Re‐Signifying Soviet Monuments: State Self‐Description, Memory Politics and Ontological Security in Estonia

ABSTRACT

Since the restoration of independence, Soviet‐era monuments in Estonia have remained contested sites through which historical legitimacy, political belonging and national identity are publicly negotiated. Following Russia's full‐scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these monuments acquired renewed salience as Estonia moved to regulate symbols that had become flashpoints in struggles over memory and the symbolic order of the nation‐state. This article examines how Soviet monuments in Estonia are re‐signified. Drawing on a data‐driven typology‐building approach and an analytical reconstruction of salient interventions since 1991, it develops a fourfold typology of re‐signification strategies and identifies the conditions under which they de‐escalate contestation, intensify it or displace it onto other symbolic sites and issues. The article shows how semiotic mechanisms of state self‐description shape these processes and argues that monument re‐signification is central to the symbolic reproduction of political community under conditions of ontological insecurity.