Authoritarianism Archives - Contested Histories

Stalin Statue in Novosibirsk

Contested Histories Admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In 2019, a bust of Soviet leader and dictator Joseph Stalin was unveiled in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third-largest city. The erection of this statue followed decades of lobbying by a local grassroots initiative. It was met with some pushback by local individuals and institutions who highlighted Stalin’s role as perpetrator of mass violence, repression, and terror. Despite demands by the pro-Statue lobby to celebrate Stalin and his wartime leadership with a monument on a public site, the bust was installed on a private site. This case study outlines the controversy in Novosibirsk and argues that it speaks much more broadly to a battleground at the heart of contemporary Russian memory politics: the memory of Stalin and Stalinism in the context of authoritarian revival in Russia.

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Hindenburg Street in Darmstadt

Contested Histories Admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0000

After retiring from his military career, Paul von Hindenburg, acclaimed commander of the First World War, became president of the Weimar Republic in 1925. After his election to a second term in 1932, he appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor and authorised decrees that enabled the Nazis to circumvent democratic safeguards. Hindenburg died in 1934 and was not implicated in the worst Nazi atrocities. However, because of his key role in facilitating the Nazi seizure of power, his legacy remains controversial. Hindenburgstraße in Darmstadt, dedicated in 1915, was one of several memorials to Hindenburg built throughout Germany. After a decades-long political battle, in 2023, the street was finally renamed in honour of Fritz Bauer, a Jewish jurist who prosecuted Nazi crimes. This case study details a research-focused and democratically oriented process for the rededication of streets, while showing the increase in tensions that can be associated with a drawn-out renaming process.

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Peter Cvirkas Statue in Vilnius

Contested Histories Admin — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The statue for the Lithuanian writer Petras Cvirka was built not only because of his talent as a successful writer, but also due to his collaboration with the Soviet regime after the Soviet occupation in 1940. The new wave of discussions about memory, heritage objects in public spaces, and national identity started on a national level after the Restoration of Independence of Lithuania in 1990. Despite various opinions about the past of Lithuania, the narrative of creating a modern country took a solid position that was created by intellectuals and new-generation pro-Western liberal politicians who took the initiative to re-create the public spaces. Therefore, the taking down of Petras Cvirka’s statue in 2021 was a political action with no one-sided supportive opinion from the public.

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Ratko Mladić Mural in Belgrade

Contested Histories Admin — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

Painted on a residential building facade in Belgrade’s Vračar district in 2021, the image of Ratko Mladić, a convicted war criminal, quickly became the most controversial street piece in Serbia. To its supporters, Mladić is a national defender, but to many others, he is a symbol of cruel violence, traumatising war and blinding hate. The painted image sparked tensions and polarisation between the authorities, local activists, the general public and the ‘guardians of the mural’. This case study explores the difficult topic of dealing with a problematic recent past, unresolved memory politics, the failure to confront one’s own past and what a society can look like when it does not engage with its history in a critical way.

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State College Carlos Marighella in Salvador

Paula — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

A state college named after the authoritarian President Emilío Garrastuza Médici (1969-1974) has officially changed its name to Carlos Marighella, a guerrilla fighter against the Brazilian military regime (1964-1985). The current name was chosen after the college held an election in 2013, which was preceded by a series of talks about the historical characters that could be honoured in the renaming. In February 2014, the government officially changed the name of the college from Médici to Marighella after decades of interest in change and frustration over the name Médici. This move has also sparked interest in similarly named schools to also attempt to change their names.

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St. Vladimir Statue in Moscow

Paula — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

On November 4, 2016, a statue of Vladimir the Great or Saint Vladimir, as he is known in Russian, was unveiled by President Putin in Moscow during the millennium commemoration of Vladimir’s death (958–1015). Known as Volodymyr in Ukrainian, he is a major historical figure in both Russian and Ukrainian memory politics and understood, by each, to be the founder of their states. Upon its unveiling, Putin sought to emphasise Vladimir’s role as a uniter of the Slavic people, and implicitly placed Russia at its core. This enormous statue was evidently meant to rival the statue of the figure in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, which has been there since 1853. This case study examines the significance of this monument in the context of memory wars with Ukraine and as part of the Russian state’s discourse of a 1000-year-old Russia.

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Dolinka Museum for the Commemoration of Victims of Political Repression in Karaganda

Paula — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The Karaganda Corrective Labour Camp (Karlag) was a Soviet forced labour camp located in the Karaganda region, in the central part of Kazakhstan, and operated between 1931 and 1959. The camp covered a vast area, at its largest, roughly the size of France. After its closure, the camp was left for the most part unfenced and unattended. The locals had reused many former camp buildings. After Kazakhstan gained independence, the government had little interest in commemorating former camps and also addressing the contentious Soviet legacy. In the late 2000s, an effort towards commemoration was made by the government with the creation of the two museums, Alzhir Museum and Karlag Museum in Dolinka. However, since then, the visitation levels have remained low, both for local and international tourists, arguably reflecting a lack of ownership and legitimacy given by other stakeholders, most importantly, local communities.

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Puente Aranda Murals in Bogotá

Paula — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The project ‘Open Museum of Bogotá: painting in the public space’ was organised by the District Institute of Arts (IDARTES) and Urban Development Institute (IDU), with the support of the Mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López. Part of the initiative aimed to decorate eleven bridges across Bogotá, using local artists selected by a public call. One of these murals, painted by Saint Cat Crew on a supporting column of the Aranda bridge at the crossroad of Avenue of Americas with Street 50 near the Military Club, provoked diverse reactions and criticism. Representing the cycle of violence on the streets, the mural depicted a policeman being awarded a medal over human skulls. Shortly after it was finished, Luis Mauricio Mayorga painted over the mural, which sparked debate regarding freedom of expression, censorship and misuse of public funds. This case examines the controversies surrounding artistic intervention in legacies of violence.

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Stone Flower at Jasenovac Concentration Camp

Paula — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The Kameni cvijet (Stone Flower) monument stands to honour the victims of Jasenovic, the largest concentration camp run by the Croatian Ustaša government during World War II. It took several decades to be built, primarily due to contestations between the Croatian far-right and Jewish, Serbian, and Croat anti-fascist organisations that have continued into the present. These concern the nature of the camp, the number of victims who perished there, and whether those deaths can be properly considered genocide. The monument itself and the annual commemoration events held at the site have both become flashpoints for these conflicts, demonstrating the difficulty in honouring the memory of victims in sites whose histories remain unsettled.

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Bridge Honestino Guimares

Paula — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0000

The Bridge Costa e Silva (named after the 2nd president of Brazil’s military dictatorship) in Brasília, Brazil, was inaugurated on February 6 1976, by the military president Ernesto Geisel, connecting the ‘Lago Sul’ neighbourhood to Brasília’s downtown. Its name has been targeted by local politicians and civil society groups since the end of the dictatorship. After the establishment of the National Truth Commission in 2011, a body responsible for investigating human rights abuses committed by the dictatorship, popular initiatives to rename the bridge intensified. However, the Federal District’s Legislative Chamber only approved a bill renaming the bridge in 2015. The chosen name was Honestino Guimarães, a university student leader who went missing after being kidnapped by the dictatorship. However, antagonistic voices in society led to lawsuits that revoked the renaming. Until 2022, the Bridge was renamed several times, whether by the federal government or public initiatives, but the name of Honestino Guimarães was eventually consolidated by law with Bill 1967/2021, resignifying the story of the bridge.

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