scholarly journals UNDERSTANDING POSTMODERNISM: NORTHERN BLOCKS OF PODIL

2019 ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Anisimov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Life Span ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Housing Estate ◽  
Late Modernism ◽  
Industrial Zone ◽  
Architectural Production ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Architectural Modernism

Reevaluation of Soviet heritage is a contested topic nowadays. At this moment debates are happening about the attempts to conserve the projects of High Modernism in the USSR of the 1970s and 1980s or even to designate them as heritage. In this article, however, the author attempts to reveal another dimension: postmodern architecture within the life span of the Soviet Union. The case discussed in the article is a housing estate “4blocks” located on the edge of the industrial zone in the Podil district in Kyiv, Ukraine. Podil area was spared from being rebuilt according to the modernist planning proposal in 1968. Afterwards, the district became a testing ground for experimental projects, part and parcel of which is the “4blocks” housing. One can perceive this project being a watershed between different periods of late modernism and postmodernism because of the specific architectural approach and the influence this project exerted on the following architectural production. In the article, the unique conditions which allowed the team of architects to work with unprecedented freedom are discussed. In what way did architects reflect on and use international influences in their projects? How did they work with the local peculiarities of landscape, materials, built environment and archaeology? The article also touches upon the topic of the change in approaches toward the historic urban areas in the late USSR. To highlight the parallels between local and international contexts and reflect on the resulting project the author uses the then-contemporary poststructuralist philosophy. Similarities of the concepts put forward by the philosophy in its critique of architectural Modernism and those used by the authors in “4blocks” is striking. One can conclude that Ukrainian Soviet architecture evolved into a variety of different styles in the mid-1980-s, and this project can be considered a vivid example of one of such styles, so-called postmodernism.            

Immigration Wave: Soviet Jew Exodus

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Assaf Razin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Human Capital ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Physical Capital ◽  
Behavioral Characteristics ◽  
Soviet Jews ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Residential Capital

The disunion of the Soviet Union and the destruction of communism in the USSR 1987-1991 triggered the recent emigration wave of Soviet Jews to various parts of the world, primarily to Israel. The professional, social, attitudinal and behavioral characteristics of the 1990s Jewish exodus cohort proved to be distinctive. Immigrants came mostly from urban areas, with advanced education systems. Immigration produced massive investments, both in residential structures and in non-residential capital. These investments were so substantial that they increased the capital to labor ratio and facilitated economic growth, aided by the remarkable human capital brought by the immigrants. The massive investments in physical capital and infrastructures were financed by capital imports as immigrants themselves fled their former homes almost penniless and credit constrained so that they hardly saved.

Conclusion

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail Kligman ◽  
Katherine Verdery
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Institutional Infrastructure ◽  
Uniform Manner

This concluding chapter summarizes the main points of this analysis and seeks to extend it by addressing broader comparative questions about the socialist variant of modern state-making. The Soviet Union exported the revolutionary technology of collectivization to its satellites, providing the blueprint along with Soviet advisors to guide them. This blueprint set out the parameters for establishing collectives: new methods to improve agricultural production, a new institutional infrastructure, and an arsenal of pedagogical techniques with which cadres were to enlighten peasants and discipline dissenters. However, collectivization was not carried out in a uniform manner anywhere. Blueprints may provide a plan, but social practices are not so easily hammered or welded into place. Romania's small and weak Communist Party, dependent on the Soviet Union, faced a largely agrarian population that offered heavy resistance. Complicating their task was the ongoing strength of the country's interwar fascist movement in both rural and urban areas, among all social strata.

From Nuclear Winter to the Anthropocene

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eglė Rindzevičiūtė
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Computer Models ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Missiles ◽  
Nuclear Winter

This chapter looks at the nuclear winter project, an outcome of global modeling. The idea that the Earth could be plunged into a “nuclear winter” as the catastrophic outcome of a nuclear war was announced by a group of leading climate and environment scientists from the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union shortly after Ronald Reagan delivered his “Star Wars” speech in March 1983. Drawing on experiments with data-based computer models, these scholars claimed that a nuclear war, unlike the two world wars, would be not simply a regional, but a truly global disaster. Nuclear missiles, detonated over urban areas, would ignite massive fire storms, which in turn would propel soot particles and aerosols into high levels of the atmosphere. As a result, the computer models predicted, a dust shield would emerge that would be transported by air currents to both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.

Historical Trends in Moscow and Leningrad Crime

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54
Author(s):  
Louise Shelley
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Crime Trends ◽  
Urban Centers ◽  
Historical Trends ◽  
Population Policies ◽  
Criminological Research ◽  
The Soviet Union

AbstractMoscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, the major Soviet cities, presently have lower rates of criminality than other urban areas in the USSR,1 thus defying the generally observed correlation between the level of urbanization and the crime rate.2 The Soviet Union has not always been the exception to this internationally observed phenomenon, for in the period directly after the 1917 revolution these three cities had exceedingly high rates of criminality.3 The crime trends of all three major Soviet cities is not coincidental but, as the author shows, this change is a direct result of government policies intended to make these urban areas showcases of the Soviet state. As a result of this governmental decision, population policies have been introduced in the last fifty years of the Soviet period to insure that only the most "desirable individuals" reside in major urban centers. Consequently, the favored cities have experienced a significant decline in criminality, while the regions not favored by government population policies have suffered measurable increases in criminality. This article will focus on the changes that have occurred in the criminality of the major urban centers of the USSR, in particular, Moscow and Leningrad, in the years since the 1917 revolution. The crime trends of Moscow have been documented in a recent Soviet collection (Comparative Criminological Research in Moscow in 1923 and 1968-1969),4 but evidence also exists from other criminological sources to assert that such a dramatic transformation has occurred in the level of crime of all major Soviet cities.

The Pandora's Box of ‘Doi Moi’: the Open-Door Policy and Contemporary Theatre in Vietnam

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (52) ◽  
pp. 372-385 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Diamond
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
National Culture ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Open Door Policy ◽  
The West ◽  
Contemporary Theatre ◽  
Doi Moi ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Socialist Realist

In the 1990s, Vietnamese traditional theatre has seen its popular base eroded by foreign videos, television imports, and the films that have poured into the country since the advent of the ‘open door’ policy, or doi moi. As that policy is primarily economic in purpose, the advantages offered to the national culture have been questionable. The traditional forms here discussed by Catherine Diamond – tuong, hat boi, and cheo – have lost much of their status in the urban areas, though still popular in the countryside. However, the forms which address contemporary issues – ‘renovated theatre’ (cai luong), spoken theatre (kich noi), and, most recently, ‘mini-theatre’ (san khau nho) – play to significant numbers in Saigon and Hanoi, often employing a distinctive vein of satirical humour. Though trained in the academies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Vietnamese dramatists have now broken away from the socialist realist ideal and are looking towards the West and China for new artistic developments. The author of this survey, Catherine Diamond, is a dancer and drama professor in Taiwan. She has recently published Sringara Tales, a collection of short stories about the traditional dancers in Southeast Asia.

scholarly journals A landscape of lies: Soviet maps in Estonia

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 08002
Author(s):  
Martti Veldi ◽  
Simon Bell
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
Military Installations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Border Zones ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Maps have long been used as ways of understanding the land as a means of defining borders, land ownership, resources, estimating tax-gathering potential and for defensive purposes. Many of the national mapping agencies originated as arms of the military. When a new regime takes over a country it may decide to prepare its own set of maps – not least for defensive purposes – and to restrict who has access to these maps. When the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic States in 1945 – and these became front-line areas during the Cold War, with large areas devoted to military installations and border zones – a whole new set of maps were created. We took a sample of maps of Estonia from the inter-war years and from the period of political and military occupation from 1945-1991. The Soviet army maps became freely available in the post-Soviet period and studying them and comparing them with the older maps reveals the way the land was perceived. Military maps were produced using different projections and scales, especially regarding the topography and other features relevant for military operations. The maps included deliberate mistakes and if publicly available they contained many blank spaces to hide sensitive areas and to pretend they did not exist. We also found that maps played a key role in planning future landscapes – kolkhoz maps showed how Estonia was foreseen as a complete planned system covering the whole country outside urban areas.

scholarly journals Preface

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Parolai ◽  
Jochen Zschau ◽  
Ulugbek Begaliev
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Seismic Hazard ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Data Sets ◽  
General Description ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Earthquake Model ◽  
Regional Partnership

Central Asia is one of the regions of the world with the highest seismic hazard. A number of large events have occurred in this region between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, when urbanization was still limited. However, the recent increase in population and, in particular, the expansion of urban areas after the collapse of the Soviet Union has greatly increased the seismic risk of Central Asian countries. Within the framework of the Earthquake Model Central Asia (EMCA), the regional partnership of the Global Earthquake Model (GEM) for Central Asia, new Probabilistic Seismic Hazard models have been recently derived, along with site effects studies in several cities, and new models for exposure and vulnerability generated based on newly acquired data sets. This volume consist of 12 papers providing both an overview of the activities undertaken and a general description of the main results of the first phase of the EMCA initiative and of other projects that directly benefited from their cooperation with EMCA.

Primary Medical Care in the Soviet Union

1972 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. M. Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Hospital Medicine ◽  
Work Force ◽  
Medical Work ◽  
First Line ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
General Physicians ◽  
District Work ◽  
At Home

The development of the Soviet Health Service reflects centrally determined decisions on the deployment of resources throughout all sectors of the economy. The fragmentation of first-line care and disaggregation of patients in urban areas have occurred in response to government dictates. Specialization has proceeded to the point where almost 90 percent of the medical work force are classed as specialists, although many have no formal postgraduate qualifications. In urban areas, primary care is provided by general physicians and pediatricians assigned to districts and by a range of specialists based in polyclinics and similar units. Norms for ambulatory care predict nearly 10 visits per person each year, only 4.3 of which are in connection with the treatment of symptoms. District physicians form a small percentage of the total work force and spend about half their time on district work. Surveys reveal a rate for first visits to patients at home of 186.5 per 1000 persons and a hospitalization rate of 148.4 per 1000. There are plans to increase the supply of hospital beds (10.92 per 1000 population in 1970), although interest is also being shown in the “hospital at home” concept. The grievances of district physicians include their isolation from hospital medicine. One critic recommends that the district general physicians should be assigned the function of interpreting specialist findings to patients and should receive broader training.

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