Marcus Colla, Paul Betts (eds.) Rethinking Socialist Space in the Twentieth Century

 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