Ideology in Infrastructure: Architecture and Soviet Imagination

Ideology does not just exist in linguistic form; it also appears in material structures. The Soviet party‐state believed architecture to have a transformative effect and promoted communal dwellings in order to mould a new socialist way of life. What was the outcome? Using the examples of the communal hostel and the courtyard, the article suggests that we should take account of the eventual everyday sociality but also go beyond it to investigate how the imagination worked in such places. The material structure did not generate the socialist values quite as intended. Imaginative literature and satire are used to show that architecture acted, rather, like a prism. Ideas were deflected from it, yet not in a random way.