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Frankfurter Institut für
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Frankfurt institute for
Transformation Studies
Arbeitsberichte - Discussion Papers
ISSN 1431- 0708
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Prof. Dr. J.C. Joerden
Prof. Dr. H-J. Wagener
© by the author
Dariusz Aleksandrowicz
The Socialist City and its
Transformation
No. 10/99
Europa-Universität Viadrina
Postfach 1786
D - 15207 Frankfurt (Oder)

Dariusz ALEKSANDROWICZ
The Socialist City and its Transformation
Prof. Dr. Dariusz Aleksandrowicz is professor for philosophy, especially philosophical
basics of cultural science analysis at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder)
and a member of the F.I.T. The F.I.T. is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein
schaft (DFG) as innovation college.

The Socialist City and its Transformation
I. Ideological foundations of a socialist city
Unlike the development of new cities in Western industrial countries, the rise of socialist
cities cannot be explained in terms of economic objectives and economic
growth in the usual meaning of the word. The very rationality of the communist system
was not an “economic” one but rested upon subordinating the latter to objectives
which derived their justification from communist ideology. Achieving these ideology-defined
tasks was due much more to political decision and political activity than
to the organic development of the society and its infrastructure. The intention consisted
rather in creating some new reality which would contradict the “spontaneous”
(i. e. mainly economically determined) dynamics of the social organism. 1 Although
the communist vocabulary contained words like “economic” or “economy”, what
they referred to was, however, a politically manipulated system of production and
distribution. 2 In the proper sense “economy” means the type of rules which govern
production and distribution of goods. In Communism, on the contrary, the notion attributed
to the specific content of what is being done (i. e., creating material goods),
whereas the rules appropriate to it relied on political decision and ideological legitimization.
Conceiving the city as the major scene where the communist utopia was to be realized
in people’s every-day life, the Soviet-type Communists were in line with the
mainstream of the tradition of utopianism. It was represented, for instance, by the
“New Jerusalem” in the Apocalypse of John or by Campanella’s “The City of the
Sun.” In accordance with this tradition they regarded the city as the expected surrounding
where the new world resulting from a radical change would find its ex
pression. 3 The ideology of the Soviet-type Communists differed here from their
1 For the opposition of “spontaneous” and “constructed” order cf. Hayek (1978: ch. 6). With
respect to the problems of a “socialist city” – cf. Szczepañski (1990; 1993a: 63p.). Contrasting
“spontaneous” social order with the communist attempt to “construct” a society according to a
general plan laid down by the superior political authority, we must, however, avoid possible misinterpretations.
The communist idea of planning (or: planned economy) as a principle of social
organization is not to be confused with planning (especially: urban planning) as a method of rationally
managing and mutually adjusting particular aspects of a social organism. Since “planning”
in the first meaning can be opposed to “spontaneity”, as Hayek understands the term, the
proper opposite to “planning” in the other sense would be “anarchy”. For a related distinction
between “utopian planning” and “social technology of particular problems” cf. Popper (1945: ch.
9).
2 The idea of opposing “production” and “economy” in order to finally release production of material
goods from restrictions imposed upon them by economic rules traces back beyond Marx’
“Critique of Political Economy” to the writings of Saint-Simon. For more cf. Aleksandrowicz
(1993: ch. XI) and Polanyi (1960).
3 “From the architectural utopias of Alberti and Leonardo in the Renaissance, to Le Corbusier’s
design for the ‘city of tomorrow,’ architects and urban planners have sought to realize the good

2 F.I.T. Discussion Paper 10/99
Maoist or Red-Khmer counterpart, who thought the village and not the city to be the
genuine environment of the desired mode of life.
Looking from a historical perspective, we must, however, realize that the relation
between the city and the village in both ideology and practice of the Soviet Communism
appears a little more complex. Prior to the Bolshevik revolution as well as in
the initial period of Soviet Russia, when a competition between different utopian
designs took place, the “urbanist” models were challenged by the “disurbanist” ones
(cf. Stites, 1989: 30p. and ch. 9). The latter originated from these currents of the
Russian culture which claimed the native tradition roots in the rural mode of life and
is to be regarded as superior to urban tradition coming from the West. On the other
hand, the Marxists, both in Russia and in the West, always insisted on the elimination
of the differences between the city and the village as a prominent objective of a
communist society. Although these hopes were never fulfilled in the reality and the
“urbanist” current finally dominated the opposite one, the Soviet-type socialist cities
were as little “urban” as the Soviet villages populated by the workers of the collective
farms maintained their “rural” character. In the social and spatial structures represented
by these both types of environment, the city and the village lost much of the
features traditionally ascribed to them.
According to its design, a socialist city was intended to be something more than a
mere town-planning and architectonic creation. It implied moreover the respective
new style of living and a Weltanschauung, which resulted from an utopian view of
the future world and of man. The design of really-existing Soviet-type socialist cities
as well as purely theoretical projects developed by the Western-European (especially
French) socialist city planers were based on such ideas. According to Tony
Garnier’s design of a “Cité industrielle,” the new city would be a model of the desired
future, contributing by its example to the rejection of the traditional forms of
society and of life (cf. de Bruyn, 1992; Garnier, 1988). These Western-type collectivist
ideas have later found their ultimate expression in the so-called “Charter of
Athens.” (cf. Le Corbusier, 1957).
Due to the very philosophy of a socialist city, its empirically given reality was, as it
were, complemented by the image of some future, emerging state of things
the name of which was “Communism.” The town-planning and architectonic features
of the city were therefore to be viewed with respect to their conformity with the
imaginary, future “man of Communism.” An important function of the city consisted
in contributing this “new man” (now existing only as an ideological project)
to really emerge. Together with the usual means of education and political propaganda,
the city had to approximate this task by way of imposing upon its inhabitants
some special behavioural patterns and style of life. This was to result from the
life in the bricks of buildings and the grids of squares and streets. ... The ideal city contributes the
element of design. Its premise is that the good society must be constructed, thought through in a
systematic way. Its hallmark is reason, its emblem the plan.” Kumar (1991: 14, 19).

D. Aleksandrowicz: The Socialist City and its Transformation 3
spatial order represented by the city as well as from the specific visual experience
permanently offered in it.
In the history of Communism and its ideology, however, the historicist metaphysics
which originally formed the core of the respective ideas was gradually dwarfed by
interpretations suggested by a more pragmatic assessment of problems in the light of
realpolitik. 4 Although the crucial notions such as “Communism,” which referred to
the desired model of society, still could not be understood without taking into account
the revolutionary eschatology they were originally rooted in, they at the same
time acquired a more practical and concrete meaning. It was most of all Stalinism
that succeeded in pushing the idea and the practice of Communism away from the
purely abstract notions once developed in Marxism. The chief invention of Stalinism
was in this respect to establish “industrialization” as a secular equivalent of the
metaphysical idea of “emergence of Communism.”
Industrialization and creation and/or further development of the working class were
therefore the major “practical” objectives to which the socialist cities owed its existence.
Since we can speak about both “industrialization” and “working class” also
with regard to the Western society, it is important to note the specific “socialist”
meaning of these terms due to the specific features of the reality to which they refer.
“Industrialization” here chiefly means the construction of production plants (especially
in the domain of heavy industry). The function of these plants was to employ
people and to produce things according to directives resulting from the politicallydefined
production plan. Apart from some physical or even technological similarity,
the socialist “production plant” had little in common with the “enterprise” in the
economic sense of the word. Correspondingly, the socialist working class, unlike the
class of employees in a Western society, owed its very existence not to the economic
process, and its position was not determined by what was taking place on the market.
More significant was its relation to the socialist state. It was exactly the socialist
state and not the market that created and secured the place of work, determined the
conditions of work and of life, and defined the system of duties and privileges for the
members of the working class. 5
II. Specific features of a socialist city
Socialist cities or settlements of the Stalinist period and those of the later decades
differ architectonically from each other. The first of them were usually built in a
socialist “neo-classical” style with socialist “baroque” elements added to it,
whereas the simplistic architecture of the latter was determined by technology of the
pre-cast panels. What they have in common is, however, an egalitarian, anti-
4 For more cf. Aleksandrowicz (1989).
5 For more cf. Aleksandrowicz (1993a; 1998a)

4 F.I.T. Discussion Paper 10/99
individualistic monotony of the urban space. 6 The human individual as an inhabitant
of the city was confronted by the urban space in the same manner as he/she was confronted
by the institutions of the socialist state. He/she was integrated into a spatial
order which widely determined his/her behaviour, leaving him/her very few alternatives
to use the urban space as a field of his/her individual creativeness. This determination
manifested itself in everyday-life – with respect to both the individual’s
work and leisure-time – as well as in the specific forms of public activity which was
organized within and by way of the structures of the urban space.
In the traditional (“bourgeois”) city which has developed owing to the economic
process, the centre of the town is obviously marked by mercantile factors. “Centre”
means there above all “shopping –“ and “business centre.” The aim of the socialist
city planers was in turn to give the centre of the new city an ideological character.
That is, instead by the market-place the centre of the town was here to be organized
by political institutions and by official ideology. 7 This very idea was, for instance,
the background of the reconstruction of Bucharest at the time of the late Ceausescu -
a project which can be interpreted as an effort to make a socialist new city out of a
traditional one.
Except obvious similarities there are also differences between the socialist and the
“pre-bourgeois” concept of the centre of a city. In the latter, the principal area was
defined as a centre of religious cult and of administration. The socialist city, in turn,
tended to marginalize religion and to somehow substitute it by secular ideology.
What added here to the administrative function of political power were, among others,
its manipulative and mobilizing efforts attempting the masses of inhabitants to
act in a particular way within the spatial order of the city. But still good arguments
could probably be found to support the thesis that something similar occurred also in
at leas few representative cities of the absolute monarchies.
According to the concept of a socialist city, the centre was to be defined as the space
where some specific form of collective life of the inhabitants of the city takes place.
By its very nature, it was an ideologically controlled collective life. A particular
political directive or a regular official occasion, such as a state or party festival,
were the source of activity which tentatively united the passive and isolated
6 Some substantial ideas underlying the design of a city in a communist-type society are, however,
not of Stalinst origin, but can be traced back to the early writings of the founders of Communism.
This refers especially to the concept of dwellings which were intended to promote a “collectivist
way of life.” 1847 Engels pleaded for “construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal
dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture.” Engels
(1847).
7 Cf. Kotarbiñski (1985: 54): “... the city should have a centre of a social and political type as well
as squares and streets as the space of collective life.” Szczepañski (1993b: 152), suggests an
analogy between socialist and “oriental” concept of the centre of a city. According to Szczepañski,
the common feature shared by them is emptiness of one part of the central space with the
other part occupied by monumental buildings.

D. Aleksandrowicz: The Socialist City and its Transformation 5
“socialist people” into an active whole which had to play a special role within the
ideologically determined ritual.
Besides the political centre, another dominant factor of a socialist city was the production
plant. Many new socialist cities have been built for the staff of a single large
production plant or for a single branch of heavy industry. 8 The role the production
plant played in the life of a socialist city went far beyond the process of production
and of work. Because of the permanent supply shortages, the plant provided the supply
of commodities for the members of its staff. 9 It also provided cultural life for
them and kindergarten for their children. Holidays were organized by the production
plant in the plant-owned “recreation settlements.” Despite the fact that these settlements
were geographically distant from both socialist city and socialist production
plant they belonged to the very same context and were thus an extension of the behavioural
and cultural patterns determined by it.
The new socialist city essentially consisted of (1) the centre of political and ideological
manipulation, (2) the place of production and of work, and (3) the private
dwelling-place. In each of these specific spaces the individual was dominated by
political manipulation (which was daily present at least in form of visual propaganda
and of monumental architecture of the central square or of the official buildings),
by the plant, and by the anonymity and monotony of the living blocks. As a
result of an extremely poor infrastructure of the urban-specific services (including
cultural services) there existed hardly any mediating instances between the individual
space, which was reduced to the inside of the dwelling-place, and the public
space of the city, which was the spatial representation of the authority of the socialist
state. This type of relation between the individual and the collective (or:
between the private and the public) was, to be sure, also an essential issue in the
above mentioned ideas of the Western socialist city planers. In Garnier’s design of
the cité industrielle, for instance, “it is only the threshold of one’s own house which
(...) marks the very narrow border between the privacy of living and the public
space. Crossing the threshold one already finds himself outside, in a space that belongs
to everyone.” (de Bruyn, 1992: 537). In the actual socialist city the problem,
however, was that this space which was originally designed so as to belong to eve-
8 The process of construction and of existence of a socialist city in its function as a dwelling place
of one single production plant is impressively documented in Beier (1997). (The central issue of
the volume is, however, to demonstrate similarities between a planned city in East and in West
Germany: Stalinstadt/Eisenhüttenstadt and Stadt des KdF-Wagens/Wolfsburg. I do not deal with
the related questions in this paper, because it would imply an detailed discussion of some other
complex problems. One of them would be the relation between the respective aspects of the two
totalitarian systems: Communism and National Socialism. It is due to the fact that Wolfsburg
owes its very character as a “planned city” to its origin in the industrializing and city-planning
concepts of the Nazi state.)
9 From the end of the 70‘s onwards, when the crisis of the socialist economy consequently approximated
its peak, some of the industrial production plants in socialist Poland even started
breeding pigs in order to improve their respective services. These initiatives were glorified by the
media and supported by the officials of party and state.

6 F.I.T. Discussion Paper 10/99
ryone, was in fact a no-one’s space. It was due to the failure of the original task of
socialism to make a “new” man out of the “old” one, for whom the very distinction
between the “private” and the “public” wouldn’t exist anymore.
III. Idea and reality of a socialist city: remarks on Naberezhnye Chelny
Like all other institutions of a socialist society, socialist cities have developed in the
context of a tension between the ideology-conforming design and the given reality.
What the city in effect was like as well as the very dynamics of its development,
were at least as much due to the original assumptions of the plan as to a tentative
adjustment of contradicting factors. 10 In “non-reforming” countries, like Russia, as
well as in the “reforming” 11 ones some determinants of this type of dynamics survived
the disintegration of the institutional system of Communism. There are, however,
some crucial differences between the respective processes which are at work
in both of them.
Naberezhnye Chelny (1982-1988: Brezhnev, in Tatar: Jar Chally), a city in the
Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan within the Russian Federation, is one of world’s
best examples of a socialist “new city.” It is a city of over half a million inhabitants
the construction of which has started only three decades ago. It therefore owes its
existence to a voluntary design of Soviet politicians and city planers of the Brezhnev
period.
The city has been planned and built along with the “Kamaz” production plant, which
– according to its size and output measured in tons and numbers – once was the biggest
truck factory in the world. Like in any other model socialist city, the very functioning
of the urban organism of Naberezhnye Chelny as well as its inhabitants’ conditions
of life depend upon the plant. But this dependence here is much more substantial
than it was the case in a Central European socialist city. This is because of
the dimensions of both the city and the plant and due to the geographical distance that
separates Naberezhnye Chelny from other industrialized areas.
After the collapse of the communist system in Russia, the dominant role of the
plant did not disappear but it adopted new forms. What one was now confronted
10 I’m not dealing here with the question as to how far several types of adaptive spontaneity of this
kind simply promoted functional disorder and degenerated into anarchy. For analyses of related
issues cf. Wódz (1990).
11 By “reforming countries” I mean the so-called “Visehrad” and Baltic countries, and Slovenia.
They follow the course of post-communist transformation which consists, roughly speaking, in
approximating the “Western” model of democracy and market economy. Contrasting these
countries with the “non-reforming” ones, I ignore the question as to whether it would make sense
to differentiate some intermediate cases. The examples for “non-reforming” countries can especially
be found in much of the post-Soviet spectrum.

D. Aleksandrowicz: The Socialist City and its Transformation 7
with was a continuation of the respective relation between the plant and the city in
the changed situation of the post-communist period. At that time, that is at the begin
of 90’s, all of the best land around Naberezhnye Chelny belonged to Kamaz. The
plant has bought this land from the surrounding collective and state-owned farms -
the kolkhozes and the sovkhozes. Kamaz has exercised political influence to move
the farms to sell the land, despite of the resistance of their staff “Kamaz is an empire,
it can exercise power.” 12 The chief argument in the bargaining could in turn be easily
used as a purely ideological one. It referred to the needs of the workers of Kamaz
who are looking for new houses to be built – a slogan which was impressive for
minds that grown up on ideas once promoted by the communists. 13
Unlike the conditions of the Soviet society, there are now some capitalist elements
that determine the situation of the involved actors. Among others, it is land property
(although there is still no genuine private land property) as an important factor in the
context of the economic game. Methods used by the plant to improve its position in
the new context, however, follow from the old repertoire. They consist in political
pressure and ideological argumentation. It is therefore still the standing of the actors
within the distribution of political power that decisively influences the results of this
special type of competition. 14
The respective evolution, the core of which is the specific constellation of economic
and of political factors, occurred also within Kamaz itself. The former socialist
“production plant” acquired some features of an “enterprise” and it became divided
into what in Poland is being called “nomenclatura joint-stock companies.” This is a
special type of organization of an enterprise in the transitory period that in a peculiar
way combines politics and economy. The semi-owners of the companies
usually come from the ranks of the former members of the communist nomenclatura 15
(usually of the leadership of the respective plant). In post-communist Russia, there
are hardly the rules of the market that form the framework of the nation-wide economic
process. Therefore, individuals involved into networks emerging from the
system of the nomenclatura are in a position to implement the political means at
their disposal in order to approach economic objectives. At the same time, they
12
Unauthorized record of an interview with Director of Kamaz Incorporated Design and Production
Company Nilov W. Stepanovitsh. The interview was organized by Peter Marcuse at September
15th 1993. At the interview participated except Marcuse and myself also Amine Benaissa,
James Hansen and Alastir McAuley.
13
In fact, building of dwelling place for workers has been at that time drastically reduced as compared
with the communist period.
14
Also the question as to whom - to the city or the plant - should the biggest hotel in the town
belong, was to be answered according to the very same mechanism. It was to be decided by way of
political power-play and not, for instance, with respect to some legally defined procedure.
15
The term was originally used in the official Soviet language. It referred to all positions in the
system for the performance of which the individual was to be “named” by the executive of the
Communist Party at the respective level of Party’s hierarchy. It gained then international and
theoretical relevance owing to the book of Voslensky (1980).

8 F.I.T. Discussion Paper 10/99
are not seriously burdened by capital risk or by competition in the proper sense of
the word.
In the way the system functions now we can, however, see an evolution of the very
same logic that determined the functioning of the respective aspects of the communist
society. In Communism there were the political rules of the game that substituted the
economic ones and finally resulted in creating “economic” factors in the Soviet
meaning of this term. It was due to political influence that the decision was taken to
build up the plant at this or other place, to direct the respective amount of resources
for its creation and subsequent growth, to secure its monopolistic position etc. Control
over these “economic” factors gave then the possibility to translate them into
means of political power and superiority. The latter were in turn instruments by the
virtue of which particular economic advantages could be gained.
Kamaz trucks were a desired commodity, but they were (because of the character of
the Soviet economy as an “economy of shortage” (cf. Kornai, 1980)) hard to buy.
The other cities – respectively plants that dominated them - got the trucks if they accepted
to give in exchange the pre-cast panels that were originally destined for their
own house-building programs. Owing to this, Naberezhnye Chelny could grow faster
that most other cities in the country (Stepanovitsh). This illustrates the way of attaining
economic objectives in a context determined by a primarily “non-economic”
type of behavioural rationality.
As in any other socialist city, the original idea that underlaid the plan to be realized
in the pre-cast-panels landscape of Naberezhnye Chelny was to come as close as
possible to the ideal, i.e. to the communist ideal. The people thus participated in the
building activity, “building settlements for others, not only for themselves,” and were
proud to say: “it was field - now it is city!” (Stepanovitsh) There was a clear educational
component in it, connected with the task of bringing up the collectivist “man of
Communism.” For, according to the very core of the Soviet ideology, it was first of
all the building activity where this “new man” was expected to emerge from (Aleksandrowicz,
1993b: 89 - 93).
Still, there were not only such purely utopian aspects of the plan that were not fulfilled
in reality. Due to the scheme once accepted, the centre of Naberezhnye
Chelny was planed at the geographical centre of the city. There should be a circus,
cultural objects, supermarkets, and a market place. 16 The project in some respect
intended to approximate the model of Brasilia – a city voluntarily designed and
erected in the wilderness of the Brazilian interior. But the plan was never realized. 17
16 The town hall, however, was not intended to be a part of it. The town hall as well as the city
council located in it didn’t have any serious function to perform in the Soviet system, since it was
substituted by the municipal committee of the Communist Party.
17 The same, as reported by Stepanovitsh, happened to the originally planed sport centre. Due to the
pressure of the party leaders who wished to have the respective facilities in their neighbourhood

D. Aleksandrowicz: The Socialist City and its Transformation 9
“We still do not have a centre, since the design of the centre turned out to be very
expensive. It therefore extended the available means. Besides that, we simply lacked
technical possibilities to realize it. It should be the task of future - when we will
have more means to make it even better and perfect.” 18 The other reason why the
centre hasn’t been constructed, however, was, according to Stepanovitsh, the lack of
real demand. Priority, therefore, was given to dwelling space. “You see, the city can
exist and function well without a centre. You in fact don’t need any such centre in the
usual practice which takes place in the space determined by the objectives of working,
shopping and living.” (Stepanovitsh).
Looking at the issue in the light of strategies social actors implement in order to
adapt to the existing reality, there are, I think, the following conclusions which can
be derived from it: On the one hand, what we face here is, as it were, a “reverse
adaptation”; that is, adaptation of a somehow sophisticated project to the very norm
of Communism. According to the logic of the system as expressed in the urban space,
there was no reason for such a centre to be really constructed. On the other hand, we
can speak here of adaptation to the provisory reality determined by the failure to
realize the plan. The adaptation concerns both behaviour and mentality as well as
related rationalizing schemes of ideology, and with it – the planning authority itself
which now attempts to interpret the failure in terms of pragmatically correcting the
plan.
The original project in question reflected the nature of Communism, as far as it
turned out to be an imaginary state of things, never to approximate in reality. What
the reality of Communism in fact was like, was a more or less chaotic building site
with all the provisional and imperfect arrangements common to it. As long as the
institutional and ideal framework of Communism persisted, the building site, however,
had some “meaning” referring to what was intended to develop out of it. This
very reference at the same time contributed to somehow “transcending” all the misery
of what actually existed. In this respect, it was just like any ordinary building
site, where we relativize the imperfectness or even ugliness of what is now given
by relating it to the final result as presented in the underlying design. When the image
of an expected future finally disappears, the sole reality one faces and lives in is
reduced to the actually existing misery of provisory arrangements. The type of
adaptation we face here, mainly consists in considering the conditions that resulted
from the failure of the previous illusions as stable reference points for the practice of
life. To be sure, this attitude is more rational than commitment to the communist
myth. But it is a very poor base for a creative evolution.
the original plan was abandoned. In effect, huge swimming pools were constructed in a part of the
city where there live only few people.
18 Stepanovitsh. Admittedly, the “failure to create a centre”, as referred to in Szczepañski (1993b:
153), was not restricted to Russia, but was an usual feature of new “socialist cities” in the Soviet
bloc. Cf. also Szczepañski (1990: 52).

10 F.I.T. Discussion Paper 10/99
In the case discussed, the major adapting actor is the planer respectively the planning
authority. Their adaptive efforts are due to giving up the original plan and at the same
to explaining the retreat by way of some new interpretative scheme. The imperfectness
of what is given appears now as what the people in their ordinary lives “really
need.” The “people” in question as well as the patterns of “ordinary live” and of
“needs” specific to them do, however, not represent any universal anthropological
standard. The respective features are but habitual consequences of the type of existence
in the peculiar environment of an ill-concepted “socialist city.” But as far as
the modernized views of the planers are concerned, the respective habits are about to
substitute the usual standards of urban life.
After the collapse of the communist system there emerged, however, some new ideas
as to how the future centre of the city is to be constructed. What the ideas substantially
aimed at was to change and at the same time to re-introduce the communist
concept of a centre as a “centre of power” according to what “power” in the altered
situation means. The two key objects designated for the new centre were therefore a
business centre of the Kamaz “nomenclatura joint stock companies” and, close to it,
an impressive building of the American-Russian Fund Dialogue Inc. 19 The huge dimensions
of both of them is exactly what the image of the centre is to be expressed
by.
IV. Transformation of a socialist city: constructive and destructive adaptation
The very design of the new socialist city followed the ideal of a plan- and ideologyconforming
society which had to overcome the spontaneous social process based on
individual activity. The adaptive counter-tendencies which resulted from behavioural
strategies of individuals and groups, however, as already mentioned in the
previous chapter, consisted in changing the original functional order and the
image of the socialist city according to the spontaneous forces and needs. This adaptation
took place long before both the breakdown of the communist system 20 and
19 Despite of the practical function of it – that is, selling software - there was also some ideological
justification for the Russian-American joint venture to be part of the institutional as well as
symbolic centre of the city. As far as we can speak of “Westernization” with respect to the postcommunist
Russia, this word would there especially mean a superficial “Americanization”, without
any deep reference to respective institutional re-arrangements or people’s behavioural patterns.
(It may be an accidental illustration of this problem that during the interview mentioned
above Stepanovitsh exposed on his desk a few two-years old issues of “New York Post” to
document that he once had “unforgettable luck” to be there.)
20 Socialist cities, to be sure, finally owed their real character at least as much to the ideological
design as to the efforts of the local apparatshiks to adapt it to the particular interests rationally
defined by them. It was, for instance, in accordance with these interests to have the biggest possible
production plant in one’s own sphere of influence and to guarantee as much as possible resources
to be planned for it. For the general problem of correlation between objectives of the
plan and particular interests of the apparatshiks cf. Hoessli (1989: 54p.): “Bürokratie gegen

D. Aleksandrowicz: The Socialist City and its Transformation 11
the implementation of reformist policies in some of the former communist countries.
But it became more dramatic after that event, since the institutional framework, on
which the rationality of the socialist city was hitherto based, ceased to exist. For the
sake of this analysis, we can differentiate two general types of such adaptation: the
constructive and the destructive one. Both of them are of crucial importance for the
future prospects of these specific urban environments. 21
One of such adaptations we could observe was the shift or the functional change of
the centre of the socialist city. The design-conforming city centre as an “ideological
centre” did not correspond with the real life of the inhabitants. It was rather an area
where they were expected to perform some ritual behaviour which was alien to attitudes
and needs defined by their every-day practice. Owing to this, the architectonic
and town-planning structure of the socialist city in fact lacked any “centre” in the
usual meaning of this word. The adaptive behaviour, on the other hand, resulted in
creating what may be called a “moving” or “tentative” centre of the socialist city.
The criteria upon which the creation of such centre rested were not ideological but
economic - in the specific meaning, to be sure, in which economic problems manifested
themselves in the context of the communist society. According to Szczepañskis
investigations on the new socialist city Tychy in Upper Silesia, such “centre emerges
irrespective of the time of the day and the day of the week, and its necessary condition
is presence, or merely the expectation of presence, of attractive commodities.” 22
This adaptive tendency was continued after the collapse of the communist system. In
the new institutional context, the original centre of the socialist city quickly changed
its function from an ideological to an economic one. The official centre, which was
distinguished by its central location in the geometry of the city, its usually large
square, its representative buildings and its good access by means of public
and private transportation, now became the central area where people started to
sell and to buy commodities. It gradually became a “market place”, a “shopping and
business centre.” This development was very manifest, for instance, in Warsaw,
which was admittedly no “new city” in a proper sense, but its reconstruction
after its almost total destruction in the World War II was partly due to the effort to
rebuilt fragments (especially the centre) of the town according to the patterns of a
socialist city. In effect, the centre of Warsaw was, according to its visual image,
much more than it was the case in Budapest or in Prague, an ideological and political
than an economic one. The centrally located monumental buildings of the Cen-
Logik der Planwirtschaft”. (As far as the analysis in Lepsius (1990) is reliable, similar correlation
was seemingly absent in the economic system of the ex-GDR.)
21 The remarks in the present chapter refer to Poland and do not therefore claim general applicability
irrespective of the specific context of the society in question.
22 Szczepañski (1991: 139): “... the central area of a settlement or even of a city ... can be a most
eccentrically located area if there can be bought a commodity in demand.” Szczepañski (1991:
157).

12 F.I.T. Discussion Paper 10/99
tral Committee of the Communist Party and of the Central Planning Institution impressively
symbolized the victory of political direction and control over economic
rationality. After the breakdown of the communist system the previous tendency has
been reversed. The centre of Warsaw quickly acquired the image of an economic
centre, whereas the huge building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
became a centre of finance and the seat of the most vigorously developing stockexchange
in post-communist Europe.
Like the constructive adaptation, the destructive one has its roots going beyond the
period of decomposition of the communist system. A socialist city extremely limited
the possibilities of individual creativeness or simply of the expression of one’s own
individuality outside of one’s own flat, that is in the public space of the city. The
obvious forms in which the individual spontaneity could come into the open were,
therefore, aggressive ones. They consisted in challenging the existing order by
openly expressing a hostile attitude to what represented the “public” sphere. Aggressive
attitudes often manifested themselves simply in hooliganism and abuse of alcohol.
But they also came into the open in some politically relevant and morally acceptable
(assuming the lack of democratic procedures of expressing one’s discontent)
behavioural patterns, which could, for instance, be observed in strikes, street
riots and all-round resistance against the “official” authority. 23 Street riots usually
were the most extreme of them. The central component of this type of collective
“street behaviour” was aggression directed against public buildings identified with
the authority. These actions reached their peak in setting in fire of some seats of the
respective committees of the Communist Party.
This negative potential, which lurked especially among young workers of socialist
production plants, played an important role in the popular struggle against the institutional
system of Communism in Poland in the 80’s. A good example would be the
story of Nowa Huta - a model new city of communist Poland located closely to the
medieval town Cracow. The city was built in the Stalinist period along with a huge
steel plant, in order to give a proletarian counterbalance to its “pettybourgeois”
and anti-communist neighbour. The communist promise which gave at
least some eschatological sense to such urban environment as Nowa Huta, and to the
mode of life it promoted, has revealed itself as an illusion. Thus the city gradually
became the bulwark of the most militant popular anti-Communism. The city that
originally had to represent the communist utopia, now developed in a way not foreseen
and not intended by its founders. 24 While in the 50’s one associated Nowa
23 For particular significance of an antagonistic relationship between individuals and official institutions
in the Polish model of social transformation cf. for instance Dalhoff (1996: 219p.).
24 Dealing with these issues, one should also note the dramatic changes in the symbolic space of
the city that took place during the communist period in Nowa Huta. The city was originally
planned and declared as “the first city in Poland without a church,” while the most impressive
symbolic substitute for it was a big monument of Lenin (one of the only two that existed in
communist Poland). Gradually, the monument became the main target of hostilities (including a

D. Aleksandrowicz: The Socialist City and its Transformation 13
Huta with workers marching in perfect order during the May Day celebrations; in the
last decade of the communist Poland, there were long-term strikes and bloody street
fights that decisively determined the image of the city.
After the collapse of the communist system the new socialist cities - owing to their
dependence on one single, usually inefficient, production plant or one branch of
heavy industry - developed into areas of sharp crisis. In face of the (at least expected)
bankruptcy of this industrial infrastructure these cities became existential
pitfalls, without any attractive future prospects for their inhabitants and particularly
for the younger generation. Discussing these problems, we must, however, note that
limiting the number of behavioural alternatives with respect to the possible spatial
behaviour undertaken on one’s own account, the socialist city at the same time relieved
its inhabitants from the corresponding individual risk. They were therefore
only exceptionally burdened by decisions of the type to go shopping to this or that
shop, to live in this or that neighbourhood etc. To be sure, most of the residents of a
communist country could lead a somewhat “economy-free” life, that is a life substantially
relieved from stress resulting from being confronted by the genuine economic
process. Although they had to come to grips with many economic problems in
their every-day life (as supply shortages or low wages), at their place of labour as
well as with respect to the basic conditions of life they were free from pressure and
from uncertainty due to the market economy and the competitive system.
In Communism, the all-round control was the reverse of the all-round support the
state offered to the system-conforming individual. Owing to the disintegration of the
communist system the people had to live progressively in an economy-related reality.
Finally, even at their place of work and in their extremely important relation to
the production plant they became dependent on the economic process. This very
situation was completely alien to their previous experience, hierarchy of values and
way of life. They, therefore, often lacked orientation and appropriate behavioural
patterns to come to grips with the changed conditions of work and of life. The expected
bankruptcy of the production plant means for the inhabitants of the new socialist
city not only unemployment but also a collapse of what they regarded to be
“normal” and “just”, and what they were used to live in. This situation causes frustrations
and tensions which strengthen the already existing potential of aggression
and anarchistic populism. Now, however, it is the authority of the democratic state,
the system of free enterprise and the market economy that are the, more or less consciously
defined, targets of striking and rioting workers of the post-socialist production
plants. In doing it, the workers try again to exert collective aggression as a
means of finding escape from the difficulties of their individual lives. 25
few bomb attacks), whereas on the other hand the official authority finally gave in to the pressure
exercised by the local bishop as well as by the workers of the steel plant and allowed a big church
building to be legally erected in the middle of the city.
25 Admittedly, this type of destructiveness is not a primary psychological attitude of individuals but
is to be understood as an attempt to master some related problems due to a specific social con-

14 F.I.T. Discussion Paper 10/99
To be sure, the popular resistance against liberal reform mobilizes not only the
workers in the new socialist cities and settlements, but also peasants and even some
groups of the traditional small enterprise. Nevertheless, this resistance combined
with a behavioural syndrome of chaotic anarchism has some additional background
in the type of environment offered by a socialist city. Along with the decline of the
social, political and ideological framework of socialism, socialist cities and dwellings
were progressively deprived of services relevant to their functioning 26 as well
as of some “meaning” this framework could provide them with. They, therefore, became
an appropriate context for the penetration of various forms of extreme radicalism
which propose simple solutions to the problems individuals have to come to
grips with. The seemingly most simple solutions are those which are to be found by
means of aggression rather than by creative problem-solving strategies. Nowadays
this radicalism, as far as it is connected with an ideology, often has racist and nationalistic
traits.
In the summer of 1993, Polish TV has shown a group of steel-workers from the socialist
city Nowa Huta, who, armed with pickaxes, spades and other tools of violence,
declared to make a grass field out of the city of Cracow unless Cracow would
stop its campaign against Nowa Huta’s poison-emitting and ineffective production
plant. It may be viewed as an irony of history, that Nowa Huta, which has been build
exactly in order to contradict the traditional city and its values by the “new” ones,
never approximated these expectations so well as it seemed to be the case at the beginning
of the post-communist transformation - 30 years after the death of Stalin and
a few years after the peaceful end of the communist system. The content of the “new”
values represented by them is, however, not exactly the same the communist ideologists
and propagandists once pleaded for.
The decisive question, to what extent the model of the constructive adaptation in a
socialist city will be accompanied or even spoiled by the destructive one is first of
all due to the transformation of the crucial component of its structure – the production
plant. The constructive path will prevail if the economic sanation of the inherited
industrial monoculture is at all possible and it will successfully absolve the painful
program of restructuring and privatization. Constructive attitudes will then determine
the dominant behavioural patterns of the inhabitants, contributing in longer run to
change the very spatial order of the (former) socialist city. It is this very issue of a
rational reconstruction of the existing industrial monoculture which still is on the
agenda in numerous post-socialist cities of the reforming countries of postcommunist
Europe.
text. For the interpretation of destructiveness as a pattern of social behaviour cf. Fromm (1941:
ch. 5b).
26 One decisive point in this context is that the production plant, now confronted with the market,
gradually adapts at least some elements of the “commercial” rationality. The first and most simple
step on this path is usually reduction or elimination of the infrastructure of diverse social
services which it hitherto performed. Cf. also Aleksandrowicz (1998b).

D. Aleksandrowicz: The Socialist City and its Transformation 15
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