Heritage and the Soviet city of the 1980s

Abstract

The article examines changes in the architects’ and society’s understanding of the role of heritage in the Soviet city and its importance for the formation of the urban environment. It is known that the architecture of the Soviet period went through several turns in its development, determined by the change of State policy in this area. It seemed that urban planning concepts were also changing dramatically. However, with external differences, the deep layers of professional thinking of architects and urban planners changed little; the same problems of urban development and the preservation of historical buildings arose again and again. At the turn of the 1960s and the 1970s and then in the 1980s, there were certain advances in understanding the role of the historical city environment, but the conditions of urban planning in the country practically did not change, which contributed to the reproduction of established stereotypes. The last decade of the Soviet era was characterized by a paradoxical attitude towards heritage, which still largely remained in the post-Soviet period.