Cynthia A. Ruder (Author)
Today the 80-mile-long Moscow Canal is a source of leisure for Muscovites, a conduit for tourists and provides the city with more than 60% of its potable water. Yet the past looms heavy over these quotidian activities: the canal was built by Gulag inmates at the height of Stalinism and thousands died in the process. In this wide-ranging book, Cynthia Ruder argues that the construction of the canal physically manifests Stalinist ideology and that the vertical, horizontal, underwater, ideological, artistic and metaphorical spaces created by it resonate with the desire of the state to dominate all space within and outside the Soviet Union. Ruder draws on theoretical constructs from cultural geography and spatial studies to interpret and contextualise a variety of structural and cultural products dedicated to, and in praise of, this signature Stalinist construction project. Approached through an extensive range of archival sources, personal interviews and contemporary documentary materials these include a diverse body of artefacts - from waterways, structures, paintings, sculptures, literary and documentary works, and the Gulag itself. Building Stalinism concludes by analysing current efforts to reclaim the legacy of the canal as a memorial space that ensures that those who suffered and died building it are remembered.
...MoreReview Steven A. Barnes (2020) Review of "Building Stalinism: The Moscow Canal and the Creation of Soviet Space". American Historical Review (pp. 2036-2037).
Book
Ashley Carse;
(2014)
Beyond the Big Ditch: Politics, Ecology, and Infrastructure at the Panama Canal
(/isis/citation/CBB368970305/)
Book
Brian Phillips Murphy;
(2015)
Building the Empire State: Political Economy in the Early Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB610727332/)
Book
Michal Ďurčo;
(2021)
Cesty a diaľnice na Slovensku v medzivojnovom období: Nástup automobilovej doby v znamení prvej Československej Republiky
(/isis/citation/CBB876947771/)
Article
Waldemar Kuligowski;
(March 2019)
How “Poland Entered Europe”: The Motorway as a Space of Neoliberalism
(/isis/citation/CBB588990884/)
Book
Gérard Duc;
Olivier Perroux;
Hans-Ulric Schiedt;
François Walter;
(2014)
Histoire des transports et de la mobilité: entre concurrence modale et coordination (de 1918 à nos jours) = Transport and mobility history: between modal competition and coordination (from 1918 to the present)
(/isis/citation/CBB509643575/)
Book
Michael Truscello;
(2020)
Infrastructural Brutalism: Art and the Necropolitics of Infrastructure
(/isis/citation/CBB993987768/)
Article
Katherine Chandler;
(2022)
Apartheid drone: Infrastructures of militarism and the hidden genealogies of the South African Seeker
(/isis/citation/CBB611340328/)
Book
Hugh R. Slotten;
(2022)
Beyond Sputnik and the Space Race: The Origins of Global Satellite Communications
(/isis/citation/CBB430492982/)
Article
Richard Hirsh;
(2013)
Fifteen Years Later: Whither Restructuring in the American Electric Utility System?
(/isis/citation/CBB706689708/)
Book
Andreas Marklund;
Mogens Ruediger;
(2017)
Historicizing Infrastructure
(/isis/citation/CBB045716184/)
Book
William W. Buzbee;
(2014)
Fighting Westway: Environmental Law, Citizen Activism, and the Regulatory War That Transformed New York City
(/isis/citation/CBB276984715/)
Chapter
Klaus Grewe;
(2016)
Urban Infrastructure in the Roman World
(/isis/citation/CBB572717553/)
Book
Ashley Carse;
(2014)
Beyond the big ditch: politics, ecology, and infrastructure at the Panama Canal
(/isis/citation/CBB384585453/)
Book
Christopher F. Jones;
(2014)
Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America
(/isis/citation/CBB824368541/)
Book
Ryan Dearinger;
(2015)
The Filth of Progress: Immigrants, Americans, and the Building of Canals and Railroads in the West
(/isis/citation/CBB156700263/)
Book
Maria Rogacheva;
(2017)
The Private World of Soviet Scientists from Stalin to Gorbachev
(/isis/citation/CBB882566124/)
Article
Vedran Duančić;
(2020)
Lysenko in Yugoslavia, 1945–1950s: How to De-Stalinize Stalinist Science
(/isis/citation/CBB524254444/)
Chapter
Bijker, W. E.;
(2005)
The politics of water -- The Oosterschelde storm surge barrier: A Dutch thing to keep the water out or not
(/isis/citation/CBB001181548/)
Article
Hicks, Geoffrey;
(2012)
Disraeli, Derby and the Suez Canal, 1875: Some Myths Reassessed
(/isis/citation/CBB001550397/)
Thesis
Thomas Gauchet;
(2020)
Une histoire politique du canal de Göta: Technique, infrastructure et pouvoirs en Europe du Nord (années 1790-1832) [A political history of Göta Canal: Technology, infrastructure and power in northern Europe (1790–1832)]
(/isis/citation/CBB414508814/)
Be the first to comment!