Living with socialism: Toward an archaeology of a post-soviet industrial town

Abstract

While the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it left a heavy legacy in the form of industrial towns, residential buildings, infrastructure networks, and ecological damage that extends the Soviet Union’s effective history into the present day. This paper explores this legacy through the perspective of contemporary archaeology to better understand how material culture from the Soviet period is being reused in the present concerning the resource extractive industry. Research focuses on the nickel, copper, and cobalt-processing town of Monchegorsk, Murmansk Oblast in northwest Russia. By employing a combination of historical sources and fieldwork, the paper demonstrates how things from the Soviet past are being repurposed in the post-Soviet present. This in turn limits possibilities for imagined possible futures by its residents. The paper concludes by highlighting the need to pay attention to the material culture of the resource extraction industry itself when studying its persistent legacies.