is this process so laborious? How are things actually the return of values?

—The fractions where Emmanuel Macron decided to unconditionally transfer values ​​to the former colonies, perhaps takes a leading position in this matter.

This process is also going on in Germany, but for this country, reflection in its colonial past is a fairly new phenomenon. This topic was mainly raised by the problem of genocide in Namibia in 1905-1911. Germany late came to recognition of responsibility for its colonial past, but in this they go with seven -mimic steps. Now the German government has a fairly detailed and expanded program of restitution, reparation and return of museum objects to the former colony.

In the United States, everything is a little more complicated - there was no metropolis and a colony controlled from it. People settled, ousted [the indigenous] population from their places of residence and really expropriated not only property, but also land. Financial payments are not limited here. In recent years, however, there has been a wave of land return to American Indians, groups living in these territories before the arrival of white colonialists. A conversation about reparations of the African American population affected by slavery is actively in the United States and has already reached parliament.

But despite the statements that the governments of these countries, as well as the wide and progressive public are ready and even participate in the return of values, this process is slow. This is mainly due to institutional racism, dominance of Eurocentric concepts about what culture and its values ​​and ideas are that “there” [in former colonies] museums are poorly equipped, they do not have a conservation system worthy of infrastructure, other cataloging standards are present and therefore they will not be able to maintain values.

I was at several conferences and forums of museum workers, where there was a conversation about the transfer of values. They make selective emphasis on really unsuccessful cases when the museum did not have storage facilities or corrupt structures unsuccessfully and problematicly treated with transferred and returned values. But in fact, in most museums [in former European colonies] there is all the necessary infrastructure. For example, the Senegal History Museum has recently opened, during the construction of which the most advanced storage, registration and registry technologies were used. The same high -level museums are in Botswan, Namibia and a number of other countries. That is, the thesis about the insufficient modernization of the museum space does not have any substrate.

Another return of values ​​slows down a difficult situation with property rights. This can be a private collection that is not described, its projection, sources of acquisition are not recorded - that is, the established requirements of museum attribution and fixation have not been fulfilled. Then the experts have time and resources for competent registration and attribution of objects, their description, and the establishment of property rights.

-Do we know examples when colonies or captured cities were able to completely free themselves from the architectural and historical heritage of the colonialists?

- If such cities existed, they would probably have lost most of their houses, streets and squares. At the time of the struggle for independence and immediately after the victory, there is always an active demolition of monuments and iconic buildings associated with the previous regime. But even in such a struggle there is your own pragmatism: if the building is the whole, necessary and you need to place some ministry in it, then why demolish it, if you can simply fake the facade, change decoration, remove symbols and remove busts? And everything can be used again. As I said before, collective memory is living; The adoption and failure of the past is in waves, but the past never returns completely. Take, for example, China. In Shanghai in the 1950s, the new communist government at that time took up the active decolonation of the city space-this process can be compared with what happened in Moscow in the 1930s .

In the 1990s, other historical parts of the city went under demolition. There was already a global capitalism. Secondary erasure of the past, including colonial, already mechanisms of the real estate market, foreign investment, the arrival of large companies that needed buildings of a completely different type.

В этот момент активизируется память колониального прошлого, снова появляется интерес к зданиям колониального периода, они начинают расти в цене, вокруг этих построек формируются градозащитные движения — это произошло в Шанхае и происходит сегодня в Намибии. Кажется парадоксальным, что 30 лет назад вы боролись с прошлым, а сейчас пытаетесь его сохранить. Но в данном случае идет речь не о ностальгии по колониализму, а о сопротивлении брутальной джентрификации, связанной с глобализацией.

Дальше начинается переформатирование колониальной архитектуры. Сегодня во многих странах, начиная от Китая и заканчивая Намибией или странами Латинской Америки, мы видим игру с колониальным наследием в архитектуре и городском пространстве, использование мотивов европейской архитектуры встроительстве новых зданий. Часто встречается консервация фасадов и полная реновация внутренностей здания. Но нельзя называть это возвращением или ностальгией по колониализму или насаждением прошлого. Это скорее реакция на изменение городской среды, жизненного уклада и устоев, связанных с urban renewal — городским обновлением и джентрификацией.

— То есть формирование исторической памяти — это живой процесс.

— Это процесс с очень многими точками зрения, которые невозможно уловить, если не начать понимать перспективы, с которых разные участники смотрят на место, на памятник, на историю. Важно учитывать, какой интерес политическая группа реализует с помощью объекта. Потому что сам материальный объект без понимания этого не имеет смысла.

Мне в голову приходит такой пример для сравнения: в столице Сенегала был монумент, поставленный французским правительством в 1923 году, когда Сенегал еще был французской колонией. Он называется «Демба и Дюпон», это памятник двум солдатам, воевавшим в Первой мировой войне плечом к плечу. Один — африканец, другой — белый француз.

Колониальное правительство поставило этот памятник с идеей показать дружбу народов под своей колониальной доминацией. Когда в начале 1960-х годов Сенегал получил независимость от Франции, этот монумент снесли, убрали с центральной площади города, но его не разрушили, а поместили в хранилище.

В 2004 году его очистили, привели в порядок и опять установили на площади, но уже как символ роли африканских солдат в спасении Европы. Случился переход от дружбы народов под колониальным контролем к независимости и переосмыслению роли бывших колоний в строительстве и спасении Европы. Мне кажется, что это очень хороший пример того, как работает прошлое, политика и переосмысление, и скульптура.

— Сейчас ЮНЕСКО считает, какое количество ценностей было разрушено за время войны в Украине, и хочет включить центр Одессы и Киевский собор в свой список культурного наследия, чтобы защитить их в будущем. Можем ли мы говорить о том, что такое внимание европейских институций характеризует новый подход к войне вообще? И что это может помочь, возможно, сохранить культурное наследие в стране?

— ЮНЕСКО действительно ведет список разрушений. Я думаю, что это последствия уроков, которые мы выучили после войны в Ираке, когда случилось масштабное мародерство музеев и коллекций античного наследия, которое совершали в том числе американские солдаты.

После войны в Ираке сформировался огромный черный рынок ближневосточной античности. Это были уже не звонки, а сирены о том, что если не вмешиваются такие международные, наднационально-государственные институции, как ООН и ЮНЕСКО, то ценности будут безвозвратно утеряны.

Это важная для меня тема. Есть тенденция перенести ответственность за конкретные действия и решения людей на некое событие; превратить войну в исторический субъект, историческое лицо действия. Война — она разрушает, война — она забирает, война — она убивает, а мы внутри этой войны оказываемся и действуем по ее законам. И поэтому либо пять, либо 50 лет спустя после этой войны у нас, в общем, ответственности за эти действия нет.

Мне действия ЮНЕСКО кажутся важным механизмом по преодолению этой тенденции — переложить ответственность на некое историческое событие.

Еще мне очень нравится проект коллектива архитекторов, дизайнеров, художников, который называется Forensic Architecture. Он посвящен обстрелу телевизионной башни Киева, где как раз идет документация не только самого взрыва, но и дается разбор исторических слоев самого места, начиная от расстрела еврейских жителей Киева и всего региона. Это работа по документации сегодняшнего дня в сочетании с прошлыми историческими слоями очень важна для того, чтобы позже мы могли называть вещи своими именами.

Беседовала Аглая Петрова