Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis

by Timothy J. Colton

Overview

Once the hub of the tsarist state, later Brezhnev's "model Communist city"—home of the Kremlin, Red Square, and St. Basil's Cathedral—Moscow is for many the quintessence of everything Russian. Timothy Colton's sweeping biography of this city at the center of Soviet life reveals what such a position has meant to Moscow and ultimately to Russia itself.

Linchpin of the Soviet system and exemplar of its ideology, Moscow was nonetheless instrumental in the Soviet Union's demise. It was in this metropolis of nine million people that Boris Yeltsin, during two frustrating years as the city's party boss, began his move away from Communist orthodoxy. Colton charts the general course of events that led to this move, tracing the political and social developments that have given the city its modern character. He shows how the monolith of Soviet power broke down in the process of metropolitan governance, where the constraints of censorship and party oversight could not keep up with proliferating points of view, haphazard integration, and recurrent deviation from approved rules and goals. Everything that goes into making a city—from town planning, housing, and retail services to environmental and architectural concerns—figures in Colton's account of what makes Moscow unique. He shows us how these aspects of the city's organization, and the actions of leaders and elite groups within them, coordinated or conflicted with the overall power structure and policy imperatives of the Soviet Union. Against this background, Colton explores the growth of the anti-Communist revolution in Moscow politics, as well as fledgling attempts to establish democratic institutions and a market economy.

As it answers persistent questions about Soviet political history, this lavishly illustrated volume may also point the way to understanding Russia's future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674283718
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	02/19/2014
Series:	Russian Research Center Studies , #88
Edition description:	Reprint 2013
Pages:	955
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 2.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Colton Timothy J. :

Timothy J. Colton is the Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies, and the Director of the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Frontier Town into Metropolis

Rude Origins

Modern Moscow

The Partial Modernization of Local Institutions

The Revolutionary Alternative

Red Moscow

1917

Dilemmas of Power

Urban Policy under War Communism

Governing the Garrison

From Reurbanization to Hyperurbanization

The Urban NEP

Casting the Institutional Die

Feeling the Approach of Socialism

Factory of Plans

Stalin's Moscow

Socialist Reconstruction

Power Play

Governance in the Stalinist Manner

The Two Cities

The Limits of De-Stalinization

Khrushchev: Moscow for the Masses

Brezhnev: Less of the Same

Command Government Perpetuated

Moscow and the Hydra State

The Politics of Basic Needs and of Urban Amenity

Planning for Metropolitan Development

Housing

A City for All Hours of the Day

Environmental Concerns

The Mold Shattered

The Change to Change

The Democratic Impulse

A Stunning Election

Exit the Partocracy

Toward a Post-Socialist Metropolis

The Minefield of Democratic Consolidation

Reinventing Metropolitan Institutions

Urban Development after Socialism

Making a Civic Community

Appendix: The Population of Moscow

Appendix: Composition and Administrative Structure of the Municipal and Communist Party Organs of Soviet Moscow

Appendix: Careers of Municipal and Communist Party Officials in Soviet Moscow

Appendix: Housing Construction and Supply in Soviet Moscow

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

Figures

Kremlin, c. 1880

Chudov Monastery, c. 1880

Assumption Cathedral, c. 1880

St. Basil's Cathedral, c. 1880

Simonov Monastery, c. 1925

Sukharev Tower, c. 1880

Red Gates, c. 1880

Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer, c. 1885

Bol'shoi Theater, c. 1880

Flophouse in Khitrov Market, c. 1900

Rally welcoming Bolshevik government to Moscow, March 1918

Liberty Obelisk and Moscow Soviet building, c. 1925

Boris Sakulin's regional plan, 1918

May Day subbotnik in Kremlin, 1920

Members of Moscow Soviet leaving for Civil War front, 1919

Sukharevskii Market, 1925

Homeless children, early 1920s

Restoration of Golitsyn villa, 1925

Workers' housing at Usachevka, 1930

Government House residence on Moskva River

Kremlin infirmary, ulitsa Vozdvizhenka

Lenin Mausoleum, lineup on anniversary of Lenin's death, 1931

Rusakov Club

Izvestiya newspaper building

Commune house on Khavskaya ulitsa, 1930

Aleksei Shchusev's New Moscow plan, 1925

Greater Moscow plan, by Sergei Shestakov, 192S

Nikolai Ladovskii's "dynamic city," 1930

Moscow and "workers' colonies," by German Krasin, 1930

Sketch by G. B. Puzis, 1930

Pantaleimon Golosov's labile planning concept, 1930

Stanislav Strumilin's proposal for a decentralized Moscow, 1930

Le Corbusier's radical vision of Moscow, 1930

Underground workers building the first segment of the subway, 1934

Architects' rendering of the Palace of Soviets and surrounding area

Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer during removal of cladding, 1931

Official rally at site of demolished cathedral, early 1932

Tearing down Kitaigorod Wall, 1934

Planning sketch by V. B. Kratyuk, 1932

Ernst May's image of Moscow and outlying "city collectives," 1932

Moscow and environs as a "system of cities," by Hannes Meyer, 1932

Moscow master plan of 1935

Revolution Day march, November 1934

Secret burial ground for victims of the terror of the 1930s at Novospasskii Monastery

Joseph Stalin with Politburo members marking a map of Moscow region, late 1940s

"Tall building" at ploshchad' Vosstaniya, under construction, 1952

"Tall building" on Kotel'nicheskaya naberezhnaya

Elite apartment house, Kutuzovskii prospekt

Workers' barracks, First State Ballbearing Works, 1933

Moskva swimming pool in foundation of Palace of Soviets, 1988

The reinforced-concrete frontier: Novyye Cheremushki, 1961

Ground plan of the Ninth Experimental Block of Novyye Cheremushki

Prospekt Kalinina

Russian White House

Novokirovskii prospekt

Nikita Khrushchev inspecting Moscow site plans at a sculptor's studio, May 1963

Moscow master plan of 1971

The eight planning zones of the 1971 master plan

Changing dimensions of typical three-room Moscow apartment, 1950s to 1980s

Bibirevo housing district, northern Moscow

Krylatskoye housing district, western Moscow

Elite housing project, Profsoyuznaya ulitsa

Natan Osterman's House for the New Way of Life

Severnoye Chertanovo in 1988

Smokestack and cooling towers of a district thermopower station

Church of the Conception of St. Anne and Rossiya Hotel

Rebuilt Triumphal Gates

Unfinished All-Union Victory Monument in 1993

Shcherbakov Mansion, 1988

Newly elected leadership of the Moscow Soviet under bust of Lenin, May 1990

Dismounting of Dzerzhinskii statue in front of Lubyanka, August 1991

McDonald's office building, Gazetnyi pereulok

Shoppers and private trading stalls near Kiev Station, 1993

Unratified draft master plan, 1989

Rebuilt Kazan Cathedral

Editorial Reviews

Moscow had a very different fate this century, as is documented in Timothy Colton's exhaustively researched tome. A powerfully, assertive Soviet Union rose from the ashes of the Russian Empire, and Moscow was its capital. Colton provides a thorough social and political history of the city's rise, with useful maps and illustrations. The book is a mine of information that regular visitors of Moscow will quarry with pleasure...The book, like the city it documents is huge, a monumental history of a monumental city.

From personal interviews to published memoirs, from newspapers to statistical surveys, from official documents to literature, Colton has made good use of them all. Furthermore, he openly admits having received invaluable input from some of the finest minds in academia, and his acknowledgements section reads like a 'who's who' of international sovietology. The list includes scholars who have also produced urban histories, but what is most significant about the roster is that it includes representatives from many different disciplines. This point not only highlights the inter-disciplinary nature of Colton's work, but also the fact that his book should be of great interest to people outside the history departments of the world. To put it most simply, this 'city biography' contains something for almost everyone.

A short review can hardly do justice to the richness of this work. It stands as a testimony to scholarship of the highest order.

Colton has written a faithful chronicle of Moscow from revolution (1917) to revolution (1989), adding a historical prefix and postscript for both fleshing out a comprehensive biography of the city...There is no comparable work, let alone one that uses the newly accessible people and documents Colton has so successfully mined...None match Colton's Soviet-period detail and analytic insight...The book is essential for any academic library.

[An] important book...[Colton] gives us an encyclopedic account of how the 'socialist metropolis' was governed from the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 to the victory of the 'democrats' in 1990...[The author takes] seriously two things that the dominant social approach to the Soviet experiment largely neglects: the party and socialism.

[Colton's] writing reflects a significant amount of original research—documents from the Moscow Party and city archives, contemporary press accounts, oral histories and surveys—as well as a mastery of current and past scholarship...[His] approach is laudable. Colton pulls together disparate topics, those subjects which are often treated by other scholars as if they have not relation to each other...One of Colton's triumphs is that he rescues architecture and urban planning from the purview of aesthetes, charting how successive regimes attempted to use Moscow's built environment as a tool in creating the socialist metropolis...Moscow is a welcome addition to the ever-expanding scholarship of Soviet history and serves as a helpful reference book.

Colton's is a model narrative. A city emerges from it, at once vital and deeply damaged, more at the mercy of ideologues and fanatics than any other comparable settlement in this century (more, for example, than Rome or Berlin), yet resistant to them because its people could not in the end be marshalled into the plans.

Truly [this] is a grand history of one of the world's ancient and great cities, and, for that, it is also a major modern contribution to the field of urban history. More significantly, however, by digging so deeply into the history of Moscow under the tsars, the communists, and the current rulers, Colton has created an important angle on modern Russian history. This is Russia's story from the bottom up, merging political with social history.

Here is a blockbuster of a book, massive in its exploration of the fluctuating fortunes of a capital city long associated with Stalin's urban massif of crenellated 'frosted wedding cakes' in concrete and steel, yet also the home of the Kremlin, Red Square and St Basil's Cathedral. This juxtaposition is...sufficient for Timothy J. Colton not only to regard Moscow as unique but also to embark on an astonishingly detailed and wholly absorbing investigation of what this meant in the past and what present changes mean for Moscow and for truncated Russia...[A] monumental and absorbing study, furnishing rich material for the historian, erstwhile Sovietologist, demographer, architect and well-tempered traveller.

A sprawling, affectionate history of who governed the socialist metropolis, and how they did...a lively, judicious analysis...[Colton's] felicitous phrases shine like polished onion domes amid concrete-block high-rises. Startling revelations fall thickly and accumulate...Timothy J. Colton has given us a blueprint for reading the contemporary capital, superbly demonstrating the depth of the Soviet-era contribution to the ancient city's outer face and inner structure.

From the Publisher

Moscow had a very different fate this century, as is documented in Timothy Colton's exhaustively researched tome. A powerfully, assertive Soviet Union rose from the ashes of the Russian Empire, and Moscow was its capital. Colton provides a thorough social and political history of the city's rise, with useful maps and illustrations. The book is a mine of information that regular visitors of Moscow will quarry with pleasure...The book, like the city it documents is huge, a monumental history of a monumental city.

National Interest

From personal interviews to published memoirs, from newspapers to statistical surveys, from official documents to literature, Colton has made good use of them all. Furthermore, he openly admits having received invaluable input from some of the finest minds in academia, and his acknowledgements section reads like a 'who's who' of international sovietology. The list includes scholars who have also produced urban histories, but what is most significant about the roster is that it includes representatives from many different disciplines. This point not only highlights the inter-disciplinary nature of Colton's work, but also the fact that his book should be of great interest to people outside the history departments of the world. To put it most simply, this 'city biography' contains something for almost everyone.

Urban History Review

A short review can hardly do justice to the richness of this work. It stands as a testimony to scholarship of the highest order.

Labour History Review

Colton has written a faithful chronicle of Moscow from revolution (1917) to revolution (1989), adding a historical prefix and postscript for both fleshing out a comprehensive biography of the city...There is no comparable work, let alone one that uses the newly accessible people and documents Colton has so successfully mined...None match Colton's Soviet-period detail and analytic insight...The book is essential for any academic library.

Choice

[An] important book...[Colton] gives us an encyclopedic account of how the 'socialist metropolis' was governed from the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 to the victory of the 'democrats' in 1990...[The author takes] seriously two things that the dominant social approach to the Soviet experiment largely neglects: the party and socialism.

Washington Post Book World

[Colton's] writing reflects a significant amount of original research--documents from the Moscow Party and city archives, contemporary press accounts, oral histories and surveys--as well as a mastery of current and past scholarship...[His] approach is laudable. Colton pulls together disparate topics, those subjects which are often treated by other scholars as if they have not relation to each other...One of Colton's triumphs is that he rescues architecture and urban planning from the purview of aesthetes, charting how successive regimes attempted to use Moscow's built environment as a tool in creating the socialist metropolis...Moscow is a welcome addition to the ever-expanding scholarship of Soviet history and serves as a helpful reference book.

Moscow Times

Colton's is a model narrative. A city emerges from it, at once vital and deeply damaged, more at the mercy of ideologues and fanatics than any other comparable settlement in this century (more, for example, than Rome or Berlin), yet resistant to them because its people could not in the end be marshalled into the plans.

London Review of Books

Here is a blockbuster of a book, massive in its exploration of the fluctuating fortunes of a capital city long associated with Stalin's urban massif of crenellated 'frosted wedding cakes' in concrete and steel, yet also the home of the Kremlin, Red Square and St Basil's Cathedral. This juxtaposition is...sufficient for Timothy J. Colton not only to regard Moscow as unique but also to embark on an astonishingly detailed and wholly absorbing investigation of what this meant in the past and what present changes mean for Moscow and for truncated Russia...[A] monumental and absorbing study, furnishing rich material for the historian, erstwhile Sovietologist, demographer, architect and well-tempered traveller.

Times Higher Education Supplement

A sprawling, affectionate history of who governed the socialist metropolis, and how they did...a lively, judicious analysis...[Colton's] felicitous phrases shine like polished onion domes amid concrete-block high-rises. Startling revelations fall thickly and accumulate...Timothy J. Colton has given us a blueprint for reading the contemporary capital, superbly demonstrating the depth of the Soviet-era contribution to the ancient city's outer face and inner structure.

New York Times Book Review

Truly [this] is a grand history of one of the world's ancient and great cities, and, for that, it is also a major modern contribution to the field of urban history. More significantly, however, by digging so deeply into the history of Moscow under the tsars, the communists, and the current rulers, Colton has created an important angle on modern Russian history. This is Russia's story from the bottom up, merging political with social history.

Foreign Affairs

This political history of Moscow, from a distinguished Harvard Sovietologist, pays equal attention to the city's fate in each of the main phases of 20th-century Russsian/Soviet history: before the revolution, during the revolution, under Stalin, under Stalin's successors, and in the present day. Each section will be of use to a particular group of specialists (e.g., urban sociologists or historians of revolution), but other readers are likely to get lost in the profuse details, which are not tied together by any unifying thesis. Although the idea of retelling Russian history from a "Moscow perspective" appeals to the capital's central place in Russian politics and culture, Colton does not succeed in demonstrating that the city per se or its government was ever more than a bystander to events played out there on the federal level. For academic collections.-Robert Decker, Palo Alto, Cal.

Library Journal