IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijurrs/v45y2021i2p332-347.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Making of Post‐Post‐Soviet Ruins: Infrastructure Development and Disintegration in Contemporary Russia

Author

Listed:
  • Mia M. Bennett

Abstract

Western journalists and photographers fetishize the infrastructural ruination of the former Soviet Union. While sites like abandoned railway stations are assumed to be artefacts of the country's collapse in 1991, many of these ruins are actually products of contemporary Russian state policies. This article critiques the way in which Soviet ruins are imagined as archaeological relics of a long‐gone polity by examining the recent political processes that have generated infrastructural obsolescence long after the Soviet collapse. In pursuit of this aim, I draw on an analysis of texts and imagery depicting Soviet ruins and ethnographic fieldwork and observations in the Russian North and Far East. Specifically, I examine infrastructural construction and ruination in Vladivostok, where the federal government spearheaded a multibillion‐dollar megaproject in advance of the 2012 Asia‐Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit for which four new bridges were built. Residents of Podnozhye, a community located on an island to which one of the bridges extends, assert that its construction caused the discontinuation of their ferry service to Vladivostok, which consequently rendered infrastructure and amenities along the waterfront obsolete. This dynamic indicates that while ruins often denote the reversal of development, development itself can prompt decay and disintegration, too.

Suggested Citation

  • Mia M. Bennett, 2021. "The Making of Post‐Post‐Soviet Ruins: Infrastructure Development and Disintegration in Contemporary Russia," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(2), pages 332-347, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:45:y:2021:i:2:p:332-347
    DOI: 10.1111/1468-2427.12908
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12908
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1468-2427.12908?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Natasha Kuhrt, 2012. "The Russian Far East in Russia's Asia Policy: Dual Integration or Double Periphery?," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 64(3), pages 471-493.
    2. John Round, 2006. "The Economic Marginalization of Post-Soviet Russia's Elderly Population and the Failure of State Ageing Policy: A Case Study of Magadan City," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 34(4), pages 441-456.
    3. Rob Kitchin & Cian O'Callaghan & Justin Gleeson, 2014. "The New Ruins of Ireland? Unfinished Estates in the Post-Celtic Tiger Era," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 1069-1080, May.
    4. John Round, 2005. "Rescaling Russia's Geography: the Challenges of Depopulating the Northern Periphery," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(5), pages 705-727.
    5. Owen Hatherley, 2014. "Everybody Knows This is Nowhere: The Kiev Park of Memory and Post-Soviet Urbanism in Context," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 1092-1101, May.
    6. Daryl Martin, 2014. "Introduction: Towards a Political Understanding of New Ruins," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 1037-1046, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. van Heur, Bas, 2024. "Urban vacancy in Europe: A synthetic review and research agenda," SocArXiv 3kmtx, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daryl Martin, 2014. "Introduction: Towards a Political Understanding of New Ruins," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(3), pages 1037-1046, May.
    2. Minakir, P. & Prokapalo, O., 2018. "Far East Priority: Combinations of Investment and Institutes," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 38(2), pages 146-155.
    3. Pablo Arboleda, 2017. "‘Ruins of Modernity’: The Critical Implications of Unfinished Public Works in Italy," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(5), pages 804-820, September.
    4. Ioan Sebastian Jucu & Sorina Voiculescu, 2020. "Abandoned Places and Urban Marginalized Sites in Lugoj Municipality, Three Decades after Romania’s State-Socialist Collapse," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-26, September.
    5. Schmidt-Soltau, Kai & Brockington, Dan, 2007. "Protected Areas and Resettlement: What Scope for Voluntary Relocation?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 2182-2202, December.
    6. Neil Gray & Hamish Kallin, 2023. "Capital’s welfare dependency: Market failure, stalled regeneration and state subsidy in Glasgow and Edinburgh," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(6), pages 1031-1047, May.
    7. Collins Patrick, 2020. "Who makes the city? The evolution of Galway city," Administration, Sciendo, vol. 68(2), pages 59-78, May.
    8. Katia Attuyer, 2015. "When Conflict Strikes: Contesting Neoliberal Urbanism outside Participatory Structures in Inner-city Dublin," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(4), pages 807-823, July.
    9. Jacopo Maria Pepe, 2020. "The “Eastern Polygon” of the Trans-Siberian rail line: a critical factor for assessing Russia’s strategy toward Eurasia and the Asia-Pacific," Asia Europe Journal, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 305-324, September.
    10. Nadir Kinossian, 2017. "Re-colonising the Arctic: The preparation of spatial planning policy in Murmansk Oblast, Russia," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(2), pages 221-238, March.
    11. Ioanna P. Korfiati, 2022. "LANDSCAPES ON HOLD: Opening up Monopoly Rent Gaps on Crete's Cape Sidero," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 576-593, July.
    12. Cian O’Callaghan & Pauline McGuirk, 2021. "Situating financialisation in the geographies of neoliberal housing restructuring: reflections from Ireland and Australia," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(4), pages 809-827, June.
    13. Paul Kilgarriff & Cathal ODonoghue & Martin Charlton & Ronan Foley, 2016. "Intertemporal Income in Ireland 1996-2011 A Spatial Analysis," International Journal of Microsimulation, International Microsimulation Association, vol. 9(2), pages 123-143.
    14. S. N. Mishchuk, 2020. "General Characteristics and Regional Differences of Migration Processes in the Russian Far East in the Post-Soviet Period," Regional Research of Russia, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 86-96, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:45:y:2021:i:2:p:332-347. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0309-1317 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.