Soviet space - our inheritance

In our country, the targeted actions of the state (if the "Soviet state" was a state) has been formed for a long time and continues to exist - still a special, specific space 1 . The observed event is logical: there is a process of spontaneous transformation of the Soviet. The space in the Russian Federation is the result of the transformation of structures inherited from the USSR. A special type of space, characteristic of the USSR, is called Soviet space ; This is not a synonym for the territory of the USSR. Currently, the structures of Soviet space are still strong and mainly preserved, which is why it is appropriate to characterize the modern space in the territory of the Russian Federation (and most countries on the site of the former USSR) as a non -Soviet space . This article is not given complete (this is done in the above special works), but only an extremely brief characteristic of this space.

The main thing for space is by no means size. Soviet space is unusual for the modern world, it is the common space of society and the state, the space of society = the state . One system, a single frame and a pattern; Society and the state, power and everyday life have a single space. This could be clearly presented like this: to build maps of society and the state and study their possible coincidence. It will be complete; This is the same card. Having substituted agriculture and industry as examples, we find the specifics of 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 placement of production, hierarchy of settlements, statuses of territories, including ethnic statuses, life support, state institutions, etc. All existing is placed according to one drawing, laid out according to the same cells in the same order. Soviet space, in principle, is equally, structurally homogeneous everywhere. The places of Soviet space consist of few absolutely standard details. This is a kaleidoscope.

One, only space inevitably becomes a system of state statuses. Every place, position in space, is some status. There are no statuses regardless of the spatial position. Position in space = place in the state. The Soviet space does not know non -state space.

Soviet space is set from a surpatient position. Space-projection is designed. Many tasks that are lowered on top create spatial cells. Places, distances and communications of places are derived from vertical-hierarchical, power and administrative ties. A lot of cells connected in vertical compare a fragmented, torn space. The territory is formed (and even consists of) semi -insulated, difficult to associate quasy -wagon places. The cells are standardized and centralized.

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

AD in a narrow sense is a system of units invested in each other, areas that have certain rank, territory and boundaries. Further, the units of ATD are called regions . A number of the USSR: Republic - region - district, - known. There are intermediate not complete, that is, the levels of units that do not cover the entire territory: the city of the Union - Republican (now - the Federal Russian Federation) - regional, etc. subordination. They are usually centers of regions.

Each level of administrative division meets its territories. The hierarchies are correlated vertically, and the objects subordinate to them are adjacent horizontally - in the territory. Our space is the imposition, the mosaic of territories of different subordination (rank). Example: located within a radius of 10 km airport of the former union level with the village, highway of republican significance, the town of regional subordination, something agrarian district level and village as part of the village council, a closed object.

However, the relations of the neighborhood are not accompanied by. The neighborhood of the cells of the Soviet space does not oblige them to contacts; On the contrary, the neighborhood is fraught with insulation, problems, conflicts. Soviet space is a fragmented space, a set of cells, not directly related, horizontally, but only by vertical, through the center. The isolation of all ties to the centers - from district to Moscow - leads to an interesting inversion . The cells are connected with each other only through the center, but since the neighboring places of the landscape are connected by boundaries, in the Soviet space the centers took over the functions of the borders, becoming functionally.

All of the above would not have much importance for organizing the territory, the cultural landscape, - if the APD system existed outside and in addition to the resettlement system, the hierarchy of industrial centers, etc.; But all this is strung on the ATD - the carrier frame of all human activity in the Soviet space. All units of APD, regions, - complex, universal, total areas; It is from these areas-parts that the country consists of. Another comparable in the strength of the system of districts in the space of the former USSR is simply not. Within the regions, all activities are managed. Everyone knows that healthcare systems, agriculture, social education, etc. built according to the frame.

The region is also a software area; The function of the program is the management of people's lives and life support. Programs are differentiated by the levels of the AD. APD system is not so much a system of territories as a universal system of statuses; Statuses are rigidly fixed. We have not only territories, settlements, enterprises, objects, but also people - union, republican, regional, district significance. Programs, tasks, functions are distributed according to the units of the AD, therefore, the type, quality of everyday life, specialization of agriculture and much more, up to the usual right, change sharply on the administrative boundaries of the regions, and even more so when moving from level to level. ATD is a frame of the full vertical -goriconal segregation of society.

The unity of the region is intensified by the fact that the region is a real nodal district , that is, the territory, headed by the dominant center, associated with it and subordinate to it of the settlement, strung on the centripetal framework of transport highways. The ATD system gives rise to a monocentric, monoorchic space.

The only axis that subordinates all directions of the territory is the center of the center - the periphery. The differentiation of the territory is determined by the distance from the center; Therefore, in the direction of the center, the development, settlement, density of the transport network sharply subsides. Even the placement of arrays of the preserved natural landscape - especially agriculture - is subordinated to this structure. Thu about there a natural landscape; In centers, people are richer, beautiful and healthy than on the periphery of regions, whose centripetalism is total. The main connections are centrrilled. The basis of the transport network. B - connections between centers in the hierarchy; In the USSR, 2/3 of the railway passenger traffic went through Moscow. The boundaries of the administrative district, especially the regions, almost do not intersect by transport; On the boundaries of the regions, desolation reigns. On aerospace images of the territory of the USSR, the boundaries of the regions are clearly visible as peculiar holistic slabs; The regions are striking even from space, and in their reality there can be no doubt.

The hierarchy of regions is the hierarchy of centers. The center of the region is the main administrative, industrial, cultural ETC center, the largest size. The Soviet space does not know the situation when the largest, richest city, administrative center, the place of the best university, the whereabouts of the largest production concern would be five different cities. We have one city. All hierarchies are combined: monoorchic space.

Inside the regions, the bulk of the connections are closed. The program and nodal closure of the region makes it holistic, delimited and isolated. The institutional frame is not imposed from the outside, but permeates the territory through, materialized, materialized. The region is a monolithic social and economic slab. ATD is the only system of parts that is apart and of which the space consists of. Basic relationships and differences in space are either between these parts of the region, or inside them.

The regions already in Soviet times were protosub objects - recall the struggle with localism. Total regions create an administrative identification. The life world of most people is determined by the ATD system. Life, competence; Regions - arena and horizons. Such a space is doomed to be insane.

The ATD system is a world of auto -modified symmetry, a grandiose system of self -likeness. The region in design is similar to the state (such a structure of Soviet space serves as the basis for the explanation of the collapse of the USSR).

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

Hence the formula:

Soviet space = ATD/(ATD + VPK)

Soviet space is a special state of the cultural landscape, extreme and maximum. Moreover, this is an antonym, the direct opposite of the cultural landscape itself in the terminologically accurate sense - since the attributes of the cultural landscape are equivalent of all places, the value of the differences and diversity of the places themselves; The neighborhood in the landscape gives rise to mutual influence and communications, many different systems and areas coexist, among which there are no privileged and dominant; The landscape has many different systems of characteristic directions and hierarchies associated with them.

Soviet space is a space in place and instead of the cultural landscape itself, which - to be consistent and accurate - simply did not exist in the most part of the territory of the USSR.

But right now, Soviet space has entered the time of rapid transformations. This is rather a surprise - but the space turned out to be alive and capable of changing, and the historical soil of the pre -Soviet cultural landscape turned out to be more intact than it could be thought twenty years ago - and it is gradually restored.

1 V. Kagansky , " Cultural landscape and Soviet inhabited space ." M.: UFO, 2001; " Insane space " / "domestic notes", 2002, # 6; "The space of Russia: the old and the new" / "Where did Russia come? .. The results of the social transformation." M.: MVSHSEN, 2003; " Spatial development? Natural vibrations and artificial instability " / "Polit.ru", June 7.