Amnesiopolis

Author : Eli Rubin
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0191046183
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Amnesiopolis written by Eli Rubin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-04 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amnesiopolis explores the construction of Marzahn, the largest prefabricated housing project in East Germany, built on the outskirts of East Berlin in the 1970s and 1980s, and touted by the regime as the future of socialism. It focuses particularly on the experience of East Germans who moved, often from crumbling slums left over as a legacy of the nineteenth century, into this radically new place - one defined by pure functionality and rationality - a material manifestation of the utopian promise of socialism. Eli Rubin employs methodologies from critical geography, urban history, architectural history, environmental history, and everyday life history to ask whether their experience was a radical break with their personal pasts and the German past. Amnesiopolis asks: can a dramatic change in spatial and material surroundings sever the links of memory that tie people to their old life narratives, and if so, does that help build a new socialist mentality in the minds of historical subjects? The answer is yes and no-as much as the East German state tried to create a completely new socialist settlement, divorced of any links to the pre-socialist past, the massive construction project uncovered the truth buried-literally-in the ground, which was that the urge to colonize the outskirts of Berlin was not new at all. Furthermore, the construction of a new city out of nothing, using repeating, identical buildings, created a panopticon-like effect, giving the Stasi the possibility of more complete surveillance than they previously had.

Author : Eli Rubin
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469606771
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Synthetic Socialism written by Eli Rubin and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eli Rubin takes an innovative approach to consumer culture to explore questions of political consensus and consent and the impact of ideology on everyday life in the former East Germany. Synthetic Socialism explores the history of East Germany through the production and use of a deceptively simple material: plastic. Rubin investigates the connections between the communist government, its Bauhaus-influenced designers, its retooled postwar chemical industry, and its general consumer population. He argues that East Germany was neither a totalitarian state nor a niche society but rather a society shaped by the confluence of unique economic and political circumstances interacting with the concerns of ordinary citizens. To East Germans, Rubin says, plastic was a high-technology material, a symbol of socialism's scientific and economic superiority over capitalism. Most of all, the state and its designers argued, plastic goods were of a particularly special quality, not to be thrown away like products of the wasteful West. Rubin demonstrates that this argument was accepted by the mainstream of East German society, for whom the modern, socialist dimension of a plastics-based everyday life had a deep resonance.

Author : Aga Skrodzka
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 019088553X
Total Pages : 799 pages
Book Rating : 4.33/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures written by Aga Skrodzka and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 799 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stereotypes often cast communism as a defunct, bankrupt ideology and a relic of the distant past. However, recent political movements like Europe's anti-austerity protests, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street suggest that communism is still very much relevant and may even hold the key to a new, idealized future. In The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures, contributors trace the legacies of communist ideology in visual culture, from buildings and monuments, murals and sculpture, to recycling campaigns and wall newspapers, all of which work to make communism's ideas and values material. Contributors work to resist the widespread demonization of communism, demystifying its ideals and suggesting that it has visually shaped the modern world in undeniable and complex ways. Together, contributors answer curcial questions like: What can be salvaged and reused from past communist experiments? How has communism impacted the cultures of late capitalism? And how have histories of communism left behind visual traces of potential utopias? An interdisciplinary look at the cultural currency of communism today, The Oxford Handbook of Communist Visual Cultures demonstrates the value of revisiting the practices of the past to form a better vision of the future.

Author : Dallas Rogers
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1783483342
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Geopolitics of Real Estate written by Dallas Rogers and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A historical analysis of the geopolitics of real estate with settler-colonialism on the one side and the rise of über-wealthy foreign real estate investors on the other.

Author : Sándor Horváth
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780253025746
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stalinism Reloaded written by Sándor Horváth and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hungarian city of Sztálinváros, or "Stalin-City," was intended to be the paradigmatic urban community of the new communist society in the 1950s. In Stalinism Reloaded, Sándor Horváth explores how Stalin-City and the socialist regime were built and stabilized not only by the state but also by the people who came there with hope for a better future. By focusing on the everyday experiences of citizens, Horváth considers the contradictions in the Stalinist policies and the strategies these bricklayers, bureaucrats, shop girls, and even children put in place in order to cope with and shape the expectations of the state. Stalinism Reloaded reveals how the state influenced marriage patterns, family structure, and gender relations. While the devastating effects of this regime are considered, a convincing case is made that ordinary citizens had significant agency in shaping the political policies that governed them.

Author : Christine Varga-Harris
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501701843
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stories of House and Home written by Christine Varga-Harris and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stories of House and Home is a social and cultural history of the massive construction campaign that Khrushchev instituted in 1957 to resolve the housing crisis in the Soviet Union and to provide each family its own apartment. Decent housing was deemed the key to a healthy, productive home life, which was essential to the realization of socialist collectivism. Drawing on archival materials, as well as memoirs, fiction, and the Soviet press, Christine Varga-Harris shows how the many aspects of this enormous state initiative—from neighborhood planning to interior design—sought to alleviate crowded, undignified living conditions and sculpt residents into ideal Soviet citizens. She also details how individual interests intersected with official objectives for Soviet society during the Thaw, a period characterized by both liberalization and vigilance in everyday life. Set against the backdrop of the widespread transition from communal to one-family living, Stories of House and Home explores the daily experiences and aspirations of Soviet citizens who were granted new apartments and those who continued to inhabit the old housing stock due to the chronic problems that beset the housing program. Varga-Harris analyzes the contradictions apparent in heroic advances and seemingly inexplicable delays in construction, model apartments boasting modern conveniences and decrepit dwellings, happy housewarmings and disappointing moves, and new residents and individuals requesting to exchange old apartments. She also reveals how Soviet citizens identified with the state and with the broader project of building socialism.

Author : Andrew S. Tompkins
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198779054
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Better Active Than Radioactive! written by Andrew S. Tompkins and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of people across Western Europe protested against civil nuclear energy. This volume uses a mix of oral and archival history to explore how citizens from disparate walks of life in France and West Germany united to oppose nuclear power, transcending national borders and political and social differences.

Author : Lewis Pyenson
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004325735
Total Pages : 666 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Shock of Recognition written by Lewis Pyenson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-12 with total page 666 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Shock of Recognition, Lewis Pyenson examines art and science together to shed new light on common motifs in Picasso’s and Einstein’s education, in European material culture, and in the intellectual life of one nation-state, Argentina.

Author : Boris Volodarsky
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0199656584
Total Pages : 832 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Stalin's Agent written by Boris Volodarsky and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 832 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the history of an unprecedented deception operation - the biggest KGB deception of all time. It has never been told in full until now. There are almost certainly people who would like it never to be told. It is the story of General Alexander Orlov. Stalin's most loyal and trusted henchman during the Spanish Civil War, Orlov was also the Soviet handler controlling Kim Philby, the British spy, defector, and member of the notorious 'Cambridge Five'. Escaping Stalin's purges, Orlov fled to America in the late 1930s and lived underground. He only dared reveal his identity to the world after Stalin's death, in his 1953 best-seller The Secret History of Stalin's Crimes, after which he became perhaps the best known of all Soviet defectors, much written about, highly praised, and commemorated by the US Congress on his death in 1973. But there is a twist in the Orlov story beyond the dreams of even the most ingenious spy novelist: 'General Alexander Orlov' never actually existed. The man known as 'Orlov' was in fact born Leiba Feldbin. And while he was a loyal servant of Stalin and the controller of Philby, he was never a General in the KGB, never truly defected to the West after his 'flight' from the USSR, and remained a loyal Soviet agent until his death. The 'Orlov' story as it has been accepted until now was largely the invention of the KGB - and one perpetuated long after the end of the Cold War. In this meticulous new biography, Boris Volodarsky, himself a former Soviet intelligence officer, now tells the true story behind 'Orlov' for the first time. An intriguing tale of Russian espionage and deception, stretching from the time of Lenin to the Putin era, it is a story that many people in the world's intelligence agencies would almost definitely prefer you not to know about.

Author : Jonathan P. G. Bach
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781787354128
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Re-centring the City written by Jonathan P. G. Bach and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of monumentality, verticality and centrality in the twenty-first century? Are palaces, skyscrapers and grand urban ensembles obsolete relics of twentieth-century modernity, inexorably giving way to a more humble and sustainable de-centred urban age? Or do the aesthetics and politics of pomp and grandiosity rather linger and even prosper in the cities of today and tomorrow?Re-Centring the City zooms in on these questions, taking as its point of departure the experience of Eurasian socialist cities, where twentieth-century high modernity arguably saw its most radical and furthest-reaching realisation. It frames the experience of global high modernity (and its unravelling) through the eyes of the socialist city, rather than the other way around: instead of explaining Warsaw or Moscow through the prism of Paris or New York, it refracts London, Mexico City and Chennai through the lens of Kyiv, Simferopol and the former Polish shtetls. This transdisciplinary volume re-centres the experiences of the 'Global East', and thereby our understanding of world urbanism, by shedding light on some of the still-extant (and often disavowed) forms of 'zombie' centrality, hierarchy and violence that pervade and shape our contemporary urban experience.