The Problem of Proportionality Between Human and City in the Context of the Architecture of Soviet Modernism

Abstract

The article analyzes the nature of the relationship between human — a resident of a post-soviet city — with the surrounding urban environment, a significant part of which is formed by buildings and objects built in the period 1960–1970^s in the style of the so-called soviet (another name — socialist) modernism. It is suggested that such architecture, which is characterized by its large scale and apparent heaviness, is still fully proportionate to a person, corresponding to the aesthetic and socio-political aspects of his everyday life, and such meanings were originally laid in it as a theoretical, philosophical foundation that does not contradict the technical and aesthetic aspects of this type of urban environment. The article also addresses the question of the relationship between space, specifically organized within the “socialist city of the future”, and the time, that a human can have in such an environment. The issue of the relationship between work, creativity and free time is considered in the context of criticism of К. Marx's theory in H. Arendt's work “Vita activa” and the comments, given by the philosopher and theorist of culture V. Mezhuev. In addition, the article notes that the characterization of the architecture of soviet modernism, following the architecture of the avant-garde as a kind of “utopia” is not entirely correct: as an example, the article examines a number of theoretical provisions of the project of urban organisation, named “new element of resettlement” (NER, 1960^s), which, at first glance paradoxically, but in reality, quite logically combined the principles of rational planning and creative search, of individual freedom and the common good.