The creation of an exemplary socialist city: Ivanovo-Voznesensk in the 1920–1930s

Abstract

This article is devoted to the attempt in the 1920s and 1930s to transform the city of IvanovoVoznesensk (Ivanovo since 1932) into an exemplary socialist city. This idea was based on the special role of the city during the first Russian revolution, when the Union of Workers’ Deputies was created during the general strike. The local authorities tested the most modern ideas in the formation of the urban environment and implemented ambitious architectural projects. Since the socio-cultural sphere had to be created almost from scratch, a large number of projects were constructed in the new architectural forms of constructivism, post-constructivism and “proletarian classics”. In 1918, the city infrastructure of IvanovoVoznesensk was completely unsuitable for a provincial center. Initially, water supply and sewerage systems were created and streets were paved. Some large-scale projects (e. g. the Lenin People’s House) could not be implemented because of a lack of resources. As a result of a mass renaming in 1927, about 300 streets were ideologically named. The creation of the Polytechnic Institute, the launch of a tram in 1934, and the opening of the first kitchen factory in the USSR in 1925 were symbolic acts. At the end of the 1920s, two new spinning factories and a huge melange mill were built in the city. From the mid-1920s to the second half of the 1930s several workers’ settlements, a large number of residential buildings, a large railway station, banks, hospitals, kindergartens, a cinema, a circus, an international orphanage, and student dormitories were built in the city. All-Union competitions preceded the construction of the Bolshoi Drama Theater and buildings for the Polytechnic Institute. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s special importance was attached to the construction of a commune house in the city. In 1936 the city was deprived of its status as the first Council homeland. The Ivanovo industrial region was liquidated and as a result, a significant part of the city development plans were not implemented.