Towards a prosperous future through Cold War planning

Abstract

This chapter focusses on East-Estonian industrial towns Sillamae and Kohtla-Jarve concerning deployment of Soviet urban space design within the period of mid-1940s and mid-1950s. The new industrial towns as examples of Stalinist utopia were built in East-Estonia in order to exploit local mineral resources by the occupying Soviet regime. Representative urban design of those towns formulated a paradigm that was unfamiliar to local urban space tradition. Sillamae and Kohtla-Jarve were designed under the guidance of Lengiproshacht and Lengorstroyproyekt residing in Leningrad (St. Petersburg). In the 1950s, both towns with the population of 10,000 got city-like centres that indicated intensions to develop them into big industrial centres. Sillamae and Kohtla-Jarve were designed to be model Soviet industrial towns in order to demonstrate a way to a prosperous future. Unlike the rest of Estonian towns, inhabitants of Sillamae and Kohtla-Jarve were deported from the large Soviet Union. Kohtla-Jarve consists of six satellite towns (Jarve, Ahtme, Kukruse, Sompa, Oru, Viivikonna, Sirgala) that were regarded as oil-shale mining and processing complex in order to produce energy in large thermal power plants. Sillamae was a classified town due to processing of uranium oxides for the Soviet nuclear industry and army. Though both Stalinist industrial towns are still considered unfamiliar, as from parallel dimension, they have got perspective and functional plans. The essay reflects on possibilities to integrate partially abandoned and mostly Russian-speaking Sillamae and Kohtla-Jarve into the entire state.