The City and Urban Lifestyle: Soviet Sociology as an Embodiment of the Weber’s Approach to Analyzing Urban Identity

Abstract

The article deals with the Soviet experience of interpretation of the city and urban lifestyle from the point of view of conceptualization of urban identity. The starting point of the analysis is the distinction between Weber’s and Zimmel’s approaches to vision of the city and urban identity in sociological classics. Weber's approach emphasizes the existence of the urban community as a necessary attribute of the city; Zimmel’s one – states the impossibility of a community in the city. The article demonstrates that Western sociology generally accepted Zimmel’s interpretation, while Soviet science – Weber’s one. The analysis made it possible to distinguish two types of urban identity: «rational-activist» one, associated with the identification of himself as a citizen on the basis of the need to defend specific local interests, and «cultural» one, associated with awareness of citizens of their own community-based «urban culture» as a shared value.