Dariusz Aleksandrowicz Aleksandrowicz - Europa-Universität ...

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).