The Legacy of the Post-Revolutionary Soviet Residential Architecture of the First Half of the XX Century: An Attempt at Sociological Analysis

Abstract

The urbanization in the USSR was going along with the formation of a new type of Soviet people in the context of social changes, for example, the abolition of private property and the mass transition from rural labor to working in factories. Millions of people had to quickly get used to the new types of collective, ideology, household and consumer, social and labor behavior, and also to life in cities. Since cities have become the main place of industrialization and life, and the main element of the new territorial and social structure. Active urbanization consisted not only in the construction of plants, but also in the integrated construction of residential, administrative, service and recreational facilities, and also in changing the appearance of old cities. Architectural objects were built not only with a functional purpose, but also in order to ensure the self-reproduction of the new social system. The paper deals with the sociological study of specific and general social phenomena associated with socialist architectural objects with the help of theoretical concepts of the sociology of architecture (as a part of the sociology of material culture): 1) The material things contain the stabilization aspect of social organization in the mutual influence of people and things. When perceiving the materiality of architecture, social situations that affect people are unfolding. The social context produces architecture that is a specific form of materiality because of the great effort invested and strong fortitude and stability in this social context and its change over time. 2) Architecture makes visible the aspects of social, ideas, social relations and concepts, manifested in the visible aggregate of people and things, social norms and processes that were in the design of architecture, and after the construction — coming with it. With the help of examples of the Soviet architectural avant-garde and, in part, the style following it, an attempt is made to reveal the connection between the materiality and the formation of the Soviet man.