Maddox, Steven Saving Stalin's Imperial City: Historic Preservation in Leningrad, 1930–1950 (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 775 the book’s title suggests, many were motivated by the opportunity to help build a socialist utopia and workers’ paradise. Their idealism and hope drew them to invest themselves and often everything they owned to travel to the unknown. Unfortunately for them, as Golubev and Takala document, this new land was not as welcoming as had been promised. In general, these Finnish speakers found that weak infrastructure, poor living and working conditions, and limited food (in both quantity and quality) challenged their commitment to a socialist utopia. Most North American Finns did have access to special stores and better food than the local Karelian and Russian people, but nevertheless suffered substantially for the first few years. Despite these challenges, North American Finns made notable contributions to education, literature, theatre, music, dance and even sports in their region. Golubev and Takala describe in great detail the debates about language policy, with Finnish being given higher status than Karelian for several years. They also devote a chapter to the challenges of cross-cultural communication before describing the tragic end of many American and Canadian Finns in the Great Terror and World War Two. At least 739 North American Finns perished between 1937 and 1938, according to these authors, who provide significant detail on several victims and a timeline of arrests and deaths. They also assess World War Two and its impact on Finnish speakers in Karelia, including mass deportations from the Soviet border as well as executions of those accused of spying on both the Soviet and the Finnish sides. They conclude by assessing the experience of North American Finns in the region after 1945. In all, this volume provides a detailed and well-written account of a region in turmoil and transition. Many will benefit from this carefully-researched study, including those studying nationalities policies in all their complexity, as well as those interested in new perspectives on the hopes and tragedies of people in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. Center for Global Programs and Studies Steven T. Duke and Department of History, Wake Forest University Maddox, Steven. Saving Stalin’s Imperial City: Historic Preservation in Leningrad, 1930–1950. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 2015. xi + 284 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £33.00: $50.00. How was it that Leningraders, on the frontlines and within the blockaded city, waged war to ensure the survival of Soviet socialism, but after it found themselves rebuilding the most glittering symbols of the tsarist imperial past? The answer to this paradox is revealed in Steven Maddox’s brilliant study of SEER, 93, 4, OCTOBER 2015 776 the conservation and restoration of historic monuments in Leningrad and its suburbs during and after the Great Patriotic War. In a meticulously researched and fluently written book Maddox succeeds in explaining how and why a warravaged city suffering acute shortages invested its scant resources in protecting and reconstructing monuments. Maddox reveals a fascinating history of the successes and failures in preserving Leningrad’s historic built environment during the ‘cataclysmic upheaval and hardship’ (p. 2) of the blockade and its aftermath. Basedonaricharrayofpublishedandarchivalsources,Maddoxexplainshow historic preservation became a powerful mobilizational tool, which bolstered Soviet patriotism and was increasingly understood as a commemorative act. ‘Through restoration of historic monuments in the city’s centre, Leningraders were rescuing the country’s “glorious history” and writing the narrative of the blockade into the city’s urban fabric’ (p. 96). Restoration of the tsarist architectural heritage allowed the Soviet party-state to project an image of power and strength, but also to ‘imprint the memory of the war onto Leningrad’s historic cityscape’ (p. 197). The development of a new Soviet patriotism in the 1930s, based on the glorious Russian past, combined with the destruction wrought by fascist invaders and the heroic efforts of Leningraders to preserve and restore monuments, transformed them from symbols of the old tsarist order into Soviet monuments invested with new meanings and symbolism, which served as a repository for local war memories. Saving Stalin’s Imperial City begins with a survey of the long tradition of activism amongst Leningrad’s preservationist from the late-nineteenth century until the eve of the Second...