Palaces of Culture (Rus. Dvortsy kultury) were state institutions for organised leisure. From the early Bolshevik rule of the 1920s, these buildings (at that time commonly known as workers’ clubs) were meant to educate, Sovietize and ‘civilise’ along with the goals of the Cultural Revolution. Workers Clubs were financially dependent on trade unions and respective industries. With the architectural and building reforms of Nikita Khrushchev in the mid-1950s and later Kosygin reform of the mid-1960s, this connection translated itself spatially, with industries commissioning true palaces for their workers to organise leisure and culture and having a respective hall for management meetings, voting and plenums. In the case of the large industrial city Sverdlovsk (from 1991 – Yekaterinburg), the capital of Sverdlov Oblast, the majority of palaces of culture were built exactly between 1955 and 1970 (Bugrov 2024).

© Lina Filip, 2024

Polina Gundarina’s doctoral dissertation examines the material and cultural transformation of these buildings in Sverdlovsk-Yekaterinburg from the mid-1960s, the period of “developed socialism” under Leonid Brezhnev. What were the principal functions of these buildings envisioned by the state vis-à-vis real practices of use? Focusing on the key institutional decisions, intellectual discourse and everyday life usage, reconstructed through archives, newspapers and interviews, the work reveals how palaces of culture during late socialism carried out functions and meanings beyond Communist propaganda, hosted underground events and were subjects of bribery and blat. But the ultimate question is: how did these palaces of culture, which at the time of the late 1980s counted in number more than 90 thousand in Soviet Russia alone, among which 20 thousand “belonged” to the Soviet industries, continue to operate after 1991 when the system it upheld disappeared? On which mechanisms this infrastructure truly relied on, and which proved continuous, intertial or were disrupted? Which values were attached to state infrastructure during Soviet time, and which were highlighted during its aftermath?

House of Culture of Automobile Workers, Sverdlovsk, mid-1980s. The House of Culture, organised in the former church in the early 1930s, acted as a centre for cinema and underground art lovers across the city. Seen in the picture is a bar and bar stools organised inside. S

© Passport of registration of the monument Church of the Trinity (Ryazanovskaya), compiled by A.Y. Kaptikov

Gundarina, Polina. The Soviet Palace. From Social Hub to Remnant of the Past and Back Again. In Engel, Barbara (ed.) Echoes of Soviet Urbanism: Exploring Modernist Narratives. Perspectives on Heritage, Transformation, and Community Dynamics in East European and Eurasian Microrayons. Berlin, Dom Publishers, 2024, 74-92.

Gundarina, Polina. One Past, One Future? The Fate of Modernist Palaces of Culture in Post-Socialist Germany and Russia: Historical Background, Current Status, and Future Prospects in Bartetzko, Daniel, Danuta Schmidt, Till Schauen, Polina Gundarina, and Maximilian Kraemer. Kulturhäuser – Demokratie Feiern (23/3). Moderneregional 2023, vol. 3, August 2023.

Making Sense of Urban Space After 1991: The Case of Post-War Soviet Houses of Culture, Workshop “Relicts of the Ancient Régime – Socialist & Imperial Legacies and the City,” Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin (Germany) 14 September 2023

The Post-Socialist Condition of Houses of Culture: Discourse(s) of Remembrance and Urban Identity, CATference, 9th International Urban Geographies of Post-Communist States Conference, Budapest (Hungary) 16 June 2022