The Soviet utopia, the project of Soviet modernity, was a project of high ambitions. In Siberian post-Soviet spaces, the remnants of the future-that-never-was remain in the “formless form” of ruins of the premature futures. In these spaces, people are constantly confronted with non-functioning infrastructure and disrupted economic realities. Ruins strew the space, in which a novelty blinks as a sudden disruption.
The idea of industrial modernity that the Soviet state perpetuated, at the time (1950s-1960s) resulted in what Craig Campbell calls “Promesceoscene.” The Promesceoscene is the time when man was the new Prometheus, or so the pervasive ideology claimed. A new Communist human being brought electricity to the far-away frontiers, and aspired to transform the whole planet into the paradise for humanity. The Soviet project was the project of classless society and universal happiness: access to medicine, education, work, and creative fulfillment—not in the interests of the individual but in the interest of collective. From Tsiolkovsky to Tatlin, from Vertov to Shklovsky the new images of the future rose in minds and shaped the materiality of the present: brotherhood, equality, and universal prosperity seemed to start tomorrow. Yet the present, with its forced labor, bureaucracy, and the biopolitical modernity of Communism, did not differ that much from the Capitalistic modernity in the eyes of many theorists outside of Russia (Foucault, 2003). The traces of Communist daring projects were the ruins of the unhappened future, the “planes that never took off,” as literary theorist and critic Victor Shklovsky formulated it (quoted by Oushakine in the preface to The Formal Method, 2016, 9). Although these planes never took off, I argue that the multiple alternative futures are still there; they continue their existence, and are evident in traces that are the “past futures”’ deposits, as it were. If ruination is a flux, as Ann Stoler put it in Imperial Debris (2013). Ruins, deformed matter (Edensor, 2005), exhibit remarkable endurance. The ruination is ongoing, but it becomes a backdrop for the new processes. What are those new processes? After the late Soviet reforms, the early post-Soviet devastating “shock therapy,” and feast of privatization, and feast of privatization, the life in the once-planned settlement in Siberia is reminiscing of the hybrid of the Soviet sci-fi and cyberpunk, but it also contains a kernel of the new, as-yet-unnamed, possibilities. But they are not the possibilities synonymous with the proverbial "opportunities." |
After the late Soviet reforms, the early post-Soviet devastating 'shock therapy,' and feast of privatization, the life in the once-planned settlement in Siberia is reminiscing of the hybrid of the Soviet sci-fi and cyberpunk, but it also contains a kernel of the new, as-yet-unnamed, possibilities.” |
The Socialist utopia does remind in some of its detail, the Capitalist utopia of Fordlandia, described by Galey (1979) and Grandin (2013), “Chaplinesque in its absurdity” (Grandin, 2013, 119). Imagine this absurdity performed on far greater territories. Yet this absurdity made a stubborn sense: developing modern infrastructure was a central political and economic goal of the Bolshevik party, demonstrating state power and the superiority of the Communist project as much as providing for the needs of the state. Railroads cut forests (see the story of the Salekhard-Igarka railroad, built in the near-polar zone, with a tremendous loss of lives by forced labor); Komsomol-built cities spring with the surprising speed in taiga and tundra, river-altering dams rise in severest climates. The new Soviet man was going to transform not only the political system of the whole world, but also the very face of the planet. While the Lenin’s thesis of building Communism in one separate country was accepted as a goal and methodology in the early Soviet years, the overarching utopian vision of the whole world eventually coming to the work within the frameworks of the Communist project, remained. Moreover, Russian theorists, from Nikolay Fyodorov to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, dreamed about populating the earthlike planets, based on the same principles which were to be put in the foundation of the Communist everyday economies.
The town of Bratsk and the village of Anovoso which emerged as the result of the Bratsk dam construction, are the examples of the "cities of the future." The town of Bratsk was built for workers of the dam, who lived for several years in green tents made out of fabric—with insulation—in Siberian winters (40-58 below zero Fahrenheit). It was a deed of great effort, heroic and desperate, and portrayed as such in Soviet literature (Yevtushenko, poem Bratskaya GES, Dobronravov, others; what we call a “register” of writing about the Bratsk dam’s construction). Yet simultaneously with these hymns to the new heroic deeds and powers, deeply pensive voices, a mute melody of unprecedented melancholy, were entwined into the triumphant march. The Russian writer Valentin Rasputin, who wrote works of poignancy about the displacement and relocation, exemplified these mermaid voices (Farewell to Matyora).
In the 60s, the town of Bratsk exploded, absorbing an agglomeration of villages that once were scattered where it is now. In 1959, 51,455 lived people in Bratsk, in 1962, 82,000, in 1967, 122,000. Moreover, the new Bratsk dwellers were young people, Komsomol workers—yesterday’s children, high-school-graduates. Even today, the medium age in the city is but 36 years; children and youth under 17, combines 20% of the population [source]. Those are fantastic numbers for Russia which is on steady demographic decline for the last twenty years.
In the 60s, the town of Bratsk exploded, absorbing an agglomeration of villages that once were scattered where it is now. In 1959, 51,455 lived people in Bratsk, in 1962, 82,000, in 1967, 122,000. Moreover, the new Bratsk dwellers were young people, Komsomol workers—yesterday’s children, high-school-graduates. Even today, the medium age in the city is but 36 years; children and youth under 17, combines 20% of the population [source]. Those are fantastic numbers for Russia which is on steady demographic decline for the last twenty years.