Case Study: Lasnamäe

4. CASE STUDY: LASNAMÄE

“Inside each one of those damn boxes is a human being who just wants to be happy.” — Mati the literatus (Autumn Ball, 2007)

Synonymous with panel housing districts and the aesthetic and political ‘problem’ they pose, Lasnamäe is deeply engrained in Estonians’ cultural imagination of post-Soviet space. The extent of Lasnamäe’s significance as a shorthand for all post-socialist housing districts is evident from it setting the backdrop for innumerous films depicting Tallinn’s other districts of Mustamäe and Õismäe (See Fig. 7), positing it as the most distilled and evocative embodiment of Estonia’s post-soviet housing. Built in the 1960s-70s, Lasnamäe is representative of broader pan-Eastern European mass housing projects constructed in phase of late socialism which, as discussed in Chapter 2, was characterised by enlarged private flats at the expense of public provision of community facilities and landscaping – design choices that have earned them an international reputation for post-Soviet squalor and prefabricated monotony. This too has been poignantly captured in international film, with ‘Autumn Ball’ Estonia, (2007), ‘Cheryomushki’ Russia (1963) and ‘Panelstory’ Czechoslovakia (1979) frequently recycling the trope of romantic escapades being lost with the memory of where a lover lived, as space is portrayed in tragicomic abstraction, ubiquitous and infinitely replicated (Alonso & Palmarola, 2014). Although such landscapes represent international trends in late socialist housing and their common cultural perceptions, Lasnamäe is unique in the Estonian context as Tallinn’s sole example of late Soviet-era housing projects and in the socio-spatial challenges these present. The unique intersection of the legal, spatial and ethnic processes it exemplifies makes Lasnamäe fertile ground for the study of marginalised Russian-speakers’ socio-spatial experiences and memory culture.

As the most ethnically segregated area (Kährik, et al., 2019) of the fastest segregating European capital (Tammaru, et al., 2015), Lasnamäe houses a distinctive demographic of blue-collar Russian-speaking minorities (Kährik & Kõre, 2013). Recent studies reveal the area’s rising levels of stigma and unpopularity among Estonian-speakers, largely on premises of this ethnicity (Kährik and Tammaru 2010; Leetmaa et al. 2015). On similar ethnic grounds, however, these estates are most preferred by Russian-speakers (ibid). Alluding to the dignity and desirability uncovered by Morris (2016) and Boym’s (1994) work in Russia’s post-Soviet districts, these polarised preferences suggest the presence of strong Russian-language social infrastructure and accompanying spatial practices that form the heart of the proposed research.

Furthermore, the emergence of a distinctive identity of a self-prescribed internal ‘other’ in Lasnamäe is likely to partially stem from domestic memories of 1990s property restitution, by which many of its residents were formally stripped of the property and citizenship rights explicitly equated with ‘Estonianness’ and rightful belonging (Feldman, 1999). Built in the 1960s and populated with immigrant labourers since the 1970s, Lasnamäe illustrates restitution of property to the ‘rightful owners of 1940’ as a vehicle for strategic dispossession and ethnic othering, narratives that have long been embedded into the district’s physical landscape. Despite formally planned utopic communality and the adhoc activities that replaced it, Lasnamäe’s land ranks among the most extreme cases of privatisation in Estonia, with near 100% of land held in private ownership by 2002 (Kährik & Kõre, 2013). This has resulted in an extraordinarily fractured pattern of land ownership, where formal spatial interventions are rendered near-impossible and informal ‘meanwhile uses’ flourish and begin to define the landscape’s use more permanently. It also undoubtedly presents a challenge to the engrained practices upholding the informal social infrastructures necessary for both survival and satisfaction. As a generation without first-hand experiences of communal landownership is now reaching adulthood and the eldest generation is well into retirement, Lasnamäe’s location and the temporal context pose a unique insight into how spatial practices and property delineations are negotiated and engrained in the memory of three successive generations of Lasnamäe’s residents.

From an architectural standpoint, the structure of the late Soviet housing districts lends itself to dissecting appropriation across three diminishing scales. Defined by the original masterplans as the wider housing estate (makrorayon); the smaller component district (mikrorayon) and the individual housing block (khrushchovka), these scales were intended to interlink and provide for various scales of life and activity. However, as Sevtsuk (2018) notes, public space provision for Lasnamäe was deferred across all three strategic scales, with the makrorayon centre, each mikrorayon’s community halls and the communal courtyards and public parks linking them remaining unbuilt to this day. This offers an unrivalled insight into appropriation of post-Soviet space on a range of scales not present in Tallinn’s other housing districts.

Exploring the scale of the Lasnamäe makrorayon at large allows distinctive yet scattered socio-spatial processes to be mapped alongside broader district-wide initiatives, such as those organised by the Lasnaidee architect-activist group. This provides a benchmark against which individual districts’ generalities and anomalies can be compared. However, as the total spatial requirements of daily work, education, and leisure were originally planned to be contained in the scale of a mikrorayon, this forms the primary scale of interest. Priisle, the easternmost of Lasnamäe’s 11 subdistricts (See Fig. 8), was selected as the initial site

of study, as it is home to several significant local landmarks, such as the Priisle Arches market (See Fig. 9), the HC boxing gym and Lasnaidee’s community gardens, identified in preliminary interviews with residents. The Priisle Arches are of particular interest as a site of appropriation and memory. The Soviet-planned structure at the centre of the mikrorayon was left unfinished upon the fall of the USSR and was immediately appropriated as an informal market by vendors of Russian-language literature and eastern foods, establishing it as a key landmark and pillar of informal social infrastructure (Lasnaidee, 2014). The locally beloved concrete arches, however, fell prey to district-wide developments of big box retailers on land originally earmarked for community centres, sparking widespread outrage and numerous artists’ installations on the site before its demolition in 2015 (ibid). While the onslaught of international supermarket chains is an issue faced by all 11 sub-districts, Priisle is unique in its residents mobilising against the destruction of appropriated sites, although their protests ultimately failed to halt the process. The majority of commercial activity and informal social gathering has since dispersed into the formally undeveloped landscapes in and around courtyard-based housing blocks, providing rich material to be studied at the 1:1 scale of individual khrushchovkas’ material culture.

However, the pressure exerted by Priisle’s community was not in vain. The years of lobbying compelled the protested supermarket chain to establish a fund for the building of “distinctive community infrastructure” in the terrain vague near the former location (Karjus, 2015). As this fund remains unused, Priisle holds great potential as a site of study – recent memories of destruction yield promising material for ethnographic research, alongside a unique ongoing design challenge to envision future public functions for the Russianspeaking communities.

Figure 8: Location of Priisle (red) in Lasnamäe (mid-grey) Figure 9: Informal market under the Priisle Arches

Figure 10: Mapped centre of the Priisle mikrorayon, showing lack of public provision, alongside quintessential patterns of supermarket infill and appropriated terrain vague landscape with loophole-driven parking lots and informal pedestrian routes