Students Daria Tarasenko (Institute of Art History in Leipzig, Art History and Digital Humanities, BA), Myriam Helena Raich (Leopold-Franzens University of Innsbruck, Art History, BA),Natalia Czapla (University of Silesia in Katowice, Game and Virtual Space Design, MA), Nikolay Petroussenko (Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski, Graphic Design, PhD), Skaistė Balkytė (Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas, Art Curating, MA) and Veronika Maron (Estonian Academy of Arts, Art History and Visual Culture, BA) and mentors Prof. Tullia Catalan, Dr. Alessandro Carrieri and Dr. Giuseppe Grimaldi (University of Trieste) worked on the re-contextualisation of the removed Lenin monument in Narva.
The organisers suggested the following assignment to the students:
https://opendata.muis.ee/object/3537452
Narva’s Lenin monument was unveiled in Peter Square on the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, on 7 November 1957. The statue was authored by the Estonian sculptor Olavi Männi and the city architect of Narva, Ilmar Bork. The location could not have been more central, as the square named after the Russian Czar Peter the First (who had conquered the city in 1704 during the Great Nordic War) had become a centre for the whole city from the nineteenth century onwards. It remained a central square also in the Stalinist replanning of the city after the Second World War, when the Soviet bombing had destroyed much of the old town.
https://opendata.muis.ee/object/4038996
In 1993, the statue was dismantled and relocated to the Western Courtyard of the Narva castle, i.e. to the premises of the Narva Museum. 1993 was also the year for the Narva and Sillamäe autonomy referendum, held on July 16–17 July 1993. A vast majority of the votes in Narva supported the autonomy, but the referendum was declared unconstitutional by the Chancellor of Justice.
Relocated statue of V. I. Lenin in the courtyard of the Narva Castle ’95. Photo: Irina Kivimäe, May 5, 1995. Estonian National Museum, Fk 3051:12975
https://opendata.muis.ee/object/4038999
On December 21, 2022, the Lenin statue was dismantled and relocated once again, this time to Tallinn. “The statue of Lenin, which stood in the western courtyard of Narva Castle since 1993, left the city today. The monument will go to the Estonian History Museum that collects material on Estonia’s political history and already has Soviet monuments on outside display. The statue will be kept at the Estonian War Museum until spring 2023,” the Narva Museum said on social media.
As of now, the statue has researched the collections of the Estonian History Museum, but is not on display. Since 2018, the Estonian History Museum houses an outdoor exhibition of Soviet monuments, but it has remained unchanged and has not been altered as a result of the new wave of monument toppling since 2022.
We invite the group to explore the context and background of this statue and the different options for reframing it and to come up with a suggestion for its recontextualisation. Questions to ask during this process can be, among other things: What is typical and what is special about the Lenin statue in Narva and its removal? How to position it in the universe of Lenin monuments and in the framework of the many waves of Lenin-statue removals ever since the collapse of the USSR in Eastern Europe and beyond? What is special about the context in Narva? Should it stay in the museum? Indoors or outdoors? In Tallinn or in Narva? What are the options for recontextualising it – artistic and other interventions, educational programmes, analogue or digital written and other explanatory texts, etc.
The students came up with the following results:
