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Chargement... Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930-1966 (Pitt Russian East European)par Paul Stronski
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Paul Stronski tells the fascinating story of Tashkent, an ethnically diverse, primarily Muslim city that became the prototype for the Soviet-era reimagining of urban centers in Central Asia. Based on extensive research in Russian and Uzbek archives, Stronski shows us how Soviet officials, planners, and architects strived to integrate local ethnic traditions and socialist ideology into a newly constructed urban space and propaganda showcase. The Soviets planned to transform Tashkent from a "feudal city" of the tsarist era into a "flourishing garden," replete with fountains, a lakeside resort, modern roadways, schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and of course, factories. The city was intended to be a shining example to the world of the successful assimilation of a distinctly non-Russian city and its citizens through the catalyst of socialism. As Stronski reveals, the physical building of this Soviet city was not an end in itself, but rather a means to change the people and their society. Stronski analyzes how the local population of Tashkent reacted to, resisted, and eventually acquiesced to the city's socialist transformation. He records their experiences of the Great Terror, World War II, Stalin's death, and the developments of the Krushchev and Brezhnev eras up until the earthquake of 1966, which leveled large parts of the city. Stronski finds that the Soviets established a legitimacy that transformed Tashkent and its people into one of the more stalwart supporters of the regime through years of political and cultural changes and finally during the upheavals of glasnost. Aucune description trouvée dans une bibliothèque |
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Google Books — Chargement... GenresClassification décimale de Melvil (CDD)307.1Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Communities Planning & DevelopmentClassification de la Bibliothèque du CongrèsÉvaluationMoyenne:
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However, in the past, city planning was not considered a trend at all. Especially with the expansion West, cities were, at one point, often planned around where the city buildings, parks, and access roads would lie, and then the housing was built around that. One especially fascinating account of city planning that is unlike anything I’ve read before is Paul Stronski’s book Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City. Stronski compiles the details of how this city was planned from both a civil and structural aspect, right down to an artistic vision of the daily life of its residents. This was not small scale planning! A political endeavor from the beginning, it was an ideological effort to demonstrate Soviet superiority and show the Western world the advancement that the Socialists confidently intended to promote.
While the book covers a great deal of the planning stages, I’m going to focus on two areas that were especially interesting to me. First was the concept of engineering and building codes: apparently even in Soviet Russia, builders wanted to cut corners! The area of Central Asia was already determined to be the site of previous deadly earthquakes, but officials felt that since a 7.0 earthquake hadn’t presumably occurred in a hundred years, they could lower the codes to only deal with the ramifications of a 7.0 earthquake instead of an 8.0 quake (as initially considered). This “small” difference in engineering, combined with hurried construction done on the cheap, with inferior materials, and built in ways that were not common to the builders (tilt-up construction was still something new in the region) left the city vulnerable to earthquake damage. Even when devastating earthquakes occurred nearby, officials were still bent on promoting an image rather than safety.
“Tashkent urban planners still concentrated most of their attention on designing monumental structures….building a compact and beautiful public space was a quicker and easier way to impress and ‘show the state’s care for’ its citizens than building apartments or schools for the population.”
No spoilers, but you can imagine how well that went, and what signaled the end of Tashkent.
Another intention in designing Tashkent was to show that Soviet rule had a cultural side, and that it would be open to permitting ethnic and artistic diversity. In detail, one section discusses how the city tried to incorporate cultural forms that would rival Europe. One woman, Tamara Khanum, was one of the “first Uzbek women to perform unveiled in the 1920s” and became a ‘People’s Artist of the USSR’. She performed in various languages and became a spokesperson for the advanced Tashkent culture. She, along with other women, were used to advance the Soviet cause by appearing to be images of female emancipation, at a time when the West had yet to acknowledge women’s rights.
While the book is heavily detailed in discussing the planning and construction stages of Tashkent, it also sheds light on the Soviet mindset towards propaganda and their intentions. A city that few have ever heard of, Tashkent seems an anomaly in the history of Soviet rule, especially given what was going on in Siberia to the North. I think that is what I liked best about it: it exposes another facet of the era that I hadn’t run across in reading other history books. ( )