Maxim Vyacheslavovich Gerasimov,
Graduate Student, Tomsk State University, Tomsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The City Square as an Object of Ideological Transformation in the Post-Soviet Years: the Case of Tomsk
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-6-9
The article is devoted to consideration and analysis of the features of symbolic transformation of the public space of Tomsk in the post-Soviet years by the example of two city squares. The dynamics of political changes and socio-economic instability in the 1990s influenced the reassessment of ideological messages encoded in the structure of public urban space objects (squares, streets, squares, etc.). The city square is understood as a field of representations organized and arranger in accordance with the symbolic intent, functioning as an ideological text in which a number of political and cultural meanings are encrypted. The process of symbolic transformation of city squares is described using the example of the Tomsk region. Politicians and public figures of this region in the early 1990s began the process of symbolic positioning on the political map of Siberia, creating the image of a democratic region that broke with its totalitarian past. In the context of delegitimization of the Communist regime, the presence of objects of Soviet power topography created semantic dissonance and ideological contradictions for the new government – in the first months after the collapse of the USSR, its representatives justified the need to destroy Lenin monuments in Tomsk. The author identifies and analyzes the main vectors of symbolic transformation used by the Tomsk power structures in the 1990s: 1) physical elimination of the symbol of the previous regime (dismantling of the Lenin monument on Revolution Square); 2) application of toponymical practices; 3) attempts at value reorientation of the object (restoration of monuments of pre-revolutionary Tomsk architecture that surrounded the Lenin monument on the square of the same name). The author describes the reaction of the readers of the new ideological text – city dwellers who used the space of the square to articulate oppositional narratives about the lost stability of everyday life in the form of political and commemorative actions. The conclusion is made about the ineffective use of the symbolic model of opposing the present to the “totalitarian” past in the process of building the power topography in the first post-Soviet years.
Publishing: 28/12/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 29/09/2021
How to cite: Gerasimov M.V. The City Square as an Object of Ideological Transformation in the Post-Soviet Years: the Case of Tomsk // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 6 (20), pp. 111–121. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-6-09.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2021
Keywords: Tomsk; post-soviet years; Revolution square; symbolic transformation; monument; Lenin