New Languages of the Avant-garde and Symbolic “Opening” of the Soviet Urban Areas

Abstract

The article analyzes the potential of the avant-garde architecture to give a boost to the development of the Soviet urban areas under current conditions. The author states that the growing interest to the objects of the avant-garde heritage contributed to the appearance of the new vision of the Soviet urban districts filling them with new meanings and symbolic values. For that reason, the proposed paper aims to outline and describe the main narratives of the Soviet avant-garde architecture that have taken shape in recent decades and have gradually established in a public discourse. By means of this exploration the author seeks to trace symbolic transformation of the Soviet urban districts and, thus, to argue that their change under post-Soviet conditions depend not so much on the new urban city-planning initiatives as on the new symbols and meanings that could give a new perception of these spaces in the current social and cultural contexts.