Strasse der Wölfe. Zwei junge Frauen erleben Russland in den dreissiger Jahren by Gabriele Krone-Schmalz (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 547 they held out for only a week less than the British and French managed the followingyear. The Polish Second Republic can stillprovoke controversymore than sixty years after its demise. It was born in the bloodshed of successive wars and uprisings. Its short life was characterized by political instability and interethnic conflict, and it met its fate in the Blitzkriegof 1939. Yet, despite the passage of time, the thirst for literature on the subject is unabated, and has even increasedin the decade since i989. This volume is a worthyaddition. Pitstone, Bedfordshire ROGER MoORHOUSE Krone-Schmalz, Gabriele. Strasse derWdofe. Zweijunge Frauen erleben Russland in den dreissiger Jahren.Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne, 1999. 287 pp. Bibliography.DM 39.90. DURING the 1930S,the vast lands of the Soviet Union's eastern Ural-Siberian frontier underwent the fundamental experiment of building a socialist civilization. Like many other newly-created cities in the East, Komsomolskna -Amure, Novo-Kuznetsk and Karaganda, Magnitogorskbecame a symbol of Stalinist industrialization and urbanization, providing a melting pot in which the Soviet working class intermingled with many people of different nationalities. For the workers Soviet and foreign alike Magnitogorsk representeda dreamfora betterlifeandofferedan alternativeto the depressed capitalistsocieties of the West. Following on from Stephen Kotkin'sMagnetic Mountain (Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1995), Krone-Schmalz, a well-known German televisionjournalistbased in Russia,tellsthe exciting life storyof two young foreign women in the steppe. Whilst Kotkin used archivaldocuments in his exploration of the institutionalframeworkwhich constructedMagnitogorsk , Krone-Schmalz offers an alternativeperspective based on interviews conducted with her two protagonists. In the years preceding the outbreak of the Second World XVar, Russians, Americans, Germans and other Europeans were working together on the Soviet Union's greatest building site. Anna (seventeen) and Meike (twentytwo ) were among a group of German and Dutch Bauhausarchitects and engineers who arrived in Magnitogorsk in I932. The young women were enthusiasticand keento be alliedwith the Sovietpioneers.Whilsttheirparents saw the Soviet Union, with its revolutionaryexperiments, as a pariah, for the young it meant adventureand a chance to escapethe boredom and constraints of Western social conventions. For Anna and Meike, working in the Soviet Union promised, at the veryleast, female emancipation. These young, qualified migrants also brought their ideas of modernity to the USSR. The Bauhaus school of architecture,founded by WalterGropiusin the 1920S, sought to achieve a unity of technical functionalism and art by creatingliving-workingspaces.Apartmentswere built beside factoriesso that factory and worker could become one organism. The aim of Stalinist architecturewas to builda socialistsocietyand create a 'new'mankind.Soviet propagandaproclaimedthat 'thecenterof the socialistcitywill be not a castle, or a market,but a factory'.In this sense, socialismmeant the culture ofindustgy. 548 SEER, 79, 3, 200I Magnitogorsk did not meet the expectations of the young Western architects,however. It was a city of barracksand tents surroundedby the dust of the steppe, and young mothers, in particular, felt uncomfortable in this nomad camp. Overcrowded barracks did not guarantee privacy. Having waited months for theirown lodgings, theywere disappointedto discoverthat they were without even primitivesanitation.Inadequate food suppliesand an absence of leisurefacilitiesmade the women feel cut offfromlife. In theirtime there, Anna and Meike's only form of relaxation came in a visit to the Bashkirs,and althoughthey enjoyed theirhospitality,thiswas not sufficientto alleviate the hardship. They found it frustratingthat the ideas of the young architects came to nothing because of the callousness of Soviet bureaucrats. Hasty Five-YearPlans killedindividualand collective creativity.The NKVD kept a close watch on factorylife, and foreign specialistsbegan to be accused of conspiracyand espionage. Xenophobia was not only a trait of the NKVD officials,but also characterizedthe relationshipbetween Russianworkersand foreign spetsy. As one worker put it: John, you're doing excellent work, but you're a foreigner!' (p. 275). By 1934, most of the foreigners -including Anna and Meike had left Magnitogorsk.The few adventurerswho stayed and adopted Soviet citizenship in the naive hope of becoming assimilated, eventually vanished to Siberian labour camps. Nevertheless, despite the atmosphere of mutual distrustthey experienced under daily Stalinism,Anna and Meike still have good memories of their 'nice, but grave years' in Magnitogorsk. InstituteofRussianHistoy EVA-MARIA STOLBERG University ofBonn Makinen, Anne. Suomen valkoinen sotilasarkkitehtuuri I926-I939. Bibliotheca Historica, 53. SuomalaisenKirjallisuudenSeura, Helsinki, 2000. 257 PP. Notes. Illustrations...