Discursive Representations of Workers Habitat: USSR and PRC Cases

Abstract

This article describes today’s discursive representation features of buildings created for "non-regular” everyday use in socialist cities. Descriptions of residential complexes for workers in two countries are used as empirical base: one case in Russia, Moscow, and two cases in China, Taiyuan and Wuhan. We use collective memory concept by A. Assman to analyze strategies implied by different agents to attract attention to the described residential quarters. For all cases, narratives include a legitimate discourse of collective memory on the years of construction, i.e. glorious start of industrial progress in the PRC and making of yet another Soviet avant-garde architectural masterpiece in the USSR. For Chinese cases, representations are clear and consistent for residents, experts and visitors from outside; Moscow case requires expert knowledge and organization of special events to transmit knowledge to guests and even residents. Authentic features, nominated as valuable and subject to preservation, coincide in expert and "philistine” narratives for cases of the PRC; in Moscow case, expert discourse becomes the leading one. At the same time, in both cases troubled memories of national historical events could be found: "cultural revolution” and the Great Terror. In Moscow, these memories are not presented at the residents level, however, corresponding information is transferred from archives to local public memory, being included in exhibition and excursions. In the PRC, memories of traumatic events exist in individual and social memory, manifesting themselves through direct communication. The study contributes to "postsocialist ethnography” by highlighting universal and particular features of discursive representations.