FORUM FOR ANTHROPOLOGY AND CULTURE

ANTROPOLOGICHESKIJ FORUM
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Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 30

 

“A UNIVERSALLY RECOGNISED MISTAKE IN CITY PLANNING”: THE DEBATES ON DEVELOPMENT OF THE HAYMARKET SQUARE IN ST PETERSBURG, 1961–1980 IN THE LIGHT OF ARCHITECTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Catriona Kelly

University of Oxford
New College, Holywell Street, Oxford, OX1 3BN, UK
catriona.kelly()new.ox.ac.uk

Abstract: Studies of Soviet architecture tend to focus primarily on ideology and symbology, and attention to human agency is limited to ruling elites and world-famous architects. On the other hand, the anthropology of architecture has been preoccupied primarily with the use of buildings after they are constructed, and with the disposition of space and employment of furnishings, rather than a building’s strictly architectural features. This article attempts a fusion of the two approaches in order to produce a more holistic model of the use of city space. It focuses on Haymarket Square (known from 1952 as Peace Square), one of Leningrad/St Petersburg’s central and most famous urban arenas. The article looks in detail about the debates around what to do with this space, whose pre-revolutionary architecture was in many respects unsatisfactory, in the eyes of Soviet planners. The square lacked the harmonious homogeneity that was the preferred ideal (the ansambl, as manifested particularly in the work of Carlo Rossi), and on it stood buildings that were unacceptable to Soviet taste — in styles that were considered ugly, or with abject functions (such as the market halls, or the large domed church of the Saviour on the Haymarket, originally from the eighteenth century, but with additions and modifications, and without a saving attribution to a famous architect). The article looks in particular at the events surrounding the church’s demolition in 1961. It argues that there is little contemporary evidence for the frequent claims that this excited widespread indignation, and that such claims are a back-projection on to the Khrushchev era of the upsurge of interest in historic buildings generally, and churches specifically, that characterised the Brezhnev years. It demonstrates that by the mid-1970s, it was standard to acknowledge that the demolition of the Saviour on the Haymarket had been a disastrous mistake, and even to call for the reconstruction of the church, or at the very least its bell-tower. At the same time, consensus to this solution proved impossible to foster, and as of the mid-2010s, rebuilding of the church still remained an as yet unrealized project. The arguments that have raged round this particular city district help illuminate the social fluidity of urban spaces in late socialist cities and the very different attitudes of the groups that made use of them.

Keywords: architecture, city planning, church-state relations, Soviet history, monument preservation in the USSR, anthropology of architecture, late socialism, the history of Leningrad and St Petersburg, urban studies.

To cite: Kelly K., 'Obshchepriznannaya gradostroitelnaya oshibka: konflikty po povodu zastroyki Sennoy ploshchadi v 1960–1970-kh gg. v svete antropologii arkhitektury' [“A Universally Recognised Mistake in City Planning”: The Debates on Development of the Haymarket Square in St Petersburg, 1961–1980 in the Light of Architectural Anthropology], Antropologicheskij forum, 2016, no. 30, pp. 119–174.

URL: http://anthropologie.kunstkamera.ru/files/pdf/030/kelly.pdf