Russia's postcommunist past: the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the reimagining of national identity

National monuments typically serve as aesthetic manifestations of dominant visions of history and collective identity, but they can also generate a contestation of the past they are intended to cement. Defending this two-pronged interpretive approach, this essay attends to the changing symbolic power of a unique national monument--the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow. The study traces the cathedral's historic role in Russia's national self-definition during the last two centuries. The cathedral's construction under tsars, destruction under Stalin, and the postcommunist rebuilding accompanied and justified a particular version of national identity. The role of the cathedral as a magnet for competing versions of Russia's traumatic past is illustrated by the controversy over its rebuilding after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Following the call of Benedict Anderson to regard nations as 'imagined communities,' scholars across the humanities have sought to investigate the formation of public memory and national identity. (1) Although [...]