Marcus Colla, Paul Betts (eds.) Rethinking Socialist Space in the Twentieth Century. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2024. ISBN 978-3-031-54580-1
This edited collection explores the problem of space under socialist regimes in the twentieth century. Bringing together contributions from international scholars with expertise in the architectural, urban, social, and cultural history of twentieth-century socialism, the book includes examples from China, Africa, Mongolia, Eastern Europe and the USSR. The volume reflects on how developments in the field over the past two decades have altered our understanding of how such spaces were constructed (both literally and discursively), how they could become sites of contested meanings, and how they were perceived outside the socialist world. Moreover, the volume is concerned with how scholarly approaches associated with post-colonialism, global history, gender history, and the ‘temporal’ and ‘sensory’ turns have reconfigured our knowledge of, and approach to, the history of socialist space.
TABLE OF CONTENTS (12 CHAPTERS)
Front Matter
Pages i-xiii
What, Where, and When Was Socialist Space in the Twentieth Century?
Marcus Colla, Paul Betts
Pages 1-20
Making Socialist Space
Front Matter
Pages 21-21
Visualizing Stalinist Space: The 1951 Geographical Atlas of the USSR for Secondary Schools
Nick Baron
Pages 23-57
Room to Experiment: Housing Newlyweds During China’s Early Reform Era
Jennifer Altehenger
Pages 59-82
Listening to East Berlin: Can a Soundscape Be Socialist?
Bethan Lucy Winter
Pages 83-106
Globalising Socialist Space
Front Matter
Pages 107-107
Global Bridges, Local Ruins? Re-thinking Socialist Spaces Through the Experience of Non-aligned Enterprises
Anna Calori
Pages 109-133
The Reordering of Space and Reference: Polish Geologists in West Africa and Their Mapping of the Postcolonial Order in the 1960s
Justyna A. Turkowska
Pages 135-158
Building the Space of Internationalism: Socialist Assistance to Mongolia in the 1950s–1970s
Nikolay Erofeev
Pages 159-183
A World of Their Own: Vietnamese Students in Late Socialist Poland
Thục Linh Nguyễn Vũ
Pages 185-215
Building, Rebuilding, and Destroying Socialist Space
Front Matter
Pages 217-217
Performing Universality: Building Norms and the Circulation of Theatre Architecture in the RSFSR
Ksenia Litvinenko
Pages 219-250
A Monument to Friendship: Socialist Modernity and the Reconstruction of Tashkent, 1966–1975
Marcus Colla
Pages 251-282
Moscow’s Khrushchevki in Flux: Reflections on the Imminent Demolition of Twentieth-Century Socialist Housing
Ekaterina Mizrokhi
Pages 283-312
Epilogue
Front Matter
Pages 313-313
Space Exploration: The Coordinates of History: An Afterword
Catriona Kelly
Pages 315-334