Soviet Architects in Viborg: Production of Heritage and Archeology of the Periphery in the Borderland City 1940s – 1960s

The research paper «Soviet architects in Vyborg: production of heritage and archeology of the peripheryin the borderland city 1940s-1960s» is dedicated to the architectural and urban planning policy of the Soviet state on the territory of Vyborg – a former Finnish town annexed to the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Much attention is paid to the analysis of the development of policies of historical memory during the post-war period and the symbolic mastering of urban space. The purpose of the research is to describe the dialectics of construction of the historical heritage of Vyborg in the context of Soviet nationality policy. The study raised the following question: is it possible to identify the symbolic and institutional resources of the national imagination of the Soviet state on the periphery on the example of the architectural development of Vyborg? What are the mechanisms and consequences of activation of these resources in a heterogeneous space of the borderland city? This work fills an existing gap in historiography – the lack of Russian-speaking research on post-war reconstruction of Vyborg not only introducing previously unused historical sources into circulation, but also creating new ones – on the basis of in-depth interviews with architects who were contemporaries of the described events. The research also offers a unique approach to the study of Soviet nationality policy within the field of urban studies and history of architecture. A feature of the methodological scope of this paper is to use a multidisciplinary approach to research design. The stated historical problem is analyzed using the methods of historical urbanism, history, architectural practice and urban planning.