Baranov statue

Although the case of Baranof Elementary School resembles the current situation in Sitka, it is the case of Baranov’s statue, that is the prism through which one can observe the conflicted memory in Sitka. The monument was erected on October 15^th, 1989, at the very center of Sitka in front of Harrigan Centennial Hall. Official commissioning was an important and a festive event. Sitka’s ‘The Honorable Mayor’ Dan Keck assisted by its former mayor John E. Dapcevich accepted the statue ‘for the people of Sitka’²⁸⁷. The statue was blessed by the Archpriest Eugene Bourdukofsky, St. Michael’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral. Songs were performed: “America” by Bates & Wood, “America, My Homeland” by O’Keefe & Paterson, and “Alaska, Flag Song” by Drake & Dusenbury²⁸⁸. The event was a mixture of American and Alaskan patriotism with the pride of Sitka’s Russian heritage. The Harrigan Centennial Hall was built in 1967 to commemorate 100 years of the Alaska Purchase and was named after it²⁸⁹. The bronze statue of Baranov was a gift to the town from local businessmen Llyod and Barbara Hames. Commissioning the statue in the midst of perestroika was a sign of thaw in Soviet-US relations and a result of a growing interest in Russia’s colonial heritage in America. Such heritage was seen as a tool to boost Alaskan tourism. A statue commemorating the most significant creator of Russian heritage could be of particular value, which could draw attention of tourists returning to their cruises nearby²⁹⁰. Shortly after the statue’s dedication, local newspaper Daily Sitka Sentinel informed about the joy and excitement, which emerged in Soviet town of Kargopol, Baranov’s birthplace after the local community had heard about the statue. Kargopol citizens sent a letter to Sitka’s mayor²⁹¹, expressing their feelings. The sponsors prepared a pamphlet for the commissioning of the statue. Dr. Evelyn Bonner wrote gave there a description of Baranov’s qualities: Aleksandr Andreevich Baranov was

287 Booklet: Commemorative Statue Dedication. Centennial Building. One Thirty O’Clock. Sitka, Alaska, Archives of Sitka National Historical Park, SITK 25380 Sitka NHP Record Collection_Series II_Box 035_File Unit 072.

288 Ibidem.

289 https://www.cityofsitka.com/departments/HarriganCentennialHall [access: April 29^th, 2022].

290 K. N. Owens, A. Yu. Petrov, op. cit., p. 276.

291 W. Swagel, Baranof Again Ties Sitkans to Russians, [in:] Daily Sitka Sentinel. Sitka Weekend, Friday, April 21^st, 1989.

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one of the outstanding personalities in the settlement of North America by Europeans (…).

History does not tell us for sure whether Baranov was a violent ruler or a benevolent leader, but it tells us that he was an honest, generous, and hardworking man²⁹². However, despite donor’s intentions and the acceptance of the statue ‘for the people of Sitka’ not all the people of Sitka shared the view of the town’s elite. The statue sparked debates and controversies from the very beginning. Before it was even dedicated. Tommy Joseph, a Tlingit woodcarver records: the day before the statue was supposed to be unveiled, somebody cut off Baranov’s nose. They had to make a new one and repair it. It was never revealed who did it²⁹³. The backlash against the statue continued in the entire period of post-Cold War era.

Monuments are means of media production, which are intentionally created by certain group of people to commemorate a person or an event²⁹⁴. They intervene in the spatial characteristics of their location and inscribe a certain perception of a respective event or a person among the local community. Andrzej Szpociński emphasizes that monuments themselves are one of Nora’s lieux de memoir²⁹⁵. James A. Young points out several aspects surrounding a role of monuments in cultural memory: Indeed, in the eyes of many contemporary artists and critics, the traditional monument’s essential stiffness and grandiose pretensions to permanence thus doom it to an archaic, premodern status. Even worse, by insisting that its meaning is as fixed as its place in the landscape, the monument seems oblivious to the essential mutability in all cultural artifacts, the ways the significance in all art evolves over time. In this way, monuments have long sought to provide a naturalizing locus for memory, in which a state’s triumphs and martyrs, its ideals and founding myths are cast as naturally true as the landscape in which they stand. These are the monument’s sustaining illusions, the principles of its seeming longevity and power.

But in fact, as several generations of artists—modern and post-modern alike—have made

292 E. Bonner, Aleksandr Andreevich Baranov. 1747 – 1819, [in:] Booklet: Commemorative Statue Dedication.

Centennial Building. One Thirty O’Clock. Sitka, Alaska, Archives of Sitka National Historical Park, SITK 25380 Sitka NHP Record Collection_Series II_Box 035_File Unit 072.

293 Interview with Tommy Joseph, conducted at the Sitka National Historical Park by Kacper Dziekan on October 20^th, 2021.

294 W. Bałus, Pomnik, [in:] Modi memorandi. Leksykon kultury pamięci, ed. M. Saryusz-Wolska, R. Traba, Warsaw 2014, pp. 387-388.

295 A. Szpociński, Miejsca pamięci (lieux de mémoire), [in:] Teksty Drugie 2008, 4, p. 12.

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scathingly clear, neither the monument nor its meaning is really everlasting. Both a monument and its significance are constructed in particular times and places, contingent on the political, historical, and aesthetic realities of the moment²⁹⁶. The meaning of Baranov statue is certainly not everlasting. Neither is it mutually understood by Sitka’s residents. Once erected, Bronze-made Baranov is a man in good shape, sitting firmly at the pedestal and looking with confidence towards the horizon. Such an image is rather contradictory to Baranov’s actual characteristics to be found in the primary sources²⁹⁷. The inscription placed on the plaque read: That we may dwell in amity and peace forever in this region²⁹⁸. The Baranov’s peaceful message is one of the mostly contested aspects of his rule in Alaska. Although Baranov is said to seek peace in his colony²⁹⁹, his attempts were not fully successful. Different relations with various Tlingit clans add to the complexity of this issue. According to Sergei Kan, Baranov managed to establish friendly relations especially with Kaagwaantaan, who respected Baranov and were even referring to him as shaade haani (lit. "the one at the head of us"³⁰⁰. Baranov interactions with Kiks.adi were much more complicated, which influences the modern perception of RAK’s first Chief Manager among Sitka’s Indigenous population. The vandalization of the statue, mentioned by Tommy Joseph prior to its dedication could be (but doesn’t have to be) related to that perception. He adds: Other [indigenous] people said ‘why don’t we do something to balance that, with Katlian for example, but it always got a shutdown³⁰¹. This is an yet another example of the conflicted memory space in the city. Baranov’s foe, Kiks.adi heroic leader is presented as a proposal to be commemorated as a balance to Baranov. The tensions reemerged from time to time reaching its first peak in 2017 on the eve of 150^th anniversary of Alaska Purchase. Local media covered the attempts of removing the statue from the post and/or possibly placing there a statue of Katlian³⁰².

296 J. A. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials in History, [in:] Cultural Memory Studies. An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook, ed. A. Erll, A. Nuenning, Berlin, and New York 2008, pp. 360-361.

297 K. N. Owens, A. Yu. Petrov, op. cit., p. 276

298 Ibidem, p. 276.

299 S. Kan, op. cit., p. 65.

300 Ibidem, p. 69.

301 Interview with Tommy Joseph, conducted at the Sitka National Historical Park by Kacper Dziekan on October 20^th, 2021.

302 https://www.kcaw.org/2017/11/27/statue-russian-leader-sparks-controversy/ [access: April 29^th, 2022].

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More and more vocal calls for the removal were in line with the general development of postcolonial discourse in the US and actions aimed at decolonization³⁰³ of American public sphere. Various historical colonial figures started to be evaluated through the lens of postcolonial theory, indigenous people’s oral tradition or other accounts of historically forgotten people such as African Americans. One of the most significant cases was the deconstruction of one of the most prominent American heroes George Washington³⁰⁴. Although Baranov’s case is different, it is also his relations with the peoples subjected to him (e.g., Aleuts) and influenced by him that served as a base for the new perception. The attempt to remove Baranov statue had a second and final peak in 2020 during the Black Life Matters protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. The monument was vandalized again, and the petition was launched to call for the removal.

The petition reached 2,886 supporters³⁰⁵ and the discussion on the removal was brought in front of the Sitka Assembly. After the public hearings and debates, on July 14^th, 2020, the Assembly voted to remove the statue from the public, and to relocate it to the local history museum³⁰⁶. This news brought Sitka fame as it was no longer commented yet by local media such as the KCAW radio³⁰⁷, but also a wide range spanning from the state media such as a KTOO³⁰⁸ and ADN³⁰⁹ to national media such as the Washington Post³¹⁰. The decision received a backlash from Russian national media such as Rossiyskaya Gazieta³¹¹ and English-language ones, which are oriented on the foreign audience, such

303 See: P. K. Nayar, Decolonisation, [in:] The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary, Chichester (UK) 2015, p. 45.

304 B. Schwartz, Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington, [in:] American Sociological Review, Vol. 56, No. 2 (April 1991), pp. 221-236.

305 https://www.change.org/p/sitka-city-council-remove-baranof-statue [access: April 29^th, 2022].

306 City and Borough of Sitka, Resolution no. 2020-23, A Resolution of the City of Borough of Sitka Concerning the Relocation of the Alexander Baranov Statue to the Sitka Historical Society Museum, A digital archive of City and Borough of Sitka Assembly: https://sitka.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=4590312&GUID=BA0B64C7-D3AB-43C3-8DBB-A7EDCED89493&Options=ID|Text|&Search=baranov+statue [access: April 29^th, 2022].

307 https://www.kcaw.org/2020/07/15/assembly-approves-plan-to-relocate-baranov-statue/ [access: April 29^th, 2022].

308 https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2020/10/06/sitkas-baranov-statue-to-be-relocated-to-local-museum/ [access:

April 29^th, 2022].

309 https://www.adn.com/politics/2020/07/15/sitka-will-remove-controversial-russian-statue-from-prominent-downtown-spot/ [access: April 29^th, 2022].

310 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/alaska-city-relocates-russian-colonist-statue-to-museum/2020/07/15/cd7f46d0-c6e8-11ea-a825-8722004e4150_story.html [access: April 29^th, 2022].

311 https://rg.ru/2020/07/16/pochemu-v-ssha-demontirovali-pamiatnik-praviteliu-russkoj-ameriki.html [access: April 29^th, 2022].

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as Russia Beyond³¹². The decision was also met with an official response from the Russian Ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, who commented: We were deeply saddened by the fact that, amid the wave of desecration and demolition of monuments to historical figures that rose during the mass protests in the United States, it was decided to dismantle the statue of the main ruler of Russian settlements in North America installed in 1989. The resolution was adopted and included many emotional assessments (...) It is regrettable that history keeps on being politicized³¹³. Since there is no organized group of Sitkans with Russian ethnic background no attempt to stop the removal came from the local community. However, the Russian government-sponsored cultural organization Russian Community Council of the USA intended to keep the statue but failed.