School architecture as a way of promotion of Soviet identity in the 1930s' Stalinist Russia

Abstract

© 2015 eum (Edizioni Università di Macerata, Italy). During the Soviet era, schools functioned as a special public locus for the promotion of social and political identity, particularly among youth. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, proponents of both 'urbanist' and 'deurbanist' architectural trends proposed imaginative school designs in an effort to advance the social utopia under construction in the Soviet Union. These plans never came to fruition, though, and were replaced in the mid-1930s with a standardized school building. This new Soviet school had strict regulations about interior and exterior décor, consistent with its assigned tasks of disseminating political ideology and organizing the social life of the surrounding community. Drawing on previously untapped sources, including Soviet architecture and youth journals from the 1930s, this article investigates the evolving role of the Soviet school, as well as its architectural design, in promoting and establishing state authority among both children and adults.