Reconstruction of the remembrance: Palace of Culture in Slantsy

Abstract

Impressive public architecture has a power to influence and imbue a space with a legend and cultural and social values and accumulate collective memories. A Palace of Culture, or Dvorets Kul’tury in Russian, represents a socialist belief, commonwealth, and people’s democracy. The monumental Stalinist Palace of Culture is a multifunctional public architecture that was built as a sociocultural epicenter in many Soviet cities. The case of the Palace of Culture in Slantsy, which is a mining town in Leningrad Region in Russia, may be an eloquent projection of this building type and its era. The edifice is currently under reconstruction after its abandonment for a long time, thereby entailing the reincarnation of citizens’ memories and the creation of new hopes and experiences.

Keywords

Neoclassicism / Palace of culture / Collective memory / Sociocultural values / Reconstruction / Slantsy town

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2019 Higher Education Press Limited Company. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).