“Imperial city” Moscow. A Comparative Perspective on Soviet Architecture as a Media of Imperial Self-Description

Abstract

The paper investigates Moscow in its historical role as “metropolis” and center of the Soviet urban system in a long-range perspective from 1918 to post-socialism. The focus on “imperial displays” in the capital allows us to reconstruct specific processes of the social construction of metropolitan and imperial spaces in the Soviet Union. As the Soviet capital, Moscow became the center of giant construction sites and nationwide infrastructure systems. The plans for Moscow served as models for the other cities of the Union. While the capital thus became present at the periphery, people as well as social and material goods also moved into the capital and became part of its fabric. The All-Union Agricultural Exhibition VSKhV (Vsesoyuznaya sel’sko-khozyaystvennaya vystavka) and the Metro (underground transport) system were “imperial displays” which show how a metropolitan topography was created, whose representations referred to the different parts of the Soviet empire and embodied relationships of power. Muscovites and visitors from the provinces alike were invited to visit these “other places” as part of the capital. At the same time, the tourists were taken on “virtual tours” of the empire and presented with imaginary spaces, sets of values and power relations in guise of spatial arrangements. Visitors were here and there at the same time, in the center and at the periphery, and they could grasp the presence and the bright future at the same time. These social constructions of space in Moscow are analyzed in comparative perspective, since “national” architectures of capitals but also the practices of great exhibitions always stood in a transnational context. Thus, VSKhV can be compared to the Paris Colonial Exhibition in 1931, whereas great train stations, underground trains or museums as well as department stores and delicatessen selling exotic foods from the colonies were features any metropolis had to have on display. Even Berlin and Paris made plans for constructing their own seaports, a project Moscow succeeded in realizing. The scope of Soviet imperial practices is traced until the nineteen-eighties in order to discuss the “imperial” character of the industrialized mass construction of flats as well as post-Stalinist, modernist projects in the representative city center. Since Moscow kept its “number one” and gateway position to the East European markets and even embarked on global city politics in the late nineties, it would be possible to follow the post-Soviet processes as well. Moscow stayed capital of the Russian Federation and changes rapidly. To be a moskvich, a muscovite, means something special until today. Moscow’s population is extremely divided on the social scale, but all the same all residents are privileged compared to other Russians in terms of resources and access to cultural and educational institutions and to a job market one can only find in one of the Russian big cities, if not in Moscow alone. The gap between Moscow and other Russian cities keeps growing and researchers even speak of “inner colonization”, because Moscow’s money is invested elsewhere in the country to bear profits for Moscow only. It would also be worthwhile looking into how the relationships to the former Soviet republics are inscribed in the new Moscow, e.g. on the main switchboard of Gazprom’s headquarters.