Bio
I’m a Design Historian studying Soviet and Post-Soviet lived environments with a particular focus on vernacular and non-centralised modifications of the socialist mass-housing. Alongside that, my other academic interests include: digital world in times of conflict and virtual activism.

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Research Project

Death of the Soviet Dream: the
Evolution of Troparevo-Nikulino from the 1980s to the 1990s

My research is a micro-historical exploration of transformations in the lived environment of a Soviet district, Troparevo-Nikulino in Moscow.

Keywords
Material Culture, Contemporary, Europe, Asia, Built Environment, Interior Space, Oral Histories, Lived Experience

Fig.1: This is a contemporary satellite image of the administrative boundaries of Troparevo- Nikulino. The section outlined with blue is Troparevo (built 1963-1974), the section in red shows the Olympic Village (built 1977-1980, approximately 13,000 residents), and the yellow part is Nikulino (built 1980-1982).

This MA dissertation is a micro-historical exploration of transformations in the lived environment of a Soviet district, Troparevo-Nikulino in Moscow. The study is placed within two decades from the 1980s to the 1990s when Soviet Russia was coming out of Zastoi and into Perestroika and subsequently moved into the ‘wild 1990s’. Oral history is adopted as a primary method for historical investigation, and recollections from four district’s residents are the main source of primary evidence for this study. The interviews used in this project are unique and were specifically crafted for the purposes of this dissertation. They facilitate a greater understanding of the district as a whole and explore specific design changes deemed characteristic of the period in question.

The thesis will aim to understand the main reasoning behind the alterations people performed to the front doors and balconies through these conversations. In particular, it will focus on the Soviet sheathed faux-leather doors, the metal doors of the 1990s, and the now pervasive glazed balconies.

Alongside exploring why people altered their homes in these ways, it will attempt to place these common modifications into the broader historical context, trying to understand whether these design changes were a continuation of existing traditions or if the transformations were caused by the shifts in the more extensive political landscape.

“Soviet balconies can be interpreted as markers of a particular kind of gaze that is quite definitive of the late Soviet society.”

Fig.3: The contemporary Google Street View image of the Olympic Village. Most of the balconies are now glazed and fully enclosed. This particular building is facing a courtyard, which no cars are allowed to drive through.

Soviet balconies can be interpreted as markers of a particular kind of gaze that is quite definitive of the late Soviet society. The sense of belonging and the overarching idea of not deviating from existing norms were integral parts of Soviet people’s everyday reality.  In this sense the new balconies occupy a peculiar intermediate position.

On one hand, they could be read as signifiers of the newly obtained freedoms, and in some senses they represent people’s responses to the faults in the initial building design that created a semi- usable space which did not adapt to the transformations of the surrounding reality. On the other hand, this modification became so widespread, that it is fair to assume that some people might have enclosed their outside spaces without any particularly pressing issues pushing them towards such renovation.

This broader assumptions suggests another way of looking at these glazed balconies. One can suggest, that the Soviet apprehension with the belonging to the existing normalcy might have reinstated itself in this new context of the balcony glazing. At first, it was only a few people who felt the need to enclose their private outside spaces, and others followed once they started seeing more and more glazed balconies appearing on the facades of their home buildings. These new balconies manifested the transformation of what is normal, and the people gazing up their neighbours’ flats decided to reinstate their own bond with this new normal.

In this light, the balconies from the Soviet past are gazed upon not for signs of any visible deviation, but by those who are witnessing that this normality is going through a transformation. Now people's gazes were met with the new reality, and the people gazing up these blocks of flats decided to reinstate their own bond with this new normal through a continued act of conformation.

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Symposium Presentation ︎︎︎