EKATERINBURG — SVERDLOVSK: LITERARY METAMORPHOSES OF THE CITY IMAGE IN THE LIGHT OF UTOPIAN PROJECTS

Abstract

The article discusses the development of a literary narrative about Ekaterinburg — Sverdlovsk, associated with utopian projects for the organization of urban life. The subject of utopia was most often the administrative bodies, and framed each of the ideas, recorded the signs of its implementation and the emotional reaction of the urban community. All new generations of writers, including in their texts the images of Ekaterinburg — Sverdlovsk developed by their predecessors, were carried away by the idea of the city’s “mission”, described its everyday life and growing dissatisfaction with it. An analysis of changes in the city image leads to the conclusion that Ekaterinburg went through three “turns” of descriptions along similar vectors. In the 18th — early 20th century the Ekaterinburg founders’ dreams about “a model in the model world of state-owned mining plants” were replaced first by the image of the city as a “living knot”, and then by its image as an ordinary provincial city. Since the mid-1920s, the image of the “city of Sverdlov” has been formed in literature — a “model Soviet city” that rejected the past. Sverdlovsk is perceived as an “arsenal city”, but by the end of the 1940s, the image of the regional center beloved by the inhabitants was localized. In the 1990s, the fate of the “third capital” was predicted for Ekaterinburg, but in parallel, the motives of increasing provincialization and the predestination of the fate of the place were developing in the literature.