1 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

Socialist Cities Stalingrad & Magnitogorsk

Theoretical ideologies
Socialism and communism are two sets of
ideas inspiring movements for social, political,
and economic change that significantly overlap.
Socialism is a populist economic and
political system in which the means of production
operate under public political ownership,
sometimes called common ownership. Common ownership under socialism may take
shape through technocratic, oligarchic, totalitarian, democratic or even voluntary rule.
All legal production and distribution decisions are made by the ruling class.
Communism is political and economic ideology based on communal ownership
and the absence of class. Communism, which can be thought of as capitalism's
opposite, says that in a capitalist society, the working class (the proletariat) is exploited
by the ruling class (the bourgeoisie).
While based on a Utopian ideal of equality and abundance, as expressed by the
popular slogan, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,"
communism in practice has only existed under authoritarian government and has been
the source of millions of human rights violations and deaths.
After 1989, a consensus was established among the mainstream economists that
socialism, as an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of
production and society-wide planning, was fundamentally flawed. It was widely
accepted that the socialist economic system could not work rationally because it failed
to solve the information problem, the motivation problem, and the innovation problem.
The consensus was shared by large sections of the leftist intellectuals.
As yet, it is true. Socialism has not created a society which can be said to
represent its IDEAL. But for more than a generation the policies of civilized nations have
been directed towards nothing less than a gradual realization of socialism.

New Economic Policy in USSR

Communism overthrew the Russian Empire by February and October Revolution
and the age of Lenin and Stalin turned out to be ambitious concerning the
development of USSR.

2 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

We must aim at the fusion of industry and agriculture, based on the rigorous
application of science, combined with the utilization of collective labor, and by means
of a more diffused settlement pattern for the people. We must end the loneliness,
demoralization, and remoteness of the village, as well as the unnatural concentration of
vast masses of people in the cities. Joseph Stalin
A series of Five Year Plans accelerated urbanization and industrialization
throughout the country. Between 1926 and 1955, the urban population of the Soviet
Union grew from 18 to nearly 50% of the total population, creating an urgent need for
investment in infrastructure and housing.

3 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

Architects took part in competitions to design monuments, buildings, and cities
based on socialist ideals. Their submissions show an exaltation of new technology,
communal living, public health, green space, and an egalitarian society. Designers
from around the world, mainly Europe (including Hannes Meyer, Ernst May, Mies van der
Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier) worked out city planning of USSR during the
1920s and 1930s

Clockwise from top Left.

1_Palace of the Soviets-Le Corbusier's project,1928. 2_Palace of the Soviets - Boris Iofan, 1933.
3_Iakov Chernikhov's Architectural Fantasies1929.

4_Tatlins Tower Vladimir Tatlin,1929

4 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

In 1930, Stalin's administration issued an order or a more pragmatic socialism
against Utopianism in planning. The experimental architectural ideologies were
consolidated into Union of Soviet architects who would work under the direct control of
the State. Along with some 12,000 to 14,000 foreign specialists hundreds of architects
and technicians were brought in.
The revolution directed in a rush of ideas on city planning in the new socialist era.
The government sought to reinvent society in accordance with Marxist principles,
including communal ownership of resources, universal education, income and gender
equality, and the unification of town and country. However, industrial development
was the primary focus rivaling the Capitalist economy. In open defiance of the 1935
plan, new factories were built throughout the city. A numbers of theories were in hard
competition with each other and these in turn have led to the impression of
representing the mainstream of Russian city planning. The various town-planning
schemes devised by Hannes Meyer (being a Marxist) are an expression of the general
line followed after discussions of the OSA.

5 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

Housing for the masses

The shortage of housing created severe overcrowding despite millions of lives lost to
famine, purges, and World War II. One effect of this collectivization was to abolish the
family home and replace it by communal houses accommodating 4,000 persons or
more. Ideas for the socialist city are often described in terms of urbanism and disurbanism orientation.
If the argument of the urbanizers had the advantage of providing a remedy to the
problems of over- and under-population, its drawback was that it could offer no
satisfactory solution to the problem of how to achieve the expansion of the towns it
advocated. It was, moreover, based on the utopian notion of abolishing family life in
the communal houses, which were a kind of giant hotel made up of individual cells,
public rooms where people could eat and the adults take their rest, and an
autonomous childrens section. The dis-urbanizers did not regard the town as an

6 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

isolated and independent organism. The dis-urbanizers proposed ribbon towns favoring
an even distribution of the population all over the country in which each family would
have a private mass-produced house. The great weakness of this plan was that it called
for the building of a highly expensive network of roads that would take a very long time
to construct and it also ran counter to the process of economic concentration which
was an essential feature of the first phase of industrialization.

The density of people

house is based only
considerations. Based
architect must create
equal rights.

100% private ownership

in a block of houses or the number of floors in an apartment

on social, biological, and aesthetic needs, and economic
on the established standard for a housing project, the Soviet
a living space for a socialist family whose members all have

The Collective Housing

The Communal Housing

7 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

Stalingrad City of Sorrow
Beautiful story about the ideal city, that emerged and disappeared on the shores of the
Great Russian River.
Stalingrad is a linear planned considering transportation along R.Volgo with regular
street grid pattern and communal housing. After complete destruction during World
War II, Stalin called for reconstruction of the city where in the new city would showcase
the rich history and victory of the city naming it be the Hero city. KaroAlabyan designed
new city, with wide perspectives and neo-classical architecture. This city shouldve
been become a symbol of victory representing bravery of soviet people. But it turned
out to be a melancholy (sculpture of Sorrow- Childrens fountain).

8 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

Magintogorsk Magical metal City.
Between the mountain and the shallow R.Ural, the workers were erecting the steel
heart of the motherland city Magnitogorsk. With linear city planning, the city was
divided into residential complex and industrial city with a green belt in between.
Decades of heavy industry has polluted the air and water and now is the one of the
worlds most polluted city. Many laborers lived in old tents and barracks, without basic
amenities or medical care. Around 10,000 people died of hunger, cold and disease in
the first five years of construction. Meanwhile, party officials enjoyed a comparatively
luxurious life. The large open areas in between the buildings designed on Ernst Mays
principle that every resident should have the maximum amount of light are not welladapted to the local climate, exposing all who come and go to the bitterly cold winds
of the R.Ural. Far from a well-designed socialist city, this was an urban planning
catastrophe with the chaotic outlaw atmosphere of a frontier town leaving their
inhabitants without running water, plumbing and central heating. Even today, housing
supply for Magnitogorsks 410,000 inhabitants is insufficient.

9 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

Scrutinizing the intent of wars: the social well-being? / glory (power)?

Did socialists reach their ideas of perfection?
The states idea of social and economic equality envisioned the cities to be perfect
driven by industrialization. So came the popping up of new cities.
But was there a demand for the city?
socialist ideas into real-life City planning?

Though established as communist nation,

totalitarian leaders everyone is equal but
they are subservient to the society. The
state decides the needs of the city and
not the people. The State did try to
achieve social and economic equality
and envisioned cities to be perfect driven
by industrialization. Hence emergence of
cities was quite hasty.

Did the architects achieve translating the

10 | Did Socialist Cities purpose serve their purpose?

Further Reading & References:
Socialism - r.n.berki
From socialism to communism in the Soviet Union joseph stalin
Socialism: the 20th century and the 21st century Minqi Li, Political Economy
Research Institute
Soviet Town Planning during the War, 19411945 - Dmitrij Chmelnizki
The Graveyard of utopia: Soviet Urbanism and fate of the International Avant-Garde
- Ross Wolfe
https://thecharnelhouse.org/2012/09/21/ernst-may-and-the-may-brigade-in-thesoviet-union-1930-1937/
https://thecharnelhouse.org/2015/08/09/bauhaus-director-hannes-meyersadventures-in-the-soviet-union-1930-1936/
http://www.thepolisblog.org/2009/12/imagining-socialist-city.html

Guruprasath A
Indhumathi A
Mrudulaa S K
Sri Krishnan P