Dariusz Aleksandrowicz Aleksandrowicz - Europa-Universität ...

Frankfurter Institut für 

Transformationsstudien 

Frankfurt institute for 

Transformation Studies 

Arbeitsberichte - Discussion Papers 

ISSN 1431- 0708 

Herausgeber - Editorial Board 

Prof. Dr. J.C. Joerden 

Prof. Dr. H-J. Wagener 

© by the author 

Dariusz Aleksandrowicz 

The Socialist City and its 

Transformation 

No. 10/99 

Europa-Universität Viadrina 

Postfach 1786 

D - 15207 Frankfurt (Oder)

Dariusz ALEKSANDROWICZ 

The Socialist City and its Transformation 

Prof. Dr. Dariusz Aleksandrowicz is professor for philosophy, especially philosophical 

basics of cultural science analysis at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder) 

and a member of the F.I.T. The F.I.T. is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemein 

schaft (DFG) as innovation college.

The Socialist City and its Transformation 

I. Ideological foundations of a socialist city 

Unlike the development of new cities in Western industrial countries, the rise of socialist 

cities cannot be explained in terms of economic objectives and economic 

growth in the usual meaning of the word. The very rationality of the communist system 

was not an “economic” one but rested upon subordinating the latter to objectives 

which derived their justification from communist ideology. Achieving these ideology-defined 

tasks was due much more to political decision and political activity than 

to the organic development of the society and its infrastructure. The intention consisted 

rather in creating some new reality which would contradict the “spontaneous” 

(i. e. mainly economically determined) dynamics of the social organism. 1 Although 

the communist vocabulary contained words like “economic” or “economy”, what 

they referred to was, however, a politically manipulated system of production and 

distribution. 2 In the proper sense “economy” means the type of rules which govern 

production and distribution of goods. In Communism, on the contrary, the notion attributed 

to the specific content of what is being done (i. e., creating material goods), 

whereas the rules appropriate to it relied on political decision and ideological legitimization. 

Conceiving the city as the major scene where the communist utopia was to be realized 

in people’s every-day life, the Soviet-type Communists were in line with the 

mainstream of the tradition of utopianism. It was represented, for instance, by the 

“New Jerusalem” in the Apocalypse of John or by Campanella’s “The City of the 

Sun.” In accordance with this tradition they regarded the city as the expected surrounding 

where the new world resulting from a radical change would find its ex 

pression. 3 The ideology of the Soviet-type Communists differed here from their 

1 For the opposition of “spontaneous” and “constructed” order cf. Hayek (1978: ch. 6). With 

respect to the problems of a “socialist city” – cf. Szczepañski (1990; 1993a: 63p.). Contrasting 

“spontaneous” social order with the communist attempt to “construct” a society according to a 

general plan laid down by the superior political authority, we must, however, avoid possible misinterpretations. 

The communist idea of planning (or: planned economy) as a principle of social 

organization is not to be confused with planning (especially: urban planning) as a method of rationally 

managing and mutually adjusting particular aspects of a social organism. Since “planning” 

in the first meaning can be opposed to “spontaneity”, as Hayek understands the term, the 

proper opposite to “planning” in the other sense would be “anarchy”. For a related distinction 

between “utopian planning” and “social technology of particular problems” cf. Popper (1945: ch. 

9). 

2 The idea of opposing “production” and “economy” in order to finally release production of material 

goods from restrictions imposed upon them by economic rules traces back beyond Marx’ 

“Critique of Political Economy” to the writings of Saint-Simon. For more cf. Aleksandrowicz 

(1993: ch. XI) and Polanyi (1960). 

3 “From the architectural utopias of Alberti and Leonardo in the Renaissance, to Le Corbusier’s 

design for the ‘city of tomorrow,’ architects and urban planners have sought to realize the good

2 F.I.T. Discussion Paper 10/99 

Maoist or Red-Khmer counterpart, who thought the village and not the city to be the 

genuine environment of the desired mode of life. 

Looking from a historical perspective, we must, however, realize that the relation 

between the city and the village in both ideology and practice of the Soviet Communism 

appears a little more complex. Prior to the Bolshevik revolution as well as in 

the initial period of Soviet Russia, when a competition between different utopian 

designs took place, the “urbanist” models were challenged by the “disurbanist” ones 

(cf. Stites, 1989: 30p. and ch. 9). The latter originated from these currents of the 

Russian culture which claimed the native tradition roots in the rural mode of life and 

is to be regarded as superior to urban tradition coming from the West. On the other 

hand, the Marxists, both in Russia and in the West, always insisted on the elimination 

of the differences between the city and the village as a prominent objective of a 

communist society. Although these hopes were never fulfilled in the reality and the 

“urbanist” current finally dominated the opposite one, the Soviet-type socialist cities 

were as little “urban” as the Soviet villages populated by the workers of the collective 

farms maintained their “rural” character. In the social and spatial structures represented 

by these both types of environment, the city and the village lost much of the 

features traditionally ascribed to them. 

According to its design, a socialist city was intended to be something more than a 

mere town-planning and architectonic creation. It implied moreover the respective 

new style of living and a Weltanschauung, which resulted from an utopian view of 

the future world and of man. The design of really-existing Soviet-type socialist cities 

as well as purely theoretical projects developed by the Western-European (especially 

French) socialist city planers were based on such ideas. According to Tony 

Garnier’s design of a “Cité industrielle,” the new city would be a model of the desired 

future, contributing by its example to the rejection of the traditional forms of 

society and of life (cf. de Bruyn, 1992; Garnier, 1988). These Western-type collectivist 

ideas have later found their ultimate expression in the so-called “Charter of 

Athens.” (cf. Le Corbusier, 1957). 

Due to the very philosophy of a socialist city, its empirically given reality was, as it 

were, complemented by the image of some future, emerging state of things 

the name of which was “Communism.” The town-planning and architectonic features 

of the city were therefore to be viewed with respect to their conformity with the 

imaginary, future “man of Communism.” An important function of the city consisted 

in contributing this “new man” (now existing only as an ideological project) 

to really emerge. Together with the usual means of education and political propaganda, 

the city had to approximate this task by way of imposing upon its inhabitants 

some special behavioural patterns and style of life. This was to result from the 

life in the bricks of buildings and the grids of squares and streets. ... The ideal city contributes the 

element of design. Its premise is that the good society must be constructed, thought through in a 

systematic way. Its hallmark is reason, its emblem the plan.” Kumar (1991: 14, 19).

D. Aleksandrowicz: The Socialist City and its Transformation 3 

spatial order represented by the city as well as from the specific visual experience 

permanently offered in it. 

In the history of Communism and its ideology, however, the historicist metaphysics 

which originally formed the core of the respective ideas was gradually dwarfed by 

interpretations suggested by a more pragmatic assessment of problems in the light of 

realpolitik. 4 Although the crucial notions such as “Communism,” which referred to 

the desired model of society, still could not be understood without taking into account 

the revolutionary eschatology they were originally rooted in, they at the same 

time acquired a more practical and concrete meaning. It was most of all Stalinism 

that succeeded in pushing the idea and the practice of Communism away from the 

purely abstract notions once developed in Marxism. The chief invention of Stalinism 

was in this respect to establish “industrialization” as a secular equivalent of the 

metaphysical idea of “emergence of Communism.” 

Industrialization and creation and/or further development of the working class were 

therefore the major “practical” objectives to which the socialist cities owed its existence. 

Since we can speak about both “industrialization” and “working class” also 

with regard to the Western society, it is important to note the specific “socialist” 

meaning of these terms due to the specific features of the reality to which they refer. 

“Industrialization” here chiefly means the construction of production plants (especially 

in the domain of heavy industry). The function of these plants was to employ 

people and to produce things according to directives resulting from the politicallydefined 

production plan. Apart from some physical or even technological similarity, 

the socialist “production plant” had little in common with the “enterprise” in the 

economic sense of the word. Correspondingly, the socialist working class, unlike the 

class of employees in a Western society, owed its very existence not to the economic 

process, and its position was not determined by what was taking place on the market. 

More significant was its relation to the socialist state. It was exactly the socialist 

state and not the market that created and secured the place of work, determined the 

conditions of work and of life, and defined the system of duties and privileges for the 

members of the working class. 5 

II. Specific features of a socialist city 

Socialist cities or settlements of the Stalinist period and those of the later decades 

differ architectonically from each other. The first of them were usually built in a 

socialist “neo-classical” style with socialist “baroque” elements added to it, 

whereas the simplistic architecture of the latter was determined by technology of the 

pre-cast panels. What they have in common is, however, an egalitarian, anti- 

4 For more cf. Aleksandrowicz (1989). 

5 For more cf. Aleksandrowicz (1993a; 1998a)


individualistic monotony of the urban space. 6 The human individual as an inhabitant 

of the city was confronted by the urban space in the same manner as he/she was confronted 

by the institutions of the socialist state. He/she was integrated into a spatial 

order which widely determined his/her behaviour, leaving him/her very few alternatives 

to use the urban space as a field of his/her individual creativeness. This determination 

manifested itself in everyday-life – with respect to both the individual’s 

work and leisure-time – as well as in the specific forms of public activity which was 

organized within and by way of the structures of the urban space. 

In the traditional (“bourgeois”) city which has developed owing to the economic 

process, the centre of the town is obviously marked by mercantile factors. “Centre” 

means there above all “shopping –“ and “business centre.” The aim of the socialist 

city planers was in turn to give the centre of the new city an ideological character. 

That is, instead by the market-place the centre of the town was here to be organized 

by political institutions and by official ideology. 7 This very idea was, for instance, 

the background of the reconstruction of Bucharest at the time of the late Ceausescu - 

a project which can be interpreted as an effort to make a socialist new city out of a 

traditional one. 

Except obvious similarities there are also differences between the socialist and the 

“pre-bourgeois” concept of the centre of a city. In the latter, the principal area was 

defined as a centre of religious cult and of administration. The socialist city, in turn, 

tended to marginalize religion and to somehow substitute it by secular ideology. 

What added here to the administrative function of political power were, among others, 

its manipulative and mobilizing efforts attempting the masses of inhabitants to 

act in a particular way within the spatial order of the city. But still good arguments 

could probably be found to support the thesis that something similar occurred also in 

at leas few representative cities of the absolute monarchies. 

According to the concept of a socialist city, the centre was to be defined as the space 

where some specific form of collective life of the inhabitants of the city takes place. 

By its very nature, it was an ideologically controlled collective life. A particular 

political directive or a regular official occasion, such as a state or party festival, 

were the source of activity which tentatively united the passive and isolated 

6 Some substantial ideas underlying the design of a city in a communist-type society are, however, 

not of Stalinst origin, but can be traced back to the early writings of the founders of Communism. 

This refers especially to the concept of dwellings which were intended to promote a “collectivist 

way of life.” 1847 Engels pleaded for “construction, on public lands, of great palaces as communal 

dwellings for associated groups of citizens engaged in both industry and agriculture.” Engels 

(1847). 

7 Cf. Kotarbiñski (1985: 54): “... the city should have a centre of a social and political type as well 

as squares and streets as the space of collective life.” Szczepañski (1993b: 152), suggests an 

analogy between socialist and “oriental” concept of the centre of a city. According to Szczepañski, 

the common feature shared by them is emptiness of one part of the central space with the 

other part occupied by monumental buildings.


“socialist people” into an active whole which had to play a special role within the 

ideologically determined ritual. 

Besides the political centre, another dominant factor of a socialist city was the production 

plant. Many new socialist cities have been built for the staff of a single large 

production plant or for a single branch of heavy industry. 8 The role the production 

plant played in the life of a socialist city went far beyond the process of production 

and of work. Because of the permanent supply shortages, the plant provided the supply 

of commodities for the members of its staff. 9 It also provided cultural life for 

them and kindergarten for their children. Holidays were organized by the production 

plant in the plant-owned “recreation settlements.” Despite the fact that these settlements 

were geographically distant from both socialist city and socialist production 

plant they belonged to the very same context and were thus an extension of the behavioural 

and cultural patterns determined by it. 

The new socialist city essentially consisted of (1) the centre of political and ideological 

manipulation, (2) the place of production and of work, and (3) the private 

dwelling-place. In each of these specific spaces the individual was dominated by 

political manipulation (which was daily present at least in form of visual propaganda 

and of monumental architecture of the central square or of the official buildings), 

by the plant, and by the anonymity and monotony of the living blocks. As a 

result of an extremely poor infrastructure of the urban-specific services (including 

cultural services) there existed hardly any mediating instances between the individual 

space, which was reduced to the inside of the dwelling-place, and the public 

space of the city, which was the spatial representation of the authority of the socialist 

state. This type of relation between the individual and the collective (or: 

between the private and the public) was, to be sure, also an essential issue in the 

above mentioned ideas of the Western socialist city planers. In Garnier’s design of 

the cité industrielle, for instance, “it is only the threshold of one’s own house which 

(...) marks the very narrow border between the privacy of living and the public 

space. Crossing the threshold one already finds himself outside, in a space that belongs 

to everyone.” (de Bruyn, 1992: 537). In the actual socialist city the problem, 

however, was that this space which was originally designed so as to belong to eve- 

8 The process of construction and of existence of a socialist city in its function as a dwelling place 

of one single production plant is impressively documented in Beier (1997). (The central issue of 

the volume is, however, to demonstrate similarities between a planned city in East and in West 

Germany: Stalinstadt/Eisenhüttenstadt and Stadt des KdF-Wagens/Wolfsburg. I do not deal with 

the related questions in this paper, because it would imply an detailed discussion of some other 

complex problems. One of them would be the relation between the respective aspects of the two 

totalitarian systems: Communism and National Socialism. It is due to the fact that Wolfsburg 

owes its very character as a “planned city” to its origin in the industrializing and city-planning 

concepts of the Nazi state.) 

9 From the end of the 70‘s onwards, when the crisis of the socialist economy consequently approximated 

its peak, some of the industrial production plants in socialist Poland even started 

breeding pigs in order to improve their respective services. These initiatives were glorified by the 

media and supported by the officials of party and state.


ryone, was in fact a no-one’s space. It was due to the failure of the original task of 

socialism to make a “new” man out of the “old” one, for whom the very distinction 

between the “private” and the “public” wouldn’t exist anymore. 

III. Idea and reality of a socialist city: remarks on Naberezhnye Chelny 

Like all other institutions of a socialist society, socialist cities have developed in the 

context of a tension between the ideology-conforming design and the given reality. 

What the city in effect was like as well as the very dynamics of its development, 

were at least as much due to the original assumptions of the plan as to a tentative 

adjustment of contradicting factors. 10 In “non-reforming” countries, like Russia, as 

well as in the “reforming” 11 ones some determinants of this type of dynamics survived 

the disintegration of the institutional system of Communism. There are, however, 

some crucial differences between the respective processes which are at work 

in both of them. 

Naberezhnye Chelny (1982-1988: Brezhnev, in Tatar: Jar Chally), a city in the 

Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan within the Russian Federation, is one of world’s 

best examples of a socialist “new city.” It is a city of over half a million inhabitants 

the construction of which has started only three decades ago. It therefore owes its 

existence to a voluntary design of Soviet politicians and city planers of the Brezhnev 

period. 

The city has been planned and built along with the “Kamaz” production plant, which 

– according to its size and output measured in tons and numbers – once was the biggest 

truck factory in the world. Like in any other model socialist city, the very functioning 

of the urban organism of Naberezhnye Chelny as well as its inhabitants’ conditions 

of life depend upon the plant. But this dependence here is much more substantial 

than it was the case in a Central European socialist city. This is because of 

the dimensions of both the city and the plant and due to the geographical distance that 

separates Naberezhnye Chelny from other industrialized areas. 

After the collapse of the communist system in Russia, the dominant role of the 

plant did not disappear but it adopted new forms. What one was now confronted 

10 I’m not dealing here with the question as to how far several types of adaptive spontaneity of this 

kind simply promoted functional disorder and degenerated into anarchy. For analyses of related 

issues cf. Wódz (1990). 

11 By “reforming countries” I mean the so-called “Visehrad” and Baltic countries, and Slovenia. 

They follow the course of post-communist transformation which consists, roughly speaking, in 

approximating the “Western” model of democracy and market economy. Contrasting these 

countries with the “non-reforming” ones, I ignore the question as to whether it would make sense 

to differentiate some intermediate cases. The examples for “non-reforming” countries can especially 

be found in much of the post-Soviet spectrum.


with was a continuation of the respective relation between the plant and the city in 

the changed situation of the post-communist period. At that time, that is at the begin 

of 90’s, all of the best land around Naberezhnye Chelny belonged to Kamaz. The 

plant has bought this land from the surrounding collective and state-owned farms - 

the kolkhozes and the sovkhozes. Kamaz has exercised political influence to move 

the farms to sell the land, despite of the resistance of their staff “Kamaz is an empire, 

it can exercise power.” 12 The chief argument in the bargaining could in turn be easily 

used as a purely ideological one. It referred to the needs of the workers of Kamaz 

who are looking for new houses to be built – a slogan which was impressive for 

minds that grown up on ideas once promoted by the communists. 13 

Unlike the conditions of the Soviet society, there are now some capitalist elements 

that determine the situation of the involved actors. Among others, it is land property 

(although there is still no genuine private land property) as an important factor in the 

context of the economic game. Methods used by the plant to improve its position in 

the new context, however, follow from the old repertoire. They consist in political 

pressure and ideological argumentation. It is therefore still the standing of the actors 

within the distribution of political power that decisively influences the results of this 

special type of competition. 14 

The respective evolution, the core of which is the specific constellation of economic 

and of political factors, occurred also within Kamaz itself. The former socialist 

“production plant” acquired some features of an “enterprise” and it became divided 

into what in Poland is being called “nomenclatura joint-stock companies.” This is a 

special type of organization of an enterprise in the transitory period that in a peculiar 

way combines politics and economy. The semi-owners of the companies 

usually come from the ranks of the former members of the communist nomenclatura 15 

(usually of the leadership of the respective plant). In post-communist Russia, there 

are hardly the rules of the market that form the framework of the nation-wide economic 

process. Therefore, individuals involved into networks emerging from the 

system of the nomenclatura are in a position to implement the political means at 

their disposal in order to approach economic objectives. At the same time, they 

12 

Unauthorized record of an interview with Director of Kamaz Incorporated Design and Production 

Company Nilov W. Stepanovitsh. The interview was organized by Peter Marcuse at September 

15th 1993. At the interview participated except Marcuse and myself also Amine Benaissa, 

James Hansen and Alastir McAuley. 

13 

In fact, building of dwelling place for workers has been at that time drastically reduced as compared 

with the communist period. 

14 

Also the question as to whom - to the city or the plant - should the biggest hotel in the town 

belong, was to be answered according to the very same mechanism. It was to be decided by way of 

political power-play and not, for instance, with respect to some legally defined procedure. 

15 

The term was originally used in the official Soviet language. It referred to all positions in the 

system for the performance of which the individual was to be “named” by the executive of the 

Communist Party at the respective level of Party’s hierarchy. It gained then international and 

theoretical relevance owing to the book of Voslensky (1980).


are not seriously burdened by capital risk or by competition in the proper sense of 

the word. 

In the way the system functions now we can, however, see an evolution of the very 

same logic that determined the functioning of the respective aspects of the communist 

society. In Communism there were the political rules of the game that substituted the 

economic ones and finally resulted in creating “economic” factors in the Soviet 

meaning of this term. It was due to political influence that the decision was taken to 

build up the plant at this or other place, to direct the respective amount of resources 

for its creation and subsequent growth, to secure its monopolistic position etc. Control 

over these “economic” factors gave then the possibility to translate them into 

means of political power and superiority. The latter were in turn instruments by the 

virtue of which particular economic advantages could be gained. 

Kamaz trucks were a desired commodity, but they were (because of the character of 

the Soviet economy as an “economy of shortage” (cf. Kornai, 1980)) hard to buy. 

The other cities – respectively plants that dominated them - got the trucks if they accepted 

to give in exchange the pre-cast panels that were originally destined for their 

own house-building programs. Owing to this, Naberezhnye Chelny could grow faster 

that most other cities in the country (Stepanovitsh). This illustrates the way of attaining 

economic objectives in a context determined by a primarily “non-economic” 

type of behavioural rationality. 

As in any other socialist city, the original idea that underlaid the plan to be realized 

in the pre-cast-panels landscape of Naberezhnye Chelny was to come as close as 

possible to the ideal, i.e. to the communist ideal. The people thus participated in the 

building activity, “building settlements for others, not only for themselves,” and were 

proud to say: “it was field - now it is city!” (Stepanovitsh) There was a clear educational 

component in it, connected with the task of bringing up the collectivist “man of 

Communism.” For, according to the very core of the Soviet ideology, it was first of 

all the building activity where this “new man” was expected to emerge from (Aleksandrowicz, 

1993b: 89 - 93). 

Still, there were not only such purely utopian aspects of the plan that were not fulfilled 

in reality. Due to the scheme once accepted, the centre of Naberezhnye 

Chelny was planed at the geographical centre of the city. There should be a circus, 

cultural objects, supermarkets, and a market place. 16 The project in some respect 

intended to approximate the model of Brasilia – a city voluntarily designed and 

erected in the wilderness of the Brazilian interior. But the plan was never realized. 17 

16 The town hall, however, was not intended to be a part of it. The town hall as well as the city 

council located in it didn’t have any serious function to perform in the Soviet system, since it was 

substituted by the municipal committee of the Communist Party. 

17 The same, as reported by Stepanovitsh, happened to the originally planed sport centre. Due to the 

pressure of the party leaders who wished to have the respective facilities in their neighbourhood


“We still do not have a centre, since the design of the centre turned out to be very 

expensive. It therefore extended the available means. Besides that, we simply lacked 

technical possibilities to realize it. It should be the task of future - when we will 

have more means to make it even better and perfect.” 18 The other reason why the 

centre hasn’t been constructed, however, was, according to Stepanovitsh, the lack of 

real demand. Priority, therefore, was given to dwelling space. “You see, the city can 

exist and function well without a centre. You in fact don’t need any such centre in the 

usual practice which takes place in the space determined by the objectives of working, 

shopping and living.” (Stepanovitsh). 

Looking at the issue in the light of strategies social actors implement in order to 

adapt to the existing reality, there are, I think, the following conclusions which can 

be derived from it: On the one hand, what we face here is, as it were, a “reverse 

adaptation”; that is, adaptation of a somehow sophisticated project to the very norm 

of Communism. According to the logic of the system as expressed in the urban space, 

there was no reason for such a centre to be really constructed. On the other hand, we 

can speak here of adaptation to the provisory reality determined by the failure to 

realize the plan. The adaptation concerns both behaviour and mentality as well as 

related rationalizing schemes of ideology, and with it – the planning authority itself 

which now attempts to interpret the failure in terms of pragmatically correcting the 

plan. 

The original project in question reflected the nature of Communism, as far as it 

turned out to be an imaginary state of things, never to approximate in reality. What 

the reality of Communism in fact was like, was a more or less chaotic building site 

with all the provisional and imperfect arrangements common to it. As long as the 

institutional and ideal framework of Communism persisted, the building site, however, 

had some “meaning” referring to what was intended to develop out of it. This 

very reference at the same time contributed to somehow “transcending” all the misery 

of what actually existed. In this respect, it was just like any ordinary building 

site, where we relativize the imperfectness or even ugliness of what is now given 

by relating it to the final result as presented in the underlying design. When the image 

of an expected future finally disappears, the sole reality one faces and lives in is 

reduced to the actually existing misery of provisory arrangements. The type of 

adaptation we face here, mainly consists in considering the conditions that resulted 

from the failure of the previous illusions as stable reference points for the practice of 

life. To be sure, this attitude is more rational than commitment to the communist 

myth. But it is a very poor base for a creative evolution. 

the original plan was abandoned. In effect, huge swimming pools were constructed in a part of the 

city where there live only few people. 

18 Stepanovitsh. Admittedly, the “failure to create a centre”, as referred to in Szczepañski (1993b: 

153), was not restricted to Russia, but was an usual feature of new “socialist cities” in the Soviet 

bloc. Cf. also Szczepañski (1990: 52).


In the case discussed, the major adapting actor is the planer respectively the planning 

authority. Their adaptive efforts are due to giving up the original plan and at the same 

to explaining the retreat by way of some new interpretative scheme. The imperfectness 

of what is given appears now as what the people in their ordinary lives “really 

need.” The “people” in question as well as the patterns of “ordinary live” and of 

“needs” specific to them do, however, not represent any universal anthropological 

standard. The respective features are but habitual consequences of the type of existence 

in the peculiar environment of an ill-concepted “socialist city.” But as far as 

the modernized views of the planers are concerned, the respective habits are about to 

substitute the usual standards of urban life. 

After the collapse of the communist system there emerged, however, some new ideas 

as to how the future centre of the city is to be constructed. What the ideas substantially 

aimed at was to change and at the same time to re-introduce the communist 

concept of a centre as a “centre of power” according to what “power” in the altered 

situation means. The two key objects designated for the new centre were therefore a 

business centre of the Kamaz “nomenclatura joint stock companies” and, close to it, 

an impressive building of the American-Russian Fund Dialogue Inc. 19 The huge dimensions 

of both of them is exactly what the image of the centre is to be expressed 

by. 

IV. Transformation of a socialist city: constructive and destructive adaptation 

The very design of the new socialist city followed the ideal of a plan- and ideologyconforming 

society which had to overcome the spontaneous social process based on 

individual activity. The adaptive counter-tendencies which resulted from behavioural 

strategies of individuals and groups, however, as already mentioned in the 

previous chapter, consisted in changing the original functional order and the 

image of the socialist city according to the spontaneous forces and needs. This adaptation 

took place long before both the breakdown of the communist system 20 and 

19 Despite of the practical function of it – that is, selling software - there was also some ideological 

justification for the Russian-American joint venture to be part of the institutional as well as 

symbolic centre of the city. As far as we can speak of “Westernization” with respect to the postcommunist 

Russia, this word would there especially mean a superficial “Americanization”, without 

any deep reference to respective institutional re-arrangements or people’s behavioural patterns. 

(It may be an accidental illustration of this problem that during the interview mentioned 

above Stepanovitsh exposed on his desk a few two-years old issues of “New York Post” to 

document that he once had “unforgettable luck” to be there.) 

20 Socialist cities, to be sure, finally owed their real character at least as much to the ideological 

design as to the efforts of the local apparatshiks to adapt it to the particular interests rationally 

defined by them. It was, for instance, in accordance with these interests to have the biggest possible 

production plant in one’s own sphere of influence and to guarantee as much as possible resources 

to be planned for it. For the general problem of correlation between objectives of the 

plan and particular interests of the apparatshiks cf. Hoessli (1989: 54p.): “Bürokratie gegen


the implementation of reformist policies in some of the former communist countries. 

But it became more dramatic after that event, since the institutional framework, on 

which the rationality of the socialist city was hitherto based, ceased to exist. For the 

sake of this analysis, we can differentiate two general types of such adaptation: the 

constructive and the destructive one. Both of them are of crucial importance for the 

future prospects of these specific urban environments. 21 

One of such adaptations we could observe was the shift or the functional change of 

the centre of the socialist city. The design-conforming city centre as an “ideological 

centre” did not correspond with the real life of the inhabitants. It was rather an area 

where they were expected to perform some ritual behaviour which was alien to attitudes 

and needs defined by their every-day practice. Owing to this, the architectonic 

and town-planning structure of the socialist city in fact lacked any “centre” in the 

usual meaning of this word. The adaptive behaviour, on the other hand, resulted in 

creating what may be called a “moving” or “tentative” centre of the socialist city. 

The criteria upon which the creation of such centre rested were not ideological but 

economic - in the specific meaning, to be sure, in which economic problems manifested 

themselves in the context of the communist society. According to Szczepañskis 

investigations on the new socialist city Tychy in Upper Silesia, such “centre emerges 

irrespective of the time of the day and the day of the week, and its necessary condition 

is presence, or merely the expectation of presence, of attractive commodities.” 22 

This adaptive tendency was continued after the collapse of the communist system. In 

the new institutional context, the original centre of the socialist city quickly changed 

its function from an ideological to an economic one. The official centre, which was 

distinguished by its central location in the geometry of the city, its usually large 

square, its representative buildings and its good access by means of public 

and private transportation, now became the central area where people started to 

sell and to buy commodities. It gradually became a “market place”, a “shopping and 

business centre.” This development was very manifest, for instance, in Warsaw, 

which was admittedly no “new city” in a proper sense, but its reconstruction 

after its almost total destruction in the World War II was partly due to the effort to 

rebuilt fragments (especially the centre) of the town according to the patterns of a 

socialist city. In effect, the centre of Warsaw was, according to its visual image, 

much more than it was the case in Budapest or in Prague, an ideological and political 

than an economic one. The centrally located monumental buildings of the Cen- 

Logik der Planwirtschaft”. (As far as the analysis in Lepsius (1990) is reliable, similar correlation 

was seemingly absent in the economic system of the ex-GDR.) 

21 The remarks in the present chapter refer to Poland and do not therefore claim general applicability 

irrespective of the specific context of the society in question. 

22 Szczepañski (1991: 139): “... the central area of a settlement or even of a city ... can be a most 

eccentrically located area if there can be bought a commodity in demand.” Szczepañski (1991: 

157).


tral Committee of the Communist Party and of the Central Planning Institution impressively 

symbolized the victory of political direction and control over economic 

rationality. After the breakdown of the communist system the previous tendency has 

been reversed. The centre of Warsaw quickly acquired the image of an economic 

centre, whereas the huge building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party 

became a centre of finance and the seat of the most vigorously developing stockexchange 

in post-communist Europe. 

Like the constructive adaptation, the destructive one has its roots going beyond the 

period of decomposition of the communist system. A socialist city extremely limited 

the possibilities of individual creativeness or simply of the expression of one’s own 

individuality outside of one’s own flat, that is in the public space of the city. The 

obvious forms in which the individual spontaneity could come into the open were, 

therefore, aggressive ones. They consisted in challenging the existing order by 

openly expressing a hostile attitude to what represented the “public” sphere. Aggressive 

attitudes often manifested themselves simply in hooliganism and abuse of alcohol. 

But they also came into the open in some politically relevant and morally acceptable 

(assuming the lack of democratic procedures of expressing one’s discontent) 

behavioural patterns, which could, for instance, be observed in strikes, street 

riots and all-round resistance against the “official” authority. 23 Street riots usually 

were the most extreme of them. The central component of this type of collective 

“street behaviour” was aggression directed against public buildings identified with 

the authority. These actions reached their peak in setting in fire of some seats of the 

respective committees of the Communist Party. 

This negative potential, which lurked especially among young workers of socialist 

production plants, played an important role in the popular struggle against the institutional 

system of Communism in Poland in the 80’s. A good example would be the 

story of Nowa Huta - a model new city of communist Poland located closely to the 

medieval town Cracow. The city was built in the Stalinist period along with a huge 

steel plant, in order to give a proletarian counterbalance to its “pettybourgeois” 

and anti-communist neighbour. The communist promise which gave at 

least some eschatological sense to such urban environment as Nowa Huta, and to the 

mode of life it promoted, has revealed itself as an illusion. Thus the city gradually 

became the bulwark of the most militant popular anti-Communism. The city that 

originally had to represent the communist utopia, now developed in a way not foreseen 

and not intended by its founders. 24 While in the 50’s one associated Nowa 

23 For particular significance of an antagonistic relationship between individuals and official institutions 

in the Polish model of social transformation cf. for instance Dalhoff (1996: 219p.). 

24 Dealing with these issues, one should also note the dramatic changes in the symbolic space of 

the city that took place during the communist period in Nowa Huta. The city was originally 

planned and declared as “the first city in Poland without a church,” while the most impressive 

symbolic substitute for it was a big monument of Lenin (one of the only two that existed in 

communist Poland). Gradually, the monument became the main target of hostilities (including a


Huta with workers marching in perfect order during the May Day celebrations; in the 

last decade of the communist Poland, there were long-term strikes and bloody street 

fights that decisively determined the image of the city. 

After the collapse of the communist system the new socialist cities - owing to their 

dependence on one single, usually inefficient, production plant or one branch of 

heavy industry - developed into areas of sharp crisis. In face of the (at least expected) 

bankruptcy of this industrial infrastructure these cities became existential 

pitfalls, without any attractive future prospects for their inhabitants and particularly 

for the younger generation. Discussing these problems, we must, however, note that 

limiting the number of behavioural alternatives with respect to the possible spatial 

behaviour undertaken on one’s own account, the socialist city at the same time relieved 

its inhabitants from the corresponding individual risk. They were therefore 

only exceptionally burdened by decisions of the type to go shopping to this or that 

shop, to live in this or that neighbourhood etc. To be sure, most of the residents of a 

communist country could lead a somewhat “economy-free” life, that is a life substantially 

relieved from stress resulting from being confronted by the genuine economic 

process. Although they had to come to grips with many economic problems in 

their every-day life (as supply shortages or low wages), at their place of labour as 

well as with respect to the basic conditions of life they were free from pressure and 

from uncertainty due to the market economy and the competitive system. 

In Communism, the all-round control was the reverse of the all-round support the 

state offered to the system-conforming individual. Owing to the disintegration of the 

communist system the people had to live progressively in an economy-related reality. 

Finally, even at their place of work and in their extremely important relation to 

the production plant they became dependent on the economic process. This very 

situation was completely alien to their previous experience, hierarchy of values and 

way of life. They, therefore, often lacked orientation and appropriate behavioural 

patterns to come to grips with the changed conditions of work and of life. The expected 

bankruptcy of the production plant means for the inhabitants of the new socialist 

city not only unemployment but also a collapse of what they regarded to be 

“normal” and “just”, and what they were used to live in. This situation causes frustrations 

and tensions which strengthen the already existing potential of aggression 

and anarchistic populism. Now, however, it is the authority of the democratic state, 

the system of free enterprise and the market economy that are the, more or less consciously 

defined, targets of striking and rioting workers of the post-socialist production 

plants. In doing it, the workers try again to exert collective aggression as a 

means of finding escape from the difficulties of their individual lives. 25 

few bomb attacks), whereas on the other hand the official authority finally gave in to the pressure 

exercised by the local bishop as well as by the workers of the steel plant and allowed a big church 

building to be legally erected in the middle of the city. 

25 Admittedly, this type of destructiveness is not a primary psychological attitude of individuals but 

is to be understood as an attempt to master some related problems due to a specific social con-


To be sure, the popular resistance against liberal reform mobilizes not only the 

workers in the new socialist cities and settlements, but also peasants and even some 

groups of the traditional small enterprise. Nevertheless, this resistance combined 

with a behavioural syndrome of chaotic anarchism has some additional background 

in the type of environment offered by a socialist city. Along with the decline of the 

social, political and ideological framework of socialism, socialist cities and dwellings 

were progressively deprived of services relevant to their functioning 26 as well 

as of some “meaning” this framework could provide them with. They, therefore, became 

an appropriate context for the penetration of various forms of extreme radicalism 

which propose simple solutions to the problems individuals have to come to 

grips with. The seemingly most simple solutions are those which are to be found by 

means of aggression rather than by creative problem-solving strategies. Nowadays 

this radicalism, as far as it is connected with an ideology, often has racist and nationalistic 

traits. 

In the summer of 1993, Polish TV has shown a group of steel-workers from the socialist 

city Nowa Huta, who, armed with pickaxes, spades and other tools of violence, 

declared to make a grass field out of the city of Cracow unless Cracow would 

stop its campaign against Nowa Huta’s poison-emitting and ineffective production 

plant. It may be viewed as an irony of history, that Nowa Huta, which has been build 

exactly in order to contradict the traditional city and its values by the “new” ones, 

never approximated these expectations so well as it seemed to be the case at the beginning 

of the post-communist transformation - 30 years after the death of Stalin and 

a few years after the peaceful end of the communist system. The content of the “new” 

values represented by them is, however, not exactly the same the communist ideologists 

and propagandists once pleaded for. 

The decisive question, to what extent the model of the constructive adaptation in a 

socialist city will be accompanied or even spoiled by the destructive one is first of 

all due to the transformation of the crucial component of its structure – the production 

plant. The constructive path will prevail if the economic sanation of the inherited 

industrial monoculture is at all possible and it will successfully absolve the painful 

program of restructuring and privatization. Constructive attitudes will then determine 

the dominant behavioural patterns of the inhabitants, contributing in longer run to 

change the very spatial order of the (former) socialist city. It is this very issue of a 

rational reconstruction of the existing industrial monoculture which still is on the 

agenda in numerous post-socialist cities of the reforming countries of postcommunist 

Europe. 

text. For the interpretation of destructiveness as a pattern of social behaviour cf. Fromm (1941: 

ch. 5b). 

26 One decisive point in this context is that the production plant, now confronted with the market, 

gradually adapts at least some elements of the “commercial” rationality. The first and most simple 

step on this path is usually reduction or elimination of the infrastructure of diverse social 

services which it hitherto performed. Cf. also Aleksandrowicz (1998b).


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