From the Soviet “Statue of Liberty” to the Lithuanian Partisan Memorial: The Significance of Kryžkalnis in 1972– 2020

Abstract

Abstract. This article examines the change in the space and significance(s) of the Kryžkalnis Memorial during the Soviet era and the period of independent Lithuania. Some key questions are posed: what meanings were embodied in the central accent of the memorial to the liberators of the Soviet Army – the Kryžkalnis Mother Monument – and how was this monument “domesticated”? Why did the memorial, established on the initiative of the LCP (b) Central
Committee, dedicated to a foreign Red Army and intensively used for propaganda, deserve a relatively greater public attention and sensitivity during the Revival (and later) than most other signs of Soviet-era identity? What determined it: the aesthetics of the sculpture, the idea embodied in it, the exclusive topography of the object, the nostalgia for the past? Whatdetermined that in the years of   Kryžkalnis was chosen to create a memorial to Lithuanian partisans and what concepts of freedom were supported in the semantics of both spaces of remembrance.