Expired Monuments: Case Studies on Soviet-era Architecture in Latvia through the Kaleidoscope of Postcolonialism
Expired Monuments: Case Studies on Soviet-era Architecture in Latvia through the Kaleidoscope of Postcolonialism

Summary/Abstract: In this article, I use the tools of postcolonial theory in order to explain the processes of architecture and its understanding in the time of the Soviet occupation. Carried out under the influence of socialist ideology, architecture in the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic became more artificial and deformed in comparison to the ‘original’ – the Soviet Russian example. Notions such as ‘our own’ architecture and the ‘other’ were present in architectural thinking. These features could be found in all three periods of architectural development in Soviet Latvia: during Stalinism (mid-1940s – mid-1950s), in the modernism revival (late 1950s – 1970s) and in the regional architecture that regained its prominence within a framework of postmodernism (1980s – early 1990s). This approach brings into focus a set of questions: how appropriate is it to apply the postcolonial theory to the studies of art history and architecture of the Soviet era; what features allow one to do so; how does postcolonial theory affect the analysis of styles and aesthetics of certain movements in architecture etc.?

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