The Civil War after the Civil War: Conflict, Reconciliation and Locality in Russian Civil War Monuments, 1922–1941

Abstract

The Civil War’s denouement into separate Bolshevik and White émigré memorial spaces meant that its monuments served to represent conflict between still-hostile sides, not promote reconciliation between victors and vanquished. Both sides worked inside a public space infused with the political and cultural mobilization for a continuing civil war. The Soviet and émigré populations were also separated by international borders, irreconcilable political ideologies and different public institutions, and neither side needed to integrate members of the former enemy into a shared political terrain. Finally, local people and interest groups showed more interest in Civil War memorials than national politicians and elites, and most war monuments addressed these proximate local priorities. In the city of Samara (renamed Kuibyshev in 1935) local officials wanted to promote the role of Vasilii Chapaev and local people in the Red victory over the central government’s preference for Mykola (Nikolai) Shchors, while the White memorial in Gallipoli was a site of mourning for defeated anti-Bolshevik armies. The resolution of enmity between the former combatants was thus not necessary, nor did it find expression in monumental form or content, and a common consensus on the public face of the war was never reached.