The Individual, Auto/biography and History in South Africa

the monument was removed during the night, and at the Kremlin, a tall wooden fence
was erected around it as an eyesore to deflect people’s attention. In the early 1990s, in
order to limit criticism and opposition, a practice emerged throughout the Soviet
Union of removing Lenin monuments in stages, so that sometimes their removal
wasn’t even noticed. In spite of opposition from its director and staff, and after
rejecting a proposal to relocate “from somewhere to nowhere”, the Central Lenin
Museum in Moscow “was gradually liquidated”, and finally closed in 1994. 88
In Germany after reunification of the state and the city of Berlin, citizens of the new
society sought ways to address the symbolic legacies of the old order in the cultural
landscape. Some features, like the Berlin Wall, were torn down through acts of ritual
destruction. Some memorial plaques, such as those that carried Erich Honecker’s
name, were removed promptly by official decree. Some statues and memorials began
to be vandalised, and many people expressed a desire to remove “vestiges of a past
best forgotten”. Berlin’s Lenin monument, however, proved to be more than merely a
political symbol, with citizens relating to it as “a neighbourhood icon, a repository of
memories, or a vital piece of urban architecture”. The circumstances of memorial
contestation in unified Germany were intense. “Ossis” did not want to feel
manipulated by “Wessis”, many of whom were Christian democrats who demanded
the removal of the material edifices of “the poisoned hand of the GDR”. In contrast,
some argued that the prior experience of postwar West Germany having “unwisely
buried and denied its Nazi past” should not be repeated. 89
In the public controversy that unfolded around the Berlin government’s decision to go
ahead with its removal, the Lenin monument became a “rallying point” for those who
resented “forced adaptation to West German ways”. While the monument was draped
with a huge “No Violence” sash, the government chose instead to dismantle it rather
88 Trevor J Smith, ‘The Collapse of the Lenin Personality Cult’, pp 332‐338; other monuments were
relocated to a park “dedicated to the failure of communism” (Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin, p
193).
89 Brian Ladd, The Ghosts of Berlin, pp 192‐194.
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