PANORAMA 2009 58

by WM. STEPHEN SCOTT

The Ideal Soviet Suburb
Social Change Through Urban Design
Facing rapid industrialization, urbanization and a social revolution, Soviet intellectu-
als in the early years of the Soviet Union (1917-1930) rushed to work imagining what
the ideal communist city would look like. Tis burst of artistic output from the far left,
known as the Constructivist movement, was multidisciplinary. Not only were architects
and bureaucrats theorizing about ideal cities, but so, too, were painters, poets, writers,
graphic designers, photographers, and product designers. Although the general spirit
was to decentralize and move away from the central core city, theorists proposed vari-
ous methods. Tis paper will explore four specic variants: the linear city, the Urbanist
super-commune, the Disurbanist mobile city, and the postwar new urban settlement.
Tough few Constructivist proposals were realized, save for some isolated buildings, the
movements ideals concerning the city oer a fascinating glimpse at a suburban dream
alien to the American perspective.
Te decentralization of cities and spread of development into the urban periphery is a
phenomenon seen across the world. Even earlier than Ebenezer Howards Garden City
in 1898, architects, planners, philanthropists, and visionaries felt compelled to reverse
urban agglomeration in cities (Batchlor, 1969; Collins, 1959). Tey wanted to expand
urbanity into the countryside, while reducing crowding and congestion within the city.
During the late 1920s in Russia, this debate played out between two major schools of
thought: the so-called Urbanists and Disurbanists. Both groups advocated suburban-
ization. Te Urbanists, led by theorist L. Sabsovich, argued for self-contained super-
communes located in the countryside. Te Disurbanists, led by Mikhail Okhitovich,
went further. Using an electrical and communication grid that would cross the entire
nation, and mobile homes, they sought to scatter single-family homes across the coun-
tryside. Although this debate was lively, both Urbanists and Disurbanists sought to
eliminate urban agglomeration in central cities and to create new, self-sucient settle-
ments containing fewer than 50, 20, or even three residents (Kopp 1970, pp. 168-17).
Figure 1. Garden City plan by Boris Sakulin
(1918).
59
Four ideological themes drove Constructivist ideas. Te rst was a
radical form of feminism that sought to revolutionize family patterns.
Concerned that women were treated unequally, Soviet idealists wanted
to reform the home, reduce womens workloads, remove children from
the household, and liberalize marriage into a completely voluntary
and open arrangement between individuals. A second theme posited
that leisure time socialist citizens would attend cultural institutions,
centered on the workers club. Tese uniquely communist institutions
would be the heart of neighborhood plans. A third theme was the idea
of the social condenser, which would use architecture to limit private
life within the single-family home and instead encourage collective so-
cialization and participation in activities. Te last theme was the desire
to bring the city to the countryside, spreading work and communist
ideology into the hinterland. Tese tropes can be found in all the plans.
Soviet Garden Cities
As with other planners of the period, Soviet Urbanists were enamored
with Ebenezer Howards Garden City principles (Miliyutin, 1974;
Talfuri, 1987). Howard called for the creation of autonomous new
settlements far from the metropolitan area to increase the amount of
green space, decrease the distance from home to work, reduce crowding
in the inner city, and bring urban amenities to the countryside. Te
Soviets were particularly interested in Howards idea that the Garden
City was to be a small, communal place, where the municipality would
collectively own property.
Te Garden City, an idea that ourished in the capitalist West, could
also be interpreted as a starting point for an ideal Soviet suburb. One
can see the Garden City concept in early Soviet plans. Boris Sakulins
1918 plan (Figure 1) depicts a system of three concentric radial high-
ways with a string of satellite cities along the arterials. His plan was
intended to reduce congestion in Moscow by spreading development to
the urban periphery (Khan-Magomedov, 1987).
Another plan (Figures 2 & 3) by M. Shirov in 1929 shows a central city
divided into three green belts: a cultural and sports belt in the urban
core, a pedestrian walkway midway from the city center, and outer
agricultural and industrial belts (Kopp, 1970). Tis plan shows other
aspects of the Garden City idea: the desire to reduce density, increase
green space, and push development beyond the center city into lower-
density nodes on the periphery.
In Constructivist literature, writers proposed more radical forms of
suburbanization, or rather de-urbanization. In the economist Alexan-
der Chaianovs 1920 novel, Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of
the Peasant Utopia, he imagined that by 1934 all cities with a popula-
tion over 20,000 would be demolished. Instead of cities, the city and
agricultural functions would intermingle, in a continuous countryside,
with the former central city converted into parkland (Beaujour, 1983).
Te primary idea behind the Garden City movement was the belief that
urbanity itself was obsolete. Communist planners believed that urban
agglomeration was caused by a capitalist need for producers to be near
markets. By abolishing private property, they thought, agglomeration
was no longer necessary. Nikolai Miliutin, a Soviet planner of the era,
captured this idea when he noted:
Te question of restricted land for big cities is inapplicable here since we
have destroyed private ownership of land. Any ideas about the necessity
for maximum (more rational) use of communally serviceable areas is
simply comical, since no such areas exist here. But more important is the
tremendous problem of the elimination of the dierences between the city
and the country. Tis is why we must review the meaning of the word
city. Te modern city is a product of a mercantile society and will die
together with it, merging into the socialized countryside.
Miliutin, 1974
The Linear City: An Old Idea Rediscovered
Sixteen years before Ebenezer Howards seminal book To-morrow, Ar-
turo Soria y Mata invented what he called the linear city. His idea was
to develop residential and commercial units along tramways, bringing
development into the open countryside (Soria Y Mata, 1984). Although Figure 2. Plan view of a Soviet Garden City deigned by M. Shirov in 1929.
Figure 3. Shirovs sketch of a Garden City.
PANORAMA 2009 60
Sorias idea gained some popularity, it was quickly overshadowed by
Howards nodal Garden City proposal.
Miliutin revisited Soria y Matas linear city idea near the end of the
Constructivist era in 1930 in his book Sotsgorod: Te Problem of Building
Socialist Cities (Miliutin, 1974). Sotsgorod is peppered with quotes
from Lenin and Marx, showing the emergence of Marxist dogmatism
under Stalin. By this time, Stalins First Five Year Plan had ramped up
industrial production, which created demand for new industrial facili-
ties and towns far removed from the central city. After 1928, many
new industrial towns sprouted, including Magnitogorsk, Dzerzhinsk,
Berezniki, Khibonogorsk, Komsomolska-na-Amure, and Karagada
(Kopp, 1970).
Figure 4 shows Miliutins proposal for the Nizhninovgorod auto plant.
He improves upon Sorias linear city by including the workplace along
with the residential units. Industrial areas are located along a railway,
providing access to the factory and creating a linear assembly line. A
greenbelt separates the industry from the residential areas, which in-
clude the communal dining halls and workers clubs as well as housing.
Past the residential zone is a park, with wilderness beyond. Te advan-
tage of the linear city concept was that all aspects of daily lifework,
transportation, open space, and living areasare all located within
walking distance, with adequate buering in between. However, there
was a lack of retail services, such as restaurants and clothing shops.
Tis failure to plan for personal consumption pervades Soviet plans.
However, Miliutins plan is still one of the more reasonable Soviet plans
of the era. In connecting residential units to industrial complexes, his
vision of disagglomeration seems viable.
A New Urbanism: The Super-Commune
One way to bring the city into the country is to create self-sucient
super-communes. Like a ship, these large communes would contain all
the functions necessary to be self-sucient. Tese communes were the
ultimate social condenser. By minimizing personal space and maxi-
mizing communal space, Soviet architects forced individuals out of the
single-family unit. Units lacked personal kitchens, living rooms, and
showers. A units total area was as small as 27 square meters (Kopp,
1970). Like a dormitory, everyone used the space collectively.
As architecture compelled collectivization, it deliberately broke down
the family unit. Women were liberated from the drudgery of house-
keeping and parenting by having the state communally raise children
from a young age. Te children would be raised in separate boarding
schools located within the overall commune. In these communes,
without children the institution of marriage would wither away and be
replaced with free-love relationships: in housing units, a sliding parti-
tion opened to allow couples to be together, and in cases of divorce, the
doors could be shut again (Kopp, 1970).
By forcing family life into communal space, new types of structures
must be accounted for: workers clubs, dining halls, collective laundro-
mats, and boarding schools. Tus in these immense collective com-
munes, all elements of daily life would be found within the housing unit
structure, with the industrial workplace nearby. Self-contained and
self-sucient, these super-communes could be placed anywhere, allow-
ing residents to leave the city and colonize the countryside.
Mobile Cities of the Future
If transportation, electricity, and communication are omnipresent, why
agglomerate at all? Could not every individual live autonomously? And
if a citizen can live autonomously, why stay in one place? With rapid
economic change, architects foresaw the need to move the population
around the country for economic reasons and freedom of mobility.
Tese were the opinions of the radical Disurbanists, who called for
the complete abolition of cities. Tey suggested replacing them with
oating cities, mobile homes, and clusters of glass cubicles, roaming the
countryside and forming spontaneous settlements.
Te key feature of the disurbanist vision is mobility. Quoting Okhi-
tovich, the founder of Disurbanist theory:
No, let us be frank: communal houses, those enormous, heavy, monu-
mental, everlasting colossi, permanently encumbering the landscape, will
not solve the problem of socialist resettlement. Prefabricated houses!
No matter if the rst ones are not a success. How fortunate that they
can be dismantled as easily as they are assembled; no one will object if
husband and wife or two close friends or even a group of friends built
their individual homes side by side, combine them into a single block; each
unit will always remain private, with its own entrance and access to the
garden. But if there is a falling out, if a friend quarrels with friend or if
one of them marries, there will be no problems with living space since
at any time the units can be separated, made bigger or smaller, or even
dismantled and rebuilt in a completely dierent spot.
Kopp, 1970
Note also the recurring theme of modularity: the adding and subtract-
ing of components to accommodate uid family situations. Flexible
architecture was part and parcel of the Constructivist push to liberalize
family relations, making marriage less obligatory and divorce as pain-
less as possible.
Te accomplished architect Moses Ginzburgs Green City Plan (1930)
is essentially a linear city layout that embraced a Disurbanist vision
of mobility (Kopp, 1970). Te state would grant each homesteader a
lightweight, prefabricated house. Tese homes could be freely arranged
and combined: single individuals could live in a unit, or units can be
Figure 4. Miliutins auto plant proposal.
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combined to form family clusters (Figure 5). Tey could be strung along
highways, clustered around community centers, or wherever there was
access by rail, automobile, or airplane.
Te Constructivist poet Velimir Khlebnikov went one step further. He
imagined the home as a glass box. Te box would have anchor points
on it so it could be attached to a train, hoisted into the air by crane or
zeppelin, or strung along a cable like beads on a string. People would
travel throughout the Soviet Union in their glass boxes, living in clus-
ters wherever they desired. Tey didnt even need to own clothing it
would be provided by the commune in charge of the cluster (Khleb-
nikov, 1985).
In another Disurbanist vision, writer Nicoli Aseev wrote a story called
Tomorrow in the main Constructivist Journal LEF in 1923 (Beau-
jour, 1983). In this story the city itself is mobile, oating across the
countryside with the aid of a magnetic levitation. Once again, Moscow
is abandoned and converted into a park.
Before we write-o the Disurbanist visions as absurd, we must under-
stand the context. Technological progress in the West such as the
bi-plane and the Model T coincided with rapid industrialization
in the Soviet Union and burgeoning creativity in the Constructivist
scene. And we must consider the motor home, the trailer home, private
commuter jets, and other innovations that have since come to pass. In
a way, their proposals are not so radical. Te idea wasnt so much that
houses did not agglomerate, but that any agglomerations were uid.
As the workforce moved, the home would follow. And with modern
transportation, the home could travel, by rail, truck, ship or zeppelin to
any destination on the planet.
The Ideal Soviet Suburb: The
New Urban Settlement
All the previous suburban visions took place in the pre-Stalin era. Un-
der Stalin, urban planning entered a dark age with the advent of Social-
ist Realism, and modernist design was forbidden (Kopp, 1970). After
Kruschevs rebuke of Stalin in 1956, there was an intellectual thaw; in
the late 1950s, a group of Moscow University intellectuals led by Alexei
Gutnov wrote Te Ideal Communist City (Gutnov et. al., 1968).
In this book they rearm many of the prewar principles: collectivized
lifestyle, reform of family patterns, and decentralization. Tey also dis-
cuss the role of leisure time and how citizens can use their free time to
cultivate themselves and to study (Gutnov et. al., 1968). Tey continue
the Constructivist urban project: creating collectivized institutions and
workers clubs in the suburbs to cultivate a new socialist man.
Gutnovs plan for the New Urban Settlement is one of the most detailed
site plans that represents socialist ideals (Figure 6). On the north and
the west sides of the site plan are high-density communal housing
blocks. Inside each housing block families live apart, with children in
dormitories downstairs and parents upstairs. Te northwest corner in-
cludes the schools, with the southeast corner holding the workers clubs
and dining halls. Within this superblock, pedestrian travel predomi-
nates; trains and freeways are conned to the periphery, dening the
superblocks boundaries. A circular tramway allows residents to travel
between superblocks, connects the settlement to quadrants o the
map, and provides a path to mass transit stations and parking lots. Te
most remarkable aspect of this site plan is that everyone is in walking
or tramway distance from school, community centers, residential areas,
and transit nodes. It is a residential suburb without auto dependency.
But unlike previous plans, the New Urban Settlement makes no at-
tempt to connect the residential area to industrial worksites. Instead,
automation is the new technique that allows workers to work near
home, yet control vast industrial complexes beyond the city limits. Te
suburban vision is modied, less radical than the Constructivist prede-
cessors. Gutnov and his colleagues moved away from thinking of the
neighborhood as a completely self-sucient unit, instead considering
it a semi-dependent suburb. It contains most daily amenities within
Figure 5. Moses Ginzburgs prefabricated housing units.
Figure 6. Alexei Gutnovs New Urban Settlement plan.
PANORAMA 2009 62
walking distance, but is dependent upon a central city for employ-
mentmore in line with Western new towns and master-planned
communities of the time.
Conclusion
In truth there is not one, but at least two iconic types of twentieth-
century neighborhood: the single-family subdivision and the multi-
family superblock. While the former dominated much of the West,
the latter are found across the world, in Brazil, Japan, China, France,
Britain, former Soviet Bloc countries, and even in the United States.
Tese developments are pedestrian-oriented, often centered on a
school or community center, and were designed to create self-contained
neighborhood units. Tey are also big, sometimes housing hundreds to
thousands of residents. While not all such modernist superblocks were
designed by Soviets, or even communists, these groups were innovators
in the modernist movement, and the most committed to advancing
social change through urban design.
Perhaps the best way, then, to reveal the nature of the ideal Soviet
suburb is to contrast it against Western ideals. One point of contrast is
the modes of transit. With abundant transportation, urbanists in the
East and West believed that housing could be built far from center cities
on virgin land. Soviet planners and architects tended to favor rail, like
the British and Japanese, rather than the automobile as in the United
States, but transportation was what made suburbanization possible.
But unlike American planners, who sought to segregate housing from
the workplace, many Soviets throughout the Constructivist era sought
to locate residents within walking distance of cultural and employ-
ment opportunities (although some, like the Disurbanists, called for
complete transit dependence). Less like Le Corbusier and more like
Ebenezer Howard, the Soviets tried to create self-contained new towns
beyond the central city, rather than segregate residential, commercial,
industrial, and cultural uses.
Another dierence is the home itself. Te Western single-family home
is a self-contained unit a place to put purchased goods, to cook, to
entertain guests, to raise children. Soviet plans deliberately attempted
to prevent this bourgeois lifestyle by reducing the amount of personal
space and ooading previously private functions into the public realm.
Collectivization required new collective entities: dining halls, laundro-
mats, boarding schools, and open space were included in Soviet plans
to a greater extent than in the West. Collectivization also implied clus-
tered, high-density residential quarters, while in the West the stand-
alone home was the ideal. Naturally, Soviets planned fewer churches,
shopping districts, and private lawns, reecting the fundamental dier-
ence between the ideal Soviet communal lifestyle and Western customs.
For all their faults, though, the Soviets collective housing schemes did
oer an alternative ideal of suburban living. Te Soviet plans all show
strong pedestrian connections between the home and civic institutions
such as schools, hospitals and community centers. Additionally, the
Soviet suburb is transit-oriented, with each new community designed
with rail access. Tese suburbs were also planned for residential den-
sity, concentrating a critical mass of residents in a small area. Interest-
ingly, these three ideas are all experiencing a renaissance in Western
planning. Designs featuring pedestrian accessibility, transit connec-
tions and higher-density concentrations are now widely sought in the
West this time not to ee the city, but rather to improve its integrat-
ed systems. While communist ideas are unlikely to gain favor in the
West, its future urban development may exhibit more in common with
the Soviet Constructionists and their pedestrian- and transit-oriented
communes than the traditional Western suburban ideal.
While one may think of communism as a political and economic sys-
tem, it was also a culture. To the Constructivists and their successors,
their architecture and city planning designs not only symbolized the
Soviet Revolution, but also were a tool to further the communist social
agenda of liberalizing the household, collectively sharing goods, and
cultivating individuals through cultural institutions, making rapid eco-
nomic growth possible. Tus the Soviet suburb was designed to change
human social structures through architecture and design. But the
overriding vision of allowing individuals to escape crowded cities and
travel into the hinterland the dream of suburbia is not unique to
the Soviets. Tis is a vision that persisted throughout the modern era
as planners across the world strove to transcend the centripetal forces
of urban agglomeration.
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