Imposed Stalinism: narrating Rīga’s urban space through Soviet films from 1945 to 1953

Abstract

Cinema is essentially a geographic art, a way of “writing the world”. By bringing a geographic perspective to examining how cinema evokes a location, we gain a better understanding of the way we socially construct place/location in our geographical imaginations. Studies of films can inform us about new historio-graphical perspectives on space, architecture and urban imagery, and thus advance new critical insights into the geo-historical formation of urban modernity. The focus of this study is to describe the portrayal of Rīga’s urban space under Stalin’s regime. The mixed method approach is used to interpret the representation of Stalin’s Soviet occupied Rīga. This exposes different elements and processes about the formation of Soviet Rīga’s cinematic landscape. Spatial analysis of Stalin’s Rīga not only displays which sites were transformed in cinematic places but also acts as an archaeological tool that explores hidden residential settings during the Soviet period. This study sheds light on innovative methods in historical analyses of geographical thought and practice, where films have been considered as geographic practice for visual language with a goal to evoke viewer experiences of inhabiting Soviet urban space. This paper acknowledges both development and spatial organization of urban space in Stalin’s Rīga, and that politically restricted space uncovers gaps and contradictions in the official Soviet history by creating an alternative history of Soviet Rīga.