The Adventures of Owen Hatherley In The Post-Soviet Space

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Pub Date 13 Nov 2018 | Archive Date 30 Nov 2018

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Description

Nearly thirty years after the fall of the USSR, the word "Soviet" should be as meaningless by now as "Hapsburg" or "Hohenzollern". Strangely, though, it endures, as places both inside and outside the former Soviet Union define themselves for or against what happened when it existed. But does that experience mean anything today, or is it just an enormous cul-de-sac? This book tries to find out, through an itinerary that goes from the Baltic to Belarus, from Ukraine to the Urals, from the Caucasus to Central Asia, and in cities that range from nuclear new towns of the Fifties to gleaming new capitals of the 21st century.

In this Eurasian post-Soviet space, we try to find the continuities with Communism - if there are any - and the remnants of revolutions both distant and recent. Instead of a wistful journey through ruins, this intends to be an engaged travelogue, a subjective, personal Marxist Humanist guidebook to somewhere that actually exists, but which is constantly haunted by what it didn't become, whether a real Communist utopia or a successful or fair capitalism.

In the course of this transcontinental account of what used to be the Soviet Union and is now a patchwork of EU democracies, neoliberal dictatorships and Soviet nostalgic enclaves (often found in the same countries) we might just find the outlines of a way of building cities that is a powerful alternative, both in the past and present.

Nearly thirty years after the fall of the USSR, the word "Soviet" should be as meaningless by now as "Hapsburg" or "Hohenzollern". Strangely, though, it endures, as places both inside and outside the...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781912248261
PRICE $24.95 (USD)
PAGES 592

Average rating from 4 members


Featured Reviews

How does Owen Hatherley do it? This is his ninth book since 2009, covering a range of subjects but with architecture and the shape of cities in Britain and, increasingly, Europe as his core theme. There's little sign of him running out of steam and lots of interest in 'Adventures' in the post-Soviet spaces he visits, in which he uses informed, but rarely condescending, description of their buildings and design (or lack of design) to explore the social and political outcomes of the end of the Soviet Union. However, he doesn't really have adventures. Hatherley rarely talks to anyone. His approach is much more academic and when he is invited into a flat in Yekaterinburg, this made me want to read more insights into how people actually live in the places he visits. Despite this, the book is often a delight, it made me want to visit most of the places he writes about , And the cover is fantastic.

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