Where did American-style settlements come from in Soviet Russia?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Imagine the typical landscape of an American suburb or small town: two-story houses with a lawn and a backyard for a Sunday BBQ, low white fences and flat paved roads. And can you believe that such towns were in the Soviet Union, and in its most remote parts?

Ural "Berezki"

Village "Berezki". Cottages - Vladislav Mikosha / MAMM / MDF / russiainphoto.ru

One of the most famous "American towns" is located in the south of the Urals, in the industrial Magnitogorsk. In 1925, the Soviet leadership decided to build the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, and in 1930 entered into an agreement with the Arthur McKee Company for design and general construction management.

American engineers arrived in the Urals in May 1930 and presented a plan for a combine similar to the U. S. Steel in Indiana, however, did not manage to develop all the drawings on time, and by the end of the year the contract was transferred to the Soviet design institutes.

Nevertheless, by the time of arrival for foreign specialists, the village "Berezki" had already been built, seven kilometers from the plant, consisting of luxurious cottages with gas, electricity, central heating, as well as all the necessary infrastructure such as walking paths and tennis courts. This place was popularly known as "American".

And although "Birchs" were called "workers' settlement", ordinary workers never lived there - their houses were much more modest, at best, they were cold wooden barracks.

After the American engineers left, the party elite settled in the cottages. Today, many of these houses are empty and dilapidated, although some are still in full swing.

American village in Nizhny Novgorod

And this village was built for American engineers from Ford and Ostin, who came to Russia to build the GAZ automobile plant in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

There were one- and two-story apartment buildings with neat lawns and walking alleys, a club where jazz was played, and a shop specially for foreign specialists.

Foreign experts have also developed a development plan for the builders and workers of the future automobile plant - the so-called "social city", however, they approved a more "condensed version".

Now, on the site of all these old houses, new residential quarters have appeared in the Avtozavodsky district. The only surviving building of the American Village is a bathhouse, which has now become an auto parts store.

Finnish Karelian Americans

In Petrozavodsk, the capital of Karelia, one of the main attractions of the city is the American Town in the city center. A small quarter, bounded by Anokhin, Gorky and Lenin streets, in 1930-1935 was inhabited by about 6, 5 thousand Finnish emigrants from the United States.

They came to the USSR in search of work: at that time the United States was going through an economic crisis, and the young country promised privileges to foreign specialists. American Finns came to Karelia to develop the timber industry. Foreigners stood out strongly against the background of local residents: they wore American raincoats and hats, spoke a mixture of Finnish, English and Russian, ate pork and beans.

In the Petrozavodsk American town there were wooden houses for several families, a dining room, a club where they staged Finnish classics. The houses were planned with bathrooms, despite the fact that there was no running water in the city at that time.

Today, only a couple of houses remain from the town, in which people still live.

"Winter" on Sakhalin

The suburban cottage community Zima near Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk is already a modern "American town", built in the early 2000s. It was designed by American architects for American oil specialists who came to the Far East. And it turned out very authentic.

Instead of Pushkin and Gorky streets, here are the streets of the Sun and Moon Light and the Blue Spruce Passage, instead of high fences, there are fluffy green lawns and high mailboxes at every house.

Of course, street names are also duplicated in English to make foreigners feel at home. Today these cottages have become simply elite housing, and mostly Russian families already live here.