Tashkent: Forging a Soviet City, 1930–1966

Chapter 8. Redesigning Tashkent After Stalin

202 News of Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, arrived in Tashkent on the following morning in brief articles in Qizil O’zbekiston and Pravda Vostoka. These newspapers devoted the remainder of that day’s issues to mundane stories of economic, industrial, and cultural affairs. However, Tashkent quickly went into mourning, with black and crimson cloth hanging from buildings and “spontaneous” memorial meetings taking place at factories and education institutions throughout the city. Mourners moved toward the city center, where a crowd of people encircled Revolution Square, where the Stalin monument stood. The number of visitors reportedly was so large that the crowd not only gathered around the statue of the Soviet leader but also formed a line that snaked through the urban center toward the Old City.1 Mourning was a multiethnic endeavor centered at the heart of the Soviet city but spreading outward to include all sections of the Uzbek capital. The death of Stalin and leadership changes in both Moscow and Tashkent did not alter the desire to reorder the Uzbek capital and make it a redeSigning taSHKent aFter StaLin 8 • stronski text i-350/3.indd 202 6/25/10 8:53 AM redeSigning taSHKent aFter StaLin O 203 modern European/Russian-style city with a unified multiethnic community . Although there was less stress on monumental public architecture and more emphasis on large buildings for everyday purposes (hospitals, schools, and apartment complexes), beautiful city spaces and idealized gardenlike parks remained at the forefront of Soviet construction campaigns to present a positive image of the Soviet state at home and abroad. Tashkent, the center of Soviet rule in Asia, remained an important symbol of socialism and the promises that the Soviet system offered to its citizens. However, once state-sponsored coercion and control decreased during Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign, people became increasingly vocal in their dissatisfaction with persistently poor living standards, forcing Party officials to begin addressing popular frustration over quality-of-life issues in the Uzbek capital and surrounding areas. As they had in the 1930s, Soviet leaders looked to the past to find scapegoats for the low living standards in Soviet cities and for rising disappointment with socialism among the population. In the mid-1950s, city politicians and planners identified the previous regime of Stalin and his supporters as the primary causes of the hard reality of life in Tashkent and other urban areas. Hence, although the architects and planners did not change, opinions on their past designs certainly changed, unleashing sharp criticism of Stalinist architecture for its “gigantic” and ornate construction, excessive costs, minimal local initiative, and delays in construction. Still, in developing new urban projects and declaring that they would solve the problems of the city, Tashkent planners from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s repeated many of the same trends, the most egregious example being their failure to engage the local population in the city’s redevelopment plans. Under Khrushchev, state officials in Moscow still strove to bring their vision of an orderly socialist city to this distant and “chaotic” Asian space. As Soviet citizens in the Uzbek capital, Tashkenters still needed to fit into Khrushchev ’s reconstructed Soviet city. Clearly, the notion that a reconstructed Tashkent should help mold Central Asians into Soviet citizens did not change over the Stalin-Khrushchev divide. Similarly, inefficient construction , shoddy workmanship, and the belief that an elite few knew more about Tashkent than city residents themselves persisted under both leaders. The Death of Stalin The death of Stalin caused shockwaves to reverberate across the Soviet Union; Tashkent was no exception. Stalin had been the undisputed leader of the Soviet Union for more than twenty-five years and had led the country through tremendous upheaval—domestic and international. Despite the stronski text i-350/3.indd 203 6/25/10 8:53 AM 204 O redeSigning taSHKent aFter StaLin devastation of famine, industrialization, collectivization, the terror, and the war, many Soviet citizens could not imagine a future without him. Soviet officials exacerbated citizen grief by making special efforts to create a public show of mourning and to turn the funeral of the leader into a demonstration of Soviet power and resolve, paying particular attention to the use of reconstructed urban spaces in these orchestrations. On March 7, 1953, two days after Stalin’s death and on cue from Moscow, Uzbek Party officials and press organs developed a unified program for presenting...