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‘A fairground for “building the new man”’: Gorky Park as a site of Soviet acculturation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

CLAIRE SHAW
CLAIRE SHAW*
Affiliation:
Institute of Historical Research, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU, UK
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Abstract:

This article analyses one of the first extensive ‘acculturation’ projects undertaken by the Soviet leadership, the construction of Gorky Park, Moscow, between its inception in 1921 and the 1930s. It undertakes a close reading of the developing conceptualization of Gorky Park as, to borrow Timothy Colton's phrase, a ‘fairground for “building the new man”’ and the practical limits of this ambition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 324 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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5 Gorky Park's role as a focus of Soviet debates on ‘leisure culture’ is similarly explored by Katharina Kucher in her monograph Der Gorki-Park: Freizeitkultur im Stalinismus 1928–1941 (Böhlau, 2007). Her book appeared after I had completed work on this article.

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