Soviet Asia

 
 

Soviet Asia
Soviet Modernist Architecture in Central Asia

edited by Robert Conte and Stefano Perago

Fuel

2019

 

 

Soviet Asia is a photo book showing images of the government buildings the Soviets erected in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan in the 1960s-1980s, along with an introductory essay and a concluding one.

 
I spotted this book in the library and it caught my eye. I've had it checked out for a little while, but it was probably recent events that inspired me to read it right now.

 
Conte and Perego talk about how the Soviet government in Moscow tried to impose a unified culture on all the Soviet states, and how this was especially disruptive in Central Asia, where many people still led nomadic lifestyles until those were forbidden by the state, and where multi-story apartment blocks didn't accommodate the preferences of people used to dwelling in multi-generational homes alongside parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins, etc.

 
The actual buildings remind me of other big concrete structures that went up in the US around the same time. There are apartment buildings in my hometown and Columbus that look similar to the ones in the book, and plenty of campus buildings at the schools where I went to college, and grad school, and where I work now look like they're part of the same architectural movement.