Saving Stalin's Imperial City: Historic Preservation in Leningrad, 1930–1950 - Hardcover

Maddox, Steven M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253014840 ISBN 13: 9780253014849

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2014

Synopsis

Saving Stalin’s Imperial City is the history of the successes and failures in historic preservation and of Leningraders’ determination to honor the memory of the terrible siege the city had endured during World War II. The book stresses the counterintuitive nature of Stalinist policies, which allocated scarce wartime resources to save historic monuments of the tsarist and imperial past even as the very existence of the Soviet state was being threatened, and again after the war, when housing, hospitals, and schools needed to be rebuilt. Postwar Leningrad was at the forefront of a concerted restoration effort, fueled by commemorations that glorified the city’s wartime experience, encouraged civic pride, and mobilized residents to rebuild their hometown. For Leningrad, the restoration of monuments and commemorations of the siege were intimately intertwined, served similar purposes, and were mutually reinforcing.

About this title

About the Author:

Steven Maddox is Assistant Professor of History at Canisius College.

Review:

"Using a wide variety of sources and exceptionally clear prose, Steve Maddox has given us a superior book on historic preservation that marvelously contextualizes Leningrad's preservation within greater European trends and pre-Revolutionary Russian traditions. Saving Stalin's Imperial City illuminates an unknown part of St. Petersburg's history, shows how professional preservationists challenged and negotiated central directives, and teaches us a great deal about Stalinism and the construction of urban biography. This is not just a book on the Leningrad blockade; this is the book that tells us why it still matters today."

(Karl Qualls Professor of History, Dickinson College)

"Postwar Leningrad presents historians with a major paradox. Why, amid the austerity that followed hard-won victory in 1945, did the USSR allocate precious resources to rebuilding the tsarist past at the expense of the Soviet present and Communist future? Why prioritize palaces over people? Why let history eclipse housing? Steven Maddox resolves this mystery in a book that should also provoke a broader reassessment of the core tenets of Soviet ideology and social identity at the dawn of the Cold War."

(David Brandenberger, author of National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National I)

"A uniquely detailed account of the process of restoring and rebuilding historic buildings, the evolution of official policies and attitudes [and] of the ways in which exhibits in the city and at the reconstructed palaces became 'mobilization tools par excellence.'"

(Lisa Kirschenbaum, author of The Legacy of the Siege of Leningrad, 1941-1995: Myth, Memories, and Monuments)

About this edition

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0253014840
• ISBN 13: 9780253014849
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296