Socialist City Research Articles

Summer Season in the Working Settlement: From Mushrooms to People and Back. Uralmash in Fiction and Non-fiction Literature About 1930s

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Memorial Representations of Working Class Quarters: Experiences of USSR and China

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A Heritage, a Project, an Art Space: How White Tower is Describing Now?

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‘...the opium of the people’? Religiosity in socialist new towns

Although an undoubtedly growing body of scholarly work deals with the economic, political and institutional transformation of post-socialist cities, the no less profound cultural changes former socialist cities have undergone since the beginning of the transition still remain relatively under-theorised. In order to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of these overwhelming cultural transformations, this paper scrutinises religiosity in two Hungarian socialist new towns, Dunaújváros and Kazincbarcika, during and after socialism. Our case studies are based on quantitative and qualitative research methods: in addition to the analysis of religiosity-related census data and long-term parochial datasets obtained from the local churches, in-depth interviews were also conducted with priests, pastors and representatives of the local municipalities. Based on our analyses, two main research results might be outlined. On the one hand, it was revealed that religiosity – although mostly ‘under the surface’, in a less explicit form – played an important role in the daily lives of the residents of both new towns during the state socialist period. This finding is especially compelling, since these mono-functional industrial towns (should have) represented the quintessence of socialist urbanity, planned to be classless and inherently atheist. On the other hand, a remarkable religious revival might have been expected in the wake of the politico-economic transition, with the advent of the ‘free world’. In contrast to this assumption, however, only a slightly increasing (and then, rather stagnating) religiosity was observed in both case study towns. It might be traced back to the overall value crisis of these communities after having lost their formerly privileged position. Therefore, our research results might help us to deconstruct the over-simplified common view of ‘atheism under socialism’ vis-à-vis ‘a religious revival in the post-socialist period’.

Potsdam, Kaleidoskop preussischer Baugeschichte und Laboratorium der Erinnerungsarchitektur

Potsdam, 30 km from Berlin, is the state capital of Brandenburg. This modern city presents itself as a Prussian baroque city with significant political history, as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and as the state's knowledge city and administrative centre – certainly more than just an attractive residential suburb of Berlin. Every square metre of this city exudes German and, in particular, Prussian history. However, Potsdam poses a challenge for politicians and planners, for architects, historical monument conservationists and landscapers. Striking a balance between preserving the historical city and taking into account the socialist city whilst allowing for new development is a Herculean task – one that has been and continues to be the subject of controversial debate.

Kelly, Catriona Socialist Churches: Radical Secularization and the Preservation of the Past in Petrograd and Leningrad, 1918–1988 (review)

SEER, 96, 2, APRIL 2018 378 as it was) at the top level. There has been exploration elsewhere of the role of military leaders, for example in Brock Millman’s article, ‘The Problem with Generals’ (Journal of Contemporary History, 33, 1998, 2, pp. 291–320; not cited here), which examines the liability presented by British generals in the field of the intervention, who, fired up by anti-Bolshevism, interpreted the instructions they were given very loosely. There is still a lot of interesting work to do on the activities of the plethora of political, economic and voluntary representatives working in the field, and the experiences of ordinary soldiers. The vast memoir literature stemming from the intervention, not to mention the many collections of private papers belonging to agents in the intervention, are a valuable resource for the exploration of these topics which are not drawn on here. There are some stylistic and typing errors that might have been picked up by copy-editing (‘Wrangle’ for Wrangel´ a total of six times on page 261 is the worst). The book offers a solid, archivally-based overview of some of the key episodes in the intervention. The structured account it gives of some of the key phases of military activity may be useful. Its attempt to speak about the Allied intervention as a whole while employing primary material relating to only Britain and Canada, and a very limited selection of reading on the other participating governments, is disappointing. And there is still plenty for future studies to do in broadening our understanding of agency in the intervention, and our understanding of the intervention as an international phenomenon. Northumbria University Charlotte Alston Kelly, Catriona. Socialist Churches: Radical Secularization and the Preservation of the Past in Petrograd and Leningrad, 1918–1988. Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb, IL, 2016. xx + 413 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Select bibliography. Index. $59.00. Much has been written over decades about how the Soviet state treated (or mistreated) religious communities. Here, in her ‘microhistory of church preservation and destruction’ (p. 16) focusing on one city, the former Russian imperial capital, Catriona Kelly studies the way the state — in all its various manifestations — treated their places of worship. ‘Under Lenin they took [the churches] away, and under Stalin they took them away’, Kelly quotes one city priest as telling her, ‘during the War they gave them back, under Khrushchev they closed them again, and then under Brezhnev things stayed as they were, then under Gorbachev they started giving them back, and under Yeltsin’ (p. 275). If this is the (not inaccurate) perspective of one cleric, Kelly takes a more rounded view. She examines the stances of ideologues in the Communist party seeking to close as many places of worship as possible; REVIEWS 379 officials desperate for premises for homes, enterprises and cultural institutions (including anti-religious museums); heritage enthusiasts seeking to preserve what they considered important (curiously they disdained neo-Byzantine and style russe buildings of the 1840–1900 period and removed traces of this period from earlier buildings); proponents of turning the imperial capital — with all its backward-looking connotations — into a socialist city; and local people who tried to make their views on preservation of churches heard. Kelly’s findings are, for non architectural specialists, at times surprising. Leningrad saw fewer churches demolished than other cities, but one key factor was how a church fitted into the ansambl´ (the urban surroundings), ‘an enormously important value term in St. Petersburg preservation’ (p. 305). While the imperial city contained a range of Christian churches (including Old Believer, Catholic, Lutheran and Armenian, alongside German, Dutch, English, Swedish) as well as places of worship of other faiths (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist), Kelly focuses mainly on Russian Orthodox churches. These of themselves made up a variety, including cathedrals, streetside churches and ‘house churches’ within institutions (which faced a ‘far more energetic drive’ [p. 56] to close them after the Decree on the Confiscation of Church Property). By the 1920s, far from all of these churches were in the hands of the newlyrecreated Moscow Patriarchate — internal theological and external political rifts, exacerbated by Metropolitan Sergii’s 1927 declaration of loyalty to the Soviet regime, saw rival...

A magyar fiatalok erősödő kivándorlási szándékának kiváltó okai és jellemzői

A magyar fiatalok egyre általánosabb életstratégiaként tekintenek a kivándorlásra, ami az országot továbbtanulás vagy munkavégzés céljából rövidebb, hosszabb időtávra elhagyók arányának drasztikus növekedésében követhető nyomon. Az írás az elmúlt évtized legfontosabb emigrációs jellegzetességeit taglalja, az országot elhagyó 18 és 40 év közöttiek fő emigrációs indokait keresi.Nemzetközi és hazai szinten a migrációs folyamatok, azok meghatározó mechanizmusai a tudományos érdeklődés középpontjába kerültek, a kivándorlást magyarázó objektív és szubjektív adatokra egyre nagyobb igény mutatkozik. Ennek érdekében a 2013 és 2016 között közel 10 000 fő megkérdezésén alapuló kérdőíves adatgyűjtés eredményeinek feldolgozásával bemutatjuk a kivándorló fiatalok legfontosabb demográfiai jellemzőit, azok évtizedes arányeltolódásait, az emigráció trendjének változásait, a kivándorláshoz vezető taszító és vonzó tényezőket, a migrációs potenciál országon belüli (város-vidék dualitás) és intraregionális egyenlőtlenségeit.

Rethinking the sexual citizenship from queer and post-Soviet perspectives: Queer urban spaces and the right to the socialist city

In this article, I use the analysis of citizenship regimes and their revolutionary changes as a point of departure to offer an improvement of the notion of grassroots politics. The focus of the article is on queer citizenship as it evolved in alternative modernity that the USSR conditioned. Immediately after the October Revolution, the new government deliberately proclaimed a new sexual freedom and rearranged the material conditions of living in urban areas of the country. This resulted in unexpected changes of practice, one of which is the multiplication of public space. Contrary to conventional forms of politics, Soviet queer politics was reallocated to parallel urban spaces. This analysis allows one to address the particular relations between one’s sexuality and political participation, citizenship and materiality, market economy and revolutions.

INFLUENCE OF SOVIETIZATION AND DECOMMUNISATION ON THE ARCHITECTURAL LOOK OF CITIES AND TOWNS IN TERNOPIL REGION (ON THE EXAMPLE CITY OF TERNOPIL, AND ZALISHCHYKY, TOWN OF SKALA-PODILSKA) IN 1939 – THE BEGINNING OF XXI CENTURY

The article deals with the problem of the influence of Sovietization and decommunization on the urban environment of modern Ternopil region: the cities of Ternopil and Zalishchyky and the town of Skala-Podilska. The author gives a detailed analysis of the changes that took place in 1939-1991 in their architectural form. It is stated that if Zalishchyky and Skala-Podilska have preserved to some extent the unique, pre-war building of the centre, having lost some primary monuments, logical city planning, sculpting and decor on the facades, then Ternopil has lost its historical heart almost wholly, becoming a typical socialist city. The reasons that caused the destruction, redevelopment or reconstruction of architectural ensembles and religious-cult objects in Ternopil territory were determined: 1. ideological (ideological opponents and the soviet regime became statues of saints, memorials and graves of participants of Ukrainian liberation competitions, etc; they were destroyed as monuments of national cultural or religious load); 2. Communist regime crackdowns and efforts to conceal their results (entrances to separate, underground premises of Ternopil have been destroyed since they became the mass graves of prisoners in the city prison (1941); 3. impossibility of further exploitation due to “irreparable damage” caused by military actions, lack of funds for reconstruction or absence of economically justified need for operation of the object (yes, in Ternopil a department store destroyed during the war); 4. adaptation of the object for the fulfilment of new functions (the Jesuit church in Ternopil in the postwar period was rebuilt in the premises of a garment factory); 5. human factor when the destruction of memorials occurred as a result of the personal initiative or passive position of party functionaries, “labour collectives” and the population of cities in general.Particular attention was paid to the restoration or reconstruction of architectural monuments and the elimination of totalitarian symbols in the process of decommunization in 1991 - the beginning of the 21st century. It was noted that as of 2016, there were virtually no monuments in Ternopil that had a communist ideological load.

The City as a Space of Plastic Happening: From Grand Proposals to Exceptional Gestures in the Art of the 1970s in Zagreb

In the period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a number of Zagreb-based artists, critics, and curators advocated the idea that art should leave the museum and engage in a direct encounter with the city and its inhabitants. Starting with the 1971 Zagreb Salon and its “Proposal” section titled The City as a Space of Plastic Happening, art took to the streets in a series of exhibition projects at the same time as Yugoslav students did so in protests that began in June 1968 in Belgrade, and continued in other cities, including Zagreb, where they were then followed by their ideological antagonist, the “Croatian Spring” movement in 1971. The notion of plasticity was a central discursive tool in the critical and theoretical accounts of the time, and the city was both the stage and target of the artistic gestures of “plastic” transformation. The article reads these projects and the discourses surrounding them as critiques of the Yugoslav socialist city, and by metonymical extension, of the failure of the Yugoslav state to live up to its promise of a just socialist society.

What Was So Socialist about the Socialist City? Second World Urbanity in Europe

Socialist cities have most often been studied as manifestations of the socialist system itself, linked to the political fate of the Communist Parties in power during their design, construction, and expansion. This article revisits the socialist city and argues for the validity of the concept historically and in the present. Looking qualitatively at this distinct paradigm in Europe, two analytical frameworks are offered, infrastructural thinking and the socialist scaffold. The analysis shows that the universal aspiration for socialist cities was their continuous operation as synchronized instruments of economic production and social transformation in physical space. Distinct from capitalist cities, they had an ideological role in an economic model that instrumentalized cities as nodes in an integrated system, described using Stephen Kotkin’s term, “single entity.” The agency of the socialist scaffold has continued into the era of neoliberalism, shown here to have previously unexplored roots in socialism.

Second World Urbanity: Infrastructures of Utopia and Really Existing Socialism

The disappearance of most state socialist regimes in 1989/1991 afforded scholars from a range of disciplines new opportunities to examine the history of socialist cities and their post-socialist transformations. Recent scholarship has focused particularly on such cities in their corresponding national contexts and with the passing of the Cold War, broader commonalities with the urban history of Western cities have come into sharper focus. Absent in most recent work on socialist cities, however, is attention to the broader ideological, political, and cultural world—the socialist Second World—that bound these cities and their countries together. Similarly lacking is a deeper appreciation of the specificities of the socialist city in contrast to its counterparts in the capitalist West and the global South. Read together, the essays in this special collection underscore the value of re-examining how socialist cities were once part of the myriad relations that gave the Second World its ideological and material coherence in pursuit of socialist urbanity.

Незавершенный проект как форма восприятия советского градостроительства 1920-1930-х гг.: опыт социалистических городов

Незавершенный проект как форма восприятия советского градостроительства 1920-1930-х гг.: опыт социалистических городов

From Tractors to Territory: Socialist Urbanization through Standardization

This article proposes that the Fordist model of industrial standardization enabled and empowered the Soviets to enact distinctly socialist, decentralized, urban patterns. It follows the design of the Kharkiv Tractor Factory (KhTZ) and the socialist city ( sotsgorod) to house its workers, built outside of the first capital of Soviet Ukraine between 1930 and 1931. The near-impossible schedule of Stalin’s hyperindustrialization drive, known as the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1932), limited the options both tractor factory and sotsgorod designers could pursue, which made easily replicable architectural types and models particularly attractive. Once tested on an experimental site like KhTZ, a type deemed successful joined the ranks of those ready for slight adjustment—a process known as priviazka in Soviet architectural discourse—and export to far-flung sites in the Soviet sphere.

Survey-based research as a scientific answer to the deficiency of qualitative data regarding micro-urban level of new multi-family housing in Serbia

In socialist era, multi-family housing played an important role in creating decent life for proletariat as the main social class in cities. Mass-construction of this type of housing put forward the creation and implementation of standards in housing, which consequently formed a specific urban fabric in socialist cities. Socialist Yugoslavia was a bit unique example due to decentralization during its last decades. This enabled the existence of regional and local housing standards. The differentiation in space was reflected thereby in every local unit, with locally-set relations between buildings and their plots as well as neighbour street and buildings. Therefore, different micro-urban characteristics appeared in housing. This situation was just intensified with the dissolution of Yugoslavia, leaving a lot of freedom to local level to do its own housing ?policy?. These local ?policies? have been significantly influenced by growing market economy and private incentive in housing. Multi-family housing has been favourable type of housing construction for new private investors due to the best exploitation of all related resources. Therefore, it has become a dominant type of housing construction. In the case of micro-urban conditions, this approach has triggered the entire urban development and has sparked public opinion in some extreme cases. Nevertheless, the relevant legislative and statistical data adopted and published by official institutions, such as competent Ministries and Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, is scarce, inaccurate and scientifically limited. Thus, the aim of this research is to find solutions to overcome this gap by using the knowledge and experience of local experts in urbanism. Taking in account that this research is based on their opinions regarding micro-urban conditions in housing, selected methodology is a survey. It was conducted among the participants of the Summer school of urbanism in Kragujevac, Serbia, in May 14-15 2015. Their professional opinion is analyzed to form recommendations and guidelines for the improvement of current state in housing planning and development in Serbia.

Memory in the “Socialist City”

Memory in the “Socialist City”

Geografia społeczna miast w Polsce = Urban social geography in Poland

This article offers a review of the state and practice of Polish research in the field of urban social geography, which is still under formation. From the outset, this domain has shown marked diversification as regards both subject matter and methodology. Like most “reviews”, this one has its strong subjective elements. The first part presents the historical context, i.e. the political, organisational and social circumstances in which research has been conducted. The roots of research in social geography in Poland trace back to the inter-War period (1918-1939), while post-War evolution of geography (like everything else in the country) reflected the imposed impact of communist-era doctrine. Specifically though, it was the formation of the Institute of Geography as a part of newly-established Polish Academy of Sciences (in 1953) as combined with the methodological conference convened in Osieczna in 1955 that shape geographical research in Poland for several post-War decades. The second part of this paper documents the gradual emergence of urban social geography (under a relatively relaxed political impact where social research was concerned). The implementation of social ecology is stressed, as well as the concept of factorial ecology as a leading toils and initial concepts. Also presented are the processes which have shaped the current state of urban social geography; sources of inspiration from geography, sociology and especially social ecology; and the quantitative turn taken by the social sciences. The third part turns its attention to the diversity of concepts and subject matter present in research on social problems, as well as such phenomena as: socio-spatial differentiation and disparity, poverty, housing issues and cultural dimensions. General mention is also made of the new concepts and research topics which emerged with Poland’s post-1989 transformation, like electoral studies, gentrification, spatial inequality, spatial conflict, the appropriation of public space, regeneration, perception studies and cultural studies. Particular attention has been paid to theoretical concepts relating to cities (as a product of ideology). So theories regarding “the socialist city” (i.e. the communist-era city) and its transformation into the city of the post-communist era were developed, with the current evolution being regarded as dominated by the neo-liberal doctrine. It is concluded that urban social geography in Poland is still under formation, even if it already occupies a relatively good position as applied research, while also returning (culturally) to its more humanistic and socially sensitive roots.

Post-socialism and urban transition: Transforming the socialist city

The paper investigates causal relationships and correlations between transitional reforms and various levels of urban restructuring that has taken place in the Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Numerous urban changes were not regarded as series of separate ?events? with a specific background in political, institutional, economic and/or social context of transition, but as a set of results which, in a radical and chaotic manner, deconstructed socialist and stimulated formation of the post-socialist city. The post-socialist city is treated as a temporary phenomenon that adapted to the rules and conditions of transferring from socialism to capitalism or as a socio-spatial manifestation of various transitional processes. The aim of the paper is to detect common influential factors of genesis of the post-socialist urban landscape.

Nowa Huta: Generations of Change in a Model Socialist Town by Kinga Pozniak

Reviewed by: Nowa Huta: Generations of Change in a Model Socialist Town by Kinga Pozniak Natalie Misteravich-Carroll (bio) Kinga Pozniak. Nowa Huta: Generations of Change in a Model Socialist Town. 227pp. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. ISBN 9780822963189. Built in 1949 and slated to become a “bastion” of socialism, Nowa Huta was the greatest endeavor of the Six-Year Plan in Stalinist Poland. Often likened to its Russian variant Magnitogorsk, the purpose of the Polish steelworks city was threefold: to stimulate Stalinist industrialization, to create a workers’ utopia, and to act as an ideological model for Polish citizens. Perceived as both a welcome opportunity for social and economic advancement after WWII and as a detested symbol of Stalinist hubris, Nowa Huta’s contemporary identity remains locked in this ambivalent dichotomy. Though Polish sociological and anthropological studies of this socialist city can be traced back to the 1950s and 1960s, only after 1989 has Nowa Huta become a major topic of global interest for a wide variety of scholars. Recent scholarship has focused on history, labor and economics, place identity, and myth, and two of the most noteworthy texts to have appeared in the last few years are Katherine Lebow’s Unfinished Utopia: Nowa Huta, Stalinism, and Polish Society, 1949–56 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni versity Press, 2013) and Monika Golonka-Czajkowska’s Nowe Miasto Nowych Ludzi: Mitologie nowohuckie (Cracow: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 2013). Kinga Pozniak’s Nowa Huta: Generations of Change in a Model Socialist Town is a fine addition to the growing scholarship on Nowa Huta, and by investigating Nowa Huta through the lens of memory, her work directly ad-dresses the ambivalent dichotomy of Nowa Huta’s postsocialist identity. Pozniak’s aim is to look at “how the socialist period is remembered and represented in various contexts, and what these memories and representations can tell us about people’s experiences of the political, economic, and social changes that have taken place since the collapse of the socialist government in 1989” (180). She succeeds in doing so by focusing primarily on physical spaces of memory in Nowa Huta. The book is divided into five chapters that examine the cityscape, the steelworks, museums and sites of commemoration, the older generation of “builders,” and the younger generation born around or after 1989. With great attention to historical and cultural detail, each thematic chapter considers the way in which the transition from socialism to capitalism, the introduction of neoliberal economic reforms, and deindustrialization have affected the everyday lives of Nowohucians, all of which have influenced the inhabitants’ relationship to the past, especially in the case of the older generations. Pozniak’s anthropological study of Nowa Huta is made up of numerous interviews, as well as her observations and participation in local commemorative [End Page 163] events marking the 60th anniversary of Nowa Huta in 2009. The extensive fieldwork is framed by the work of major scholars engaged in investigating memory in postsocialist societies. It is worth noting that Pozniak situates Nowa Huta alongside the experiences of postindustrial cities in North America and Western Europe. This comparison provides a much needed global context to the case of Nowa Huta and turns the focus away from looking at Nowa Huta as a failed socialist experiment to investigating how a postindustrial society negotiates major political and economic transformations on the local, national, and supranational levels. The significance of her study lies in her comparative approach to memory. She situates the memories of the older generation against the attitudes of the younger generation, who have no direct memory of the socialist period and whose relationship to the history of Nowa Huta is questionable. Is the past important for younger generations to recognize, and if so, which narratives of the past do they appropriate: those from their families, their teachers, or the contemporary hegemonic attitudes? Pozniak claims that the national hegemonic attitudes prefer to characterize the socialist period as one of “repression, resistance, and inefficiency” (4). These three keywords repeat often throughout the text and serve as the benchmarks against which Pozniak problematizes the memories and experiences of her subjects. Thus, not only does she examine contested memories between generations, she also investigates...

나르콤핀 공동주택과 위니떼 다비따시옹에 담긴 건축이념 및 구성요소의 상관성에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship of architectural ideology and characteristics of spatial composition between Moisei Ginzburg's Narkomfin communal house and Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation. Narkomfin communal house and Unite d'Habitation is considered as example of experiment to construct ideal community housing model. Moisei Ginzburg designed Narkomfin communal house to make typical housing model for socialist city. Meanwhile, Le Corbusier is considered as a leader of modern functionalism architecture. His Unite d'Habitation in Marseille is important experiment for housing model in modern period. Unite d'Habitation is known to be affected by Narkomfin communal house in terms of architectural ideology and its spatial composition. This study focuses on comparative analysis between Narkomfin communal house and Unite d'Habitation through drawings, pictures and various literatures. Narkomfin communal house and Unite d'Habitation have common ideology to realize ideal community housing model. Moreover, both of them have considerable similarities in their spatial composition. First of all, unit housing of Narkomfin and Unite d'Habitation are maisonette type. Secondly, both of them have unique system that one corridor serve two of housing unit. Also, both have common facility such as laundry, childcare which is connected with their housing.