Burzyć, mieszkać, produkować. Ideowe podstawy urbanistycznej teorii awangardy rosyjskiej lat 20. i 30. XX wieku w projekcie Socgorodu Nikołaja Milutina

The project of the socialist city devised by Nikolay Milyutin is presented in this article as the end point of Russian avant-garde urban planning in the 1920s and 1930s. Milyutin’s book Sotsgorod: The Problem of Building Socialist Cities, published in 1930, contains the main topics which the discussions and design practices of Russian urban planners centred on in those years. At the same time it was an attempt at a comprehensive formulation of the principles of designing contemporary forms of habitation, which according to Milyutin were to answer the needs and potential of a new revolutionary society. The essential demands that Milyutin formulated regarding required design practices that were in accordance with avant-garde ideas derived from ideological premises, related to a kind of structural formation of a settlement that effaced the differences between urban and rural areas and maximized its functionality. This meant having recourse to the concept of a linear city, with a functionally diverse system of building bands spaced along the main communication line. Like the avant-garde architects and planners, Milyutin argued that this would improve transport between the home and workplace, or areas with services or of recreation. The linear structure would also improve the condition of the dwellings, making them healthier to live in, and provide residents with equal access to all points of the settlement structure. Albeit less rigorously than members of the avant-garde, Milyutin also associated the nature of the linear socialist city with the project of anthropological revolution, on the strength of which, through dismantling of the family, the fundamental reconstruction of the social system was to take place. The functions fulfilled by the family were to be subjected to a strenuous process of socialization. However, Milyutin was more radical in terms of functionalization of the urban layout, choosing the process of continuous-flow manufacturing as a model of efficiency for the organization of the settlement, as well as emphasizing the need to recognize the temporary nature of new urban systems – both due to financial constraints (he advised putting up light wooden structures) and macroeconomic factors – related, for example, to the necessity of dismantling a city due to economic requirements (for example, the depletion of existing mineral deposits, or changes in the methods of production of certain goods).