THE PHENOMENON OF THE CITY OF SLAVUTYCH IN THE SOVIET PARADIGM OF THE COMMUNIST FUTURE

Abstract

The article analyzes the city of Slavutych as a model of the city of the future in Soviet communist ideology. The history and reasons for the city's emergence are considered – from the early 1970s and the construction of the Chornobyl nuclear power-plant and the city of Prypiat to the man-made disaster at the nuclear power-plant, the design and construction of Slavutych, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The author describes urban planning, architectural, artistic, and historical features of Slavutych, including the city's unique quarters: Tbilisi, Baku, Yerevan, Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, Chernihiv, Kyiv, Pechersk, Dobryninsky, Polissia (formerly Moscow), Dniprovsky (formerly Belgorod), Desniansky (formerly Leningrad, later Nevsky). Innovative approaches that were used in the design and construction of the city were identified, in particular: general humanistic radial layout of the city, widely developed social infrastructure in the quarters (educational institutions, social infrastructure, squares), preservation of forest trees during construction, and the first system of bicycle paths in the Soviet Union. The article describes in detail how the artistic national peculiarities of different republics (Georgian SSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Armenian SSR, Lithuanian SSR, Latvian SSR, Estonian SSR) that participated in the construction of the city emphasize the urban space of Slavutych as opposed to the typical Soviet standardization of everything related to art and architecture in particular. The article analyzes how Soviet propaganda used the construction of the city in 2 years, participation in the construction of many republics, as powerful symbols of the inviolability of the USSR economy and "friendship of nations" against the background of a deep economic crisis and protest moods of the people in the second half of the 1980s. The article describes how the city is developing today and why it should be considered a unique openair architectural museum valuable for Ukrainian heritage.