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The Belarusian protest movement that started in August 2020 has been discussed from the point of view of strategy and objectives, and as the cradle of a new subjectivity. This essay goes beyond those two perspectives by looking at the regimes of engagement, developing in interaction with the material and technological environment, that have given the protests their distinctive style. The first part looks at coordination and representation at protest events and in producing protest symbols such as flags. The second part discusses the role of Telegram and the emergence of local protest groups. Even though the movement did not grow organically out of everyday concerns, there are some signs that it has begun to reassemble local communities from above. Yet there are also indications that politics continues to be seen as distinct from everyday life, making it uncertain that the movement will lead to a deeper transformation of society.

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There is a widespread perception that the countries of the former Soviet bloc removed all or most communist-era public monuments soon after the end of socialism. Based on a number of heavily publicized instances of iconoclasm, this claim is wildly exaggerated. Focusing on war memorials, the paper provides an overview of cases of destruction and removal, starting in Soviet times. It shows that centralized campaigns to remove Soviet war memorials (as opposed to local initiatives) have been the exception rather than the rule. Thus the most recent Polish decommunization campaign is an outlier among post-socialist policies regarding such memorials. The paper also contextualizes cases of removal and destruction by mentioning other ways of dealing with Soviet war memorials, such as symbolic marginalization, artistic interventions, or new construction.

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