Transporting the Proletariat: City Transit and Soviet Socialism, 1930s-1950s

• In Event: From Industrial Imagination to Cold War Realities: Soviet-American Encounters and Perceptions

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role of public transportation and its relationship to the meaning of Soviet socialism from the 1930s to 1950s. Using the cases in Leningrad and Riga as each planned a metro and trolleybus system across and beyond the Stalinism period highlights the centrality of city transit's important role under state socialism. Soviet city transit systems demonstrate the fluidity to the meaning of Soviet socialism under Stalinism and beyond in relation to the proletariats promise arrival of communism.

Author

• Justin Ramsey, U of Rochester