Lubyanka's Dissonant Voices: Conflicting Heritagescapes in the Heart of Moscow

Summary

This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Moscow’s former ‘Lubyanka’ prison building is now controlled by the FSB, the contemporary Russian successor to the Soviet KGB and NKVD. Yet this does not mean that this past is erased; on the contrary, the surrounding landscape has become a meaningful space for memorializing the victims of Soviet and contemporary repression. A boulder from the USSR’s first gulag camp is now a linchpin of periodic public gatherings in memory of Muscovite victims of the Great Terror, while the stone serves as a permanent, year-round memorial. NGOs and civil society groups use digital technology and social media to share information about the ‘dark’ history of the Lubyanka building itself, as well as the surrounding area. Protests are resonant precisely because of the Lubyanka’s legacy of violence, incarceration, and terror. This paper will examine the different processes of heritagization and memory work through which different stakeholder groups participate within the Lubyanka’s ‘heritagescape’.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• 2020 SHA General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1046