SGRAFFITO «SOVIET TATARIA» AS A URBAN RETROTEXT: IS IT POSSIBLE TO RETHINKING?

Abstract

The modern urban space is overflowing with a variety of texts. From a sociological point of view, the opportunity to read and interpret urban texts is becoming very promising. Try to answer the question about the intentions of the authors of the texts, about the languages that the city text uses and what the city text can tell about us, about our time and the environment in which we live. In this article, the author considers sgraffito as one of the forms of manifestation of the urban text. As a specific case for a detailed analysis, a sgraffito with a double name «Soviet Tataria» or «Kazan – the capital of Tataria» was chosen. This choice seems to be interesting and relevant for several reasons. First, this sgraffito was created in 1967, during the «post-thaw» period – the interval between the second thaw of the early 1960-s and the stagnation of the 1970-s. Secondly, in the 1970s-1980-s it played the role of a significant symbol representing the Soviet image of the city of Kazan and the Republic of Tatarstan as a whole. Third, at the beginning of 2000-s, in the era of dismantling and rethinking the Soviet past, a discussion arose about the fate of Soviet monumental painting in a new historical context. Sgraffito «Soviet Tataria» was preserved and restored, but received a new name «Kazan – the capital of Tataria». At present, there is a gradual ousting of the texts of the Soviet era from urban discourse spaces. In Kazan, Soviet urban texts are being replaced by texts focused on traditional values, ethno-national and ethnoreligious content, as well as a variety of texts that are usually defined as street art, graffiti, etc. The state's monopoly on control and authorship in the creation of urban texts has been called into question.