Microrayons under Consideration: The Use of Space, Memory and Nostalgia in Current Discourse of Latvian Microrayons
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2025-07-14
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en
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Microrayons, as a Soviet urban construction designed to provide equal housing for all citizens of the state and to promote a Soviet lifestyle, have been a much-discussed topic especially since 2022 amid Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In this thesis, I look at three personal reflections published as part of the independent newspaper Avīzes Nosaukums’ 34th edition from December of 2024 to answer the question of how the experience of growing up in microrayons is reflected in current discourses of Soviet-era architecture in Latvia. The first chapter explores this topic from the angle of space and explains how microrayons can act as a transnationally unifying platform. The second chapter expands on this from the angle of memory and discusses how microrayons have become sites of collective memory. The final third chapter then brings these two moments together from the angle of nostalgia to understand how nostalgia is employed in these conversations by relating it to the physical space of microrayons and the individual and collective memories of people who have lived in them. This three-part analysis reveals how microrayons, embodying people’s experiences, can act as a platform for a collective transnational post-Soviet identity while also acknowledging the ability to develop past a reductionist view of collective history.
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