ABSTRACT

This paper traces the changes and continuities in the cityscape of Soviet Samarkand following the launch of the mass housing campaign under Nikita Khrushchev. It examines the planning, building, appropriation, and renovation of public and private housing on the level of practices rather than policies and discourses. The paper relates these practices to the specific temporalities of Samarkand’s landscape, such as the life cycles of inhabitants, the change of seasons, or the timelines of material decay, among others. It shows that self-help building often proved to be more effective than state projects in addressing these temporalities. Drawing on site-specific cultural, material, and technical repertoires, self-help building was more than a pragmatic reaction to the housing shortage. It sustained the traditional Central Asian neighbourhood that Soviet planners hoped to banish from the urban landscape and was key to the expansion and diversification, rather than homogenization, of the ‘Soviet’ cityscape.

摘要

本文追溯了在尼基塔·赫鲁晓夫领导下发起大规模住房运动后苏联撒马尔罕城市景观的变化和连续性。它从实践层面而非政策和话语层面审视公共和私人住房的规划、建造、拨款和翻新。该论文将这些实践与撒马尔罕景观的特定时间性联系起来，例如居民的生命周期、季节的变化或物质腐烂的时间线等。它表明，在解决这些暂时性问题方面，自助建设通常被证明比国家项目更有效。利用特定地点的文化、材料和技术曲目，自助建筑不仅仅是对住房短缺的务实反应。