Russian Society and Politics: How to study Soviet and Post-Soviet Urbanization as Cultural Phenomena, 5 op

This course will be focused on the special character of Soviet urbanization and its impact on the development of Soviet and Post-Soviet culture. This specificity is mainly determined by the heightened rates of urbanization and the lack of strategic planning of urban life. It is well known that Soviet urbanization was strongly connected with and subjected to the tasks of industrialization when the development of cities and their culture was understood only as an indirect consequence of the intensive development of Soviet industry.

Within the framework of this course, I intend to discuss the following themes: 1) how Soviet peasants became workers and city dwellers (from the early 1930s to the late 1980s) and how they learned and acquired the rules of urban life; 2) how infrastructure of Soviet and Post-Soviet cities changed throughout the process of Soviet urbanization; 3) what cultural conflicts and tensions emerged due to the influence of Soviet urbanization; 4) how Soviet urbanization and its consequences were represented and discussed in Soviet censored and non-censored art; 5) what heritage was left by Soviet urbanization for the Post-Soviet period and how this heritage is conceptualized in contemporary Russian culture.

Lecture 1: The concept of modernization and contemporary approaches to discerning and studying the diversity of modernization models. The concept of “multiple modernities:” its benefits and shortcomings.

Lecture 2: Specificity of Soviet urbanization, its demographical dynamics. Problem of migrations.

Lecture 3: First Soviet industrial cities and their architectural planning. Lack of social infrastructure and adaptation to new city life. Barracks and communal apartments as special forms of housing, living and building social interrelations.

Lecture 4: Old and new city-dwellers: former nobility, former peasants, engineers and state employees, military men, etc. Social hierarchy, social contacts, communicational problems.

Lecture 5: Different types of Soviet cities and their culture: industrial, scientific, “closed,” “satellites”, etc.

Lecture 6: The concept of “Soviet urban culture for former peasants” and its main genres: comedy movies and “musicals,” urban lyric poetry and romance, social dramas on village life, etc. “Intermediary” social forms and the phenomen of “dachi” (country houses).

Lecture 7: Post-Soviet consequences of Soviet urban planning and culture: lack of horizontal social ties, hatred to migrants and newcomers, low level of “care of the self.”