This edited collection explores the problem of space under socialist regimes in the twentieth century. Bringing together contributions from international scholars with expertise in the architectural, urban, social, and cultural history of twentieth-century socialism, the book includes examples from China, Africa, Mongolia, Eastern Europe and the USSR. The volume reflects on how developments in the field over the past two decades have altered our understanding of how such spaces were constructed (both literally and discursively), how they could become sites of contested meanings, and how they were perceived outside the socialist world. Moreover, the volume is concerned with how scholarly approaches associated with post-colonialism, global history, gender history, and the ‘temporal’ and ‘sensory’ turns have reconfigured our knowledge of, and approach to, the history of socialist space.

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Springer International Publishing AG

Springer Nature Switzerland AG

Springer Nature, Cham, 2024

Switzerland, Switzerland

Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Contributors
List of Figures
1 What, Where, and When Was Socialist Space in the Twentieth Century?
A Brief History of Space
A Space of Its Own? Socialism and Space
Rethinking Socialist Space in the Twentieth Century
Part I Making Socialist Space
2 Visualizing Stalinist Space: The 1951 Geographical Atlas of the USSR for Secondary Schools
Stalinist Space and Socialist Space
Stalinist Space: Shape and Scale
Stalinist Space: Landscapes and Nature
Stalinist Space: Politics and Peoples
The Temporalities of Stalinist Space
Conclusion: Spatial Agency
Select Bibliography
3 Room to Experiment: Housing Newlyweds During China’s Early Reform Era
A Space and a Problem: The Dilemma of Youth
An Idea and a Dream: Designing the Socialist Wedding Chamber
Individualised Collectivity: The Modular Wedding Chamber
Conclusion
Bibliography
4 Listening to East Berlin: Can a Soundscape Be Socialist?
Freie Deutsche Jugend Parades
Radio
Church Bells
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Part II Globalising Socialist Space
5 Global Bridges, Local Ruins? Re-thinking Socialist Spaces Through the Experience of Non-aligned Enterprises
Thinking Outside the Blocs: the NAM as a Space of Alternatives?
Enterprises as Spaces of Cooperation
Portals of Globalisation
Conclusions
Select Bibliography
6 The Reordering of Space and Reference: Polish Geologists in West Africa and Their Mapping of the Postcolonial Order in the 1960s
Creating a Socialist Space: Decolonialisation and Polish Geologists in West Africa
Testing the Socialist Space: Polish Experts as Agents of Change
Othering Socialist Space: Polish Experts and Their Worlding
Translating the Space: Conclusion
Select Bibliography
7 Building the Space of Internationalism: Socialist Assistance to Mongolia in the 1950s–1970s
Introduction
Planning
Construction Sites and Workers’ Settlements
Housing and Urban Space
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
8 A World of Their Own: Vietnamese Students in Late Socialist Poland
A Brief History of Polish–Vietnamese Relations
Scientific Collaboration and Student Visits
Shared Experiences: Becoming Transnational Socialist Subjects
Conclusion
References
Part III Building, Rebuilding, and Destroying Socialist Space
9 Performing Universality: Building Norms and the Circulation of Theatre Architecture in the RSFSR
A ‘Universal’ Right to Leisure
Debating and Drafting the SNiP-69
Mediating Customised and Typified Modes of Architecture
Silencing Cultural Erasure
Conclusion
References
10 A Monument to Friendship: Socialist Modernity and the Reconstruction of Tashkent, 1966–1975
Modernity at The Margins
Traces of Tradition
The Star of the East
Conclusion
References
11 Moscow’s Khrushchevki in Flux: Reflections on the Imminent Demolition of Twentieth-Century Socialist Housing
A Blemish on the World-Class City Façade
Evolving Approaches to the Future of Socialist Space
‘Renovating’ Moscow: What Is Lost? What Is Gained?
Contradictory Convictions
Insecure Futures
Spaces of Nature, Not Concrete
A Tandem of ‘Aesthetic Activism’
In Conclusion: The Off-Modern Khrushchevka?
References
Part IV Epilogue
12 Space Exploration: The Coordinates of History: An Afterword
References
Index

2024-06-13