L'urbanisme utopique pendant la révolution culturelle soviétique

During the "Cultural Revolution" of 1928-1931, diverse strains of radical town planning blossomed in the U.S.S.R. This essay demonstrates that the two leading currents, usually characterized as "urbanist" and "disurbanist", in fact shared an antipathy to the city as such, and to the concentration of political power and productive forces represented by the modern urban center. In their common hostility towards all forms of centralization, Russia's anti-urbanist planners stood squarely within the tradition of in dividualistic anarchism that had flourished in Russia during the nineteenth century and which existed as a submerged current even within Bolshevism. It is the more surprising, therefore, that these same anti-urbanists could have gained the support and patronage of many of the most powerful agencies within the Soviet government and, briefly, of the Communist Party itself. This occurred, it is argued because the specific conditions existing in Russia at the time imparted to the anti-urbanists' program the appearance of realism and practicality. By 1930-1931, however, the political implications of the anti-urbanists' position had become clear, and the movement was quickly suppressed by the rising forces of political and economic centralization headed by J.V. Stalin