Download or read book Soviet Cities Labour Life and Leisure written by Arseniy Kotov and published by Fuel. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Soviet dream of modernist architecture for all, portrayed on the brink of its erasure In recent years Russian cities have visibly changed. The architectural heritage of the Soviet period has not been fully acknowledged. As a result many unique modernist buildings have been destroyed or changed beyond recognition. Russian photographer Arseniy Kotov intends to document these buildings and their surroundings before they are lost forever. He likes to take pictures in winter, during the "blue hour," which occurs immediately after sunset or just before sunrise. At this time, the warm yellow colors inside apartment-block windows contrast with the twilight gloom outside. To Kotov, this atmosphere reflects the Soviet period of his imagination. His impression of this time is unashamedly idealistic: he envisages a great civilization, built on a fair society, which hopes to explore nature and conquer space. From the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the desert steppes of Kazakhstan to the grim monolithic high-rise dormitory blocks of inner-city Volgograd, Kotov captures the essence of the post-Soviet world. "The USSR no longer exists and in these photographs we can see what remains--the most outstanding buildings and constructions, where Soviet people lived and how Soviet cities once looked: no decoration, no bright colors and no luxury, only bare concrete and powerful forms." This superbly designed volume is the latest in Fuel's revelatory and inspiring series on Soviet-era architecture.

Download or read book Soviet Seasons written by Damon Murray and published by Fuel. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The post-Soviet republics seen over four different seasons, by acclaimed Russian photographer, Instagram sensation and Soviet Cities author Arseniy Kotov In Soviet Seasons, Arseniy Kotov reveals unfamiliar aspects of the post-Soviet terrain in sublime photographs. From snow-blanketed Siberia in winter to the mountains of the Caucasus in summer, these images show how a once powerful, utopian landscape has been affected by the weight of nature itself. This uniquely broad perspective could only be achieved by a photographer such as Kotov. Singularly dedicated to exploring every corner of his country, Kotov often hitchhikes across vast distances. On these journeys he chronicles not only the architectural achievements of the Soviet empire, but also its overlooked or simply undocumented constructions. He writes: "In this book I want to show how beautiful and diverse the cities and nature of this vast region are at different times of the year. I have traveled widely across Russia and its neighboring countries, where I captured the landscape of post-Soviet cities and witnessed the seasonal changes."

Download or read book City of Workers City of Struggle written by Joshua B. Freeman and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the founding of New Amsterdam until today, working people have helped create and re-create the City of New York through their struggles. Starting with artisans and slaves in colonial New York and ranging all the way to twenty-first-century gig-economy workers, this book tells the story of New York’s labor history anew. City of Workers, City of Struggle brings together essays by leading historians of New York and a wealth of illustrations, offering rich descriptions of work, daily life, and political struggle. It recounts how workers have developed formal and informal groups not only to advance their own interests but also to pursue a vision of what the city should be like and whom it should be for. The book goes beyond the largely white, male wage workers in mainstream labor organizations who have dominated the history of labor movements to look at enslaved people, indentured servants, domestic workers, sex workers, day laborers, and others who have had to fight not only their masters and employers but also labor groups that often excluded them. Through their stories—how they fought for inclusion or developed their own ways to advance—it recenters labor history for contemporary struggles. City of Workers, City of Struggle offers the definitive account of the four-hundred-year history of efforts by New York workers to improve their lives and their communities. In association with the exhibition City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York at the Museum of the City of New York

Download or read book Summerfolk written by Stephen Lovell and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dacha is a sometimes beloved, sometimes scorned Russian dwelling. Alexander Pushkin summered in one; Joseph Stalin lived in one for the last twenty years of his life; and contemporary Russian families still escape the city to spend time in them. Stephen Lovell's generously illustrated book is the first social and cultural history of the dacha. Lovell traces the dwelling's origins as a villa for the court elite in the early eighteenth century through its nineteenth-century role as the emblem of a middle-class lifestyle, its place under communist rule, and its post-Soviet incarnation.A fascinating work rich in detail, Summerfolk explores the ways in which Russia's turbulent past has shaped the function of the dacha and attitudes toward it. The book also demonstrates the crucial role that the dacha has played in the development of Russia's two most important cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, by providing residents with a refuge from the squalid and crowded metropolis. Like the suburbs in other nations, the dacha form of settlement served to alleviate social anxieties about urban growth. Lovell shows that the dacha is defined less by its physical location"usually one or two hours" distance from a large city yet apart from the rural hinterland—than by the routines, values, and ideologies of its inhabitants.Drawing on sources as diverse as architectural pattern books, memoirs, paintings, fiction, and newspapers, he examines how dachniki ("summerfolk") have freed themselves from the workplace, cultivated domestic space, and created informal yet intense intellectual communities. He also reflects on the disdain that many Russians have felt toward the dacha, and their association of its lifestyle with physical idleness, private property, and unproductive use of the land. Russian attitudes toward the dacha are, Lovell asserts, constantly evolving. The word "dacha" has evoked both delight in and hostility to leisure. It has implied both the rejection of agricultural labor and, more recently, a return to the soil. In Summerfolk, the dacha is a unique vantage point from which to observe the Russian social landscape and Russian life in the private sphere.

Download or read book Holidays in Soviet Sanatoriums written by Maryam Omidi and published by Fuel Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating photographic study of the previously overlooked Soviet Sanatoriums and their treatments - stunning eastern bloc architecture meets crude-oil baths and radon water douches. Visiting a Soviet sanatorium is like stepping back in time. Originally conceived in the 1920s, they afforded workers a place to holiday, courtesy of a state-funded voucher system. At their peak they were visited by millions of citizens across the USSR every year. A combination of medical institution and spa, the era's sanatoriums are among the most innovative buildings of their time. Although aesthetically diverse, Soviet utopian values permeated every aspect: western holidays were perceived as decadent. By contrast, sanatorium breaks were intended to edify and strengthen visitors - health professionals carefully monitored guests throughout their stay, so they could return to work with renewed vigour. Certain sanatoriums became known for their specialist treatments, such as crude oil baths, radon water douches and stints in underground salt caves. While today some sanatoriums are in critical states of decline, many are still fully operational and continue to offer their Soviet-era treatments to visitors. Using specially commissioned photographs by leading photographers of the post-Soviet territories, and texts by sanatorium expert Maryam Omidi, this book documents over forty-five sanatoriums and their unconventional treatments. From Armenia to Uzbekistan, it represents the most comprehensive survey to date of this fascinating and previously overlooked Soviet institution.

Download or read book Red Plenty written by Francis Spufford and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . . Freewheeling and fabulous." —The Times (London) Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending. Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

Download or read book Life and Terror in Stalin s Russia 1934 1941 written by Robert W. Thurston and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1998-11-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining Stalin's reign of terror, this text argues that the Soviet people were not simply victims but also actors in the violence, criticisms and local decisions of the 1930s. It suggests that more believed in Stalin's quest to eliminate internal enemies than were frightened by it.

Download or read book Soviet Asia written by Roberto Conte and published by Fuel Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fantastic collection of Soviet Asian architecture, many photographed here for the first time Soviet Asia explores the Soviet modernist architecture of Central Asia. Italian photographers Roberto Conte and Stefano Perego crossed the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, documenting buildings constructed from the 1950s until the fall of the USSR. The resulting images showcase the majestic, largely unknown, modernist buildings of the region. Museums, housing complexes, universities, circuses, ritual palaces - all were constructed using a composite aesthetic. Influenced by Persian and Islamic architecture, pattern and mosaic motifs articulated a connection with Central Asia. Grey concrete slabs were juxtaposed with colourful tiling and rectilinear shapes broken by ornate curved forms: the brutal designs normally associated with Soviet-era architecture were reconstructed with Eastern characteristics. Many of the buildings shown in Soviet Asia are recorded here for the first time, making this book an important document, as despite the recent revival of interest in Brutalist and Modernist architecture, a number of them remain under threat of demolition. The publication includes two contextual essays, one by Alessandro De Magistris (architect and History of Architecture professor, University of Milan, contributor to the book Vertical Moscow) and the other by Marco Buttino (Modern and Urban History professor, University of Turin, specializing in the history of social change in the USSR).

Download or read book Quality Of Life In The Soviet Union written by Horst Herlemann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Quality of life" is a difficult concept to define, and particularly so when referring to the Soviet Union because Westerners have many preconceptions about Soviet living conditions. This volume goes a long way toward illuminating the realities of daily Soviet life and stands as an important contribution to our understanding of the Soviet Union. Contributors focus primarily on the relation of quality of life to living conditions but also discuss the quality and availability of state-provided services such as education, health care, and housing. Of special interest is their coverage of problems in Soviet society, including working conditions in factories, living conditions in rural areas, alcohol abuse, and the status of the elderly. Together these essays show that although the Soviet government has made great strides in improving the living conditions of its citizens, Soviet living standards and services are relatively poor by Western standards and several important social problems continue to burden the Soviet people.

Download or read book The Death and Life of Great American Cities written by Jane Jacobs and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Terrible Country written by Keith Gessen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Editors' Choice Named a Best Book of 2018 by Bookforum, Nylon, Esquire, and Vulture "This artful and autumnal novel, published in high summer, is a gift to those who wish to receive it." —Dwight Garner, The New York Times "Hilarious, heartbreaking . . . A Terrible Country may be one of the best books you'll read this year." —Ann Levin, Associated Press "The funniest work of fiction I've read this year." —Christian Lorentzen, Vulture.com A literary triumph about Russia, family, love, and loyalty—from a founding editor of n+1 and author of Raising Raffi When Andrei Kaplan’s older brother Dima insists that Andrei return to Moscow to care for their ailing grandmother, Andrei must take stock of his life in New York. His girlfriend has stopped returning his text messages. His dissertation adviser is dubious about his job prospects. It’s the summer of 2008, and his bank account is running dangerously low. Perhaps a few months in Moscow are just what he needs. So Andrei sublets his room in Brooklyn, packs up his hockey stuff, and moves into the apartment that Stalin himself had given his grandmother, a woman who has outlived her husband and most of her friends. She survived the dark days of communism and witnessed Russia’s violent capitalist transformation, during which she lost her beloved dacha. She welcomes Andrei into her home, even if she can’t always remember who he is. Andrei learns to navigate Putin’s Moscow, still the city of his birth, but with more expensive coffee. He looks after his elderly—but surprisingly sharp!—grandmother, finds a place to play hockey, a café to send emails, and eventually some friends, including a beautiful young activist named Yulia. Over the course of the year, his grandmother’s health declines and his feelings of dislocation from both Russia and America deepen. Andrei knows he must reckon with his future and make choices that will determine his life and fate. When he becomes entangled with a group of leftists, Andrei’s politics and his allegiances are tested, and he is forced to come to terms with the Russian society he was born into and the American one he has enjoyed since he was a kid. A wise, sensitive novel about Russia, exile, family, love, history and fate, A Terrible County asks what you owe the place you were born, and what it owes you. Writing with grace and humor, Keith Gessen gives us a brilliant and mature novel that is sure to mark him as one of the most talented novelists of his generation.

Download or read book Architectural Drawings of the Russian Avant garde written by Catherine Cooke and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Plutopia written by Kate Brown and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While many transnational histories of the nuclear arms race have been written, Kate Brown provides the first definitive account of the great plutonium disasters of the United States and the Soviet Union. She draws on official records and dozens of interviews to tell the extraordinary stories of Richland, Washington and Ozersk, Russia--the first two cities in the world to produce plutonium. To contain secrets, American and Soviet leaders created plutopias--communities of nuclear families living in highly-subsidized, limited-access atomic cities. Plutopia was successful because in its zoned-off isolation it appeared to deliver the promises of the American dream and Soviet communism; in reality, it concealed disasters that remain highly unstable and threatening today.

Download or read book Moscow A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955 1991 written by Anna Bronovitskaya and published by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. This book was released on 2018-08-28 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moscow: A Guide to Soviet Modernist Architecture 1955-1991 provides descriptions of almost 100 buildings from the most underrated period of Soviet architecture. This is the first guide to bring together the architecture made during the three decades between Khrushchev and Gorbachev, from the naive modernism of the "thaw" of the late 1950s through postmodernism. Buildings include the Palace of Youth, the Rossiya cinema, the Pioneer Palace, the Ostankino TV Tower, the TASS headquarters, the "golden brains" of the Academy of Sciences and less well-known structures such as the House of New Life and the Lenin Komsomol Automobile Plant Museum. The authors situate Moscow's postwar architecture within the historical and political context of the Soviet Union, while also referencing developments in international architecture of the period.

Download or read book Socialist Spaces written by David Crowley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. This book was released on 2002-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work explores the representation, meanings and uses of space in the socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The essays investigate the extent to which actual spaces conformed to the dominant political order in the region.

Download or read book Everyday Stalinism written by Sheila Fitzpatrick and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-04 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on urban areas in the 1930s, this college professor illuminates the ways that Soviet city-dwellers coped with this world, examining such diverse activities as shopping, landing a job, and other acts.

Download or read book Moscow Monumental written by Katherine Zubovich and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-01-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An in-depth history of the Stalinist skyscraper"--