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Writing the Cityscape

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Writing the Cityscape Writing the Cityscape Narratives of Moscow since 1991 Mark John Griffiths University College London A thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Russian Literature and Urban Studies 1 Declaration I, Mark John Griffiths, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 To my family, old and new, with thanks. 3 Abstract This thesis considers how continuity and transformation, the past and the future, are inscribed into the cityscape. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ image of the city as ‘a discourse’ and Michel de Certeau’s concept of the Wandersmänner, who write the city with their daily movements, this thesis takes urban space as both a repository of, and inspiration for, narratives. In few cities is the significance of writing narratives more visible than in Moscow. In the 1930s, it was conceived as the archetypal Soviet city, embodying the Soviet Union’s radiant future. Since the deconstruction of this grand narrative and the fall of the Soviet Union, competing ideas have flooded in to fill the void. With glass shopping arcades, a towering new business district, and reconstructed old churches, Moscow’s facelift offers only part of the picture. A number of other visions have been imprinted onto the post- Soviet city: nostalgic impulses for the simplicity of old Moscow; the search for a new, stable, powerful centre; desires for luxury, privatized gated communities; and feelings of abandonment in the grey, decaying, sprawling suburbs. Following an overview of recent changes to Moscow’s topography, these four major themes are investigated through the prism of post-Soviet Russian literature. Retro- detective fiction offers insight into nostalgia for the past and the temporal layers that build up the palimpsestic cityscape. Descriptions of Moscow after the apocalypse shed light on the city’s traditional concentric structure and the concomitant symbolism of hierarchy. Glamour literature challenges this paradigm by focusing on the gated community, a topographical form that splinters the city. Images of the supernatural and the Gothic lead to an alternative vision of the hybrid city, embracing multiplicity. In this way, fictional works defy the physical world’s constraints of time and space, revealing a kaleidoscope of different perspectives on post-Soviet Muscovite experiences. 4 Table of Contents List of Figures .................................................................................................................. 7 Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 8 Chapter I: Introduction ................................................................................................ 11 Writing the Cityscape: Space, Time, and Genre 1.1. Making the Urban Environment............................................................................... 12 1.2. Writing Time into the Cityscape .............................................................................. 16 1.3. The Impact of the ‘Spatial Turn’ on the Study of Russia ........................................ 23 1.4. The City in Literary Context: From Petersburg Text to Moscow Texts .................. 30 1.5. Post-Soviet Literature in Transition: From Chernukha to Genre Fiction ................ 37 1.6. The Post-Soviet ‘Psychological-Ideological Landscape’......................................... 41 1.7. Chapter Appendix .................................................................................................... 45 Chapter II: Moscow’s Cityscape ................................................................................. 52 Old Visions, New Buildings: Continuity and Change in Post-Soviet Moscow 2.1. Appropriating the Past, Writing the Future ............................................................. 53 2.2. The Plinth without a Statue: Transformations after the End ................................... 55 2.3. Moscow, Luzhkov Style: Rewriting the City from Above in the 1990s ................. 61 2.4. Concentric and Vertical Moscow in the 2000s ........................................................ 67 2.5. New Moscow in the 2010s? Exploring the Potential of the Peripheries .................. 78 2.6. From ‘Fact’ to ‘Fiction’ ........................................................................................... 84 2.7. Chapter Appendix .................................................................................................... 86 Chapter III: Nostalgic Moscow .................................................................................... 98 Reading the Palimpsest of Old Moscow 3.1. Pseudonyms, Fake Portraits, and Other Forms of Reflectsiomania ......................... 99 3.2. Akunin as Nostalgic? The Centred Order of Past Stability.................................... 104 3.3. Old Mother Moscow and the Petersburg Text ....................................................... 108 3.4. Decentring the Petersburg Text in Moscow’s Jungles ........................................... 115 3.5. The Future and the Virtual: Making Time Visible................................................. 122 3.6. From Past to Future ................................................................................................ 132 Chapter IV: Post-Apocalyptic Moscow ..................................................................... 135 Moscow after the Apocalypse: Resurrecting the ‘Phoenix-City’ 4.1.The Rise of the Firebird from the Ashes ................................................................. 136 4.2. Juxtaposing Centre and Periphery in Pre-Apocalyptic Moscow............................ 141 4.3. Continued Concentricity in Tolstaia’s Post-Apocalyptic Moscow ........................ 146 4.4. The Train, History, and Moscow in Bykov’s ZhD................................................. 153 4.5. Glukhovskii’s Metro 2033: Deconstructing the Palaces of the People .................. 164 5 4.6. From Circles to Splinters ....................................................................................... 174 Chapter V: Glamorous Moscow ................................................................................ 178 Wealth, Gates, and Glamour: Different Planes of Existence 5.1. Money and the City ................................................................................................ 179 5.2. The Claustra of the Gated Community .................................................................. 183 5.3. Unveiling the Glamour of Fortress Moscow .......................................................... 192 5.4. ‘A Utopian Social Experiment but without the Poor People’ ................................ 198 5.5. Robski’s Parochial Realm ...................................................................................... 209 5.6. From Secluded ‘Privatopia’ to Barbaric Wilderness ............................................. 217 Chapter VI: Magical Moscow .................................................................................... 221 Death, Resurrection, and In-Betweenness in Moscow’s Suburbs 6.1. Unglamorous Moscow: Embracing ‘Other’ Local(e)s ........................................... 222 6.2. Questions of Genre: From Moscow’s Void to Gothic Moscow ............................ 225 6.3. Mundane Moscow: The Eccentric City of Suburbs ............................................... 234 6.4. The Past Rises from the Muscovite Earth .............................................................. 242 6.5. The Search for the ‘Real’ and Alternative Communities ....................................... 251 6.6. MundaneMagical Moscow as ThirdSpace ............................................................. 260 Chapter VII: Conclusion ............................................................................................ 267 Moscow: Russian Capital of the Future? 7.1. Global Expanses and Local Walls.......................................................................... 268 7.2. Moscow’s Past, Present, and Future ...................................................................... 273 List of Sources ............................................................................................................. 280 6 List of Figures Figure 1. Entrance to the Vserossiiskii vystavochnyi tsentr (VVTs) .............................. 45 Figure 2. Statue of Lenin outside the main pavilion of the VVTs .................................. 46 Figure 3. Main building of the MGU .............................................................................. 47 Figure 4. Post-Soviet ice-cream stalls in the VVTs ........................................................ 48 Figure 5. Aeroplanes flying over the Spasskaia Tower .................................................. 49 Figure 6. Aviation-themed mosaic at Maiakovskaia metro station................................. 50 Figure 7. Bronze statue at Ploshchad′ Revoliutsii metro station ..................................... 51 Figure 8. Statue of Dzerzhinskii...................................................................................... 86 Figure 9. Defaced statue of Stalin ................................................................................... 87 Figure 10. Wooden sculpture of Buratino ....................................................................... 87 Figure 11. Bronze statue of mayor Luzhkov, entitled ‘Dvornik’ .................................... 88 Figure 12. Close-up of Tsereteli’s statue
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