Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-vt8vv Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2024-08-19T18:05:18.593Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘The Thaw’ in the Arctic: constructing Mirny as a Soviet Arctic city of a new type

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2024

Ekaterina Kalemeneva Open the ORCID record for Ekaterina Kalemeneva [Opens in a new window]
Ekaterina Kalemeneva*
Affiliation:
Department of History, St Petersburg School of Arts and Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg, Russia
*
Email: eakalemeneva@gmail.com
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The town of Mirny, which was established in 1955 in the Arctic region of Yakutia, was not only the first Soviet settlement constructed near the newly explored diamond mine; it was also one of the first industrial towns in the Soviet Arctic to be constructed from scratch in the post-World War II period, as it was never part of the Gulag legacy. Focusing on the case of Mirny, this article elucidates the new principles behind the perception of urban space in the Soviet Arctic in the 1960s. Close analysis of the first years of the town’s construction illuminates the formation of a new conception of a socialist Arctic town at that period – a town open for migration flows, with a developed public and social sphere, that was celebrated as a ‘town of youth’ or a ‘town of the future’, and yet was also a town where extreme environmental conditions had a greater influence on the life of its inhabitants than did official state directives and regulations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , First View , pp. 1 - 18
Check for updates
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 www.bbc.com/news/business-13212036; www.dw.com/en/inside-russias-diamond-mines/a-19434116, accessed 18 Aug. 2023.

2 Uzmuhametov, R., ‘Iz istorii otkrytiya yakutskoi almazonosnoi provintsii’, Izvestiya Altaiskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. Seriya Istoriya, 64 (2009), 281–7Google Scholar; Habardin, U., Put’ k Almaznoi Trubke (Yakutsk, 1994)Google Scholar.

3 Bruno, A. and Kalemeneva, E., ‘Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991’, in Howkins, A. and Roberts, P. (eds.), The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions (Cambridge, 2023), 462–86Google Scholar.

4 Barenberg, A., Gulag Town, Company Town: Forced Labor and Its Legacy in Vorkuta (New Haven and London, 2014)Google Scholar; David-Fox, M. (ed.), The Soviet Gulag: Evidence, Interpretation, and Comparison (Pittsburgh, 2016)Google Scholar; Shirokov, A., Dal’stroi v Sotsial’no-ekonomicheskom Razvitii Severo-Vostoka SSSR. 1930–1950-e gg. (Moscow, 2014)Google Scholar.

5 Hardy, J., The Gulag after Stalin: Redefining Punishment in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union, 1953–1964 (Ithaca, NY, 2016)Google Scholar; Elie, M., ‘Khrushchev’s Gulag: the Soviet penitentiary system after Stalin’s death, 1953–1964’, in Kozlov, D. and Gilburd, E. (eds.), The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the 1950s and 1960s (Toronto, 2013), 109–42Google Scholar.

6 Govorit Mirny (Yakutsk, 1961), 14–15 (author’s translation).

7 Bohn, T., ‘“Closed cities” versus “open society”? The interaction of de-Stalinisation and urbanisation’, in Bohn, T.M., Einax, R. and , M. Abesser (eds.), De-Stalinisation Reconsidered. Persistence and Change in the Soviet Union (Frankfurt and New York, 2014)Google Scholar; Ruters, M., ‘Sovetskaya rodina kak prostranstvo gorodskoi arkhitectury’, Ab Imperio, 2 (2006), 193–231 Google Scholar.

8 Josephson, P.R., ‘“Projects of the century” in Soviet history: large-scale technologies from Lenin to Gorbachev’, Technology and Culture, 36 (1995), 519–59Google Scholar; Ward, C.J., Brezhnev’s Folly: The Building of BAM and Late Soviet Socialism (Pittsburgh, 2009)Google Scholar; Zarecor, K.E., ‘What was so socialist about the socialist city? Second world urbanity in Europe’, Journal of Urban History, 44 (2018), 95–117 Google Scholar.

9 Crawford, C., Spatial Revolution: Architecture and Planning in the Early Soviet Union (Ithaca, NY, 2022)Google Scholar; Zakirova, M., ‘The city as genuine place. The paradoxes of Soviet urbanisation: the search for the genuine Soviet city’, in Lyssakov, P. and Norris, S.M. (eds.), The City in Russian Culture (London, 2018), 141–65Google Scholar.

10 Kotkin, S., ‘The search for the socialist city’, Russian History, 23 (1996), 231–61Google Scholar; Attwood, L., Gender and Housing in Soviet Russia: Private Life in a Public Space (Manchester, 2010)Google Scholar; Austin, R.C., Building Utopia: Erecting Russia’s First Modern City, 1930 (Kent, OH, 2004)Google Scholar; Meerovich, M.G., Konysheva, E.V. and Hmel’nickii, D.S., Kladbishche Sotsgorodov: Gradostroitel’naya Politika v SSSR (1928–1932 gg.) (Moscow, 2011)Google Scholar.

11 Bittner, S., ‘Green cities and orderly streets. Space and culture in Moscow’, Journal of Urban History, 25 (1998), 22–56 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meerovich, M., ‘Sotsgoroda v Sibiri: gradostroitelnaya i rasselencheskaya politika v period industrializatsii’, Balandinskie Chteniya, 9 (2014), 121–7Google Scholar.

12 Bruno, A., The Nature of Soviet Power. An Arctic Environmental History (New York, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lajus, J., ‘ Colonization of the Russian North: a frozen frontier’, in Ax, C.F., Brimnes, N., Jensen, N.T. and Oslund, K. (eds.), Cultivating the Colony: Colonial States and Their Environmental Legacies (Athens, OH, 2011), 164–90Google Scholar; Josephson, P.R., The Conquest of the Russian Arctic (Cambridge, MA, 2014)Google Scholar.

13 Reisser, C., ‘Russia’s Arctic cities: recent evolution and drivers of change’, in Orttung, R. (ed.), Sustaining Russia’s Arctic Cities: Resource Politics, Migration, and Climate Change (New York and Oxford, 2016), 1–22 Google Scholar; Wilson, D., ‘The Siberian oil and gas industry’, in Wood, Alan (ed.), Siberia: Problems and Prospects for Regional Development (London, New York and Sydney, 1987), 96–129 Google Scholar.

14 Hemmersam, P., Making the Arctic City: The History and Future of Urbanism in the Circumpolar North (London, 2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Decker, J., Modern North: Architecture on the Frozen Edge (New York, 2010)Google Scholar; Farish, M. and Lackenbauer, P., ‘High modernism in the Arctic: planning Frobisher Bay and Inuvik’, Journal of Historical Geography, 35 (2009), 517–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 The city got its name from the nearest diamondiferous pipe called ‘Mir’, discovered by a geological expedition in 1955. The word ‘peace’ became an important element of official discourse of the Thaw era both as a sign of reconstruction of peaceful life after World War II and as the official rhetoric of ‘peaceful co-existence with the West’ proclaimed in the 1950s in the context of increased tensions of the Cold War.

16 For more about the ‘Thaw’ period in Soviet history, see D. Kozlov and E. Gilburd, ‘The Thaw as an event in Russian history’, in Kozlov and Gilburd (eds.), The Thaw; Bittner, S., The Many Lives of Khrushchev’s Thaw: Experience and Memory in Moscow’s Arbat (Ithaca, NY, 2008)Google Scholar.

17 Natsionalny Arkhiv Respubliki Sakha (NARS), F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 1, L. 17.

18 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 15 (ob.).

19 Munitsipalny Arkhiv Mirnenskogo Raiona Respubliki Sakha (MAMR RS), F. 22. Op. 1 D. 16, L. 26.

20 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 4, D. 6, L. 1.

21 NARS, F. 3060, Op. 1, D. 37, L. 21.

22 ‘Segodnya v klube. Dlya detei i vzroslykh’, Mirnensky Rabochii, 1 Jan. 1960, 2.

23 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 11.

24 Z. Fedorova, ‘Obrazovanie i administrativno-territorial’noe urpavlenie Mirninskogo raiona’, in Mirninskii Raion: Istoriya. Kul’tura. Fol’klor (Yakutsk, 2005), 44–6.

25 MAMR RS, F. 22, Op. 1, D. 50, L. 29.

26 Tsentralny Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Nauchno-Tekhnicheskoy Dokumentatsii Sankt-Peterburga (TsGANTD SPb), F. 17, Op. 1–1, D. 502, L. 1.

27 MAMR RS, F. 10, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 43.

28 I. Stas, ‘Urbanizaciya v umakh: stalinskoe “pravo na gorod”, sovetskaya sub’ektivnost’ i praktiki grazhdanstva v Khanty-Mansiiske’, Anthropological Forum, 52 (2022), 85–132.

29 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 1, L. 4.

30 Ibid.

31 S. Boldyreva, ‘Po dorogam idut mashiny’, Mirninskii Rabochii, 16 Feb. 1960, 2.

32 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 4, D. 2, L. 5.

33 Ibid., L. 6.

34 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 3.

35 ‘V gorode volshebnoy lisitsy’, Moskovsky Komsomolets, 31 Dec. 1958, 1.

36 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 4, D. 31, L. 73.

37 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 1, L. 80.

38 MAMR RS, F. 10, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 34.

39 MAMR RS, F. 22, Op. 1, D. 50, L. 15, 28.

40 MAMR RS, F. 10, Op. 1, D. 59, L. 91.

41 TsGANTD Spb, F. 17, Op. 11, D. 502, L. 1.

42 MAMR RS, F. 22, Op. 1 D. 16, L. 34–7.

43 Pis’ma iz Sibiri. Deti (Novosibirsk, 1968), 115.

44 Rossiisky Gosudarstvenny Arkhiv Economiki (RGAE), F. 5, Op. 1, D. 26, L. 50.

45 Ol, G.’, Rimskaya-Korsakova, T. and Tankayan, V., Planirovka i Zastroika Zhilyh Kompleksov Krainego Severa (Leningrad, 1968)Google Scholar.

46 Ibid.

47 H. Lefebvre, Production of Space (Oxford, 1991).

48 RGAE, F. 746, Op. 1, D. 9.

49 RGAE, F. 5, Op. 1, D. 26, L. 85.

50 Pis’ma iz Sibiri. Deti, 107.

51 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 1, L. 77.

52 MAMR RS, F. 10, Op. 1, D. 9, L. 153.

53 ‘Obrashchenie Tsentral’nogo Komiteta Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza i Soveta Ministrov SSSR ko vsem komsomol’skim organizatsiyam, k komsomol’tsam i komsomolkam i ko vsei sovetskoi molodezhi’, Pravda, 19 May 1956, 1.

54 Dolgoliuk, A., ‘Rol’ kommunisticheskh partiinykh organizatsii v reshenii kadrovykh problem v raionakh novogo industrial’nogo osvoeniya Sibiri’, in Timoshenko, A. (ed.), Deyatel’nost’ Gosudarstvennykh Organov po Industrial’nomu Osvoeniiu Sibiri v XX – nachale XXI veka, Vypusk. 1 (Novosibirsk, 2009), 161–96Google Scholar.

55 B. Parshikova, ‘Paren iz Moskvy’, Mirninskii Rabochii, 18 Feb. 1960, 1.

56 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 4, D. 1, L. 23.

57 Boldyreva, ‘Po dorogam idut mashiny’, 2.

58 M. Rozhansky, ‘Ottepel’ na sibirskom moroze’, Otechestvennye Zapiski, 5 (2012), 184–206.

59 Koller, E.E., ‘Negotiating “coldness”: the natural environment and community cohesion in Cold War Molotovsk-Severodvinsk’, in Herzberg, J., Kehrt, C. and Torma, F. (eds.), Ice and Snow in the Cold War: Histories of Extreme Climatic Environments (New York, 2018), 253–84Google Scholar.

60 MAMR RS, F. 22, Op. 1, D. 50, L. 28.

61 T. Semushkin, ‘Na zemle almaznoi’, Pravda, 22 May 1965, 4.

62 TsGANTD SPb, F. 17, Op. 2–5, D. 1088, L. 69.

63 MAMR RS, F. 22, Op. 1, D. 16, L. 26, L. 34.

64 MAMR RS, F. 22, Op. 1, D. 16, L. 42.

65 The term ‘the long rouble’ referred to a special state programme of financial support for migrants to the northern industries.

66 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 15 (ob.).

67 Ibid., L. 15.

68 NARS, F. 50, Op. 58, D. 71, L. 1.

69 NARS, F. 3160, Op. 10, D. 4, L. 97.

70 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 6, D. 1, L. 6.

71 MAMR RS, F. 22, Op. 1, D. 50, L. 21.

72 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 1.

73 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 11, L. 50.

74 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 7, L. 7.

75 TsGANTD SPb, F. 17, Op. 2–5, D. 1088, L. 69.

76 Ibid, L. 157.

77 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 43.

78 NARS, F. 3060, Op. 1, D. 1, L. 1.

79 A.I. Gogolev, Yakutia: Vek 20 (Yakutsk, 2001), 86.

80 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 4, D. 1, L. 37.

81 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 4.

82 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 4, D. 1, L. 31.

83 NARS, F. 3060, Op. 1, D. 13, L. 2.

84 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 19, L. 3.

85 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 24.

86 Bolotova, A., ‘Loving and conquering nature: shifting perceptions of the environment in the industrialised Russian North’, Europe-Asia Studies, 64 (2012), 645–71Google Scholar.

87 Kalemeneva, E., ‘Politika osvoeniya Krainego Severa i kritika zhiznennyh uslovii arkticheskih gorodov v narrativah khrushchevskogo vremeni’, Quaestio Rossica, 5 (2017), 153–70Google Scholar.

88 Harris, S., Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin (Baltimore, 2013)Google Scholar; Varga-Harris, C., Stories of House and Home: Soviet Apartment Life during the Khrushchev Years (Ithaca, NY, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 Reid, S., ‘Happy housewarming: moving into Khrushchev-era apartments’, in Balina, M. and Dobrenko, E. (eds.), Petrified Utopia: Happiness of Soviet Style (London and New York, 2009)Google Scholar.

90 Govorit Mirny, 24.

91 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 7, L. 13.

92 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 4, L. 6.

93 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 19, L. 1.

94 NARS, F. 3051, Op. 1, D. 11, L. 2.

95 NARS, F. 50, Op. 58, D. 64, L. 3.

96 MAMR RS, F. 22, Op. 1, D. 50, L. 29.

97 V. Basanets, ‘Zhilishchnoe stroitel’stvo – pod kontrol Soveta’, Mirninskii rabochii, 27 Jan. 1963, 2.

98 F. Egorova, ‘Ne otkladyvaya v dolgii yashchik’, Mirninskii rabochii, 16 Feb. 1962, 3.

99 Ibid.

100 Kalemeneva, E., ‘From new socialist cities to Thaw experimentation in Arctic townscapes: Leningrad architects attempt to modernise the Soviet North’, Europe-Asia Studies, 73 (2019), 426–49Google Scholar.