A Forgotten Plot from the History of Soviet Urban Planning: the Unfulfilled All-Union Congress of VORS on the Planning of Socialist Cities (1931)

Abstract

The article focuses on a plot from the history of Soviet urban planning at the turn of the 1920s – 1930s, which had not previously come to the attention of researchers, namely, the idea of the All–Russian Society of Construction Rationalizers (VORS) to hold in early 1931 the first All-Union Congress on the planning of Socialist cities. Based on the materials of little-known today periodicals of that time and a few VORS’ documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), the article attempts to restore in general terms the history of creation and activity VORS, first of all, in the field of urban planning. Special attention is paid to the creation the Sector of Socialist Planning and Reconstruction of the USSR cities under the Central Board of the VORS under the leadership of S.M. Gorny and the initiative to hold an urban planning congress, which is considered among other events of this kind that took place and unfulfilled in the 1900s – 1930s. The semantic center of the article is the reports of the participants of the VORS conference (E. May, V.L. Orleansky, I.A. Ilyin and Main Geodetic Directorate of the VSNH of the USSR), held in March 1931 as an alternative to the postponed congress.