Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how the (re)construction of Moscow in the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union has sought to embody a new national narrative by incorporating and renovating elements of the tsarist and Soviet past in service of the imperial aspirations of the post-Soviet present.

Paper long abstract:

In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow, as the capital of the Russian Federation, has undergone a radical renovation. Among the most controversial and visible projects have been the destruction and reconstruction of symbolically charged structures as a means of appropriating and rewriting the past and thereby shaping the urban space into a vehicle for a new Russian imperial narrative. The recent firing of long-time Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, the force behind the transformation of the capital, throws into relief the vulnerability of the semiotic coherence of the post-Soviet Moscow city text. Controversies over such charged architectural projects as the rebuilding of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, destroyed by Stalin in the early 1930s, and the destruction and reconstruction of the Stalin era Hotel Moscow in the center of the city highlight the vexed intersection of tsarist and Soviet imperial narratives in the architectural landscape of contemporary Moscow. While critics have accused the Moscow of today of conceptual incoherence, this paper will argue that the dynamic city text of contemporary Moscow renders visible a narrative that seeks to reconcile usable pasts in the service of the everyday realities of the present.