From Ruins to Reconstruction This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:36:39 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:36:39 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions From Ruins to Reconstruction Urban Identity in Soviet Sevastopol after World War II Karl D. Qualls Cornell University Press Ithaca and London This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:36:39 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Copyright © 2009 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2009 by Cornell University Press Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Qualls, Karl D. From ruins to reconstruction : urban identity in Soviet Sevastopol after World War II / Karl D. Qualls. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4762-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Reconstruction (1939–1951)—Ukraine—Sevastopol'. 2. City planning— Ukraine—Sevastopol'—History—20th century. 3. Urban policy— Ukraine—Sevastopol'—History—20th century. 4. Public architecture— Ukraine—Sevastopol'—History—20th century. 5. Central-local government relations—Ukraine—Sevastopol'—History—20th century. 6. Sevastopol' (Ukraine)—History—20th century. I. Title. D829.U4Q35 2009 307.7609477'1—dc22 2009017877 Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www. cornellpress.cornell.edu. Cloth printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:36:39 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions To Gretchen, Hayden, and Hadley This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:36:39 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:36:39 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi List of Archival Abbreviations xv Introduction: Rebuilding as an Urban Identification Project 1 1. Wartime Destruction and Historical Identification 11 2. Local Victory over Moscow: Planning for the Future 46 3. Accommodation: Bringing Life to the Rubble 85 4. Agitation: Rewriting the Urban Biography in Stone 124 5. Persistence and Resilience of Local Identification 157 Selected Bibliography 197 Index 207 This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:40:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This content downloaded from 128.184.220.23 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 12:40:09 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Illustrations 1. Map of the city center xviii 2. Destruction in the city center 14 3. Ruins at Khersones Archaeological Preserve 24 4. Girl at Gosbank vault 90 5. Reconstruction on Nakhimov Prospect 98 6. Scuttled Ships monument 134 7. Kazarskii monument 138 8. Crimean War Panorama on Historical Boulevard 151 9. Former Sechenov Institute 153 10. Lunacharskii Drama Theater 153 11. Hotel Sevastopol 154 12. Megasport sporting goods store 179 13. Fete store 180 14. Store and apartments on Bol'shaia Morskaia 181 This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:01:03 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:01:03 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Acknowledgments There are many people and institutions to whom I owe great debts. I have been fortunate enough to study with wonderful mentors who have fostered a love of learning and a multidisciplinary approach to understand- ing Russia and its history. As a teenager at the University of Missouri I had the honor to study with historians Charles Timberlake and Russell Zguta, political scientist Robin Remington, geographer Robert Kaiser, and Rus- sian visual art and literature specialists James Curtis and Gene Barbatalo. These scholars and teachers helped me to appreciate the country to which I have devoted my professional life. At Georgetown University I had the pleasure to work with many talented historians, and the guidance provided by Roger Chickering, David Goldfrank, and Richard Stites was essential to the early development of this project. I owe special thanks to Richard for urging me to look at “history from the side” so that I could illuminate the “above” and “below.” Their encouragement and prodding in the last few years have helped to bring this multidisciplinary study to fruition. Along the way a number of other scholars, whether they realize it or not, have helped me to expand my approach to this topic and to sharpen my arguments. To name them all is impossible, but I would especially like to thank Blair Ruble, who has given me guidance since this project’s This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:06:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions xii Acknowledgments inception. Don Raleigh, Don Filtzer, Susan Reid, David Crowley, Marcus Funk, Diane Koenker, Anne Gorsuch, and many others have provided comments at conferences, edited related publications, and /or provided as- sistance securing funding and preparing the project for publication. Jeffry Diefendorf asked the question that started me on this study. “It would be extremely interesting,” Diefendorf wrote, “to know how the Soviet Union dealt with the task of reconstruction.”1 I hope that I have answered some of his questions. The participants in Sheila Fitzpatrick’s “Stalin’s Last De- cade” workshop at the University of Chicago in 2000 provided wonderful critiques at an early stage. The contributors to the “Cities after the Fall” conference hosted by John Czaplicka and Blair Ruble at Harvard’s Center for European Studies in 2005 helped me to extend my investigation of the postwar decade to the beginning of the twenty-first century. A special thanks also goes to a group of young upstarts like myself who in the 1990s started to venture into the postwar period. An even smaller number of researchers began to investigate the Soviet Union outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Discussions with Jeff Jones, Per Brodersen, and Heather DeHaan have been especially helpful. In the last few years I have had the pleasure of exchanging ideas with a group of young East- Central European specialists who have forced me to rethink some of my previous conclusions. I will blame all of the above for the lengthy writing process! Their probing questions and scholarly examples made me keep going back to sources with new ideas in mind. Thank you. Many institutions and organizations have provided assistance and support along the way. Dickinson College’s Research and Development Committee has never turned down a request for time or money to pursue research or to travel to conferences. To these colleagues I am indebted. In the early stages I benefited from financial and administrative support from the Center for the Study of Russia and the USSR, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, and the American Council of Teachers of Rus- sian. Generous grants during my sabbatical year provided me with the re- sources to support my family and to travel extensively while chasing leads across Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. Funding was provided by the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research and Inter- national Research and Exchanges Board under the authority of a Title VIII 1. Jeffry Diefendorf, ed., Rebuilding Europe’s Bombed Cities (New York: St. Martin’s, 1990), 12. This content downloaded from 128.197.26.12 on Fri, 23 Oct 2015 18:06:30 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Acknowledgments xiii grant from the U.S. Department of State. A sizable J. Paul Getty Fellow- ship provided additional funding that allowed me to extend a sabbatical year to nearly eighteen months. An American Council of Learned Societ- ies Library of Congress Fellowship in International Studies, with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Association of American Universities, and the Library of Congress, provided magnificent facilities in the library for the latter stages of writing, particularly chapter 5. Of course, wonderful, hardworking, and underpaid archivists make re- search much easier. I want to give specific thanks to Liudmila Gennadievna Kiseleva at the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF II). Not only were she and the rest of the staff exceedingly helpful, but Liudmila Gennadievna’s excitement about my topic helped me through some tough days. The staff of the State Archive of the City of Sevastopol (GAGS) went well beyond my expectations. There has been turnover in the decade since I first started working there, but the continuity of service, collegiality, and friendship never changed. Although sometimes I just wanted to focus on work, I appreciated their invitations to the various celebrations hosted at the archive. The motherly attention of the archivists when I was sick or homesick made the long months go by quickly. I am grateful to the following for permission to use previously pub- lished material. One of the initial ideas in chapter 1 originated from Karl D.