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Production of spatial relations: history of socio-economic practices and infrastructures, representation of territories and functioning of heritage on the materials from the history of the North and North-West Russia

Objectives of the research:

The project focuses on the material and temporal relationships in the history of Russia and is based on the study of the development of the regions of the North and North-West in the long historical perspective. The aim of the project is to analyze the practices of interaction between institutions and communities with spatial objects that influenced the creation of volumetric infrastructures. While space and time are certain properties of infrastructure, the infrastructure itself also produces a specific experience of space that is open to historical analysis.

Based on specific historical examples, this study will develop a methodology to analyse dynamic and hybrid sets of human and natural influences reflected in various spatial configurations, namely:

  • analyze the relationship between space, time and the materiality of the produced infrastructures in a long historical perspective;
  • describe how infrastructures influenced the production of specific experiences in the creation, use and perception of spaces in different historical periods.

The project resulted in the following conclusions:

  • In different historical epochs, Russia's space (to say it more correctly, the corresponding political and geographical formations on the territory known as Russia, the Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union) was a dynamic and hybrid transformation of power and institutional, economic and socio-cultural relations. At the same time, technologies, technological infrastructures as well as expert knowledge proved to be critical and determined the specifics of these relations.
  • A study of the materials of the Russian North allowed us to conclude that during the monastic colonization of this territory beginning in the XVI century management practices and skills as well as special expert knowledge were fundamental factors in the process of transforming underground salt brine deposits into a popular commodity – salt -- by the means of technology.
  • Analysis of urban space in St. Petersburg in the late XIX - early XX centuries demonstrated that the formation, transformation and use of "green spaces" was not the result of rational planning, as it has so far been widely accepted by earlier historiography, but rather the production of this special material-spatial, social and symbolic phenomena of the urban environment was a tension of various interests, complex negotiations and interactions between different local groups.
  • A study of the post-war history of the Karelian Isthmus demonstrates that in the Soviet conditions there was a hybridization of Finnish and Soviet practices of governance, economic and social development built into the planning and typical Soviet and post-socialist practices in Russia. Exploring the space of the "other" was a symbiosis of practices that formed a special attitude towards the territory as a “foreign” or “abroad land” in the political borders of the USSR and Russia.
  • An analysis of a corpus of newspaper publications, popular essays and scientific articles on the exploration of the North, which were regularly published during the 1950s and 1970s, showing how the whole region, previously presented as a "severe remote land" was symbolically incorporated into the space of "ordinary Soviet life". Descriptions of the social and technological infrastructure to be created there and the materiality of urban spaces and everyday life played a crucial role in domesticating and incorporating these natural lands into the national identity and imagination.
  • The study of the city of Tot'ma in the Vologda region and the peculiarities of the city's topography resulted in the conclusion that the idea of "tourist space" and its relationship with natural and cultural heritage objects is characterized by certain dynamics. In particular, the space acted both as an object and as a subject in the "tourist imagination" and concrete practices of interaction.

The obtained results open up new questions for further research but can be fruitfully used in local history projects (for example, for creation of tourist guides, description of regional history on public websites, among others), museum sphere, as well as in planning tourism activities and national projects related to cultural and social development of specific regions and the whole territory of the country.

Supervisors

Julia Lajus

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Ведущий научный сотрудник

Evgeniy Anisimov

Центр исторических исследований: Главный научный сотрудник

Participants of the project

Aleksandra Bekasova

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Старший научный сотрудник

Michael Vsemirnov

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Стажер-исследователь

Margarita Dadykina

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Старший научный сотрудник

Pavel Demchenko

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Младший научный сотрудник

Ekaterina Kalemeneva

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Научный сотрудник

Elena Kochetkova

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Старший научный сотрудник

Alexei Kraikovski

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Старший научный сотрудник

Красикова Елена Игоревна

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Лаборант

Никулина Александра Олеговна

Лаборатория экологической и технологической истории: Стажер-исследователь


 

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