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Since unification, eastern Germany has witnessed a rapidly changing memorial landscape, as the fate of former socialist monuments has been hotly debated and new commemorative projects have met with fierce controversy. Memorializing the GDR provides the first in-depth study of this contested arena of public memory, investigating the individuals and groups devoted to the creation or destruction of memorials as well as their broader aesthetic, political, and historical contexts. Emphasizing the interrelationship of built environment, memory and identity, it brings to light the conflicting memories of recent German history, as well as the nuances of national and regional constructions of identity.

Monuments for Posterity challenges the common assumption that Stalinist monuments were constructed with an immediate, propagandistic function, arguing instead that they were designed to memorialize the present for an imagined posterity. In this respect, even while pursuing its monument-building program with a singular ruthlessness and on an unprecedented scale, the Stalinist regime was broadly in step with transnational monument-building trends of the era and their undergirding cultural dynamics. By integrating approaches from cultural history, art criticism, and memory studies, along with previously unexplored archival material, Antony Kalashnikov examines the origin and implementation of the Stalinist monument-building program from the perspective of its goal to \"immortalize the memory\" of the era. He analyzes how this objective affected the design and composition of Stalinist monuments, what cultural factors prompted the sudden and powerful yearning to be remembered, and most importantly, what the culture of self-commemoration revealed about changing outlooks on the future-both in the Soviet Union and beyond its borders. Monuments for Posterity shifts the perspective from monuments' political-ideological content to the desire to be remembered and prompts a much-needed reconsideration of the supposed uniqueness of both Stalinist aesthetics and the temporal culture that they expressed. Many Stalinist monuments still stand prominently in postsocialist cityscapes and remain the subject of continual heated political controversy. Kalashnikov makes manifest monuments' intentional attempts to seduce us-the \"posterity\" for whom they were built.

The article presents the issue of architecture of the second half of the 20th century in Poland, with particular emphasis on the sacred architecture of that period. These resources, associated in the collective consciousness with the gloomy period of communism in Poland, are not treated as valuable monuments of their era but are often subject to demolition, devastation and radical transformations. The sacred architecture of this period, created despite very unfavorable conditions, is treated in a slightly different way, being a testimony to the rebellion and determination of a significant part of society. Despite this, churches from the Polish People's Republic (PPR) period, not being treated as historic monuments, are often not preserved and renovated with respect for their original assumptions. Due to the increasing secularization of society, some buildings are currently too large in relation to current needs, which is why the problem of adapting some of these buildings for other purposes begins to arise. These adaptations should be carried out with respect for the basic function of the temple and the original architectural assumptions. The work presents examples of churches from the second half of the 20th century in the Archdiocese of Częstochowa that were subject to this type of intervention.

Using an approach situated at the intersection of cultural memory studies and (critical) heritage studies, with a focus on the ambivalent socialist heritage of socialist statues and monuments and their changing role in postsocialist public spaces, this article engages with the postcommunist strategies of reckoning with the past in Romania and Bulgaria in the period 1990–2020. Comparing the kinds of monumental memory of communism that were established in these countries, the author discusses how each dealt with their ambivalent socialist heritage through a public memory policy comprising three combined strategies: removal; preservation; and the replacement of communist heroes with anticommunist counter-monuments. The author concludes that stances toward the socialist heritage manifest various tensions in terms of the types of statues that were removed or, alternately, allowed to remain; of the opposition between local and national decisions as well as between the official approach and citizens’ perspectives; and, finally, of aesthetic versus political criteria.

The Communist Party of Yugoslavia regarded the interpretation and the commemoration of World War II as one of the most important pillars of the ideology of \"brotherhood and unity\" and the socialist revolution. Accordingly, the issues of the civil war and the nationality and ethnic identity of the perpetrators and victims were suppressed. The article examines war memorials in the Yugoslav Federal Republic of Croatia to show that following the sociopolitical changes that occurred from the mid-1960s, these previously evaded issues became more prominent in public life and began to jeopardize the official policy of remembrance.

Dark tourism sites serve as powerful spaces where history, memory, and emotion intersect, shaping both individual experiences and collective narratives. The aim of this paper is to investigate how dark tourism narratives are constructed around post-Soviet memory and gendered suffering. A mixed-methods approach was employed, including content analysis of media sources (2013–2023), semiotic analysis of brochures and promotional materials, and survey data with Likert and open-ended questions (n = 250) collected via QR codes in 2023. ALZHIR (Akmolinski Lager Zhen Izmennikov Rodiny) is predominantly portrayed as a symbol of Soviet repression and gendered trauma. Media visibility remains limited due to geographic isolation, while museum narratives emphasize resilience and national unity. ALZHIR functions both as a commemorative and political space, blending authentic storytelling with state narratives. This study contributes to the international dark tourism literature by highlighting the transformative role of emotion, the politicization of memory in post-Soviet states, and the underexplored dimension of gendered suffering.

This article uses an “urban landscapes” perspective to examine the urban sculpture scene and its production system in Shanghai. It reviews both the national urban sculpture discourse and urban sculpture planning practices since 1949, and then focuses on Shanghai specifically. It examines three major stakeholders in urban sculpture development and their interactions. The main argument is that Shanghai's urban sculpture scene has evolved due to the proliferation of aesthetic and symbolic sculptures as opposed to traditional monuments; however, urban entrepreneurialism and globalization have been shaped by the continuity of the Chinese ideological framework, which has transformed urban sculptures from explicit into veiled political didacticism under the guise of caring for the people. 近二十年来，在上海城市雕塑规划的推动下，城市雕塑数量剧增，艺术风格趋以多元，为城市构筑起一道靓丽的风景。本文以“城市风景”的理论视角来审视上海的城市雕塑景观，以及这道风景背后的社会机制。文章回顾了1949 年以来在国家层面，有关城市雕塑以及雕塑规划的讨论，然后在地方层面聚焦于上海，研究城市雕塑规划主管机构，以及其他影响城市雕塑发展的利益相关人。文章的主要论点是，上海城市雕塑风景线的形成得益于审美和象征性雕塑的繁荣，而非传统的纪念碑式的雕塑，尽管后者乃是城市雕塑中最重要的类型。与此同时，雕塑折射出上海“城市企业化”以及“全球化”的城市政策，乃是在政党意识形态的框架底下制定以及执行的，其结果是将城市雕塑的角色，从直接的政治说教，转变成了披着“为民所爱”外衣的间接的意识形态的宣传。

The article analyzes two examples of restoration socialist era railway station buildings and monumental art works. The difficulty of restoration with the reconstruction of Kyiv railway station building was that during the Second World War it was partially destroyed and many structures were in disrepair; the finishing technique of exterior facades and interiors has been changed several times. In the station building centre under the lobby a new flooring of metal structures was arranged, escalators were arranged, the roof was replaced with a copper one with existing structures reinforcement. The stages of restoration and repair works of the upper and lower pavilions of the Warszawa Powiśle railway station are analyzed. In 2008-2009, the upper pavilion was renovated to restore the original appearance. The stone floor and glass back wall made of glass blocks were replaced with new ones. In 2009, the lower pavilion of the Warszawa Powiśle railway station was converted into a cafe-club with a change in the internal functional scheme. The example of the new railway station in Oświęcim shows a positive example of the transfer of the mosaic in the interior of the old station building by transferring it to the new minimalism-style station building facade.

Polish Góra św. Anny (Saint Anne Mountain), previously German Annaberg, is one of the few places in the world where art was utilized to promote two regimes—fascist and communist. With the use of art, the refuge of pagan gods and then, Christian Saint John’s Mountain with Saint Ann’s church and a calvary site were transformed into a mausoleum of the victims of uprisings and wars—those placed by politics on opposite sides of the barricade. The “sacred” character of the mountain was appropriated in the 1930s by the fascist Thingstätte under the form of an open-air theatre with a mausoleum, erected to commemorate fallen German soldiers in the Third Silesian Uprising. After the Second World War, the same place was “sacralized” by the Monument of the Insurgents’ Deed, which replaced the German object. The aim of both of them was to commemorate those who had perished in the same armed conflicts—uprisings from the years 1919–1921, when the Poles opposed German administration of Upper Silesia. According to the assumptions of both national socialism as well as communism, the commemorative significance of both monuments was subjected to ideological messages. Both monuments were supposed to constitute not only the most important element of the place where patriotic manifestations were intended to be held, but also a kind of counterbalance for the local pilgrims’ center dedicated to the cult of Saint Anne. The aim of the paper is to present the process of transforming a Nazi monument into its communist counterpart, at the same time explaining the significance of both monuments in the context of changing political reality. This paper has not been based on one exclusive research method—historical and field studies have been conducted, together with iconographical and iconological analyses of the monuments viewed from their comparative perspective. The text relies on archive materials—documents, press releases, and projects, including architectural drawings of the monument staffage—discovered by the authors and never published before. They would connect the structure not only to the surrounding landscape but, paradoxically, to the fascist Thingstätte.

This article deals with the issues of architectural elements of public space, treated as components of art and visual communication, and at the same time determinants of the emotional aspects of political conflicts, social disputes, and media discourse. The aim of the considerations is to show, with the usage of the principles of critical analysis of media discourse, the impact of social events, political communication, and the activity of mass communicators on the perception of the monument of historical memory and the changes that take place within its public evaluation. The authors chose the method of critical analysis of the media discourse due to its compliance with the planned purpose of the analyses, thus, providing the opportunity to perform qualitative research, enabling the creation of possibly up-to-date conclusions regarding both the studied thread, and allowing the extrapolation of certain conclusions to other examples. The media material relating to the controversial Monument to the Revolutionary Act, located in the city of Rzeszów (Poland), was selected for the analysis. On this example, an attempt was made to evaluate the mutual relations between politically engaged architecture and art, and the contemporary consequences of this involvement in the social and political dimension.