SHRINKING CITIES

In the textile region northeast of Moscow the economic structures collapsed with the end of socialism and the Soviet Union, and the industrial production sank to a fifth of what it was. The number of births fell dramatically since 1989 and life expectancy declined significantly. Particularly young people with a better education left Ivanovo in search of work.

The project of Soviet modernization and urbanization of the territory remained incomplete. Small communities still exist today without basic infrastructure, and large construction projects were abandoned. Central planning has been replaced by small architectural undertakings of individual interventions.

Here globalization is a synonym for the ruptures in the economic network and internationalism, and for the decline in technology and in the modern division of labor. Machines were dismantled, the airport was closed. The city life adapted itself to the rhythms of agrarian production cycles, since many city residents were forced to revert to subsistence farming on the lots of their dachas or gardens. Pre-modern and post-industrial practices overlap and develop new lifestyles.

The ideology of the collective identities of factory and party has been eroded. It was replaced by the flood of information through globalization, a universal individualization and a cultural cosmopolitism of Barbie, Nike, and Coca Cola. At the same time, local traditions are being called upon to bolster identity. With the de-industrialization, the factory lost its central function in cultural and public life – no comparable structures have been developed. The modern regime of factory labor has yielded to a postmodern patchwork of individual arrangements and initiatives on the basis of a finely woven social network.