The Socialist City Re-Imagined: New Symbols and Narratives of the Soviet-Era Urban Legacy in Ukraine

Mikhail Ilchenko and Roman Liubavskyi

Europe-Asia Studies, 2025, vol. 77, issue 7, 1053-1076

Abstract: Since Ukraine’s independence, its Soviet past has been re-evaluated and the start of the full-scale war in 2022 has accelerated these processes. The understanding of urban legacies remains limited, not least because of the focus on top-down initiatives such as decommunisation. To compensate for this, the essay offers a bottom-up perspective, relying on the case of the iconic socialist city (sotsgorod) which was built to service the Kharkiv Tractor Factory, was called ‘Novyi Kharkiv’ in the 1930s and 1940s, and later turned into a district of Kharkiv (KhTZ). The essay shows how local activities around the Soviet-era architectural legacy have encouraged new public attitudes towards the Soviet past, and how those attitudes are changing today, under war conditions.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2025.2551148

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