'City of the Sun – District of the KhTZ': Space, Images, Memory

Abstract

The paper analyzes the project of creation of “New Kharkiv” – a “socialist town” for workers of Kharkiv Tractor Plant (KhTZ) at the level of its development, implementation and memory. Today, the space of “the town” is the heart of the Industrialnyi (1934–2016 Ordzhonikidzevskyi) district of Kharkiv, located on the northeast outskirts of the city. The article analyzes the project of “the town”, everyday practices of its inhabitants in the 1930s, the image of the district in city guides, the symbolic changes that took place in the toponymics of the district during decommunization. It has been established that the authors and developers of the project were a team of young architects led by P. Alyoshin. The designers tried to realize the social ideals of the era through specific architectural solutions. It was assumed that all the residents of the town would be workers whose way of life would be in socialized to the limit. For this purpose, no kitchens were designed in the apartments, which was intended to provide public eating facilities. Some odious ideas (connecting the houses with corridor-bridges at the second floor level) were rejected in the early stages of implementation. The authors of city guides during the second half of the XX century. advised guests and residents of the city to visit the area of the “social town”. Although its description is devoid of the pathos of the first five-year plan, it is labeled “model”, “cozy”, “green”. The positive image of the area was marginalized in the early 1990s. With the decline of the economy, the collapse of the social sphere of enterprises, the working districts and towns in Ukraine lose their metaphorical meaning. The KhTZ area was no exception. The analysis of changes in the toponymics of the district shows that during the decommunization its space was deprived of the most odious Soviet political figures (S. Ordzhonikidze, S. Kosior, etc.). More than half of the streets were named after Soviet figures who are directly related to the development of the area and/or worked/were born in Kharkiv. New toponymic names reflect the historical context of origin and the essence of the working outskirts.