International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2016.1184701

Communism and cultural heritage: the quest for continuity

Pablo Alonso Gonzleza,b
a
Division of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK; bInstitute of Heritage Sciences (Incipit-CSIC),
Santiago de Compostela, Spain

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical genealogy and main Received 30 November 2015
uses of heritage in actually existing communist countries. This is performed Accepted 22 April 2016
by carrying out a critical review of leazar Aleksandrovi Ballers Communism
KEYWORDS
and Cultural Heritage, (1984, Progress, Moscow). The analysis of Ballers Communism; cultural
work reveals that the logics of heritage in communist countries differed in heritage; leazar Baller;
various ways from capitalist countries, mainly because of the almost total monuments; museums;
state control over the heritage apparatus and the subordination of heritage ideology
policies to MarxistLeninist ideology. Heritage was fundamental in dealing
with the problem of change and continuity with the traditions, narratives and
identities of previous society, and in the process of transforming citizens into
new men through the cultural revolution and the inculcation of ideology
through museums and monuments.

1.Introduction
Along with the increase in the number of socialist-oriented countries, the problem of attitude to cultural heritage
gains in importance. The question arises as to what has to be inherited from the treasury of world culture, and
in what way the people may use the cultural values created in the far and near historical past and produced by
capitalist society. (Baller 1984, 9)
The first time I came across leazar Ballers Communism and Cultural Heritage (1984) in 2010, I
thought it was a highly relevant piece of work and was surprised to discover the little attention it had
hitherto been paid. I thought it deserved at least a book review, but I decided to wait until the com-
pletion of my doctoral research to write a more comprehensive analysis of his work. My investigation
into the changing uses of heritage in revolutionary Cuba served to test and confirm the relevance of
Ballers work to the analysis of heritage in communist regimes.1 Two caveats are in order here. First,
although Ballers work appeared relatively late in relation to the development of most cultural policies
of communist-oriented countries, it somewhat encapsulates the most relevant issues and theoretical
underpinnings of heritage politics and policies in communist states. Nonetheless, I will not attempt here
to connect Ballers theorization with the growing scholarship on heritage in each specific communist
or ex- communist country. Rather, it is the aim of this paper to highlight the potential relevance of
Ballers work to this body of scholarship as a whole.
Second, it is beyond the scope of this paper to carry out a fully-fledged comparison between com-
munist and capitalist conceptualizations of heritage. It is important to note that Ballers work was prior
to or contemporary with the initial emergence of critical perspectives on heritage in capitalist countries
(Hewison 1987; Lipe 1984; Lowenthal 1986), although his perspective on heritage largely differed from

CONTACT Pablo Alonso Gonzlez pabloag10@hotmail.com

2016 Pablo Alonso Gonzlez. Published with license by Taylor & Francis.
 2 P. Alonso Gonzlez

these authors. We must bear in mind that because of the development of heritage studies in the capi-
talist world after 1990, we run the risk of projecting the heritage categories developed in recent times
onto the communist world. It is therefore necessary to understand the wider context for Ballers work.
Baller was an influential cultural theorist and philosopher that dealt with the dialectics of the
material and spiritual life of society. He was interested in culture, heritage and the question of con-
tinuity in the formation of communist ideas. Historically, his works appeared in a period when
Brzhnev had curtailed Khrushchevs liberal reforms in the Soviet Union and reinvigorated socialist
realism in culture and art between 1964 and 1982. At that time, Soviet post-Stalinist cultural policies
shifted from a disregard of heritage and a promotion of modernist image of the USSR, towards a
willingness to spread the riches of Russias pre-Soviet cultural heritage in order to serve foreign policy
(Gould-Davies 2003, 208). It is vital to understand the role of heritage in the USSR, given that most
communist regimes throughout the world saw it as the revolutionary heartland and looked to it for
political and policy models in all fields.
His most influential book, published in Russian and English, was Socialism and the Cultural Heritage
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(1966), which was translated into German in 1968 and French in 1970, and re-edited as Communism
and Cultural Heritage (1984). His works coincided with a productive intellectual period in the USSR
during the 1960s and 1970s. He taught at the Institute of Philosophy of the Academy of Sciences in
Moscow between 1963 and 1975, at a time when Khrushchevs thaw allowed for a renewal of historical
and philosophical debates. While the schools of Aron Gurevich and Yu. Bromlei focused on cultural
history and historical ethnography, Baller joined the current of Marxist cultural analysis and social
psychology, interested in the psychological development of individual subjective consciousness under
communist conditions. Ballers work should be interpreted in a context when the interest on language,
thought, symbols and experience partially replaced and complemented the traditional Soviet Marxist
concerns with relations of production, social formations and historical laws (Markwick 2006).
The purpose of this paper is to elicit a broader debate about the genealogy and uses of heritage in
communist countries through a critical engagement with Ballers work. What was the conceptual place
of heritage within communist ideologies, especially in relation to notions of change and continuity,
tradition and modernisation? How was heritage used in the communist attempt to shape social and
individual consciousness, memory and identity? What role did heritage play in the construction of
a new national narrative and in symbolising a new national identity in monuments and museums?
Although the literature is rich in studies of the uses and fates of the heritage of communism in
post-communist states (Forest and Johnson 2002; Wanner 1998), less research has focused on the
local conceptualizations of heritage that have emerged in different communist countries throughout
the world (Groys 1994; Todorov 1995). This paper, therefore, will address understandings of heritage
under communism, and not the fate of communist heritage after the fall of communist regimes.
In part, the scarcity of research in this area can be explained by the boom of heritage studies after
1990, precisely when the core communist countries collapsed. Thus, although communist societies can
be investigated with the theoretical and methodological tools of critical social theory from Bourdieu
to Foucault, they require further analytical frameworks to be developed because they present distinct
tendencies, including bureaucratism, central control of the means of production, a hyperbolic ideol-
ogization of the social field and a rationally planned attempt to transform human subjectivity, among
others (Verdery 1995). This paper first addresses the communist break with the past and the issue of
change and continuity. Second, it deals with the role of heritage in the cultural revolution. Third, it
reveals how the relation between heritage and history influences decisions about heritage preservation.
Finally, it examines the role of museums, material culture and monuments in communist society.

2. Continuity and change: what inheritance for the new man?

History is thorough, and it goes through many stages when it conducts an ancient formation to its grave. The last
stage of a world-historical formation is comedy [] why should history proceed in this way? So that mankind
shall separate itself gladly from that past. (Marx, 1844, in Tucker, Marx, and Engels 1978, 57)
 International Journal of Heritage Studies 3

Most communist regimes throughout the world grounded their legitimacy and gained sociopolitical
support by claiming to break with the past (Long 2012). Consequently, in communist regimes, the
question of cultural heritage is even more deeply connected with the problematic of change and con-
tinuity than in capitalist systems. The reason for this significance was the close connection between
heritage and history. Because socialist states presented themselves as a scientific outcome of inevitable
historical processes, the control of history and its materialisation via heritage was fundamental for
their claims to legitimacy. Indeed, they created official versions of history that functioned as religion
or scientific mythologies (Thrower 1992).
Baller devotes the introduction and first chapter of Communism and Cultural Heritage to the issue,
which also resurfaces at many moments throughout the book. This question is relevant because com-
munist regimes always struggled to come to terms internally with the break with the past they were
carrying out, both rhetorically and in practice. Baller recounts how communists in the USSR were
accused of destroying culture, erasing individual, familial and community memories, and renounc-
ing the cultural values accumulated by humanity. During the early days of the Soviet revolution, the
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Narodniks considered communists to be people who do not acknowledge any continuity with the past
and emphatically renounce the heritage (Lenin 1972b, 493).
In terms of heritage, and according to Baller, Lenin would have adopted a moderate position, half-
way between the traditionalists praising bourgeois and capitalist values, Trotskyites arguing against
the possibility of a proper proletarian culture, and left-wing advocates of a total break with the past.
Among the latter, supporters of Proletkult proposed the destruction of past monuments and museums,
considering them remnants of a bourgeois past to be overcome. As Soviet poet Kirillov stated, in the
name of our morrow, let us burn Raphael, destroy the museums, and trample underfoot the flowers
of art (as quoted in Baller 1984, 115).
But Bolshevik leaders were suspicious of avant-gardes and had a positive attitude towards past
heritage generally. For Boris Groys, the Bolshevik stance could be summarised as: take from this
heritage that which is best and useful to the proletariat and use it in the socialist revolution and the
construction of the new world (Groys 1992, 37). This position was exemplified by Andri Zhdanov,
for whom:
we Bolsheviks do not reject the cultural heritage. On the contrary, we are critically assimilating the cultural
heritage of all nations and all times in order to choose from it all that can inspire the working people of soviet
society. (1950, 8889)
In his writings, however, Lenin advocated the preservation of capitalist values and their use in the con-
struction of socialism: we must take the entire culture that capitalism left behind and build socialism
with it. We must take all its science, technology, knowledge and art. Without these we shall be unable
to build communist society (as quoted in Baller 1984, 5). Baller generally assumes Lenins positive
view of continuity. For him,
material monuments of culture created by the people over centuries are not only historical values but an integral
part of the cultural wealth of socialist society, more, they will be inherited by a future, communist world. Those
who tear the future and the past from the present thus impoverish the future. (1984, 187)
Lenins stated aim was not the invention of a new proletarian culture, but the development of the
best models, traditions and results of the existing culture (1972c, 217). Hegelian dialectics provided
the theoretical underpinnings for this position, for he considered that what is transcended is also
preserved (Hegel 1929, 120) suggesting not only abolition, destruction and annihilation of the past,
but also preservation, retention and development of the rationale which has been achieved at the
preceding stage (Baller 1984, 10).
This meant that decisions about the heritage that ought to be preserved from the past had to be
grounded on rational assessments about their potential for the construction of communism. Heritage
was therefore judged in terms of its compliance with the objective criteria of social progress (1984,
66), which were determined by MarxistLeninist principles. This reveals the essentially modern and
Enlightenment roots of communist ideologies, whose ultimate aim was to rationally plan the con-
struction of a new society made of a new man. This man of the future is:
 4 P. Alonso Gonzlez

a comprehensively developed person of high intellectual capabilities who possesses all the material and spiritual
values which have been created for centuries, and who has mastered the creativity of all the foregoing generations
concentrated and objectified (actualised) in cultural values. (1984, 8)
Ballers conceptualisation of heritage is broad and all-encompassing. For him, heritage comprises:
a complex of the bonds, relations and results of the material and spiritual production of the preceding historical
epochs, while, in the narrower sense of the word, it is a complex of spiritual values transmitted by mankind down
the generations, critically mastered, developed and utilized in the context of the concrete historical objectives of
the particular age, and in compliance with the objective criteria of social progress. (1984, 66)

The assessment of the authenticity of heritage was mediated by ideology. Heritage was ranked according to
its level of reliability as absolutely authentic; relatively authentic; absolutely untrue (1984, 58). Baller thought
that communist society ought to break with absolutely untrue heritage, which was not considered relevant for
preservation and was therefore to be destroyed or abandoned. In these cases, inheritance is replaced by struggle
against the survivals of the old system which pose as undesirable manifestations of historical continuity (1984,
59). This position was inspired by Lenins Plan for Monumental Propaganda of 1918, which demolished most
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previous monuments, built new ones, changed city names and renamed streets (Wanner 1998, 176).
In turn, continuity in the development of spiritual culture is determined by its material foundation, yet
it fully depends on all the spiritual values which are being created by people (Baller 1984, 40). In other
words, the notion of heritage is suggestive both of theoretical realization of the laws of continuity, and
of conscious action in the form of critical evaluation of cultural values inherited from the preceding
generations, and their creative utilization (1984, 57). Continuity is assessed in terms of its progressive
or regressive contents. Since, from a MarxistLeninist perspective, every new form of relations of
production is more progressive and ensures the optimum rate of development of material production,
progress implies the incorporation of the lower (old) into the higher (new) and the subordination
of the former to the latter (1984, 15, 29). But, Baller asks, what is:
the proper understanding of the expression the entire wealth of previous development? Is the degree of cor-
respondence between the values which have been created throughout the whole history of world culture and
the objective laws of the progress of society the application of the objective criterion of social progress to
an analysis of the history of world culture enables us to solve correctly the theoretical and practical problems
associated with the evaluation and utilization of the cultural heritage. (1984, 101102)

Baller puts forward a definition of heritage that is ultimately determined by ideology. The argument is circular:
the heritage to be preserved must be a sign of continuity; continuity is ensured whenever it represents progres-
sive values; and these are judged under the objective criterion of social progress, i.e. MarxistLeninist ideology.
With regard to heritage, contrary to progression, regression involves the subordination of the
higher (old) to the lower (new) (1984, 8). This theoretical stance was apparent in the disregard of
traditional city centres by most communist states, which subordinated them to the requirements of
urban and economic development. Many city centres were destroyed or replaced by new urban spaces
located in the outskirts that were designed to become the future city centres, as happened in Cuba
(Alonso Gonzlez 2016). Whenever Baller refers positively to the preservation or restoration of city
centres, the argument is predicated upon notions of modernisation and progress:
By preserving valuable architectural buildings of the past epochs, the modern town, one may say, becomes more
up-to-date: the historical contrasts of the old and the new underline, strengthen the aesthetic impact of the new,
raise the general cultural level of the population and make the specialist strive to create not worse but better
things than those erected in old times. (1984, 187)
The underlying assumption here is that there has been a de facto break with the past and tradition, and this
break allows for the reification, rational selection and appropriation of the heritage to be incorporated into the
new society:
By extracting from the cultural values of preceding epochs the creative energy of human thought and labor
concentrated in them, people are able to turn it into their own possession The material and spiritual culture
inherited from the preceding generations, once assimilated, is viewed by those who have adopted it merely as
raw material for further production, for the production of new cultural values. (1984, 104)
 International Journal of Heritage Studies 5

This constructivist view of continuity presupposes a break with the past that would allow communist
society to formulate a rational evaluation of its heritage. Baller interprets heritage as a tangible reality
that can be discarded or celebrated, but also as a present-centred social construction mediated by
ideology: communist society selects heritage from the past, assimilates it, and then uses it as raw
material for the development of new values and meanings. In this way, the cultural monuments of the
past enter contemporary life, promote understanding of the progressive tendencies in art, its profound
humanistic sense and its lofty social mission (1984, 190).
The consequence is that the heritage preserved had to be exorcised from its capitalist past through
a process of resignification that involved its inscription into the new communist symbolic order. In the
new communist society, heritage from the past should be used as raw material for the production of a
new culture. In other words, cultural heritage always comprises both incorporated and newly-created
cultural heritage (1984, 66, italics in original): heritage ought to be subordinated to the new society,
and the new communist monuments and museums created according to MarxistLeninist logics.
The cultural revolution was the process whereby the new communist society would first incorporate
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previous heritage, and then propagate and inculcate MarxistLeninist ideology through newly-created
cultural heritage.

3. The cultural revolution and the mastering of culture

Marx believed that men had to overcome alienation, making their own history and fulfilling their
true needs. For him, this would be achieved through the transformation of economic structures and
relations of production. Lenin considered, however, that only the revolutionary vanguard could create
a true socialist culture through the ideological moulding of the consciousness of the masses. Heritage
was understood as a functional instrument for the cultural revolution that would help creating a new
man for the future communist society. There were two phases associated with different tasks in the
cultural revolution. The redistributive phase focused in making the masses master culture: that is,
incorporating the previous heritage. Baller considers, however, that:
mastering culture and its assimilation are two different things. Satisfaction of cultural requirements (mastering of
culture) in itself does not yet remold a person The central problem of the cultural revolution, consequently, was
how to awaken an internal need for culture in man. (1984, 177, italics in original)
In other words, the redistributive phase had a quantitative character and focused on appropriation of
heritage by the masses, understood as an external feature to be assumed by subjects. The assimilation
phase had a more qualitative bent, emphasising the need of the new man to internalise ideology and
become the producer of the new communist heritage. The Cuban case, for instance, can be interpreted
in this light, as the early revolution between 1959 and 1975 emphasised the redistribution of heritage
and universal culture to the masses, while the institutionalisation period after 1975 focused instead
on using heritage to inculcate ideology.
Baller accords a series of functions to heritage in the creation of communist society through the
cultural revolution. In terms of epistemology, heritage has to inculcate the humanist ideals of com-
munism as a means for accelerating social progress, according to the laws of nature and society
(1984, 265). With regard to its social role, heritage should have a normative and regulative function in
tune with the establishment of new norms and patterns of behavior, a new morality, new traditions and
customs (1984, 265). In sum, heritage should act as a potent factor in forming a new type of man who
builds his attitude to labor, the collective, his comrades and family on the principles of collectivism,
internationalism and communist humanism (1984, 265). This differs from capitalist understandings of
heritage as a feature representing or mediating the construction of individual and collective identities
and memories. Communist countries, especially during Stalinism, were more interested in shaping
the subconscious and triggering behavioural change while concealing the mechanisms to do so (Groys
1992, 4344). In this sense, the use of heritage was not far from Pavlovs theory of conditioned reflexes
or Stanislavskiis performance methods seeking the dissolution of the identities of actors into their roles.
 6 P. Alonso Gonzlez

Concerning ideology, heritage ceases to be a mechanism shaping the mythological and alien-
ated consciousness of the masses and now sees its mission in making the scientific world outlook
the conscious conviction of each man (1984, 265). The reversal in the meaning of heritage from
being representative of the bourgeois past to becoming a revolutionary instrument mirrored the
reversal of ideology that took place in communist regimes. As Todorov (1995, 152) has shown, Marx
considered ideology to be a false consciousness alienated from real life that had to be unveiled and
eradicated. However, early in the history of the USSR, the meaning of ideology shifted: rather than
false consciousness, the term came to connote a strategic consciousness geared towards the creation
of a total power system under Party rule.
Baller was actually providing a conceptual foundation to the cultural revolution that had taken
place in the USSR and other communist countries. As described by Groys, heritage bureaucrats in
these contexts symbolically divorced heritage from its former bourgeois expropriators and placed it at
the service of the people, managing to render explicit its folk character (1994, 155). In other words,
the redistributive phase focusing on the mastering of previous heritage was aimed at making people
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believe that universal culture and values were also theirs. In the second assimilation phase, this would
ease the inculcation of the ideological message due to its familiar folk appearance. In addition, it
would facilitate the transformation of people from different ethnic, racial and national backgrounds
into new men who would embrace the internationalist and universal values promoted by Marxism
Leninism. This recontextualization of past identities and values through heritage was consistent with
the MarxistLeninist understanding of progress as a means of incorporating a selection of the lower
(old) into the higher (new), and treating past heritage as raw material for the construction of
emergent scientific, ideological, and historical values.

4. The problem of nationalism: history and Lenins two national traditions

Every political regime resorts to the control of history and the creation of a national narrative and
identity in order to ground its legitimacy and hegemony. Communist regimes, however, established
almost total control over historiography and public representations of national identity (Long 2012),
structuring a symbolic imaginary based on a metanarrative and a series of myths and symbols that
legitimised the historic necessity of revolution and Communist Party rule. Indeed, some people have
characterised history itself as the effective God of MarxistLeninist regimes (Thrower 1992). This was
so because MarxistLeninist ideology and historical narrative almost blended together in rhetoric
and practice. Indeed, Verdery has argued that the epistemological notion of historical truth becomes
ontological under socialism, because a correct understanding of the past is essential to correctly fore-
seeing the direction of historical development and to determining policies for the future (1995, 216).
Consequently, on the one hand, historiography largely influences the ways heritage is conceptualised
and, on the other, heritage can be seen as the means to give public, tangible form to historical narratives.
In the twentieth century, the problem most communist regimes faced was how to compete with the
existing national narratives associated with former ethnic, religious and territorial identities. To avoid
this problem, communist regimes grounded their narratives not in the past, but in the present and the
future of the revolution and communist utopia. In addition, they created class-based narratives that
could accommodate ethnic and racial heterogeneity. However, this could not suppress the dissonance
involved in establishing hegemonic control over the past and the symbolic regimes associated with
it. Consequently, communist regimes throughout the world had to translate the master-narrative of
MarxismLeninism into their national roads to communism and into the local meanings, idioms
and contexts inherited from pre-communist realities. As a result, nationalist narratives based on
culture-history normally blended with class-based MarxistLeninist narratives, and the contents and
forms of heritage were adapted to the requirements of this ideological hybridisation. This issue haunted
not only peripheral states, but also the USSR. Kuzio (2002) has shown how the USSR started to recon-
struct its connections with Tsarist Russia after 1930 in the search of a unifying symbolic narrative to
guarantee historical continuity.
 International Journal of Heritage Studies 7

Again, Baller tackles this question by focusing on the potential of heritage to inculcate ideology.
For him, the central issue beyond the expansion of culture and its mastering by the masses was the
assimilation of the ideological message implicit in heritage to create the new man and build the new
civilisation. In a similar vein to the question of ideology, the problem here is that pre-communist
heritage was understood to be intrinsically linked to its reactionary ideological use by the dominant
classes to impose their will (Baller 1984, 84). Baller finds the solution to this conundrum in Lenins
theory of the two national cultures. For Lenin, there are two national cultures in every national cul-
ture, the culture of the exploited people and a bourgeois culture in the form of the dominant
culture (1972a, 32).
Lenins theory makes it possible to retrace an alternative ethnic, racial and national historic line-
age focusing on the oppressed classes. This is so because the oppressed classes make more and more
conscious efforts to reveal the objective progressive content in the cultural heritage of the preceding
epochs, to develop it and utilize it to achieve their goals (Baller 1984, 85). Thus, the reactionary line
of continuity in historical development is opposed by another, that of the slaves-serfs-proletariat
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(1984, 83). Communist historians investigated and constructed national narratives seeking historic
continuities between oppressed classes, which allowed for the combination of nationalist and inter-
nationalist narratives and identities.
Nonetheless, nationalism always remained a daunting question in the USSR. Lenins theory of the
two national cultures was meant to create an internationalist identity in the USSR that superseded
national traditions. But this was challenged by liberal-reformers and intellectuals emphasising the
different heritages within the USSR. In an article entitled Socialism and Cultural Heritage, Ivanov
(1970) harshly criticised Russian nationalism, associating it with bourgeois influences and a dismissal
of Lenins two cultures theory and proletarian internationalism. For advocates of orthodoxy like Ivanov,
socialist culture had to be inextricably linked with the notion of Soviet people disregarding national
filiations (Brudny 2000, 923).
In reality, a middle ground was often reached between nationalists and internationalists. National
histories under communism usually conveyed a teleological narrative based on Marxist evolutionist
historical stages, where the class struggle dialectic between the dominant and the subaltern classes
triggered historic change and progress. Cuba provides a good example of the combination of nation-
alist and internationalist narratives given its distinct racial, ethnic and historical makeup from the
USSR. In Cuba, the Western MarxistLeninist narrative of oppressed classes that posited a lineage
of ancient slaves/mediaeval serfs/proletarians, had to be adapted to the local context and replaced by
the indigenous people/black slaves/proletarians scheme. Then, this MarxistLeninist narrative was
combined with the Cuban radical-nationalist narrative that posited an evolution from the warriors
fighting for independence against Spain in the nineteenth century and the guerrilla revolutionaries
led by Fidel Castro (Alonso Gonzlez 2014; Alonso Gonzlez 2015).
These hybrid narratives had to be represented in public by the new communist heritage. This
involved the twofold task of recovering past features representative of the oppressed lineage, and the
use of monuments and museums for the production, naturalisation and dissemination of their history.

5. Museums and the building of communism

Since the start of the Soviet revolution, radical communist artists, professionals and intellectuals had in
various ways criticised the museum as a bourgeois temple of beauty and space of mere contemplation
(Groys 1994, 145). Baller built on these critiques to argue that:
in tsarist Russia, just as in the capitalist countries today, museums, as a rule, were a kind of store houses of cultural
and historical values. Their activities were academic or at best strictly culturological in nature. They were little
connected with the pressing problems of peoples life. (1984, 193)
He considered, however, that museums should play an active role in the construction of communism
in the USSR. For Baller, museums:
 8 P. Alonso Gonzlez

do not only promote the dissemination of knowledge of the countrys past and do not only develop aesthetic tastes
in people, but also actively disseminate the scientific, Marxist-Leninist world outlook; they assist in educating
young people in the revolutionary traditions of the communist party, carry out exchanges of advanced industrial
experience and promote interest in modern science and technology. (1984, 193)
Throughout the communist world, museum professionals had a utilitarian understanding of muse-
ums, considering them to be pedagogic instruments to enhance the peoples intellectual and cultural
standards (Anoschenko 1977, 63). Museums were openly defined as didactic tools of propaganda:
Soviet Museums are an efficient propaganda tool for communist ideas, for the communist conception
of the world and thus for communist education (Galkina et al. 1957, 3). These ideas underpinned
two museum policies that were replicated in most communist countries: the creation of an ideal-type
Museum of the Revolution and the implementation of vast networks of local museums.
In a similar fashion, the key figure of Cuban revolutionary heritage policies, Marta Arjona Prez,
conceived museums as propaganda instruments. For her, some bourgeois scholars oppose this view
arguing that, if we do not proceed with caution, history museums can cease to be instruments of
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education to become devices of propaganda (2003, 96). Because Arjona Prez defined propaganda as
the effort to propagate an idea, she considered it legitimate for museums to concentrate on the dis-
semination of the Marxist conception of history, art or science (2003, 96). Accordingly, museums were
understood as places where heritage features and historic narrative should be presented in a specific
context in dialectic relation following scientific philosophical conceptions according to an objective,
a thesis to be demonstrated every museum is also a proved thesis (Arjona Prez [1986] 2004, 36).
Museum objects were not supposed to represent the past but to serve as evidence demonstrating the
current state of socioeconomic development according to the scientific laws of MarxismLeninism. As
Wolfgan Klausewitz, the renowned curator from the German Democratic Republic, argued, without
objects:
scientific knowledge cannot advance, and the appropiation of the objective reality in the process of social repro-
duction is precluded. Historic objects are the appropriation of the past, they give the measure of the political,
economic and cultural development of a period and a society in a specific territory [which is] essential for under-
standing the phases of social evolution, and to document and demonstrate the material progress accumulated
hitherto. (1988, 5, translated by the author)
Although Baller does not address this issue directly, it fits with his broader theoretical framework of
heritage: in the effort to build communism, museums incorporated past heritage (low) as raw material
into the production of the new socio-political life (high). When the past heritage was not considered
suitable for the museum, museums commissioned specific artworks that could reflect the truthfulness
of real life. However, the museum was always held in low regard, and constituted a place for those
who could not represent the real life of communism. Unsurprisingly, for Baller, a traditional artist
belongs, figuratively speaking, to the domain of the museum. He may be extremely sincere and have
a brilliant drawing technique, yet he is completely oblivious of the essence of art: the living pulse of
life (1984, 152).

6. Monuments and socialist realism

Contrary to museums, monuments were conceived as artistic creations. Aesthetic appeal was consid-
ered necessary to improve the public reception of ideology by giving it tangible form within public
space. Because the communist system presented itself as enacting a revolutionary transition towards
communism and as being permanently under construction, it had to ground its ideology in the solidity
and sense of perdurability that monuments provided. Because of the difficulties communist regimes
had in dealing with the past, the present focus and future orientation of the revolution, monuments
were propagandistic and didactic, and orientated to the people to come (Begi and Mraovi 2014).
As part of revolutionary art, Baller considered that monuments had to:
contribute actively to the great revolutionary transformation of the world and to the building of communism.
Soviet literature and art are called on to arouse each person as a creator, to instil in him the desire to work for
the benefit of society and to give all his abilities, gifts and talents to this cause. (1984, 158)
 International Journal of Heritage Studies 9

However, genuine innovation in artistic creativity finds its expression in the ideological content, and
only then in form, and this change is never so rapid as in science (1984, 146). If content was provided
by MarxistLeninist ideology and could not be discussed, form similarly had to remain under rigid
control and be homogeneous. That is, monuments had to be socialist realist. The standard Soviet
argument for socialist realism demanded artists to give a correct, Party reflection of the present, and
a bold, revolutionary vision of the future (1984, 149), socialist in content, realist in form. Realism had
to reflect life, incorporating the progressive contents of previous forms of art to represent the objective
conditions of historical development. Absolute meaning required a break between representation
and reality, past and present in other words, the suppression of any sort of transcendence outside
ideology. As Groys has argued, socialist realist art was thus crucial for erasing the boundary between
poster and painting, between museum space and nonmuseum space (1994, 158).
This immanent rationale is the premise of MarxismLeninism as a modernising ideology that wipes
out any form of abstract representation that could lead to some sort of transcendence, thus erasing
anything standing outside ideology. According to Herbert Marcuse,
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as the regime has absorbed philosophy into the official theory, literature and art become dangerous. Ethical
philosophy becomes a set of rules, and Western philosophy is discredited. With the negation of philosophy,
the main ideological struggle then is directed against the transcendence in art. Soviet art must be realistic.
(Marcuse 1958, 128)
In practice, this resulted in the development of highly pedagogic and patriotic legislation concerning
monuments in the USSR, stating that monuments serve the goal of promoting the development of sci-
ence, education and culture, cultivating a lofty feeling of Soviet patriotism, and the ideological, moral,
internationalist and aesthetic education of the working people (USSR 1977, 5). This was replicated
in Cuba, where the second PCC Congress in 1980 concluded that special emphasis must be placed
on the development of sculptoric, monumental and muralist works that perpetuate our history and
commemorate the leaders, heroes and martyrs of the nation (PCC 1987, 71). Institutions specialising
in monumental works were often created to implement this legislation, such as Cubas CODEMA
(Advisory Board for the Development of Monumental Sculpture), which implemented quinquennial
plans for the creation of lists of socialist realist monuments demanded by the Party.
As with the MarxistLeninist master-narrative, however, socialist realism became an ideal-type
that was constantly being renewed in the USSR, and adapted to local traditions in every country. It
remains to be seen the extent to which socialist realism became hegemonic in different contexts, and
whether and how artists and professionals resisted socialist realism in the field of heritage.

7.Conclusion
If, following Baller, the assimilation of the cultural heritage is a necessary condition for creating com-
munist culture and a most important constituent of the cultural revolution (1984, 165), the necessity of
developing in-depth accounts of heritage theory and practice in communist regimes becomes apparent.
Ballers work reveals how the uses of heritage by communist regimes differ only in degree from
other political regimes. As in liberal democracies and totalitarian states, communist regimes have used
history and heritage to disseminate and give tangible form to official ideology, and its representations in
the forms of a metanarrative and a series of myths and symbols. The new symbolic order rested upon
a disciplinary institutional framework that rendered power circulatory and prevented deviation from
the official authorised heritage discourse (Smith 2006). This contrasts with the supposedly neutral and
a-ideological character of heritage in capitalist societies. As iek (2010) has argued, capitalist societies
produce the idea that ideology as false consciousness does not exist anymore and only different subjective
positions apply. This creates the appearance that ideology has vanished and that we live in a post-ideo-
logical society where capitalism is, so to speak, everyday life. In the communist world, the reverse applied:
everyday life had to coincide and resemble ideology, and the control of heritage was central for this task.
Because the meaning of ideology under socialism depended on a sense of historical development,
the articulation of perceptions of historicity and temporality in the public sphere through heritage in
 10 P. Alonso Gonzlez

education, art, museums and monuments was deemed crucial for building legitimacy. For authors
like Orwell, Kundera or Havel, the break with the past was the ultimate goal of communism, since
memory allowed people to recall the political alternatives that had existed in the past. Ideology and
heritage were fundamental for communist regimes to create:
a system based on the jamming of information and memory. Hence all the talk of the revolutionary break with
the past, the new age, the new community of socialist nations, the new social forces and, last but not least, the
new man. (Rupnik 1989, 235)
This rhetoric was strongest in the heartland of communism, the USSR, which established clear leg-
islative, theoretical and practical frameworks in terms of heritage, monuments and museums. Even
countries with a complicated relationship with the USSR, such as Cuba, mostly adhered to Soviet
practices and aesthetics. Communist countries could celebrate their national traditions and identities,
but they did so by enforcing most of the categories, principles and values established by the most
symbolically powerful communist country: the USSR.
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Of course, communist countries were not monolithic and there were important differences among
them in terms of heritage politics and policies. However, Ballers work also points to some areas of inquiry
that are characteristic or specifically privileged by communist regimes. These include the consequences
for heritage of, first, the present and future orientation of communist ideology, second, the tight relation
between historiography and heritage, and third, the hybridisation between national narratives, traditions
and identities and internationalist ones. Similarly, it remains to be seen how the different degrees of
adoption of socialist realism and the internal debates and resistance spurred by it in different countries
affected heritage production. It has been the aim of this paper to spark debate on these significant topics
and to establish a dialogue between Ballers theorization of heritage and the main features of communist
heritage. In doing so, it has aimed to promote an exchange of ideas with other case studies globally in
order to establish a comparative framework among them, highlighting the differences and similarities
concerning the uses of heritage in capitalist and communist countries. This might allow us to shed light
on the many topics and processes left out in this necessarily brief critical review of a hitherto unnoticed
but nonetheless important book such as Communism and Cultural Heritage.

Note
1.
I will simply name countries as communist when they assumed some form of Marxist ideology, lacked a free
market and the state owned most means of production. This includes the states labelled as realist socialist, state
socialist, socialist and communist.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Pablo Alonso Gonzlez is postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Heritage Science (Incipit-CSIC). He holds a PhD
in History from the University of Len (Spain) and a PhD in Archaeology at the Heritage Research Group, University
of Cambridge (UK). He has published five books and articles in prestigious international journals on topics ranging
from cultural heritage and archaeology to spatial planning and social theory.

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