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The Lineup for Meat: The Stalin Statue in Prague

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Hana Pichova
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Abstract

In Prague a debate is taking place over whether an aquarium ought to be built on the site that once housed the largest monument to Stalin. The site is difficult to contend with, not only because it is a physical reminder of the atrocities committed during the Communist rule but also because of the monument's bizarre history, one plagued by absurd events. The monument's history is preserved in obscure historical and fictional narratives. I explore these narratives in terms of monumentality, foreign imposition, socialist-realist aesthetics, power, and humor. I concentrate on the dual function the absurd served in the history of the statue. Reliance on humor, while enabling the Czechs to undercut the monumentality of this emblem of the imposition of foreign power, also fostered a forgetting of the statue's history and political significance. Thus, the Czechs' propensity for the absurd, even if temporarily freeing, ultimately undermines the nation's understanding of its past.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 3 , May 2008 , pp. 614 - 631
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

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