Christina E. Crawford - Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union

I COMPLETED FINAL REVISIONS FOR THIS BOOK DURING THE GLOBAL COVID-19 pandemic, which gave me a renewed appreciation for the spatial debates discussed in these pages. Living under lockdown with a spouse and two children brought into stark relief the basic human need for restorative private space at one end of the spectrum (be that a living cell or home office), and communal public space on the other. The protagonists in these pages insisted that intelligently designed spaces could generate healthy social lives. As a trained architect and planner, I, too, believe that built environments can impact individual and collective well-being, and that certain spatial constructs span geography, politics, and time.

This project really began when I was welcomed into the Chernyi family as an AFS exchange student in Krasnodar, Russia in 199091, the final year of the USSR. It is thanks to their care and patience that I am able to speak and read Russian, have returned so many times, and remain deeply invested in Soviet culture and history. I have accrued more recent intellectual debts over the past decade working on this book. I am grateful to Eve Blau for the gift of Baku and for her assurance that with careful research and patience the stories would emerge (she was right). Thank you to Jean-Louis Cohen for his early advice to follow the money, which led me to the three sites explored in these pages, and for modeling scholarly generosity. Thanks also to Maria Gough for accurately predicting that deep description would generate new knowledge about early Soviet design. In Baku, I am grateful to Amad Mammadov at the State Committee on Urban Planning and Architecture, Galina Mel'nikova at the State Archives, and Chingiz; and from stateside, advice from Sara Brinegar, Heather DeHaan, and Bruce Grant helped me to navigate the Azerbaijani capital. In Magnitogorsk, I offer thanks to the helpful staff at the Magnitogorskii kraevedcheskii muzei and Magnitogorskii Gipromez, and to Stephen Kotkin who sent me their way. Over the past year I have benefitted from the friendship of Evgeniia Konysheva, whose work on Magnitogorsk I have long admired. My interest in the surprising linear city of New Kharkiv is thanks to Jenia Gubkina. In Kyiv, Gena Donets and Alena Mokrousova each helped in myriad ways. Moscow was made so much more enjoyable thanks to the hospitality and intellectual stimulation provided by Nadya Nilina and Kolya Malinin. At Harvard, I am grateful to my GSD cohort, especially Peter Sealy, who has proven a friend for the long haul; to members of the Davis Centers writing and book proposal groups; and to my fellow Graduate Student Associates at the Weatherhead Institute for International Affairs for helping me capitalize on the interdisciplinarity of this work. A shout out goes to Daria Bocharnikova and Steven Harris for pulling together a community of congenial scholars under the umbrella of Second World Urbanity, including Richard Anderson, Diana Kurkovsky, Michal Murawski, Lukasz Stanek, Kimberly Zarecor, and Katherine Zubovich, with whom I look forward to continued collaboration. At Emory University, I thank my supportive colleagues in the Art History Department, particularly fellow architectural historians Sarah McPhee and Bonna Wescoat, and the Modern/Contemporary cohort of Lisa Lee, Susan Gagliardi, and Todd Cronan. My colleagues in Emorys Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Program, especially Juliette Stapanian-Apkarian and Matthew Payne, welcomed me graciously. This book has also benefitted from the Emory students in my graduate seminarsSoviet Cities and Spatial Revolution!who proved to be astute manuscript readers and interlocutors.

Feedback on this final version of the bookwhen I could not see the forest for the treeswas particularly welcome. I am indebted to Johanna Conterio and Claire Zimmerman who gave the text a full read through and provided invaluable comments, and to Steven Harris for helping me to fine-tune the introduction. Thank you to staff and board readers at Cornell University Press, and the two anonymous reviewers whose recommendations made this book so much better in the revision. Thanks to acquisitions editor Roger Haydon, who partnered with me to secure funding and who demystified the publishing process for this first-time author with calm and humor; to Bethany Wasik and Karen Laun, who picked up where Roger left off; and to copy editor Irina Burns. If any inaccuracies remain, despite their efforts, the responsibility is mine alone.

Many research and publication grants funded this project. A Fulbright fellowship to Ukraine back in 2002, when I was in architecture school, started the wheels turning. Particularly impactful was a two-day trip to Kharkiv that opened my eyes to the citys remarkable Constructivist legacy. Critical archival forays to Azerbaijan, Russia, and Ukraine during my doctoral studies were funded by Priscilla McMillan and Maurice Lazarus research travel grants from the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, a Peter and Mary Novak Ukrainian Fellowship from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, a Jens Aubrey Westengard Scholarship from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and a John Coolidge Research Fellowship from the New England Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians. The Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Canadian Centre for Architecture cosponsored the TD Bank Group-CCA Collection Research Grant for a fruitful summer of research in Montral. A Merit/Term Time Fellowship from the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Sidney R. Knafel Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs helped me to push through the first version of this project. A generous grant from Emory Universitys TOME/Digital Publishing in the Humanities program, led by Sarah McKee, made the open access version of this book possible, and a Millard Meiss Publication Fund grant from the College Art Association helped support the high-quality image reproduction.

My deep gratitude goes to the directors and staff at the archives and libraries who came through with permissions documentation during the pandemic. These include the Azerbaijan State Film and Photo Documents Archive (ARDKFSA); the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan; the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA); the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine (TsDAVO); the Central State Cine-Photo-Phono Archives of Ukraine, named after G.S. Pshenychnyi (TsDKFFA); the Magnitogorsk Local History Museum; the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI); the Russian State Archive of Documentary Films and Photographs (RGAKFD); the State Archive of the Azerbaijan Republic (ARDA); and the State Museum of Architecture, named after A.V. Shchusev (MUAR). I extend special thanks to the archivists at the Central State Archives and Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine (TsDAMLM) who managed, during this difficult time, to track down specific citation information for many of the illustrations I used from their collection. I do not know how they did it with the archive officially closedI am truly grateful. This book would not be as rich as it is in primary published sources without the help of Harvard and Emory University Libraries, and the Interlibrary Loan staff in particular, who managed to track down the most obscure rare books and pamphlets from 1920s USSR and convince other institutions to lend them. Thank you to Sage Publishing for permission to use previously published portions of chapters 7 and 8: Christina E. Crawford, From Tractors to Territory: Socialist Urbanization through Standardization. in Journal of Urban History 44, no. 1 (January 2018): 5477.

This book is, finally, the result of a family effort. Huge thanks to my dad, Lee, who served without complaint as a third parent to my boys over the past decade, and to my mom, Linda, who pitched in countless frequent flier miles and who came through at the eleventh hour to keep the boys busy during the pandemic. My sons, Isaiah and Oskar, have provided much-needed distraction and joy, and have given me innumerable reasons to make writing a book and teaching a Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 proposition. Most of all I am thankful to my husband, Duke, who loves this period and culture as much as I do, and who unquestioningly supported my leaving a stable professional career to follow an academic dream. This is for you.