Daria Syuzeva “Re/Evolution of USSR: Thinning Period”

Re/ Evolution of the USSR: thinning period

Pa rt I Thinning Research: Dachas and Infrastructure issues Oil&Gas VS Transsiberian&BAM 10 Destinations Views from Moscow Windows Inspire You to Go The Pursuit of Fresh Air Pa rt I I Moscow-Adler-Sochi-LazarevskoeGagry-Moscow Olympic Truce Ski Jumping Sochi Fieldtrip Stories

Daria Syuzeva

part i Thinning Research: Dachas and Infrastructure issues Oil&Gas VS Transsiberian&BAM

Europe dependence on Russian gas Level of dependence

10%

100%

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10 destinations views from Moscow windows inspire you to go.

The lack of comfort and aesthetics, chaotic urban sprawl, low quality of life are the features of all contemporary Russian urban areas. It seems people have nothing to do but endure. And they would have done it if they had not a way out. The savior’s name is dacha. It is a place with freedom to create and presence of nature, with nice smells and delicious food, and very special for Russian culture.

There is a great variety of types of dachas in Russia. It can be made of stone or wood, it can be called with a codeword townhouse or look like a castle with a church behind the fence. It may even be abroad – in Bulgaria or Spain, however it still will be a dacha – a second house of a townsman who has a Russian registration – propiska – in any urban area.

Why do Russian urban citizens along the whole country are eager to have a second house for gardening or leisure? Maybe among other things reasons also lie in failures of a city which becomes not sufficient for satisfaction of the townsmen needs. And if we consider the fact that Russian houses are created for winter survival but the SNIPs (Russian construction regulations) ignore the summer conditions it explains a lot. According to the SNIP logic summer people are supposed to spend outdoors, in public spaces. However public spaces turned into the battlefields not created for relaxation. In this vicious circle dacha becomes a multifunctional area which offers beautiful exterior and freedom to self-fulfillment. And the desire to have a dacha and independent living conditions is so dramatic that people just want to escape from a city even if they have only one alternative which is to build new “castles in the air” kind of town like Deauville in Moscow region. And it doesn’t matter that the prices for a house can extend up to $16 million.

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City Life New York Amsterdam Kratovo & more

10 DESTINATIONS

VIEWS FROM MOSCOW WINDOWS INSPIRE YOU TO GO

40 GREAT

TRADITIONAL DACHAS in RUSSIA Intricate Neighbours

Entertaining Rubljovka Pragmatic Kievka Fast Novaya Riga Faithful Dmitrovka Grigory Revzin: the Best that Has Been Built in Moscow During 2000s or Architects Dachas

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part ii Moscow-Adler-Sochi-Lazarevskoe-Gagry-Moscow Olympic truce King Iphitos of Elis, who was a descendent of Hercules, is credited with revamping the Games and imposing the institution of the Olympic truce. At the time of King Iphitos, around the ninth century BC, mainland Greece was unsettled with civil wars and migrations. Legend claims that King Iphitos went to the Oracle of Delphi and asked her how to bring an end to the wars and pestilence that were gradually destroying the land of Greece. She instructed him to reinstate the Games and declare a truce for their duration. This plan succeeded and the Olympic truce became a major instrument in the unification of the Greek states and colonies.

“I can say with full confidence that if we were not able to restore the territorial integrity of the country, if we had not stopped the confrontation in the Caucasus in the form that was five-seven years ago, if we fundamentally have not changed the situation in economy, if we had not decided a number of social problems, we would not see neither hide nor hair of any Olympic Games”.

Vladimir Putin People want to see one side on top and the other side humiliated, and they forget that victory gained through cheating or through the intervention of the crowd is meaningless. Even when the spectators don’t intervene physically they try to influence the game by cheering their own side and “rattling” opposing players with boos and insults. Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

George Orwell Transformations

As a result of Russian-Turkish war the area of contemporary Sochi was conquered by Russians in 18281829. In pre-USSR period the territory was occupied mostly by dachas and summer houses. During the Soviet Period with the help of planning economy it was specializing on tourism industry. In modern Russia Sochi is the most popular touristic destination for Russians from all over the country.

Population of this territory is around 500 000 people (2010). The city-forming industry is tourism and resort industry in particularly. Even though the quality of tourism infrastructure is low comparing with such destinations as Egypt, Spain, Turkey, and even to Abkhazia, during summer period the population is increasing dramatically as several millions of tourists from Russia are coming to this destination each year.

In 2007 former President Vladimir Putin made a big effort in achieving his goal, Winter Olympic Games 2014 will be held in Sochi, Russia. This means that two areas – Imeretinskaya lowland, which is an old community center, and Krasnaya Polyana, which is ecological park, will be developed as sport destinations.

Resulting in huge constructions and big expenses for new Olympic facilities Sochi must become a tourism destination with better transport infrastructure, improved tourism facilities, new energy system.

Thinning aspect

According to the experience of former Olympic destinations winter games facilities are harder to use afterwards and there is a huge risk for the remained infrastructure to be abandoned. Moreover construction process negatively influences locals’ life because of damaged ecology, traffic congestion and resettlement processes.

But the victims are not only the locals. Most of the governmental projects have been stopped in favor of Olympic construction as the amount of public expenses for the Olympics is huge and the government cannot

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provide public support for the rest. Government corporation “OlympStroy� (or OlympConstruct) that was initiated for this particular project is financed directly from a federal budget which means greater status of a project and difficulty in counting large flows of money. Both recipient and donor regions as well as taxpayers contribute to the process of Sochi contemporary development.

Russian budget is filled with the help of one industry that sell natural resources. And the whole economical system reminds a gas pipe, which unintentionally influence Russian government system making the whole country mono-functional from the top to the bottom. Any attempts of diversification by government means look inept and put a region at risk of going bankrupt.

Olympic glory

Olympic games were initiated in a very unstable time in the end of 19th century. According to Pierre de Coubertin, a founder of Olympic movement, weak physical state of French soldiers was one of the reasons of their defeat in Franco-Prussian war in 1870-1871. As an answer an attempt of propagandizing sport activities, culture and equality on the global level was initiated. However throughout history Olympic Games were held on territories of instability and conflict like Moscow in the period of the Cold War, or Beijing in a period of uncertain relationship with Taiwan and Tibet, or Barcelona with threats of terrorist attacks by local separatists or Seoul with its confrontation between North Korea and South Korea.

Fierce competition between the applicant cities, huge budgets for preparations, involvement of global media, sponsorship boom create an event which turns one small point on the world map into a center of global attention for two and a half weeks in favor of it. However at the same time hot and cold war can be initiated on the 1st day of the Olympic Games following the information war as it happened with Russia and Georgia in 2008.

Or the Olympics infrastructure can be constructed in parallel with the existing border zone (at the same area).

Can that mean that people treat the war and the Olympic Games as the same things and the venue should be prepared for the consequences of war? In that sense Olympic truce becomes an intricate irony.

Russian Federation

Olympic Ski Facility

Sochi Olympics infrastructural objects pass along Russian Federation borderzone on the Abkhazian/Georgian border

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Ski Jumping Adler: A Story About Future

“Ladies and gentlemen, please, fasten your seatbelts. We are starting to land”. With a big interest I look out the window and finally I see the long-awaited sea. But my joy begins to decline as we move deeper into the center. Sweet multi-colored houses become replaced by unfinished bridges, vacant dirty areas and mud. “Our plane landed in the airport of Sochi. For your safety we ask you to remain seated with your belts fastened”. We are in Adler, the venue of 2014 Winter Olympic Games. We were met by bad weather, cold and rain. While waiting for the luggage we have the opportunity to explore the airport. It is new and small, with a queue to the bathroom and full of intrusive taxi drivers. But there is a cozy patio, and there behind the glass you can see tropical plants.

Adler is one of the four districts of Greater Sochi, “gates” of the venue of the Winter Olympic Games, a festival of sport and culture. Olympic objects are being built here in Imeretinskaya lowland as well as a cargo port and a lot of transport infrastructure.

“Adler Ring” is a complex of two automobile junctions which are aimed to provide cargo supply during the construction and traffic during the Games. Besides the fact that junctions construction doesn’t provide efficient use of main roads it transfer all the traffic to the narrow bypass road, the construction area is too close to the housing – not more than half a meter, although according to the standards it should be not less than five meters. “How can I know that all these houses are built legally? Actually all the adjacent to the road houses will be demolished afterwards”, - says a young construction worker from Rostov-on-Don. The reason for such a chaotic development in Adler is that the construction process is very hard to legalize in this area so there appeared a new institution – “you first build and then make the papers”. In the result people are vulnerable – they are out of the law. And that is the reason why their rights move away and considered at last. And the landscape becomes full of chaotic structures where people can use all the types of structures and even in the residential garages.

There is a collision of two powerful forces – the local population and the state. Chaotic building interferes with infrastructure. The infrastructure is not bound to social needs. And the social needs are displaced by the narrow edge of the curb.

Lazarevskoe: A Story About Present

Valentina Stepanovna Masaltseva, a former engineer of energy facilities in Sakhalin, is nowadays living in a settlement Verkhnyaya Mamedka, Lazarevskoe, since she have been retired at the age of 50, now she is 74. “I am very lucky to receive this house as inheritance. In 70ies my husband who was an architect expanded it with the help of some random materials. Of course I need to renew it now”, - she says.

The current population of the settlement is 200 people with the kids. In the past the settlement was maintaining tea plantations. Nowadays all the people become unemployed and only a small portion of the former tea plantations are developed by a local businessman and his employers. The rest of the plantations are overgrown with ferns.

“The best tea leaves are collected nowadays. They are very tasty, very bracing and very expensive,” – says Valentina Stepanovna. After the USSR collapse the tea Kolkhoz was dissolved. Currently all the locals are working either as taxi drivers or as housemaids. And the children finish their studies after the 9th grade and do not want to study any longer. On the question of her attitude towards the Olympic Games she says that all the advantages of the Olympics bypassed them: “We hoped that they will hold water system but they made only the bilingual streets signs. This is the only thing we received from the Olympics”. But in fact Valentina Stepanovna has self-made water system and the sewer system goes to the bamboo grow which filter the waste.

The state lost the right to land ownership and the monofunctional settlement had to change the function. Due to the transformation of the planned economy and the transformation of the state the area, the culture and the people become thinned.

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Abkhazia: a story about past.

We cross the borderline between Russia and Abkhazia. Passing through the border corridor we see the duty free shop “Scyphia”, outwardly not different from the kiosks of Moscow, the poorly-dressed people with empty platform trolleys which are the main instrument of foreign trade turnover for Abkhazia. The border guard checks your foreign passport and puts no stamp in it. You are in Abkhazia which means that you are in a place where the sea is clean, the beach is empty, the food is delicious, the locals are friendly, the architecture is beautiful and blends into the landscape. And the place is abandoned.

During the perestroika all the republics of USSR had the right to determine their sovereignty independently. And Abkhazia wanted to be independent nation. But Georgia was against it. And as a result military conflict of 1991-1992 happened. Currently Abkhazia is under Russian protection. No one talks about Georgia any more.

The war allowed to preserve the state and the atmosphere of the USSR for many years. And the Soviet Union looks like a goodie in this context. You can see nice architecture, interesting shapes and cozy public spaces for cultural activities here. A local on the street can with no reason fasten conversation with you on the street offering you some help and even roof. This attitude can be called socialism from the past. And you see here some features that possessed Great Sochi seashore which were lost during the attempt of being a champion of “ski jumping” from soviet past to the capitalistic future. And you want to understand how to connect the imperial and soviet past with present make it logically and correctly, and aesthetically beautiful.

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1) Adler chaotic urban sprawl 2) Former Kolkhoz tea plantations, Lazarevskoe

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3)Olympic village construction at Krasnaya Polyana, Adler

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Sochi Fieldtrip Stories

Nature invaded by Infrastructure

Black Sea as Borderzone

“What do I think about the Olympics? I

”At the moment of perestroika all

think that in 50 years the fish will come

the border guards accepted that

back to the rivers, trees will grow again,

they all would be dismissed. And

but the historical monuments will be gone

at that time we were able to travel

forever”.

across the sea very easily. For this

(Talking about the fortresses of VI-IX cen-

reason I have been to Bulgaria,

turies and other traces of past civilizations)

Turkish sea shore. And nowadays

Gennady Ivanovich Kuk, a photogra-

we can sail through the Black sea

pher, 84 years old

only two miles away from the coastline. However our marine belt is 12 miles away from the coast”.

Vitaly Sergeevich Sarakhatunov, a sailor, 80 years old.

Disharmony between the shell and

Kolkhoz shift

the content in post-USSR

“The current population of the settlement is 200 people

“Mazesta resourt is not worse and in

with the kids. In the past the settlement was cultivating tea

some respects even better than re-

plantations. Nowadays all the people become unemployed

sourts of Baden-Baden and Karlovy

and only a small portion of the former tea plantations is

Vary, however the demand have fallen

developed by a local businessman and his employers. The

dramatically after the USSR collapse”

rest of the plantations are overgrown with ferns”.

Evgeny Pavlovich Belikov, deputy

Valentina Stepanovna Masaltseva, energy infrastruc-

chairman of marketing at “Mazesta”

ture ingeneer, 74 years old

resourt.

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