It is amazing how we human beings deny our own history. I think we should leave these dying places there, and I say dying because for the city they represent its own decline.
To destroy them so as not to recognize what happened or happened is Dantesque. It obliterates a painful and damaging era. The horror must be there in its attempt at beautiful expression to remember the damage caused to humanity. To deny the facts is to deny oneself.
It is inevitable. Everything that happened in that era was Dantesque, but traces of the damage must be left so that people know that it was a sad time that should not grow or be lived again.
Yeah it's a tragedy. Armenia had a ton of abandoned Soviet things, but they weren't rejecting that history or trying to remove it. Even in the middle of nowhere you'd see a road sign that points to Yerevan with a big hammer and sickle at the top of it. It must've been there since the 70s at least.
It's really evident in Tbilisi. It's riddled with decay and far more destruction of that history. Kutaisi was different, much better preservation of its old buildings, ranging from the 1800s that looked brand new. In Tbilisi you'll see a building that says 1903 or something and it'll look like the wind will bring it down any moment. Massive cracks in the walls, lopsided windows, etc.
I understand the banning of the great hammer and sickle in Europe. If a city does not reject its past, it means that it understands its process and the pain inflicted at that time. The idea is that one should cohabit with that scenario of the past. Incidentally, in urban planning, this is called culturalism, which is intermingled with the development trend itself: urban progressivism. This is something that Françoise Choay claims.
It is very sad that Tbilisi is in this state. Reality surpasses fiction. It is single-mindedness to erase the past, it always takes its toll. I say it from my own experience, people should know how everything has risen and why it is there.