Building Peoples’ Friendship University in Moscow: Internationalization of Socialist Modernism in the Cold War Context

Date

2024-8-26

Author

Alptekin, Ali Haydar

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This study aims to evaluate the spatiality of urbanized and industrialized socialism at its very center, i.e. Moscow, the capital city of the Soviet Union, in the post-World War II period when the international contacts of the city began to develop. Focusing on the internationalization of socialist modernism especially in the 1960s, the opportunities, knowhow production and experiences of spatiality in various public and private environments of Peoples’ Friendship University in Moscow, later named after Patrice Lumumba, is examined. Post-war universities in the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as two superpowers of the Cold War, are initially analyzed to understand the foundation of Peoples’ Friendship University in 1960. The socialist modern university will then be the focus of analysis, requiring an understanding of post-war modernity and socialist modernism in architecture. In this frame, the making of Peoples’ Friendship University with its administrative and academic aims, and spatial features in relation to the construction of the university complex as a campus is under investigation. How (foreign) students were living in the university is evaluated in order to understand daily life in the campus. Thus, examining why and how Peoples’ Friendship University aimed to become a “social condenser” of the relation between the Soviet Union and other countries, the study point outs the fact that its campus provided the space for realization of this aim, and potential influences of the university exceeded the boundaries of the campus to reach overseas by its graduates in Third World.

Subject Keywords

Peoples’ Friendship University, Moscow, Soviet Union, Socialist Modernism, Cold War

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/110828

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis