Cold War heritage dissonance and disinheritance as a heritage alternative: the case of Soviet military remnants in the Baltic states

ABSTRACT

Despite the ongoing efforts towards Cold War heritage-making in Europe, the ambiguities in meaning and the cultural status of certain materialities from the second half of the 20^th century across different national contexts highlight a heritage dissonance at play. Focusing on the case of the Baltic states, we analyse the engagements with Soviet military remnants since the early 1990s in the context of changing political regimes. We approach the prevailing practices of disinheritance along the same conceptual lines as heritage-making and highlight how disinheritance has contributed to shaping national identities and future-oriented landscape relations. We argue that disinheritance can be a legitimate alternative strategy for dealing with difficult legacies. In addition, we shed light on how the fragmented attempts to preserve and re-narrativize certain Soviet military remnants reflect the constrained relations between the political agendas of post-1990s nationalism and European integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Military remnants
• heritage dissonance
• difficult legacy
• transnational heritage-making
• cold war

Acknowledgements

We thank the two anonymous reviewers whose critical feedback contributed significantly to improve the initial version of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The record of the TV broadcast is available on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT5F1s11bCA.

2. The digital collection of the contributions from the involved countries is available at the website https://coldwarsites.net/.

3. The Estonian-Latvian transborder partnership project ‘Military Heritage’ funded under the EU Interreg programme is documented at https://militaryheritagetourism.info/en?lang=en.

4. The digital collection of the contributions from the involved countries is available at the website https://coldwarsites.net/.

5. There are several websites of local and foreign urban exploration activists, e.g. https://diggers.lv; Facebook page ‘Abandoned places in Baltics’ https://www.facebook.com/groups/481170326256238/

6. See, e.g. https://www.facebook.com/urbanestonia/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Swedish Research Council Formas under Grant [2017-01224].

Notes on contributors

Kristīne Krumberga

Kristīne Krumberga is a PhD candidate in Cultural Geography at the University of Latvia in Riga, Latvia. In her thesis, she examines cultural and ecological transformations of former military sites in Latvia in heritage and nature conservation contexts. Her research interests include the cultural production of space and nature-culture entanglements.

Anna Storm

Anna Storm is a Professor of Technology and Social Change at Linköping University in Linköping, Sweden. Her research interests centre on ‘industrial afterlives’, that is, the lingering effects of industrial activities and their social, cultural, and environmental expressions.