The Rise and Fall of the Russian Shopping Mall in the Putin Era
Lead Research Organisation:
University College London
Department Name: School of Slavonic & East European Studi
Abstract
Background
Russia's built environment has changed significantly since the Soviet era ended, and in many ways which point towards the country's embrace of capitalism. Today, Russian cities are covered in giant advertising billboards; super-tall skyscrapers host offices for some of the world's biggest companies; and vast numbers of shopping malls have appeared across the country. Indeed, Russia now possesses more shopping mall space than any European nation (Roberts, 2016, p.30): since 2000, the number of shopping malls in Russia has exploded to such an extent that they can be regarded as a defining characteristic of Putin-era urbanism.
However, this is not a simple 'success' story: in 2018, a fire at a shopping centre in Kemerovo, Siberia, killed dozens of people, many of them children. This incident thrust the shopping mall into the epicentre of national outrage, opening questions about political corruption and casting a negative light on the boom in these spaces in Putin's Russia (Kliment'eva and Chevtaeva, 2018; Oreshkin, 2018; Revzin, 2018). An increasing number of commentators are now calling for or predicting the end of malls' domination over Russian urban space (Ershov, 2020; Kovtun, 2019; Tarasova, 2019). How and why have these spaces become so deeply integrated into Russian society, and could their 'golden age' really be coming to an end?
Aims and Methodology
This thesis seeks to examine provincial cities alongside Moscow and St Petersburg, thus 'de-centring' the deeply entrenched domination of these urban centres without ignoring them: to exclude them because they are 'centres' would perpetuate the idea that there is a fundamental opposition between these categories. It will also query the popular belief that shopping malls are simply a Western import, considering certain precursors to Putin-era urbanism, such as GUM, a pre-Soviet arcade on Moscow's Red Square; Mostorg, a Soviet department store; and Okhotny Ryad, a post-Soviet underground shopping mall next to the Kremlin. These historical comparisons will enable an examination of what is distinctly 'Russian', or 'post-Soviet', about these spaces.
As a thesis located within the field of urban studies, its methodology will necessarily be interdisciplinary: both the city and the mall are spaces in which the vectors of multiple disciplines intersect, meaning such an approach is essential to understand how they function. My research will focus on five central case studies, and will use a range of tools, including discourse analysis, architectural investigations and archival searches, as well as extensive original fieldwork surveys of previously unexamined shopping malls. This will enable a consideration of these spaces from various angles, including sociological, anthropological and cultural.
This project thus seeks to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on these urban spaces which have blossomed in Russia over the last two decades, interrogating the conditions which have led to their rapid expansion and questioning the notion that these spaces are on the decline. In such a way, it aims to provide a new perspective on 21st century Russian urbanity through the lens of this ubiquitous yet under-researched phenomenon.
To frame its investigation, this thesis posits the following research questions:
1. Does the rapid increase of shopping malls since 2000 represent a paradigm shift or a transformation of a pre-existing urbanism rooted in the historical forms of Russian cities?
2. What can these spaces tell us about recent transformations in Russian urbanity and public space?
3. What role has political/economic corruption played in developing these shopping malls?
Russia's built environment has changed significantly since the Soviet era ended, and in many ways which point towards the country's embrace of capitalism. Today, Russian cities are covered in giant advertising billboards; super-tall skyscrapers host offices for some of the world's biggest companies; and vast numbers of shopping malls have appeared across the country. Indeed, Russia now possesses more shopping mall space than any European nation (Roberts, 2016, p.30): since 2000, the number of shopping malls in Russia has exploded to such an extent that they can be regarded as a defining characteristic of Putin-era urbanism.
However, this is not a simple 'success' story: in 2018, a fire at a shopping centre in Kemerovo, Siberia, killed dozens of people, many of them children. This incident thrust the shopping mall into the epicentre of national outrage, opening questions about political corruption and casting a negative light on the boom in these spaces in Putin's Russia (Kliment'eva and Chevtaeva, 2018; Oreshkin, 2018; Revzin, 2018). An increasing number of commentators are now calling for or predicting the end of malls' domination over Russian urban space (Ershov, 2020; Kovtun, 2019; Tarasova, 2019). How and why have these spaces become so deeply integrated into Russian society, and could their 'golden age' really be coming to an end?
Aims and Methodology
This thesis seeks to examine provincial cities alongside Moscow and St Petersburg, thus 'de-centring' the deeply entrenched domination of these urban centres without ignoring them: to exclude them because they are 'centres' would perpetuate the idea that there is a fundamental opposition between these categories. It will also query the popular belief that shopping malls are simply a Western import, considering certain precursors to Putin-era urbanism, such as GUM, a pre-Soviet arcade on Moscow's Red Square; Mostorg, a Soviet department store; and Okhotny Ryad, a post-Soviet underground shopping mall next to the Kremlin. These historical comparisons will enable an examination of what is distinctly 'Russian', or 'post-Soviet', about these spaces.
As a thesis located within the field of urban studies, its methodology will necessarily be interdisciplinary: both the city and the mall are spaces in which the vectors of multiple disciplines intersect, meaning such an approach is essential to understand how they function. My research will focus on five central case studies, and will use a range of tools, including discourse analysis, architectural investigations and archival searches, as well as extensive original fieldwork surveys of previously unexamined shopping malls. This will enable a consideration of these spaces from various angles, including sociological, anthropological and cultural.
This project thus seeks to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on these urban spaces which have blossomed in Russia over the last two decades, interrogating the conditions which have led to their rapid expansion and questioning the notion that these spaces are on the decline. In such a way, it aims to provide a new perspective on 21st century Russian urbanity through the lens of this ubiquitous yet under-researched phenomenon.
To frame its investigation, this thesis posits the following research questions:
1. Does the rapid increase of shopping malls since 2000 represent a paradigm shift or a transformation of a pre-existing urbanism rooted in the historical forms of Russian cities?
2. What can these spaces tell us about recent transformations in Russian urbanity and public space?
3. What role has political/economic corruption played in developing these shopping malls?
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Grzegorz Murawski (Primary Supervisor) | |
| Oliver Banatvala (Student) |