The Comeback of the European Cities

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Notes

1. An initial systematic attempt at an analysis of the transformation of the cities is in: Karl Schlögel, Berlin und das Städtenetz im neuen Europa, in Kursbuch Stadt. Stadtleben und Stadtkultur an der Jahrtausendwende, Redaktion: StefanBollmann, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1999, 17–38.

2. See Blair A. Ruble, Leningrad. Shaping a Soviet City, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Osford 1990. St. Petersburg—Die Stadt am Weißmeer-Ostsee-Kanal, in Berliner Osteuropa Info 20/2004, Osteuropa-Institut der FU Berlin, Schwerpunktthema 300 Jahre St. Petersburg, 5–13; Robert W. Orttung, From Leningrad to St. Petersburg. Democratization in a Russian City, New York 1995.

3. For more about the debate surrounding the appraisal of St Petersburg's centenary, see Karl Schlögel, Der Vorhang öffnet sich. Zum 300. Geburtstag von Sankt-Petersburg, in Der Tagesspiegel, 27 May 2003, 21,

4. For more on the transformation of the cities, see the contributions in: Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, edited by John J. Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble. Assisted by Lauren Crabtree, Washington DC, Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center press, The John Hopkins University Press 2003.

5. The ‘murder of the city’ stems as far as I am aware, from Bogdan Bogdanovic, the architect and former mayor of Belgrade, Cf. Die Stadt und der Tod, Klagenfurt: Wieser 1993; see also: ‘Murder of the City’ in: The New York Review of Books, May 27, 1993. For more on the character of the modern cities as open cities, cf. Georg Simmel, Die Großstädte und das Geistesleben, in: Georg Simmel. Das Individuum und die Freiheit. Essais, Berlin: Verlag Klaus Wagenbach 1984, 192–204.

6. Moscow's transformation is best documented in Moscow's key architecture magazines and in the Russian-Dutch magazine ‘Proekt Rossija/Project Russia’.

7. As far as I am aware, there has been no analysis of the terrific ‘decoration swap’ in the eastern cities. The process in which millions of people, within a very few years, replace their old furnishings with new is known as ‘Euroremont’. This process of spontaneous modernisation from below is probably only comparable to the mass modernisation of living conditions in Western Europe in the 1960s.

8. The development of the property market is described in the relevant magazines such ‘Dom i Usadba’ of glossy interior design magazines.

9. An example of the connections between historical urban research and real estate development is Dmitrij Gubin, Lev Lur'e, Igor Porosin, Real'nyj Peterburg. Sankt-Peterburg 2000.

10. For the difference between public space in socialism and in civic societies, see also Karl Schlögel, Der ‘Zentrale Gor'kij-Kultur- und Erholungspark’ (CPKIO) in Moskau. Zur Frage des öffentlichen Raums im Stalinismus, in: Manfred Hildermeier (Hg.), Stalinismus vor dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Neue Wege der Forschung, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs, Kolloquien 43, Munich 1998, 255–274.

11. For more on the shaping of the cities of eastern and central Europe in the twentieth century, see the portraits in: Karl Schlögel, Promenade in Jalta und andere Städtebilder, München: Carl Hanser Verlag 2001; and also: Karl Schlögel, Moskau und Berlin im 20. Jahrhundert. Zwei Stadtschicksale, in: Osteuropa. Zeitschrift für Gegenwartfragen des Ostens. 53 (9–10), September–October 2003, 1417–1433.

12. It would be worth carrying out a systematic comparison of the destruction of European cities.

13. That the ‘demographic pathology’ in the first half of the twentieth century shaped our understanding of European history was suggested at an early stage: Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move. War and Population Changes, 1917–1947, New York: Columbia University Press 1948.

14. See Europa in Ruinen, Augenzeugenbericht aus den Jahre 1944–1948. Gesammelt und mit einem Prospekt versehen von Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn Verlag 1999.

15. See two classical texts in modern urban history: Nikolaj Anziferow, Die Seele Petersburgs, München: Carl Hanser Verlag 2003 (Russian original: Saint Petersburg 1922) and Lewis Mumford, The City in History. Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects, New York: Harcourt, Brace &World 1961.

16. For more on cities in the late multinational empires see Michael F. Hamm (ed.), The City in Late Imperial Russia, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1986; Mythos Großstadt. Architektur und Stadtbaukunst in Zentraleuropa 1890–1937, edited by Eve Blau und Monika Platzer, München/London/New York: Prestel Verlag 1999.

17. A model study of the consequences of ethnic cleansing for cities is: Gregor Thum, Die fremde Stadt. Breslau 1945, Berlin: Siedler Verlag 2003. Similar studies are underway for Grodno, Lviv, Kaliningrad, Brno and others.

18. See Social Dimensions of Soviet Industrialization, ed. by William G. Rosenberg and Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Bloomington: Indiana University Press 1993; Moshe Lewin, The Making of the Soviet System, New York 1985.

19. David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

20. It would be useful to link the new discourse (post-1989) about ‘civil society’ to the old discourse about modernisation and the ‘nachgeholte Moderne’ (Jürgen Habermas).

21. The most detailed study is still: S.O. Chan-Magomedow, Pioniere der sowjetischen Architektur. Der Weg zur neuen sowjetischen Architektur in den zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreißiger Jahre, Dresden, 1983.

22. New interpretations, beyond ideological and political normativism, are primarily to be found in the work of: Sheila Fitzpatrick (ed.), Stalinism: New Directions, New York 2000; Stefan Plaggenborg (ed.), Stalinismus. Neue Forschungen und Konzepte, Berlin: Berlin Verlag 1998.

23. For more on the production of public space see Vladimir Papernyj, Kultura Dva, Moskva: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie 1996.

24. The phrase ‘Economy of Irresponsibility’ stems from the GDR dissident Rudolf Bahro.

25. See Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia. Cambridge 1994. N.B. Lebina, Povsednevnaja zhizn‘ sovetskogo goroda: Normy i anomalii, 1920–1930 gody. St. Petersburg 2000.

26. A literary portrayal of these experiences is in: Joseph Brodsky. Erinnerungen an Leningrad, München: Edition Akzente Hanser 1987.

27. Following Dietrich Geyer, Professor of East European History at Tübingen, who coined the phrase ‘Gesellschaft als staatliche Veranstaltung’ (society as state event’).

28. For the destruction of German cities by carpet bombing see Jörg Friedrich, Der Brand, Berlin: Propyläen Verlag 2001. For Kiev see: Kiiv 1941–1943. Fotoal'bom. Kiev, 2000.

29. The Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov has produced a remarkable autobiography as a Muscovite; see also: Roj Medvedev, Model’ Moskva, Moskva 2005.

30. The phrase ‘metropolitan corridor’ has been borrowed from the US historian John R. Stillgoe.

31. For the connections between globalisation and deterritorialisation see Charles S. Maier, Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era, in: American Historical Review, June 2000, 807–831; Karl Schlögel, Im Raume lesen wir die Zeit. Über Zivilisationsgeschichte und Geopolitik, München: Carl Hanser Verlag 2003.