Monumenti contesi. Arte pubblica e memoria urbana nella Russia contemporanea

In recent years, Russian public space has become a crucial battleground for negotiating and contesting collective memory. This phenomenon is evident in the polarity between the institutional rehabilitation of authoritarian symbols (such as statues of Sta-lin, emblematic of nostalgia and ideological metanarratives) and the ephemeral coun-ter-narratives generated by dissident Street Art. This essay, though briefly, explores the dialectic between aesthetics, politics, and society in post-Soviet Russia by examining recent monumental public commissions alongside unauthorized urban interventions. In this context, art emerges as a political tool - one that shapes national identity, often in contradictory ways - highlighting once again the tension between centralized power and critical consciousness.