Thanks to @JohnVsetecka for the ”Spotlight” interview at H-Ukraine. I met John virtually a few years back, when he reached out for help tracking down a factory newspaper from 1930s Kharkiv. Helpfulness almost always comes back around. So, thanks for the opportunity, John/H-Ukraine! A snippet:
H-Ukraine: I remember first coming across your work when doing some research on the Kharkiv Tractor Plant (KhTZ), and you graciously replied to an email of mine asking for more information about the factory newspaper Tempo. It was so wonderful to meet someone else who was as passionate about tractors and the sotsgorod as me! When did you become interested in Soviet history, and what made you decide to study Soviet architecture and planning?
CC: I’ve been interested in these ideas and visiting sites built during the early Soviet period for a long time. I was an exchange student in Krasnodar with a Russian family in the final year of the USSR—a totally life-changing experience. I learned the language and culture from my Russian family, trial by fire, and am still close with them. Of course, 1990-91 was a tumultuous year. Quite a few of my exchange cohort, who experienced the Soviet Union collapsing in real-time, ended up studying Soviet history in college. And as for my focus on Soviet architecture and planning: well, I know from experience that English-language literature on Soviet architecture and planning is truly sparse. At the Harvard GSD (the top-ranked architecture school internationally, taken as just one notable example), the only projects from the socialist world taught (if any are at all) are so-called paper projects: visionary avant-garde designs, never built. Why don’t we know more about the material spaces that contained the lives of Soviet citizens for so much of the 20th century? Because of my background in practice, I am particularly interested in those built projects. Environments constructed in Soviet times reveal viable alternatives to the architecture and cities built under capitalism.
Stay for the Ukraine travel tips from the architectural historian (well, me) at the end: https://networks.h-net.org/node/4555727/discussions/7904172/h-ukraine-spotlight-interview-christina-crawford