Building Utopia: Cities, 'Megaprojects', and Socialism in the USSR

'Utopia' has always been a realm of dreamers and intellectuals. But between 1917 and 1991, the political leaders of the Soviet Union actually built their socialist utopia, brick by brick. They constructed cities in a matter of months, moved whole factories by train, and even tried to reverse the course of rivers. This class aims to explore how infrastructure, as policy and in implementation, impacted the political, geographic, economic, social, and environmental history of the USSR. We will examine maps, architecture, propaganda, newspapers, and films to figure out how socialism was `built' and what the consequences were.