Book Review of Píchová, Hana: The Case of the Missing Statue: A Historical and Literary Study of the Stalin Monument in Prague

In this intriguing and at times frustrating study, Hana Píchová makes a compelling case for the Stalin Monument in Prague as both an object and an idea in physical space and cultural consciousness. The book came about with Píchová’s unexpected acquisition of a cache of unpublished photographs of the 1955 monument as it was slowly being demolished in 1962. Taken secretly by Josef Klimeš, the last surviving sculptor to have worked on the project, he hid them for decades since photography had been banned during the year-long demolition process. He gave them to Píchová after an interview in 2012. Of this encounter, Píchová writes that “his patient explanations of the [monument’s] technical aspects […] made me appreciate the endeavor in spite of its political symbolism” (p. 5). This statement encapsulates Píchová’s binary approach, which is to contrast the monument’s overwhelming physicality and technical complexity with its sinister symbolic presence both in the past and present