Dariusz Aleksandrowicz Aleksandrowicz - Europa-Universität ...

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).