"Model Cultural Village": Architectural Dreams and Reality of the 1920-1930s

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the planning and development of the countryside in the 1920-1930s, both in the context of the rural social policy and in connection to the general orientation of Soviet town planning of this period. The idea of a "Model Cultural Village", which should've been shown to peasants as an example for imitation, was formed in the first post-revolutionary years. Depending on the changing construction policy of the State in the 1920-1930s, this idea was embodied in various projects, but all of them were far from the real situation in the countryside. In particular, attempts to create "exemplary" and then the "standard" projects of the planning of collective and state farm settlements, not based on the study of specific data, are considered.
 The article shows the birth of scientific approach to the individual rural design based on pre-project studies in the second half of the 1930s. Such an approach was developed by the institutes of communal hygiene, but it did not manage to develop before the World War II. The social life basis in the countryside was unsustainable, and in the pre-war years the state policy regarding the planning of the countryside became much more strict. The struggle with the so-called "extravagances" began.
 This trend was in contradiction with the slogan of "blurring the differences between urban areas and the countryside". The article shows the gradual simplification of the concept of "agro­town" - from agro-industrial plants, conceived in a big way in thelate 1920s, to a minimum equipping of the countryside. At the same time, the search for a visual image of the Soviet countryside was mainly reduced to competition projects of various "types" of clubs and community centers.