Mnemonic Bodies: The Vernacular Commemorative Tattoos

There are very few theoretically informed studies on commemorative tattoos and even fewer studies on the commemorative tattoos of political leaders. The only category of tattoos that has received more academic attention is the tattoos of criminals (Palermo Reference Palermo2004; Adams Reference Adams2009; Jacques Reference Jacques2017). A notable exception is Deborah Davidson’s significant research on grief and the “coming to terms with the past” dimension of commemorative tattoos (Davidson Reference Davidson2017). Her Tattoo Project—both a digital archive and an edited book—reunites insights from tattoo scholars, practitioners, and consumers. Some collected material for the project consists of autoethnographic contributions, which provide “contextual links between the study of commemorative tattoos and the process of selecting, inking, and living with them” (MacCath-Moran Reference MacCath-Moran2015, 213). The book considers various memorial tattoos and methodologies of approaching the topic and building a communal archive.

However, this study would have benefited from a more nuanced conceptualization of commemorative tattoos as well as from a thorough approach to how tattoos function as practices of memorialization through and through. Davidson and contributors to the Tattoo Project use a very broad definition of the “commemorative tattoo.” Hence, a vast majority of tattoos “can be coaxed within it” (Thompson Reference Thomson2018). Tattoo Project’s working definition of a commemorative tattoo is “memory or honor of a deceased person or animal” (Davidson Reference Davidson2017). Although the definition is broad enough and the act of tattooing itself can be regarded as a ceremonial practice of honoring someone’s memory, the Tattoo Project book fails to address the political dimension of commemoration in any detail. While not all commemorative tattoos can be examined through the lens of the politics of commemoration, some of them certainly ought to; these tattoos require a more nuanced conceptualization of what a “commemorative tattoo” is and does because their commemorative dimension is not only conspicuous and ceremonial but also top–down or bottom–up oriented.

This article does not attempt to offer an exhaustive typology of commemorative tattoos, as it mostly focuses on the political portrayal of former communist/socialist leaders. The vernacular commemorations of the former leaders inked onto the skin are collected into a body archive that reflects the memory of pain (through the act of tattooing) as well as the overwhelming emotions and recollections of a past that guaranteed certain ontological security. Most tattoos (irrespective of their function and meaning) are brought to life through voluntary pain inscribed into the body, but commemorative tattoos further shape and materialize memories and memorable events. Unlike other categories of tattoos, commemorative ones deflect from the purely aesthetic function to a ritual of commemoration that can be both political and spiritual, as one does not exclude the other. The connection between pain and cultural memory has been illuminated by Nietzsche’s classical philosophy long before the birth of Memory Studies as a field of inquiry. Hence, for the German cultural critic and philosopher of the will to power, “A thing must be burnt in so that it stays in memory: only something that continues to hurt stays in the memory. […] When man decided he had to make a memory for himself, it never happened without blood, torments, and sacrifices” (Nietzsche Reference Nietzsche1994, 38).

Those who chose to mark their bodies with portraits of former dictators’ consent to contribute to a culture of vernacular memorials: that is, a spontaneous form of the memorial created by individuals who are not related to or subsumed under institutions of remembrance. Although vernacular memorials are not included in official national museums and other institutions of remembrance, they are also part and parcel of public memory. Contemporary approaches of the term “public memory” can be traced back to Halbwachs (Reference Halbwachs1925)—who used the cognate term “collective memory”—and to Durkheim’s “collective representations” (Reference Durkheim1912). John Bodnar (Reference Bodnar, Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy2011) further elaborates on the meaning and content of this memory format, positing that “public memory emerges from the intersection of official and vernacular cultural expressions.” (Bodnar Reference Bodnar, Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy2011, 265) He also clarifies what “official” and “vernacular” memory cultures entail. By “official memory,” Bodnar means the official culture of elites (cultural and political leaders) who attempt to advance certain narratives about the past “that reduce the power of competing interests that threaten the attainment of their goals… Normally official culture promotes a nationalistic, patriotic culture of the whole that mediates an assortment of vernacular interests. But seldom does it seek meditation at the expense of ascendency” (Bodnar, Reference Bodnar, Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy2011, 265).

Vernacular memory, by contrast, “represents an array of specialized interests that are grounded in parts of the whole. They are diverse and changing and can be reformulated from time to time by the creation of new social units” (Bodnar Reference Bodnar, Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy2011, 265). Therefore, public memory is produced by a body of representations (both official and vernacular) that shape commemorative politics and its rhetoric. Along these lines of understanding public memory, it can be stated that the practice of commemorative tattooing explored in this study illuminates what “the rest of society that participates in public commemoration and protects vernacular interests” (Bodnar Reference Bodnar, Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy2011, 266) has to disclose about the memory of former communist dictators. The social dimension of the tattoos and their propensity to be grasped and noticed is part and parcel of their raison d’etre. In this vein, “A Robinson Crusoe figure would never be tempted to tattoo; alone on an island, tattooing would not make sense, because it is an inherently social practice. The act of tattooing, Gell posits, produces a “paradoxical double skin” that achieves “the exteriorization of the interior which is simultaneously the interiorization of the exterior” (Gell quoted in Pagliarini Reference Pagliarini2015, 206). Along the same lines, tattoos are treated as “social objects” (Rawls Reference Rawls2019; Bukovska and Mlynar Reference Bukovska and Mlynar2020). The criterion of visibility is critical in understanding tattoos as social objects “that are constituted and maintained by the locally situated work of the participants” (Bukovska and Mlynar Reference Bukovska and Mlynar2020, 74). Thus, social objects are features of “situated social practices: all social objects—including words and meanings—are created by participants using shared assembly practices that orient, legitimate and sanctioned systems of interaction” (Anne Warfield Rawls quoted in Bukovska and Mlynar Reference Bukovska and Mlynar2020, 74).

Unlike most of memorial culture, which is endorsed and sponsored by official institutions of remembrance, vernacular memories and memorials are not cast (and set) in stone memories about the past but more often than not are ephemeral cultural productions that display porous discursive frames. The mnemonic actors who engage independently in these cultural practices of remembrance and commemoration seek to reveal their fresh identities from the bottom–up. Hence, the production and consumption of vernacular memory cultures reflect a set of identity concerns. In this vein, vernacular memory acts as a mechanism of identification and self-identification with a lasting prominence of the past on the self. This cultural-political process ought to be scrutinized “from below” as well (and vernacularism plays an important role in materializing the memories of those who are left out of official collective memories). In this framework, the commemorative tattoos of former socialist and communist leaders can be understood as vernacular mnemonic expedients that seek to transform and expand cultural space. The political-cultural space, at both the national and transnational levels, can be democratized in the sense of encompassing those who feel disenfranchised or left out of the official memorial culture in a way that is not confined only to official institutions of remembrance and mass media’s representations of it.

Intentionally inscribed in the skin, tattoos are like crosses, candles, fluffy toys, quilts, roadside markers, and other vernacular memorials in that they convey the memory of a lost one. Taking a cue from Deborah Mix’s work, I argue that tattoos, unlike other vernacular memorials, cannot be visited and then left behind because they are “sublime scars” carried with the body (Mix Reference Mix, Greer and Grobman2015). Unlike memorial tattoos that mark the recognition of a group that suffered the same trauma (e.g., the victims of the Holocaust’s tattoos or the survivors of the Bataclan attack in France), the commemorative tattoos analyzed in this article reflect a centrifugal set of identity concerns, ranging from Yugonostalgia to individualized spaces of self-healing and bonding with a model of “great leadership.” While the symbolic meaning of the Holocaust victims’ tattoos was culturally constructed—and interpreted—only in the post-WWII period as an identity marker, the tattooing of the portraits of former socialist leaders emerged as a cultural practice of resistance and nostalgia for the security of the past. It is precisely this dimension that adds up to the creation of fresh identities from the bottom up and makes these commemorative tattoos particular and distinct from other commemorative tattoos.

For instance, the “novel” Holocaust-related commemorative tattoos reveal recently developed meanings and purposes. These re-tattoos are perceptually indistinctive from the actual ones executed in Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Nazis on the prisoners’ skin as identification numbers. Yet, unlike the prisoners’ tattoos, the children and grandchildren of Holocaust victims purposefully have their relatives’ number etched on their bodies. A relevant example in this respect is the artistic memory work of Dushan Marinkovic, an artist of Romani ancestry who is a third-generation Serbian Roma migrant living in Sweden. Marinkovic decided to have his grandfather’s tattoo re-enacted onto his arm. His grandfather survived deportation and Auschwitz and returned to his family; decades later, he raised his grandson (My Grandfathers Memory, digital print, 2014 from the exhibition Re-contextualizing Roma Resistance).Footnote ¹ These practices of commemorative tattooing (or better said, re-tattooing) have also gained momentum among the progeny of Holocaust survivors, especially in Israel (Brouwer and Horwitz Reference Brouwer and Horwitz2015; Astro Reference Astro and Aarons2016; Klik Reference Klik2017). Through these mnemonic practices, the public memory of the Holocaust is re-signified, and, as Brouwer and Horwitz poignantly argue, the “shifting conditions of discourse across time alter decorum about public memory of the Holocaust. Furthermore, the progenic practice, constituting a distinct form of trauma tattoo, enacts a mode of postmemory through a resignification of the original sign that makes visible the intergenerational trauma of the Holocaust” (Brouwer and Horwitz Reference Brouwer and Horwitz2015, 534).

While this cultural memory practice seems to proliferate among the young generation, not everyone appreciates it because it is disrespectful and incongruous with the customized commemorative practices dedicated to Holocaust victims (Abboud Reference Abboud2013). The memory entrepreneurs who enact these spontaneous memorials perform them outside the institutional formats of memory practice. This does not mean that the skin, as a “locus for commemoration” and “re-tattooing” as postmemory work, does not produce forms of “customizable individual and collective memory” (Klik Reference Klik2017, 649), even though they emerged outside of official institutions of memory creation and preservation. To sum up, the commemorative tattoos of former socialist leaders (Ceauşescu, Tito, and Stalin) ought to be understood as distinct both from commemorative tattoos undertaken by the progeny of Holocaust survivors (intergenerational trauma re-tattooing) and other commemorative tattoos (e.g., tattoos dedicated to the memory of 9/11 victims). Yet, it has to be acknowledged that all these commemorative tattoos can be regarded as vernacular memorials.

The life-long plasticity of commemorative tattoos makes them less ephemeral than other vernacular memorials (e.g., roadside memorials made out of plush toys or religious artifacts). The fact that they are connected to a mnemonic body confers a ritualist dimension of remembrance that differs from officially sanctioned memory cultures. The cultural practice of tattooing “draws abstract or overwhelming interior elements (thoughts, emotions, memories) out and materializes them through the infliction of pain. At the same time, things of desire outside the self (spiritual ideals, healing symbols, conceptions of a new self) are conveyed into the body through the process of painful inscription. Through the pain of tattooing and the marks left in the skin, abstractions are made concrete and real, shaping identity, memory, and spirituality” (Pagliarini Reference Pagliarini2015, 189). Thus, remembering through tattooing is never void of spiritual undertones because the painful intervention into the body does not leave the tattooed the same as before having the tattoo.

The vernacular instantiations of the cultural memory of former socialist leaders supplement and sometimes oppose the official enactments displayed in the public memory fora. As I will argue in what follows, the inked body accommodates commemorative representations of former political leaders who are sometimes (e.g., in Romania and Bulgaria) depicted in public memory as “unworthy” of commemoration. As the theorists of the “unmemorable” argue, this “does not designate things that memory cannot hold and has relegated to the realm of forgetting, but rather things that are not ‘worthy’ of remembrance and that, although remembered, never enter the realm of representation” (Vukov Reference Vukov, Sarkisova and Apor2008, 308). By these protocols of official memory, the image of the former socialist leaders cannot and shall not enter the cultural realm of representation. In Vukov’s view, the “unmemorable” is not a fight grounded in a conflict between memory and forgetting but rather one between memory and representation, “thus constituting the ‘limits of representation’ that historians such as Saul Friedlander have tried to probe.” (Vukov Reference Vukov, Sarkisova and Apor2008)

While the distinction between “official” and “vernacular” memory cultures (Bodnar Reference Bodnar, Olick, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Levy2011) is expedient in zooming in on the confrontations of memory politics, Bodnar’s claim that official memory is uniform and represents the interests of the elites (treated as a whole), whereas vernacular memory mostly pertains to the “people,” is thorny. The politics of memory in Central and South-East Europe has revealed that the battlefield of collective memory is very vast, amorphous, and various mnemonic groups within the elite’s banner contest to impose hegemonic narratives of memory. Thus, what seems to stand for “official” memory at one moment can be hugely altered in a very short time and replaced by another “official” version of the past. By the same token, vernacular memories—while disclosing fresh identities from the bottom–up—can turn into fiercely nationalistic, populist, radical-right oriented, and vindictive claim-making narratives that overshadow the supposed “official,” mainstream memories. Likewise, the vernacular interests should not always be associated with “ordinary people,” just as official ones should not be strictly linked to the ruling cultural and political elites. These considerations are not only meant to critically discuss Bodnar’s flaws in outlining “official” and “vernacular” memory theory but also to emphasize that the boundaries between the two memory cultures are quite porous. This penetrability between the two forms of public memory brings forward a considerable set of highly significant concerns that are beyond the scope of this study.

Political Portraits: The Iconography of Political Leaders

The recent collection of research articles focusing on the diverse employment of the political portraiture genre by various groups and social movements hones in on the proclivities of the leaders’ portraits to trigger political communication that is put to different ends (Cheles and Giacone Reference Cheles and Giacone2020). The Forward of this collection of research articles invokes Leon Batista-Alberti’s famous statement from his seminal On Painting, where he referred to the figurative genre of the portrait’s effectiveness as residing in “its ability ‘to make absent persons present’” (Alberti quoted in Cheles and Giacone Reference Cheles and Giacone2020). For the limited purpose of this article, I will explore Ceauşescu, Tito, and Stalin’s reliance on the portrait genre to engineer their personality cult. Furthermore, my exploration focuses on how the cult of charismatic leadership has been transformed since the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, particularly in regard to vernacular commemorative tattooing practices. The mnemonic actors who chose to have a portrait of a beloved communist leader inked onto skin aim to re-enact the official portrait in light of present concerns. Tattooing a portrait is currently accessible and no longer a privilege of the mighty (as before the 19th century). At the same time, the practice of tattooing is currently starting to be disidentified with deviancy and criminality.

The public iconography of the three former socialist leaders reveals several significant similarities regarding the depiction of the leader appearing supra-dimensioned when compared with all other persons or objects in the painting. All three leaders are notorious for endorsing a canonical portrait with several variations (mostly revealed in Tito and Stalin’s iconography and not in Ceauşescu’s). Ceauşescu was obsessed with his idealized portrait, whose standardization turned the image of the leader into a “videology” (Cioroianu Reference Cioroianu and Cesereanu2006)Footnote ² or an “icon” (Marin Reference Marin, Cheles and Giacone2020, 197). He was usually depicted in warm colors, wearing a well-cut black suit, smiling discretely, and gazing into the distance “to suggest that he was a leader with a vision” (Marin Reference Marin, Cheles and Giacone2020, 197). The official propaganda portraiture displays an everlasting young man, methodically concealing his real age and presenting himself as decades younger (Glăvan Reference Glăvan2019). Stalin’s iconography was also backed up by his cult of personality, and it “certainly owed something to Stalin’s affinity for self-aggrandizement” (Brandenberger Reference Brandenberger, Davies and Harris2005, 249). Thus, the official portraits of Stalin–especially after 1942, when Stalin’s public iconography significantly adjusted in the aftermath of the WWII Soviet offensive against Nazi Germany—did not disclose the leader as a regular (human) person. Most portraits depicting Stalin after 1942 display a super-human (hero and Marshal of the Soviet Union), presented in military uniform.

Tito also regulated how his image was expected to be displayed in the public sphere. It was well-known in former Yugoslavia that “in the premises of the federal organs photographs of the president may be displayed, but only those that are approved by the federal organ dealing with the affairs of science and culture. In the case of the president, socialist realism never died. His image was fully protected from different styles and interpretations” (Dimitrijević Reference Dimitrijević2002). Both Ceauşescu and Stalin encouraged the proliferation of grandiloquent titles linked to their public persona, and this personality cult obsession was also reflected in their official portraits. While Stalin particularly enjoyed portentous titles such as “Father of Nations,” “Coryphaeus of Science,” “Brilliant Genius of Humanity,” “Gardener of Human Happiness,” and “Great Architect of Communism,” (Volkov Reference Volkov2004) Ceauşescu liked to be called “The Genius of the Carpathians,” “Source of Our Light,” “Treasure of Wisdom and Charisma,” (Danta Reference Danta1993, 174; Behr Reference Behr1991, 175), and “Oak of Scorniceşti” (Gilberg Reference Gilberg2018).Footnote ³ The iconography of Stalin and Tito is more diverse than Ceauşescu’s, who was obsessed with the same idealized image of himself that was displayed in a three-quarter profile portrait that appeared ubiquitously in socialist Romania’s public sphere (from classroom walls to textbooks and stamps). The omnipresence of the official portrait was also a political-cultural practice in both the USSR and former Yugoslavia.

Compared with Ceauşescu and Stalin’s abundant grandiloquent titles, Tito’s predilection to diversified honorific propaganda titles seems less pervasive, although he was the only person who ever received the rank of Marshal of Yugoslavia (the Yugoslav People’s Army) and managed to brand the term “Marshal” as synonymous with Josip Broz Tito in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The official portraits devoted to the three leaders reveal the thematic clusters emphasized in the honorific titles they endorsed. By this token, while Stalin and Tito were portrayed mostly in their military uniforms (with or without insignias and epaulettes), Ceauşescu’s canonical portrait reveals a beaming visionary man in a casual, well-cut but simple black suit. The artists who failed to portray the leader in line with the idealized portrait canon had the commissioned work rejected and critiqued, as happened with a portrait of Stalin painted by Brodsky in 1937. The portrait “depicts Stalin as a severe, strict leader, forcing the viewer to look up at him from below. The image lacked the requisite sense of warmth, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the commission in charge of the competition.”Footnote ⁴ All three political leaders gave great importance to photography as a model for official portraits. Like Stalin, Ceauşescu did not pose as a live model for a painter (Plamper Reference Plamper2012; Marin Reference Marin, Cheles and Giacone2020). For both of them, the ideal portrait relied on existing photographic templates. Plamper posits that “Stalin had to remain true to his image of the quintessential Bolshevik, who was modest and who acted rather than sitting for painters; moreover, the social realist aesthetics required that portraits be based on “existing depictions of Stalin or photographic and cinematographic templates” (Plamper Reference Plamper2012, 144). Before elaborating on the differences in the commemorative tattoos of the three former political leaders, let us move to individual cases studies.

Ceauşescu’s Official Portrait Tattoo

Although there were numerous homage portraits dedicated to Nicolae Ceauşescu from 1965 on, only one official portrait became ubiquitous in the public sphere of the Socialist Republic of Romania (Cătănuş Reference Cătănuş2005, 50). Cultural theorist Mihai Risnoveanu points out that “the standard state image of Nicolae Ceauşescu, until 1986–1988, the image appearing on official portraits placed in schools and state institutions of all kinds, showed a 50–60 something man, his hair a little strewn with gray, in a three-quarter profile, smiling benignantly. There was no flaw at all in this until the time that some person with a sense of humor called this type of portrait ‘Ceaușescu într-o ureche’ (One-eared Ceauşescu)” (Risnoveanu Reference Risnoveanu2006). After the so-called “Cultural Revolution” implemented in the country after Ceauşescu’s trip to North Korea in 1971, the official portrait, “by law, it had to hang on the walls in schools, factories, and army barracks, as well as at border checkpoints. Ordinary people were obliged to display his portrait on public ceremonies, state anniversaries, mass meetings, and official visits” (Dikötter Reference Dikötter2019, 212). Ceauşescu encouraged the exhibition of his official portrait in all public institutions, and he thought that his portrait displayed in a room was a suitable replacement for his physical presence. Former communist politician Paul Nicolescu-Mizil humorously recalls how during various official meetings speakers started their speech addressing the ruler directly (with the appellation “Dear Comrade Ceauşescu”), although the leader was not present in the room at the time (Cătănuş Reference Cătănuş2005, 51).

Manuela Marin advances an argument according to which Ceauşescu’s official portrait was used in the engineering of his personality cult (Marin Reference Marin, Cheles and Giacone2020, 191). Not every image representing the former socialist leader could have been elevated to the status of “official portrait.” For an image of Ceauşescu to become a “portrait” displayed in the public sphere, several conditions applied. First, the representation had to be less realistic and more ideological (Cioroianu Reference Cioroianu and Cesereanu2006; Preda Reference Preda2017; Dikötter Reference Dikötter2019). This requirement included the necessity of the leader’s portrait being painstakingly scrutinized for blemishes and defects. Although the leader was ill and visibly older in the late 1980s—the archival material of the Romanian National Television has preserved a multitude of footage of Ceauşescu from that decade—the official representations had to respect the canonical portrait where he looked everlasting young, radiant, unperturbed by illness or fatigue and in exemplary good shape. Ceauşescu’s housekeeper Suzana Andreiaş posits that the communist leader always came dressed up in his elegant suit and white shirt for breakfast. He would never allow himself to show up publicly in pajamas or other at-home garments (Dobrescu Reference Dobrescu2004, 142–145). This piece of biographical literature reveals that Ceauşescu fully identified with the official representation of the Romanian communist leader, and his commitment to the officially endorsed image was through and through.

Correspondingly, artists were not expected to have the leader pose for them, but they mostly used forged photos of Ceauşescu (Preda Reference Preda2017, 174) that were delivered to them “by a special photo laboratory, which was commissioned to execute the Romanian leader’s portraits.” (Marin Reference Marin, Cheles and Giacone2020, 192). The acclaimed artist Ion Grigorescu recalls that he was commissioned—as a member of the Romanian Artists Union (UAP)—to execute a portrait (painting) of Ceauşescu in 1980, but his piece was eventually rejected by the regime because it displayed three Ceauşescus instead of one. The unusual portrait was meant to suggest that Ceauşescu “was always discussing the important issues only with himself. He was his own critic, the only one” (Grigorescu, cited in Andres Kreuger Reference Krueger2009). Oddly enough, the communist cultural emissaries asked him to revise the portrait by exposing only one idealized Ceauşescu. Later on, Grigorescu recalls that Comrade Dobrescu (the head of the exhibitions’ bureau) was shocked to see the peculiar portrait and remarked, “Well, you made three of them, but I haven’t seen a painting like this until now… if you want you can keep only the one in the middle. And so I did. On the same canvas, these parts became the landscape.”Footnote ⁵

Grigorescu posits that, in the end, he did not understand why they wanted him “to continue the artwork, but they asked [him] to do only one Ceauşescu, they asked [him] to finish the work. When they refused, they said the work was too realistic, anatomically, but also that the work was showing his age. In the official portraits, Ceauşescu was always looking younger. And the guidelines in those times for Ceauşescu portraits set out to really create an idealized image” (Grigorescu cited in Andres Kreuger Reference Krueger2009). Thus, the iconography of the leader was a visual ideology that attempted to impose the same effigy as the canonical portrait. As Cioroianu argues, Ceauşescu’s obsession with his self-portrait led to endless reproductions of the same idealized image where there was no room for indexical realism and anatomical accuracy (Cioroianu Reference Cioroianu and Cesereanu2006). Correspondingly, all the artistic renderings of the leader’s cult seem as if “the Conducător would have painted them himself, if only he had known how” (Preda Reference Preda2017, 200). Ceauşescu’s passion for his portrayal was so intense that people were drawing his official portrait with their bodies during big mass celebrations. This incongruous choreography, where hundreds of young people formed the portrait of the “beloved leader” with their bodies, was usually staged during the annual national communist cultural festival “Song to Romania” (1976–1989). As the festival took place during the summer months, many participants complained of exhaustion and faintness, especially because of the long rehearsals under the torrid sun. These mass parades used the human body as support for enacting the official portrait of Ceauşescu (among other symbols of the communist regime), and this imposed the choreography of the personality cult to remain in the traumatized memories of its participants. Given this history of deferential bodies enforced to enact the official portrait of the leader, it becomes even more bewildering as to why Romanians deliberately decided to have the same portrait inked into their skin as a mnemonic choice.

After the death of the “beloved leader,” the notorious portrait vanished from the public space and public memory for a while only to vigorously re-emerge after several years in various instantiations and re-enactments. Perhaps one of the most unexpected re-enactments of the official portrait is revealed in the Ceauşescu tattoo. Although Ceauşescu would not have approved of tattooing his official portrait on the skin, some Romanian citizens engaged in this very cultural practice after his death (Asavei Reference Asavei2016). Intriguingly, these mnemonic actors used this radically committed piece of memory-work as a commemorative practice, disregarding the fact that “the tattoo was deemed, the same as other cultural products (for example, the rock or pop music, the hippie clothes), an attempt to destroy the values of the totalitarian system, which had previously set its moral frames onto the society that it led. The communist regime has never allowed for any subculture form to undermine its projection on culture or for delinquents to alter the formal image of society” (Muha Reference Muha2019, 112).

Several tattoo parlors, mostly located in the urban areas of Romania (Bucharest, Bistrita, Oradea, Brasov, Iasi, and Vaslui), offer templates of the Ceauşescu portrait in their catalogues. The oldest parlor (called Roxy Tattoo) located in the “Centrul Vechi” (The Old Town Center) in the capital offers a Ceauşescu portrait tattoo model to those clients who have an interest in political portraits (on the parlor’s website, Ceauşescu’s portrait tattoo model is presented under the rubric “For Boys”).Footnote ⁶ The photograph displays a large black tattoo of Ceauşescu’s portrait inked on someone’s foreleg. A less famous salon in a smaller city—Vaslui (North-Eastern Romania)—displays Ceaușescu’s portrait tattoo in its catalogue under the rubric of “Celebrity Portraits.” One of the artists recalls that, although there is no big demand for the former dictator’s portrait, he tattooed approximatively seven people with the infamous portrait in his four years practicing at Angels parlor.Footnote ⁷ He posits that all those tattooed with the official portrait motivated their choice by emphasizing their longing for a more secure past where their voice would have been heard and “where everyone had equal access to jobs and housing under the leadership of a just and uncorrupted leader…unlike our current politicians.”Footnote ⁸

In 2012, a Ceaușescu portrait tattoo received the “Best in Color” prize during an international tattoo contest organized in the city of Iaşi. The tattoo artist, Szikszai Jozsef Janos (Jeff), started his career in Târgu-Mureș and then moved to the city of Brașov. He is also one of the founding members of the Professional Tattoo Artists Association in Romania. For the 2012 international tattoo contest, Szikszai Jozsef Janos decided to execute a large-scale portrait of Nicolae Ceaușescu on the back of a young man from Iași (the tattooed person is known as “Toni”).Footnote ⁹ The awarded tattoo is aesthetically pleasing, exhibiting vibrant reds and strong pigments that went into drawing the notorious portrait. “Toni” declared to the Romanian press that “the idea to have a tattoo with Ceauşecu’s portrait is not new. I had this idea in mind for a long time and now I had the chance to bring it to life. Although I lived under communism for only twelve years, I had a beautiful childhood during Ceauşecu’s regime… I consider that there are still many nostalgic people for that period, and I am one of them.”Footnote ¹⁰

Tsoie Tattoos Studio advertises a photographic tattoo of Ceauşescu’s portrait (Figure 1). Compared with the other tattooed portraits, this one is a digitally made tattoo whose photographic resemblance is remarkable, revealing the facial expression of the former political leader exactly as it used to appear in the propaganda iconography before the 1980s. Similarly, the Ceaușescu portrait advertised by Roxy Tattoo Parlor and the Tsoie tattoo are made on a client’s foreleg. Tsoie Tattoo Studio had 60,747 followers on Facebook in January 2021, and the tattoo titled Nicolae Ceauşescu, A Great Man (posted on June 17, 2016) received 90 likes and has been shared by 7 people on their social media.Footnote ¹¹

Figure 1. Tsoie Tattoos Studio, Nicolae Ceauşescu, A Great Man Tattoo, 2016.

Magnum Ink Tattoo parlor in Bistrița also offers a drawn model of the infamous portrait, but it does not exhibit a tattoo as such. All these vernacular enactments of Ceauşescu constitute a memory culture that envisages the former dictator’s representations as “worthy” of materialization. Thus, this vernacular memory culture—among other vernacular enactments of the memory of the former political leader—contrast the official scarcity of visual representations of Ceauşescu. Even 30 years after the fall of the regime, “Exhibitions on the communist past are scarce in Romanian museums. In contrast to this scarcity, the commemoration of the ‘communist tragedy’ through memorials, monuments and the hybrid species of memorial-museum is disproportionately present” (Cristea and Radu-Bucurenci Reference Cristea, Radu-Bucurenci, Sarkisova and Apor2008, 275). The vernacular memorials inked onto skin attempt to counterbalance, without managing to (actually) balance, the prevalence of the “communist tragedy” narrative in present-day Romania. In this vein, the post-communist nostalgia in the former Eastern bloc can be understood as peculiar cultural memory instantiations of some internalized desires to recuperate socialism and its lost set of moral and political obligations.

Marshal Tito and the “Tittooages”

Unlike the Romanian and former USSR cases, the practice of tattooing is very old in the Balkan Peninsula, supposedly going back to the religious and ethnical tattoos performed by the Croatian Catholic population in Bosnia and Hercegovina and Albania as an identity marker against Ottoman occupation.Footnote ¹² However, there is no scholarly consensus on whether these religious/ethnic tattoos originated as a custom of resistance against the Ottoman occupation or they actually pre-existed the arrival of Christianity and are rather associated with the cultural-religious customs of the Illyrians, Thracians, and Iapydes (all of which inhabited the Balkans peninsula before the Slavs settled). The phenomenon of tattooing was also widespread from northern Greece to Macedonia and Western Bulgaria (Truhelka Reference Truhelka1896). While Catholic Christians were not reluctant regarding the custom of tattooing, for orthodox Christians and Muslims, this practice was regarded as a disgrace (Truhelka Reference Truhelka1896). These injunctions against inking skin are also signaled by more recent studies, which posit that Islam strictly prohibited tattooing, especially because “Allah has cursed those women who practice tattooing and those who get themselves tattooed, and those who remove their face hairs […] to look beautiful, and such women as change the features created by Allah” (Taşğın and Mollica Reference Taşğın and Mollica2017, 280). If we read this statement together with Ciro Truhelka’s assertion (Reference Truhelka1896, 245) that mostly women and girls got tattooed in Bosnia and Hercegovina during important Catholic ceremonies such as Saint John’s Day (June 24) or Saint Joseph’s Day (March 19), we can assume that the main function of these religious tattoos was to prevent them from getting converted to Islam during Ottoman rule (1463–1878).

In former Yugoslavia, tattooing was not exclusively associate with religious devotion as previously assumed, nor with deviance and the penitentiary universe as in the other two case studies. Among other thematic clusters, the tattoos depicted symbols of the Yugoslav People’s Army as well as Josip Broz Tito’s portrait. This particular tattoo cluster was both pervasive during Yugoslav socialism and after the collapse of the regime. Tito’s mythic aura has materialized in numerous commemorations, starting with the biggest burial ceremony in 1980 whose magnitude reverberated worldwide as “the biggest event of this kind after Kennedy’s” (Simeunovic Bajic Reference Simeunovic Bajic2020, 46). Even today, the memory of Tito is still cherished within certain circles in former Yugoslavia and beyond. Mitja Velikonja researched the content and form of these “Titostalgic” cultural manifestations (Velikonja Reference Velikonja, Suber and Karamanic2012). Velikonja coined the term “Titostalgia,” which in his understanding is a “neologism, describing nostalgic sentiments, activities and products in post-Yugoslav societies that are connected to the late president of Yugoslavia Josip Broz, alias ‘Tito’ (1892–1980)” (Velikonja Reference Velikonja, Suber and Karamanic2012, 283). Yet, we should not be too quick to conclude that the Titoist discourse and nostalgia are predominant today. Velikonja also clarified that there are currently other political hegemonic narratives, myths, and heroes. More importantly for the scope of this study, within these new discourses and cultural imaginaries, “Tito and yougonostalgia generally figure as insults or convenient disparagements. The personality cult of the former Marshal all but disappeared from dominant discursive constructions. Or, more accurately, it moved elsewhere” (Velikonja Reference Velikonja2008, 17). One of these “other spaces” (the “elsewhere” of official culture) where Titostalgia has relocated is the human skin.

These peculiar commemorations on the skin are privately created and maintained, falling into the vernacular category (at least after 1991 when Yugoslavia disintegrated). While there are academic studies on the Titostalgia phenomenon as well as on tattoos from the Yugoslav People’s Army milieu (Velikonja Reference Velikonja2008; Abram Reference Abram2015), it has thus far remained only one type of political tattoo addressed in less detail. When Sandi Abram wanted to conclude his classification of tattoo designs related to the Yugoslav People’s Army, he claimed that there is only one tattoo category insufficiently explored in his study. In his words, “To conclude this classification of designs, inescapable ideal-typical, with a ‘pearl.’ Tattoos of Josip Broz Tito, ‘Tittooages’ so to speak (Močnik in Velikonja, Reference Velikonja2008, 22), certainly deserve a special place in the sphere of political portrayal and representation” (Abram Reference Abram2015, 108).

The tradition of tattooing the face of Tito can mostly be traced back to the period between 1950 and the 1980s, when his portrait (and the symbols of the Yugoslav People’s Army) was inked on the body of men in “the entire region of the former Yugoslavia” (Abram Reference Abram2015, 103). This interest in tattooing Tito’s portrait resurfaced after the fall of socialism. Danica Radisic makes it clear that “new color techniques began being used for new versions of Tito tattoos as well, among those who remained nostalgic.”Footnote ¹³ For a comparative perspective, her article is illustrated with two Tito tattoos next to each other, where the former Yugoslav leader is shown in an old, retro style (the pre-1990s tattoo version) and a new colorful portrait of the Marshal dressed in military uniform, visibly elder and wearing glasses. The older tattoo displays a younger Tito in a soldier’s uniform. Both tattoos used photographs of Tito as models for the drawing.

Tito’s iconographic appearances—especially in photographs—changed dramatically between 1943 and 1980, in line with the “dynamic relationship between the Western and Eastern perspectives on his leadership style, personality, and role, as communicated in the idiom of Western photojournalism and celebrity photography, as well as the style of official presidential photography in Yugoslavia” (Kurtovic Reference Kurtovic2012). Unlike Ceauşescu’s and Stalin’s portraits, the iconography of Tito (starting in the 1950s) glamorizes presidential portraiture to foster Marshal’s stardom in the West. As Kurtovic’s detailed research demonstrates, “Appropriating the rhetoric and formal devices of Western celebrity and glamour photography, Yugoslav photographs created a set of presidential stereotypes and their photographs were bearers of the conventional narrative of Tito’s presidency in Yugoslav magazines and books addressing Western audiences between 1960 and 1980” (Kurtovic Reference Kurtovic2012). Marshal Tito is photographed with a charming aura, exquisitely good-looking and in line with the main fashion trends from the West. Both Kurtović and Todić posit that the portrait featured on Life cover in 1949 reveals “Tito’s masculine and stylish appearance, rendering him the embodiment of a political stereotype of the ‘good-looking chap’ whose obvious personal ‘sex appeal’ is properly applied and mediated by the mass media in the same way as in Hollywood’s movies and the very popular cult of mature male movie-stars” (Kurtović Reference Kurtovic2012; Todić Reference Todić2014). Before this stardom era, Tito’s portraits—from the beginning of the communist era and its agitprop culture, and before the Stalin-Tito split in 1948—displayed a leader who was both dressed up and with the attitude of an old ruler impersonating a “guerrilla war hero” and “unique Yugoslav Marshal” (Todić Reference Todić2014). The two Tito tattoos (the earlier and the newer version) displayed in Danica Radisic’s article correspond to these two stages in Tito’s public iconography: “the guerrilla war hero” versus “the Yugoslav political celebrity.”

The post-communist tattoos reveal various visual instances of the leader. Some tattoos underline Tito’s stardom rather than his political persona as such. For instance, Laibachink Tattoo Parlor in Ljubljana offers a detailed tattoo representing the former socialist leader in his military outfit. The leader is depicted in vivid colors recalling the Hollywood stars. The presence of the fancy retro car that accompanies the cinematic depiction of Tito suggests the emergence of certain nostalgic feelings for the retro Yugoslav socialist chic. A different type of “Tito tattoo” can be noticed in a 2016 blog post on the website called TheMladichi (http://themladichi.com/tag/josip-broz-tito/). The photo depicts a rudimentary drawing of a pseudo-portrait. The first impression of the viewer is that the Tito tattoo is unfinished. The photograph appears under the banner Idols 5 (Tattoo April 2016, in Best Ex Yu Trash Tattoo of the Year). The accompanying text reads “In the world, a tattoo idol depicts a positivist, pop star or athlete. Is that true also for the Balkans?” The answer might be suggested by recent media reports from the former Yugoslavia. For example, recent media reports from Serbia reveal commemorative tattoos dedicated to the former Yugoslav socialist leader. On May 4, 2021, Tito nostalgia materialized in veritable pilgrimages to the Marshal’s grave. One of the photos published by Darko Vojinovic in the online outlet Napa Valley.com shows a man tattooed with Tito’s portrait. This tattoo discloses a younger Tito with a concerned facial expression. The drawing is not fully visible because the arm is put in a plaster cast. However, the white plaster cast carries a written message consisting of Tito’s death date (May 4) and the year of commemoration (2021). This visual detail indicates that Tito tattoo is not just a body embellishment, but a mnemonic device associated with the duty to pay respect to the dead Yugoslav hero.

Stalin Tattoos: From Penitentiary Symbolic Cryptography to Vernacular Memorials

In Jan Plamper’s rigorous analysis of Stalin cult, we found out that the Soviet public space was saturated with images of Stalin (Plamper Reference Plamper2012). The book zooms-in on several artistic representations of Stalin (e.g., poems, portraits, films, posters, statues) but overlooks the portraits inked on skin. The cultural practice of tattooing portraits of Stalin goes back well before the collapse of the communist regimes in the former USSR in 1991 (Bonnel Reference Bonnel1997). The practice of tattooing was prevalent among Soviet criminal prisoners, and studies of criminals’ body art reveal that most of these tattoos connoted a belief in “rebels against authority.”Footnote ¹⁴ Unlike the Romanian case where tattoos were deemed “delinquent” and a deflation of communist values—and, correspondingly, very few tattoos existed even within the penitentiary tattoo genre—the Soviet criminals’ archive reveals a steady interest in this cultural practice. The highly intriguing symbolic cryptography inked on the skin of Russian convicts can be interpreted by accessing several sources. The criminalistics expert Arkady Bronnikov (Reference Bronnikov2016) collected photographs of criminal inmates’ tattoos from 1960 to mid-1980 (supposedly with KGB support), and photographer Sergei Vasiliev composed his collection of tattooed prisoners with astute care for the smallest of details (his photographs were taken between 1989 and 1992) (see Murray and Sorrell Reference Murray and Sorrell2009). In addition, there are several Russian Criminal Tattoos Encyclopaedias where those interested in the topic can identify various tattoo designs/themes that were popular in the prison’s heterotopic spaces (known in Russia as the “Zone”).Footnote ¹⁵ The history of Russian prison tattoos goes back to the 19^th century when the government “began tattooing the phrase ‘KAT’ onto the faces of those convicted of a crime and sent to jail. This slang term was short for the Russian word for criminal and was used to show society that the person wearing the tattoo had been to prison.”Footnote ¹⁶

Soon after this official initiative, the prisoners decided to execute their tattoos until this practice became “illicit” and the authorities banned it. Condemned to less sanitary tattooing methods, the inmates continued this cultural practice underground. The vast symbolic cryptography inflicted on the bodies of inmates (multi-domed churches and monasteries, stars, skulls, crosses, spiders, dragons, medals, epaulettes, eyes, religious icons, and so on) are now decoded in line with the identity concerns of each category of prisoners. Thus, the choice of a certain tattoo model signified that “they were determined to show the world who they were, and not be pigeonholed by the government. They wanted to take the authority out of the hands of those in charge by making a practice that was intended as a punishment into something that they were proud of and chose to do for themselves.”Footnote ¹⁷

When the Soviets took power, Stalin’s official portrait unsurprisingly started to appear tattooed on political prisoners. Historians agree that there were two types of Stalin portrait tattoo: those carried by political prisoners and those embraced by the criminal underworld (Klements Reference Klements2019). However, the semantic interpretation of such tattoos by criminals and thieves was profoundly different from the tattoos of political prisoners. There is no consensus regarding the meaning and function of the Stalin portrait tattoo in the Zone’s symbolic universe. While some sources indicate the employment of the Stalin portrait tattoo as a bullet-proof device, others argue that these peculiar tattoos served as “visual agitation”/propaganda (Kozlov Reference Kozlov2015, 155). Tattoos of the political leaders were often inked on the chest supposedly to prevent being shot dead by the fire squads. Arkady Bronnikov explains that “often tattoos with portraits of Lenin and Stalin are intended to show patriotic feelings. However, some prisoners had portraits of Lenin and Stalin tattooed on their chest for ‘protection’, as it was commonly believed that the guards were forbidden to shoot at an image of their great leaders” (Bronnikov Reference Bronnikov2016).

A different understanding of the political leader tattoo refers to anti-Soviet feelings. In Vladimir Kozlov’s analysis of “a hooligan’s war” on the urban margins of the USSR, the historian underlines the subversive nature of some of the Stalin (and Lenin) tattoos: “Some would point to the tattooed portrait of Stalin and say ‘It is because of him that we are suffering in these prisons.’ Others, while raising an uproar in a public space, would open their shirts to reveal Lenin and Stalin and then cry out ‘I bear these (calling them something obscene) on my chest” (Kozlov Reference Kozlov2015, 155). After the collapse of the USSR, Stalin portrait tattoos extended their presence beyond penitentiary bodies and have ceased to connote the meaning supposedly understood by the inmates. Although there is no consensus on the meanings of the Stalin portrait tattoo produced and reproduced by inmates on their skin, the evocation of the political leader was certainly not purely decorative (as tattoos of stars, crosses, or dragons might be interpreted, despite the detailed decoding offered in the three volumes of Russian Criminal Tattoos Encyclopedia).

After the 1990s, Stalin portrait tattoos panoply continued to be present unremittingly on some “nostalgic” skins. My first encounter with tattooed persons who still worship Stalin took place in July 2017 in Gori (Georgia). After visiting the Joseph Stalin Museum (established in 1956) in his birthplace, I noticed two middle-aged men who had Stalin portraits tattooed on their forearm. The museum glorifies the life of Josif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (Stalin) and commemorates his achievements. Initially, the Stalin museum has been perceived as an official institution of remembrance (the materialization of the official memory of the historical moment). Starting with the “Secret Speech,” the museum should have been closed in line with the well-known legislation enacted by Nikita Khrushchev, according to which “the cult of Stalin” must be denunciated (Smith Reference Smith2005, 191). Yet, the museum remained opened because massive mass demonstrations occurred in Georgia. These riots encapsulated the population’s astonishment with Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization. As Smith poignantly notices, “Khrushchev’s reversal of the official deification of Stalin shocked the populace and provoked daring outbursts from those who would defend Stalin as well as from those who found the Secret Speech insufficiently radical.

In Georgia, officials had to cope with street protests against the re-evaluation of Stalin. Though they decisively quashed the pro-Stalin demonstrations in Georgia, Soviet authorities seemed tacit at least to support growing political and artistic liberalism in the months following the denunciation of the cult of personality” (Smith Reference Smith2005, 191). Currently, the museum’s display is a curious example of how official memory and vernacular memory are sometimes not in contradiction, but they might overlap within the space of public memory. The museum is still running, “although its existence is not legal (at least according to the law of Georgia). Thus, in this case, the memory of Stalin can be classified as ‘official’—as it is institutionalized in form of a state museum—but as long as this museum exists only due to the will of people, it could be considered as ‘vernacular’ as well” (Kovtiak Reference Kovtiak2018, 38). Although the museum was shut down in 1989, Georgians reopened it later. The director of the museum, Robert Maglakelidze, recalls that he always collaborated with the Ministry of Culture and that the mission of the museum is to “satisfy every visitor” (including those who love, detest, or know nothing about Stalin). Thus, as Katrine Gotfredsen argues “paradoxically, however, I would suggest that the ambiguity one meets in the representation of Stalin and the Soviet period was partly created by staff trying to adhere (rather than contest) the government and museum’s management initiatives to improve objectivity, professionalism, and an unbiased service for visitors (Gotfredsen Reference Gotfredsen and Norris2020, 392). The ever-persisting interest of the public in the Joseph Stalin Museum in Gori is difficult to assess, especially in a country which “has even introduced a penalty for the use of Soviet symbols, following bans in the Baltics and Ukraine” (Hopp Reference Hopp2017).

The two visitors tattooed with Stalin portraits were speaking in Georgian in the smoking zone outside the museum when I asked one of them in Russian if the tattoo represented Stalin’s portrait. The answer was that the tattoo was rendering “Father Stalin” as if he were alive. Both tattoos displayed a very detailed and multi-colored portrait of the former communist leader. Unlike the minimalist Stalin tattoos displayed in the black and white photographs from Russian Criminal Tattoos Encyclopaedias, the Stalin(s) tattooed on the forearm of the two visitors appeared as freshly executed portraits. Irrespective of whether they belong to the penitentiary space or not, the old tattoos of Stalin are usually monochrome (either black or blue) and executed quite schematically by following the outer part of a contour. The technology of the old Stalin tattoos reflects the old school tattoo design and style as well as improvised tattooing devices. As the Alchetron website reminds us, N. Banerjee recalled for the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that prisoner tattoos were performed by “instilling pigment in the skin with thousands of needle pricks. In the camps, the process can take anywhere from a few hours to a few years, depending on the artist and his ambition, says Mr Bronnikov. Because of prison conditions, tattoo artists have to improvise with materials and equipment. For instance, they will draw a picture on a wooden plank, place needles along the lines of the design, cover the needles with ink, and stamp the whole tableau on the prisoner’s body. Another method is to slice the image onto the skin with a razor and daub the cut with indelible ink.”Footnote ¹⁸

The newly tailored tattoos of Stalin reveal vivid portraits of the former communist leader executed in a realist tattoo style with all the shadows accurately mapped and in highly saturated colors. As with any realist tattoo depiction of celebrities, Stalin’s portrait requires considerable planning beforehand. Interestingly, the two tattoos revealing Stalin’s portrait I noticed in Gori were not identical. Although both were executed in a realistic style as veritable paintings onto the mobile canvas of the skin, both the colors used, and the shades looked unsimilar. Russian press has also noticed that “Stalin is making a comeback,” displaying photographs of recently made Stalin tattoos in a fancy parlor at Moscow’s Amber Plaza Shopping Centre.Footnote ¹⁹

Like the Romanian case explored in one of the previous sections of this article, The Moscow Times magazine (2017) pointed out that the elaborately executed Stalin tattoo shown in the newspaper’s pages had been completed during the Moscow Tattoo Festival in 2017. Both tattoos—those of Ceauşescu and Stalin—that were executed during tattoo festivals reveal the commemorative commitment of the tattooed, as well as their longing to have their tattoos seen. Thus, both the commemorative tattoo and the act of tattooing are rendered as an “inherently social practice” (Gell quoted in Pagliarini Reference Pagliarini2015, 206). Unlike other nonpolitical commemorative tattoos destinated for personal dealings with trauma or other personal histories worthy of commemoration, the commemorative tattoos of Ceaușescu and Stalin make little sense if not exhibited and gazed at.

When German photographer Sebastian Hopp travelled to Georgia—allegedly “to meet Stalin’s present-day followers to understand why these individuals are keeping his destructive legacy alive” (Hopp Reference Hopp2017)—one of the persons he encountered and photographed for The Calvert Journal was an elderly man called Shalva who “decided to get his Stalin tattoos together with nine other men, when Stalin’s body was removed from the mausoleum in Moscow” in 1961 (Hopp Reference Hopp2017). The photograph (Figure 2 shows Shalva sitting half-naked on his unmade bed. His white shirt with brownish stripes lies on the bed against the background of the peeling wallpaper. Shalva discloses his naked upper body to the camera revealing two quasi-identical old-fashioned tattoos of Stalin on each chest. On the left side of the chest, the tattoo exhibits a double portrait: of Stalin and Lenin, while the right side unveils only Stalin’s portrait of an equal size and form with the Stalin from the right side of the chest. Both of them are executed in a similar style, with the portraits inked on the skin in what is known as the Zone in Russia. Currently, several tattoo parlors provide catalogues with hundreds of tattoo models to choose from. In these catalogues, the Stalin tattoo cluster offers various hypostasis of the “former leader” portrait as a model for the further tattooed. A relevant example is the Tatufoto parlor from Moscow that offers not only a catalogue with various Stalin tattoo patterns (photos and sketches of the most popular Stalin tattoos) but also a short description of each tattoo pattern as well as a chart that indicates how many people wanted “Father Stalin” tattoos on the chest, back, feet, forearm, neck, and so on.Footnote ²⁰

Figure 2. Shalva Exhibiting His Stalin Tattoos (2017), The Calvert Journal, Photo by Sebastian Hopp

Apart from commemorative Stalin tattoos executed within the borders of the former USSR, there are other Stalin tattoos that would not be effortlessly considered commemorative. To illustrate this category of Stalin tattoos with an example, it can be relevant to mention the British tattoo artist Kev Hickman who works at the Imperial Art Tattoo and Body Piercing Bedworth (United Kingdom) and recently earned a prize at the Throwback to the Ink and Oil Convention (September 2019) for his Stalin portrait tattoo. This reveals that Stalin’s international appeal and cultural memory enactments extended way beyond the former USSR’s physical and symbolic borders.

Comparative Insights and Prospects for Further Research on Political Commemorative Tattoos

Conceptually, this study advances an approach that emphasizes the tattoos’ significance as bodily enactments, suggesting that not only monuments and memorials can be regarded as mnemonic spaces but also “the body itself constitutes a place of memory.” (Alderman, Brasher, and Dwyer Reference Alderman, Brasher and Dwyer2020, 39). More specifically, the vernacular commemorative tattoos of the former dictators are, indeed, bodily enactments that differ from the public places of memory and their aesthetics (e.g., monuments of the three former political leaders both actual and bulldozered after the fall of the communist regimes). While the public memory of the former communist leaders is materialized in cultural formats whose messages are usually unidirectionally encoded by institutions and memory entrepreneurs associated with these institutions, the commemorative tattoos’ various meanings are framed by the individuality of the bearer in line with subjective sets of concerns. Unlike monuments and memorials—as well as unlike the commodification tattoos—commemorative ones are both functional and committal because they cannot be visited and then left behind (like other vernacular and official memorials). At the same time, this study has shown that commemorative tattoos of the former dictators can perform a variety of functions and identity concerns, yet, at the same time, they form a radically committed memory culture that notionally lasts until the death of the body. The commitment dimension of vernacular commemorative tattoos and its performative underpinnings as bodily enactments differ from the ossified politics of memory (usually top–down) inherent in the official memorial culture of the three former communist leaders. At the same time, this study has also showed that tattoos can be associated with a broader range of identity categories, overcoming the stereotypical associations with deviance, criminality, or, more recently, with aestheticized body fashion or bodily adornment.

If we compare the three cases analyzed in this study, the practice of tattooing is much older in the Balkan peninsula than in Romanian and the former USSR. As stated previously, the religious tattooing popularly known as sicanje or bocanje in former Yugoslavian countries supposedly pre-existed Ottoman occupation, whereas the practice of tattooing (with several exceptions) started to be noticed in the other two contexts preponderantly only from the 19th century (Minovici Reference Minovici2007). While the tattooed political portraits of Tito and Stalin constituted a sub-cultural practice, more or less underground, even before the fall of the socialist/communist regimes in the Eastern bloc, Ceauşescu’s portrait tattoos belong exclusively to the vernacular memorial genre that gained momentum after the 1980s. Another notable difference is that the commemorative tattooing of Tito and Stalin has extended beyond national borders while Ceaușescu commemorative tattoos did not make it to the parlors outside of Romania. By contrast, Stalin also made it to Youtube (in a 3-minute-long video of How to Draw a Stalin Tattoo) and in the title of a parlor in Spain (Stalin Tattoo and Piercing).Footnote ²¹ Yet another difference is that Stalin and Tito’s commemorative tattoos (following the official portrayals from the pre-1990s) exhibit the former leaders in military uniforms while Ceaușescu’s tattoo remains faithful to the iconography of a smiley man in a black suit, although he was self-proclaimed as the supreme commander of the armed forces of Romania. Furthermore, the Ceaușescu tattoo (like Ceaușescu’s portrait) displays an everlastingly young man, while both Stalin and Tito tattoos reveal more variation when it comes to the leader’s age. This is particularly transparent in the more recent tattoos of Tito, where the leader is depicted manifestly elder and wearing eyeglasses.

Further studies on the issue of the vernacular commemorative portrayal of former dictators could illuminate the extent to which post-1990s enactments of official portraits regenerate or deflect from the pre-1990s culture of worship of former political leaders. It would be highly thought-provoking to investigate the appetency for tattooing and the “cultural imaginaries” of far-right adepts in Eastern Europe, especially because the nationalist and populist right in many parts of the region often invoke a fictitious communist enemy (of “the People”) as a way of attacking the left. An enquiring phenomenon can be noticed in the Western Balkans among tattoo consumers. Alongside freshly made and colorful tattoos of the Tito portrait, one can also notice (among young men with strong nationalist stances) tattooed portraits of the 20th-century fascist leader Ante Pavélic or portraits of present-day politicians such as the Bosnian-Serb Milorad Dodik (Radisic Reference Radisic2014). Similar with the tattoos dedicated to former political leaders, those devoted to present-day right-wing politicians use photographs from current media to perform the inked political portrait. While there are significant studies dedicated to the history and genealogy of the political portrait, additional research on political tattoo portrayal can broaden the understandings of “the uses of portraiture by antagonistic groups or movements” (Cheles and Giacone Reference Cheles and Giacone2020). Further studies can also illuminate the peculiarities of the political tattoo portrayal when used by antagonistic political groups and movements as both camps long for “great leadership.” While the Milorad Dodik tattoo might signpost a revival of the personality cult, one of those tattooed with Ceauşescu, a young man from Vaslui (Romania), was longing for “the leadership of a just and uncorrupted leader… unlike our current politicians.”Footnote ²² Irrespective of what “good leadership” means on both sides of the political spectrum, the issue that has to be addressed thoroughly in further studies on the matter is that of inking a firm image on someone’s body.