Vladimir Kagansky. Soviet space

Soviet space is our heritage
Vladimir Kagansky

Publication date: August 20, 2004

In our country, through the purposeful actions of the state (if the “Soviet state” was a state), a special, specific space was formed for a long time and continues to . exist The observed eventfulness is natural: a process of spontaneous transformation of the Soviet is underway. The space on the territory of the Russian Federation is the result of the transformation of structures inherited from the USSR. A special type of space, characteristic specifically for the USSR, is called Soviet space ; this is not synonymous with the territory of the USSR. At present, the structures of the Soviet space are still strong and largely intact, which is why it is appropriate to characterize the modern space on the territory of the Russian Federation (and most countries in the former USSR) as a neo-Soviet space . This article does not give a complete (this was done in the above-mentioned special works), but only an extremely brief description of this space.

The main thing for space is not size. Soviet space is unusual for the modern world; it is the common space of society and the state, the space of society = state . One system, one frame and pattern; society and the state, power and everyday life, have a single space. This could be visually represented like this: build maps of society and the state and study their possible coincidence. It will be complete; it's the same card. Substituting agriculture and industry as examples, we will discover the specifics of the Soviet space.

It, this space, does not experience the influence of the state, since it is inside the state; the space is nationalized. The only space is universal; one frame carries and organizes the location of production, the hierarchy of settlements, the statuses of territories, including ethnic statuses, life support, state institutions, etc. Everything that exists is placed according to one picture, laid out in identical cells in the same order. Soviet space is basically the same everywhere, structurally homogeneous. Places in Soviet space consist of a few absolutely standard parts. It's a kaleidoscope.

A single, unique space inevitably becomes a system of state statuses. Every place, position in space, is a certain status. There are no statuses independent of spatial location. Position in space = place in the state. The Soviet space does not know non-state space.

Soviet space is defined from a supradimensional position. The projection space is constructed. Many tasks descended from above create spatial cells. Places, distances and connections between places are derived from vertical-hierarchical, power-administrative connections. Many vertically connected cells make up a fragmented, torn space. The territory consists of (and even consists of) semi-isolated, difficult-to-connect quasi-autarkic places. Cells are standardized and centralized.

Administrative-territorial division (ATD) is the basic system of cells, the matrix on which all other structures of the Soviet space are built. The Soviet ATD implemented the principle of “ political, economic and ethnic unity ” . The institutional structure is both territorial and the administrative structure is complex. ATD is equally the structure of the state and all everyday life on its territory, thereby the structure of their interdependence.

ATD in the narrow sense is a system of units nested within each other, areas that have a certain rank, territory and boundaries. In the following, ADT units are called regions . The USSR series: republic - region - district, - is known. There are intermediate, incomplete, levels of units that do not cover the entire territory: union city - republican (now federal RF) - regional, etc. submission. They are usually the centers of regions.

Each level of administrative division has its own territories. Hierarchies are correlated vertically, and the objects subordinate to them are adjacent horizontally - on the territory. Our space is an overlay, a mosaic of territories of different subordination (rank). Example: located within a radius of 10 km is an airport of the former Soviet Union level with a village, a highway of republican significance, a town of regional subordination, something agricultural at the regional level and a village within the village council, a closed facility.

However, connections do not go hand in hand with neighborhoods. The proximity of cells in the Soviet space does not oblige them to contacts; on the contrary, neighborhood is fraught with isolation, problems, and conflicts. Soviet space is a fragmented space, a set of cells connected not directly, horizontally, but only vertically, through the center. The closure of all connections to centers - from regional to Moscow - leads to an interesting inversion . The cells are connected to each other only through the center, but since neighboring places in the landscape are connected by borders, in Soviet space the centers took on the functions of borders, becoming functional borders.

All of the above would not have much significance for the organization of the territory, the cultural landscape, if the ATD system existed outside and apart from the settlement system, the hierarchy of industrial centers, etc.; but all this is strung on the ATD - the supporting frame of all human activity in the Soviet space. All ATD units, regions, are complex, universal, total regions; It is from these districts-parts that the country consists. There is simply no other system of districts comparable in strength in the space of the former USSR. All activities are managed within the regions. Everyone knows that the healthcare, agricultural, social and cultural systems, etc. built on the ATD frame.

The region is also a program area; The program's function is to manage people's lives and provide life support. The programs are differentiated by ATD levels. The ATD system is not so much a system of territories as a universal system of statuses; statuses are strictly fixed. We have not only territories, settlements, enterprises, objects, but also people - of union, republican, regional, district significance. Programs, tasks, functions are distributed among ADT units, therefore, at the administrative boundaries of regions, and even more so when moving from level to level, the type, quality of everyday life, specialization of agriculture and much more, even customary law, changes dramatically. ATD is the framework for complete vertical-horizontal segregation of social life.

The unity of the region is strengthened by the fact that the region is a real hub area , that is, a territory headed by a center that is dominant in all respects, connected to it and subordinate to it, a network of settlements strung on a centripetal frame of transport highways. The ADT system generates a monocentric, monohierarchical space.

The only axis subordinating all directions of the territory is the center-periphery axis. The differentiation of the territory is determined by the distance from the center; therefore, development, population, and density of the transport network sharply decrease in the direction from the center. Even the placement of tracts of preserved natural landscape - especially agriculture - is subordinated to this structure. What about the natural landscape there; in the centers, people are richer, more beautiful and healthy than on the periphery of the regions, the centripetal force of which is total. The main connections are centripetal. The basis of the transport network. b - connections between centers according to the hierarchy; in the USSR, 2/3 of railway passenger traffic went through Moscow. The boundaries of the administrative district, especially the region, are almost never crossed by transport; Desolation reigns on the borders of the regions. On aerial photographs of the territory of the USSR, the boundaries of regions are clearly visible as unique integral plates; regions are striking even from space, and there can be no doubt about their reality.

The hierarchy of centers corresponds to the hierarchy of regions. The center of the region is the main administrative, industrial, cultural, etc. center, the largest in size. The Soviet space does not know a situation where the largest, richest city, administrative center, site of the best university, location of the largest manufacturing concern would be five different cities. We have one city. All hierarchies are combined: monohierarchical space.

The bulk of connections are made within regions. The software-node closure of a region makes it integral, delimited and isolated. The institutional framework is not imposed from the outside, but permeates the territory through and through, materialized, reified. The region is a monolithic social and economic slab. ATD is the only system of parts into which space is divided and of which it consists. The main relationships and differences in space are the relationships either between these parts of the region or within them.

Regions were already proto-subjects in Soviet times - let us remember the fight against localism. Total regions create administrative identification. The life world of most people is determined by the ADT system. Life, competence; regions, arenas and horizons. Such a space is doomed to be insane.

The ADT system is a world of self-similar symmetry, a grandiose system of self-similarity. A region is similar in design to a state (this structure of Soviet space serves as the basis for explaining the collapse of the USSR).

There were several systems that held together the Soviet space during the USSR. The upper levels had territories in regions of all levels. The functional core of the ATD system was the regional-supraregional apparatus of the Communist Party. The supraregional center was a key, functional link in the ATD system, simultaneously providing and suppressing the regions. The fit of the system of regions required continuous violence, powerful vertical communication while blocking horizontal communication, strict division by levels of the regional hierarchy of control of the most important resources and vertical flows of such resources. In the USSR - a region of the highest rank - there was an integrating subsystem. It almost coincided with the military-industrial complex, which implemented the functions of integration of both the state and the territory.

Hence the formula: