Memorial Representations of Working Class Quarters: Experiences of USSR and China

Abstract

Research provides a comparative analysis of the collective memories formed aroundordinary residential complexes in socialist cities. Comparison is done between elements that are manifested in the collective memory of the working class quarters built previously in two socialist countries - USSR and People's Republic of China (PRC). Two workers' districts - the Khavsko-Shabolovsky (Moscow) and the Iron and Steel Corporation (Wuhan) housing estates – serve as research cases. Memorialrepresentationsof selected residential complexes are different from the standard set byEastern European cities with majority of socialist legacies either completely excluded from the collective memory, or reduced to the function of the communist era amusement park. While the Chinese case demonstrates the diversification of symbols and types of memory, memory structure of Moscow quarter is more unified: leading symbol is the avant-garde architecture, which is valued so high that it functions as a barrier toproper development of social memory of the place. The identity of the Khavsko-Shabolovsky housing estate is built on the cultural memory basis, demanded by certain group of consumers, mostly non-residents of the district. The analysis makes it possible to contribute to post-socialist ethnography, fixing some common and particular features in memorial presentations of two functionally similar objects of the urban environment created during an intensive social transformation while establishing socialist ideology at the national level.