Author Archives: Nicholas Cappuccino

What I have come to understand about Soviet material culture in the few years that I have dedicated to its study is that objects or systems, which are normally given very little thought beyond their immediate utility in western society, were imbued with deeper implications in Soviet society. This in all likelihood can be understood as an extension or at the very least symptom of Marx’s conception of the worker as an intellectual, whereby he or she is a synthesis of both, realizing an ideal of an educated proletariat. The objects or systems are an outgrowth of this conception on two fronts. Firstly, Soviet leadership believed that the material conditions in which the worker lived shaped his outlook and relationship with the world, ultimately defining him has a person. Because of this, those conditions must be adjusted in such a way as to mold him as the leadership saw fit. As such, each object or system was dealt with careful consideration so as to facilitate this outcome. Secondly, it can be argued that due to the proletariat centric approach that Marx takes, the Soviet worker himself was treated as one of the objects imbued with greater implications than he would normally have been in a western or capitalist society.

Plain Jane housing in Turkmenistan

Stated simply, the Soviets took a methodical approach to every day monotony that for the most part would have been taken for granted in other circumstances. Everything physical around the worker had significant implications, whether it was the contents of his apartment, or the metro that he rode to work on. For more learned scholars and Sovietologists this is likely an elementary conclusion. Indeed, in my experience in the post-Soviet space I had noticed a difference in aesthetic and importance given to certain elements of the physical space that I was used to, primarily the grandiose nature of public systems, like the metro, against the ascetic nature of the average apartment.

Moscow metro
https://friendlylocalguides.com/moscow/tours/metro-tour-moscow

I could describe the general aesthetic that prevailed across the physical space in post-Soviet society and how it was different than the western aesthetic, but it had not occurred to me that there was a methodology behind it. After reading “Soviet Hygiene and the Battle against Dirt and Petit-Bourgeois Consciousness” by Victor Buchli and “An Introduction to the Design of the Moscow Metro in the Stalin Period: ‘The Happiness of Life Undergroupd'” by Karen L. Kettering, I finally was able to understand the rationale behind the extreme contrasts of grandiosity and asceticism in the Soviet/post-Soviet physical space.

In his work, Buchli presents the ideal conception of the Soviet household. Above all else, the concept of “nichego lishnego” (nothing superfluous) dominated the conceptual framework of what should constitute the ideal Soviet living space. It should be a place of quiet reflection, study, and cleanliness. Indeed, in my time in Central Asia the spartan nature of the apartments in which I stayed for months on end was not lost on me. Just like Buchli’s description, I had a non-wooden bed, large windows to let in light to supposedly kill bacteria, a simple desk and chair underneath them at which to become the perfect worker/intellectual, and a minimalist table with one chair in a communal apartment with 4 inhabitants. Upon first experience of my living space, I had assumed all aspects of society to be of a similar nature.

My home of 8 months

Kettering’s description of the Soviet built Moscow metro, complete with chandeliers, epic mosaics, and themed stations, as well as the rationale for such designs echoed my experience in metros in Central Asia, particularly in Tashkent and Almaty. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why each city had such clean,  impressive, and perhaps even excessive and gaudy public transportation systems while the average person was content to live with very few material comforts in their apartments. The grandiosity of the metros that I experienced pale in comparison to the description of Moscow metro in Kettering’s essay, however, when considered in their own ecosystems, the care and maintenance that each was afforded seemed inconsistent with the living conditions of the average person.

Bearded me in the unusually clean and decorated Almaty metro

Judging by my experience and observations alone, it would seem that Soviet aesthetic conceptions have carried on in the post-Soviet space, as there was great consistency with the physical realms I inhabited in my time abroad and the literature of Buchli and Kettering. Perhaps this aesthetic carries on not so much as a means of cultivating an ideal Soviet person vis a vis manipulation of material conditions as it was originally intended, but rather through the momentum of its consistent implementation, leading to its ultimate acceptance as “normal” or “how things are supposed to look”. As I understand it, emphasis was placed on an ascetic private life and a more grand public life as a means of fostering a communal attitude in society in accordance with Marx’s principles. It would seem that the dynamic between home and public space, the metro in this instance, in Soviet society was meant to be an inversion of what was understood to be occurring in capitalist/western society at the time, with decadent and gaudy homes, and dirty neglected metro systems. As anecdotal as it may be, there was a nigh perfect consistency in Buchli and Kettering’s descriptions of the Soviet space and what I experienced in the post-Soviet space.

Tashkent is a city of contrasts. In many ways it has all of the trappings of a stereotypical medium to large sized post-Soviet city. It has wide avenues that terminate in a central district, an extensive and seemingly immaculate metro system, various monuments to events of local historical importance, a tomb of the unknown soldier, an opera house, marginally well stocked shopping centers, and the ever common endless labyrinth of retro-futuristic apartment complexes that one immediately identifies as a marker of a Soviet past.

On the other hand, the city has retained many elements of its pre-Soviet past as well, being vestiges of the city’s Turco-Persian or Imperial Russian heritage. These include a number of street bazaars, centuries old mosques, madrassas (which since have been converted into artisan’s shops), people wearing traditional Uzbek clothing, Russian Orthodox churches, and Imperial Russian palaces.

Then in some instances there seems to be a collision of the city’s Soviet and pre-Soviet pasts. When looking upon the city’s monument to Tamerlane, the Turco-Mongol conqueror of old, who Uzbekistan has claimed as a fundamental axiom of its national identity since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one cannot help but see the shocking aesthetic similarity it has to the Socialist Realist style used in monuments to figures like Lenin or Stalin.

Comrade Tamerlane

Or perhaps when one enters Tashkent’s main “bazaar”, and notices it holds little resemblance to the other more traditional ones in the country’s smaller cities, exchanging the tent covered lanes filled with merchants sitting on the ground, for a sterile indoor marketplace more resembling an American supermarket than its namesake.

“Bazaar”

In his book Tashkent: Forging of a Soviet City, in the chapter “A City to be Transformed”, Paul Stronskii takes the reader into what can be described as the “primordial ooze” out of which the city of Tashkent as we know it was built. A central theme that he comes back to throughout the chapter is the notion that Tashkent had been treated as something of a project by both Imperial Russian and Soviet rule as a city. They thought that through the effort and grace of their superior cultures, they would be able to transform the city from being backward and Asiatic, to modern and European or Soviet in aesthetic and structure.

Considering this perspective against my own experience in Tashkent and Central Asia as a whole, a question I have long had has finally been answered: why is Tashkent so much more “Soviet” and “Russian” looking than Uzbekistan’s other cities, such as Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva? The aforementioned three have a uniquely well preserved pre-Russian and pre-Soviet downtown area, which by the layman would more likely be assumed to be in Iran, Afghanistan, or perhaps Pakistan. This is not to say that there are no vestiges of the recent Soviet past in these cities, rather, there is a clearly defined boundary between the “old city”, characterized by mosques and madrassas, and the “new city” in each.

Me in Samarkand

It is interesting that Stronskii describes Tashkent during its Imperial Russian experience as something of a city that grew in two halves, with there being a clear line between the European and Asiatic halves of the city, with the former existing to inspire the latter with its innovation and technology to, as he describes it, “follow them into modernity”. From his description of what Tashkent was, I could better conceptualize that line between the Asiatic and the European elements of the city, as I had witnessed something quite similar in viewing the dichotomy between the “old towns” and “new towns” of Bukhara and Samarkand.

However, the modern day contrast and collision that characterizes the urban landscape of Tashkent, that is so absent in the other major Uzbek cities, certainly stems more so from its recent Soviet past. From how Stronskii describes it, the Russian Imperial forces aimed to build up modern Tashkent parallel to old Tashkent, while the Soviets sought to integrate their own designs into the already existing framework of the city, essentially seeking to augment and renovate it, rather than building a whole new city entirely. This involved integrating the Uzbek and Russian populations that lived there, destroying or replacing many symbols from the Imperial Russian past, creating a standardized street system, bringing in industry, electricity, and sanitation, and converting traditional spaces of learning, such as mosques and madrassas into more modern establishments. The Soviet Union considered Tashkent with the same status that the Imperial Russian forces did as a center piece of Central Asia and the main canvas upon which it would paint its designs, and because of that, the city bore the brunt of its machinations. Indeed, when one looks at the urban landscape of modern Tashkent, one doesn’t see a city that is explicitly Central Asian in the way one does with Bukhara. Similarly, one doesn’t see a completely Soviet manufactured city as well. One sees a collision of all aspects of Tashkent’s history. Through the narrative that Stronskii provided, I was better able to understand the journey that the city took, and how it resulted in such a startlingly unique urban landscape when considered against other cities in the region.