CHAPTER SEVEN

HOW SMALL KITCHENS BECOME SMALLER: SOCIAL LIFE OF SOVIET

MICRO-DISTRICTS IN BISHKEK

EMIL NASRITDINOV, YELENA GAREYEVA AND TATIANA EFREMENKO

Introduction An elderly Russian lady is drinking tea by her window in the small kitchen of her Soviet-style apartment building,

constructed 40 years ago. She is drinking her tea alone. Slowly mixing sugar, she looks into the empty yard, while her memories take her back to the years of her youth, when the yard was full of life. She sips her tea and sighs; a cat, lonely like herself, slowly makes her way across the yard, disturbed by no one. This image invites a discussion of the social meaning of interiority, and an analysis of the boundaries between public and private in the context of a post-Soviet micro-district—a residential neighbourhood in Bishkek, the capital city of Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. This paper argues that examining the transformation of urban space from the Soviet to post-Soviet will enable unique insights into the nature of the twenty-first century residential interiors. These post-Soviet urban transformations can be approached from different angles: as transformation from modernist to postmodern, socialist to post-socialist, physical to virtual, gemeinschaft to gesellschaft, and public to private. Brief overviews of these approaches are provided in this introductory section.

The Soviet city was a modernist city built around functionality and minimalist aesthetics. Standard buildings constantly reproduced the mechanised homogeneity of residential spaces all across the Soviet Union. A modernist city was a functionally segregated city—divided according to the zone planning schemes into industrial, administrative, recreational and residential areas.1 Residential areas were often divided into micro-districts with minimal functional requirements (a school, kindergarten and shop). In contrast, the postmodern city is a fragmented, fractured city.2 It can be best understood not as a mosaic of socially, culturally and economically cohesive areas, but as a form of networked urbanism with “decentralized, diffuse, and sprawling character which depend on multiple and myriad technological, informational, personal and organizational networks that link locations in complex ways”.3

The Soviet city was a socialist city, with enterprise-driven (rather than ethnic, racial or economic) social segregation. Three quarters of state housing belonged to factories, administrations and other institutions.4 This did not create spatial social inequalities; rather, it reinforced social cohesions.5 In contrast, the post-Soviet city is socially and culturally much more diverse. It produces social stratification and creates new wealthy gated communities amidst newly emerging squatter settlements built by internal migrants.6 There is also strong trend towards the commercialisation of both public and private spheres.7 The Soviet city is physical, while the post-Soviet city is significantly digital and virtual. Many new urban concepts related to the introduction of digital technologies, internet communication and global media in urban contexts—which are described by Mitchel, Castels and Aurigi and Graham8—can be applied to the post-Soviet cities: information age, virtual reality, network society, hybrid spaces and

1 J. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). 2 E. Soje, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (Verso, 2011); S. Watson and K. Gibson, Postmodern Cities and Spaces (Brooklyn, NY: Wiley-Blackwell, 1995). 3 T. Blockland and M. Savage, “Social Capital and Networked Urbanism,” in Networked Urbanism: Social Capital in the City, eds. T. Blockland and M. Savage (Aldershot Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008), 4–5. 4 C. Pickvance, “State Socialism, Post-Socialism, and their Urban Patterns: Theorizing the Central and Eastern European Experience,” in Understanding the City, eds., J. Eade and C. Mele (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002). 5 S. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin (Baltimore, Maryland: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). 6 C. Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economics after Socialism (Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 2002); C. Humphrey, “New Subjects and Situated Interdependence: After Privatization in Ulan-Ude,” in Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia, eds., C. Alexander, V. Bulchi and C. Humphrey (London: University College London Press, 2007); G. Manzanova, “City of Migrants: Contemporary ulan-Ude in the Context of Russian Migration,” Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia, eds. C. Alexander, V. Buclhi and C. Humphrey (London: University College London Press, 2007). 7 M. Miles, “Public Spheres,” in Public Spheres after Socialism, eds. A. Harutyunan, K. Hörschelmann and M. Miles (Bristol: intellect, 2009). 8 W. Mitchel, City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn (MIT Press, 1996); M. Castels, "Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Space in the Information Age," in The City Reader, eds. R. LeGates and F. Stout (Cambridge, MA: Routledge, 2011); A. Aurigi and S. Graham, “Cyberspace and the City: The ‘Virtual City’ in Europe,” in A Companion to the City, eds. G. Bridge and S. Watson (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003).

so forth. These concepts provide new ways of examining how technology shapes contemporary private and public spaces in the post-Soviet city.

Classical concepts from urban studies can be applied to the analysis of urban life in Soviet and post-Soviet cities. Soviet residential neighbourhoods can be viewed as socially strongly bounded gemeinschaft communities or urban villages,9 while post-Soviet urbanites have more characteristics of gesellschaft society—a society of individuals with a limited number of close social connections.10 Finally, Soviet to post-Soviet urban transformation can be analysed in relation to the relative weight of urban public and private domains. Soviet cities and Soviet urban life had a much stronger public component in relation to the organisation of physical space and communal life. In contrast, the main features of the post-Soviet urban transformation were privatisation, compartmentalisation11 and loss of public milieu.12

Public spaces in post-Soviet cities have received significant attention from scholars. A significant amount has also been written on public spaces in the post-Soviet Central Asian republics of Kyrgyzstan,13 Kazakhstan,14 Uzbekistan15 and Turkmenistan.16 However, the majority of these studies focus on official public spaces, monuments and national symbols located in the city centres. Very little has been written about everyday public spaces in residential areas. A couple of important exceptions include Alexander’s discussion of the public sector in Almaty,17 and Schroeder’s study of urban social life and residential public space in Kyrgyzstan, on the example of Yug-2—a residential neighbourhood in Bishkek. In this study, he focuses on how identities of young people from this district are constructed, and the role of shared public space and social practices in their lives today.18

This current paper develops in a similar direction as Schroeder and attempts to compensate for the lack of discussion on the relationship between everyday public and private domains. It deals with residential urban units of three different scales in Bishkek: the residential micro-district, apartment building and individual apartment. The paper proceeds by contrasting the physical setting and social life of the ninth micro-district during the Soviet time with the present day situation. It traces the aforementioned dimensions of Soviet to post-Soviet urban transformations through the ethnography of this specific place. The methodologies of research include observations, interviews, life stories, photography and mapping. The kitchen, as the smallest bounded space of the micro-district, is used to initiate and conclude the discussion.

Social Life and Public Space Inside the Micro-district During Soviet Times Everyday life in Bishkek’s micro-districts during the Soviet time was interactive and social. Many residents of

multi-storey apartment buildings knew each other and exchanged news sitting on the benches at the end of the day. They visited each other’s houses, celebrated birthdays and other holidays, and gathered for subbotniks—Saturday cleaning days. Many did not lock their doors at night and left their windows open because they felt safe. Neighbours easily shared household goods, personal problems and rumours. It was very common for a neighbour in a building to knock on the door, ask for salt and end up staying for an hour or two discussing the latest news from work. It was also common to put tables outside and share food during special occasions. Larisa, a 68-year-old woman who greatly misses Soviet times, told us how they would share pancakes, baked pies and cookies with neighbours. She said that she would always bring a plate of baked food to share. She recalls these times with nostalgia: everything was cheap and neighbours were like relatives—very close and always helpful.

These well-interrelated residential communities were based not on kinship or nationality, but on place of work. The apartments in these buildings did not belong to people—they were the property of the State, given to workers of various state factories and institutions. Residents could not sell their apartments—these were their houses for life. Therefore, very often, many residents shared their living and working space and knew each other well. Moreover, kindergartens inside micro-districts were sponsored and maintained by the same organisations; therefore, even the children of these residents knew each other from a very young age. After kindergarten, the children usually all went to

9 E. Gans, Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (New York: Free Press, 1982). 10 L. Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” The American Journal of Sociology 44, 1 (1938), 1–24; G. Simmel, “The Metropolis of Modern Life,” in Simmel: On Individuality and Social Forms, ed. Levine (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1971), 324. 11 Humphrey, The Unmaking of Soviet Life: Everyday Economics after Socialism (Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 2002). 12 Miles, “Public Spheres.” 13 S. Cummings, “Leaving Lenin: Elites, Official Ideology and Monuments in the Kyrgyz Republic,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity 41, 4 (2012): 600–21. 14 B. Koppen, “The Production of a New Eurasian Capital on the Kazakh Steppe: Architecture, Urban Design, and Identity in Astana,” Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, 41, 4 (2013): 590–605. 15 J. Bell, “Redefining National Identity in Uzbekistan: Symbolic Tensions in Tashkent’s Official Public Landscape,” Cultural Geographies 6 (1999): 183. 16 M. Denison, “The Art of Impossible: Political Symbolism, and the Creation of National Identity and Collective Memory in Post-Soviet Turkmenistan,” Europe-Asia Studies 61, 7 (2009): 1167–87. 17 Alexander, C. “Almaty: Rethinking the Public Sector.” In Urban Life in Post-Soviet Asia, edited by C. Alexander, V. Buchli and C. Humphrey. London: University College London Press, 2008. 18 Schroeder, P. “‘Urbanizing’ Bishkek: Interrelations of Boundaries, Migration, Group Size and Opportunity Structure.” Central Asian Survey 29, 4 (2011): 453–67.

the same school inside the micro-district; hence, people of several generations knew each other well and communicated on a daily basis.

These residential buildings had apartments with one, two or three rooms, and their area ranged from 27 to 70 square metres. Fig. 7-1 shows the typical plan of a two-room apartment from the so-called 104th series. The kitchens in these series of apartments were particularly tiny—about six square metres. After fitting in the stove, basin, bulky Soviet refrigerator, and couple of shelves, a family would have enough space to squeeze in a tiny table and two or three chairs. The bedroom was usually occupied by the parents, while the children would sleep in the living room, or vice versa. The residents were not allowed to reconstruct their apartments and create openings in the walls—even covering balconies was looked on negatively, as if a person had something to hide.

Fig. 7-1. Plan of the two-room apartment (104th series).

Due to having very little space inside these kinds of apartments and because there was little entertainment available at home (the television had only three channels: two from Moscow and one local, with the local channel broadcasting only in the evening), members of the family often preferred to spend more time outside with their neighbours. Considering that, in Bishkek, winter comes only in December and lasts until March, the weather was not a major obstacle to this. The territory outside was quite spacious—micro-districts were planned according to Soviet building standards, with plenty of space between buildings to enable proper sunlight exposure and ventilation, children’s playgrounds, communal events and greenery. Bishkek was always famous as one of the greenest cities in the USSR. Very few people had cars, and those that existed were usually kept in garages, not in the yards. The yards themselves were reasonably well looked after—every building entrance had benches in front, often shaded by grapevines. These benches played an important role in the social life of the yards, with elderly people occupying them during daytime, and young people occupying them after dark. Some yards had summer pavilions, the children’s playgrounds were in good condition, there were special places for drying washed clothing, and all yards were properly irrigated. Fig. 7-2 shows the plan of the ninth micro-district in Bishkek, where this research was conducted. This has 42 apartment buildings (all four-storey buildings with 48 apartments, except for one nine-storey building), a school, three kindergartens, university dorms, a food shop, a post office and a cafeteria.

Fig. 7-2. Plan of the ninth micro-district as it looked in Soviet times.

Subbotniks were organised once each week on Saturdays to clean up the neighbourhood and plant new trees and flowers. The state organisation called Zelenostroy provided seedlings for residents to plant. An elderly lady, baba Zina, explained to us that planting trees was a significant event, especially for the younger people. The boys rushed to plant as many seedlings as possible, which is why the tall trees currently standing in her yard are growing in such a chaotic order. However, some people did not like subbotniks because refusal to take part resulted in “voluntary” work that could imply various kinds of administrative punishment.

The boundaries between public and private were blurred. Informally, people spread rumours about each other’s lives; however, formally, “immoral” behaviour was subject to discussion and condemnation at the public meetings held in the workplaces. Neighbours could write complaints about other neighbours, while the domkom (apartment building supervisor), together with the uchastkovyi (local representative of the police), had significant powers as controllers of social behaviour. Some people left their doors and windows open, even at night, because they were not afraid of being robbed or attacked. This facilitated neighbours taking care of lonely, elderly and disabled people who needed help. Widows and the elderly were also helped economically. Guests were common—people came to ask for salt, sugar or bread, or just to talk. They could simply knock on the door and enter without waiting for people to open. Children playing outside in the yard were under the continuous observation of elderly grandparents who spent most of the day on the benches in the yard.

Most of our elderly respondents remember only the good times of the Soviet period, during which neighbours lived a happy communal life, and the popular Russian proverb suggested that “a good neighbour is closer than a relative”. However, this idyllic image of the past communal life in the Soviet micro-districts may be over-romanticised. There were also negative aspects of life in the Soviet micro-districts. For example, the city was divided among youth gangs based on the territories in which they lived. Several micro-districts could be united into one zone of influence. These youth gangs existed in constant conflict with each other to such an extent that young people often felt safe only inside their own regions. However, in the narratives of our respondents, these facts were usually downplayed. The past was idealised, and strongly contrasted to the contemporary situation in micro-districts.

We conclude this section by suggesting that apartment buildings in the Soviet micro-districts of Bishkek existed as strongly bounded entities with active communal life. At the same time, the interiors of the apartments were quite “unbounded”—people preferred to spend more time outside, while their doors were open for neighbours to visit. It is for these reasons that the small kitchens of these apartments did not feel that small, and the residents were not isolated. The situation significantly changed after the collapse of Soviet Union, as discussed in the next section.

Present Situation in the Micro-district The collapse of the Soviet Union brought significant changes to the demographics of the country’s capital. During

the Soviet times, Bishkek—then Frunze—was a predominantly Russian city, with the ethnic ratio of Russian to Kyrgyz about 80 to 20 per cent. As Soviet factories began closing in 1991, Russian residents lost their jobs and started selling their apartments and migrating to Russia. This became possible because of privatisation—all residents were allowed to privatise and sell their apartments. In the early 1990s, the cost of apartments was very small—from US$500 to 1,000. The apartments of Russian residents were purchased mostly by the Kyrgyz residents of the city and by Kyrgyz internal migrants moving to Bishkek from other parts of Kyrgyzstan, where income opportunities were almost non-existent. Large markets in Bishkek were some of the few places people could earn a wage, and many apartments were purchased with money made by traders in these markets. In addition, many apartments were purchased on remittances sent by Kyrgyz labour migrants working in Russia.

Today, the ethnic composition of the city has almost reversed, with nearly 80 per cent of city residents being Kyrgyz. Many Kyrgyz internal migrants moved to new residential areas on the outskirts of the city; however, the demographics of the micro-districts also changed significantly. The Soviet residential communities of the micro-districts—which were based on a common place of work and characterised by a strong sense of solidarity, knowledge of one’s neighbours and active socialisation—began to break down due to the exit of Russian residents and entrance of Kyrgyz migrants from other regions of Kyrgyzstan, who often did not speak much Russian. Today, 22 years after the collapse, life in the micro-districts is very different to how it was during the Soviet time. The physical appearance of the micro-district has changed, with the general sense being of strong decline. Many benches in front of the building entries are broken—often intentionally by the residents themselves because adults and elderly people no longer spend time outside, while unknown migrant youths are believed to drink, smoke, litter and talk loudly during the night, and are unwelcome.

Fig. 7-3. Left: Completely removed benches in front of a building entry (only concrete foundations are left). Right: Broken benches in the yard.

Many children’s playgrounds are in a poor condition, with slides and swings broken and no sand in the sandpit. In many yards, children’s playgrounds were demolished to create space for car parking. Cars are also parked on lawns, with irrigation ditches destroyed when drivers cross the lawn from the driveway. There are two reasons for this parking arrangement: first, there are many more cars in the city than during Soviet times, and second, there are insufficient parking spaces. Public space is almost non-existent and children play hide and seek between cars, frequently setting off car alarms and hearing car owners yell at them from windows.

Fig. 7-4. Left: Cars parked on the space of a former children playground. Right: Cars parked on the lawn.

The public space of yards has become significantly commercialised. During Soviet times, there was only one shop for the entire micro-district; now, there is, on average, one small food shop for two apartment buildings. Many people who work in these shops are internal migrants. Soviet state shops worked on schedule and were closed by six or seven o’clock at night, while new shops are open until midnight. This makes life very convenient; however, as a result, people no longer knock on their neighbour’s door asking for salt. In the buildings close to the central roads, many first-floor flats have been redesigned into private dental clinics, notary offices, clothing and grocery shops, restaurants, canteens and internet cafés. Internet cafés and computer games rooms are especially popular in the micro-districts, and many young males prefer to play online games in small, dark and stuffy rooms, rather than playing outside.

Fig. 7-5. A new, small food shop inside a micro-district.

During Soviet times, the entries to buildings were always open—now, almost every entry has a metal door with an intercom, and only people with keys can enter. In addition, some entrances have video cameras. Community control, which was once performed by elderly grandparents, has been replaced by video surveillance. The apartments on the first and second floor are likely to have iron grills installed on their windows and balconies. There is a stronger fear and suspicion of outsiders, which was uncommon in Soviet times, when doors of apartments were left open during the night.

Fig. 7-6. Intercom and video surveillance (the sign reads: “Yard is under video surveillance”).

Finally, micro-districts become increasingly complex in their social organisation. Micro-districts already have water, central heating and natural gas; thus, it is cheaper for construction companies to squeeze new housing into micro-districts, rather than building in new, undeveloped areas without infrastructure. Using various corrupt schemes, they purchase municipal land—public spaces inside micro-districts—and build new residential apartment buildings. These new apartments are more expensive than apartments in existing Soviet buildings, and are also more spacious—there are four-room apartments as large as 120 to 140 square metres. The new buildings are usually nine storeys and have penthouses. Commonly, these new residential towers are referred to as “elite” housing. While many residents in the micro-districts have a working class background and received their apartments from the State as workers on factories during Soviet times, apartments in new buildings are affordable only to the wealthy members of Bishkek’s population. These new residential “elite” complexes are built as gated communities inside micro-districts, usually with fences and security around their territory. Not only are they built on spaces reserved for public use by residents of the micro-districts, they also break the connectivity of the space.

In contrast, university dormitories are also being constructed in the micro-district. During recent years, these have started making money by hosting university students and low-income migrant families. These dormitories have tiny studios with shared bathrooms and kitchens. Living conditions are far from decent—they are overcrowded, but they are affordable for families with low incomes. As a result, what used to be a socially homogenous community of residents in the Soviet micro-districts is now socially significantly stratified and divided—from gated “elite” housing, to a great diversity of lifestyles inside older Soviet apartment buildings, to more extreme poverty inside dormitories. This social stratification is another factor that helps erase the sense of community.

Fig. 7.7. Left: New “elite” apartment building with penthouses under construction. Right: Shared kitchens in the dormitories.

An 84-year-old Russian lady, Lyubov Ivanovna, has been a resident in the ninth micro-district for more than 40 years and is living through a personal drama of loneliness and regret. She misses Soviet times—the busyness of the yard, loud discussions and regular meetings. She remembers how she used to spend evenings, weekends and holidays with her friends in the yard, sharing news and singing: “My neighbours were my best friends since I did not have many other friends in the city”. Now, she has trouble communicating with her neighbours—she does not know many of them and they generally no longer talk or greet each other. Most of her neighbours spend their time at home and work, and do not socialise in the yard. Most of the time, she sits alone on a large pipe because the benches in the yard have been removed. Her only company is the small children who play soccer:

The yard appears to become a very deserted place to me. Only cars and clothes hanging out of the windows remind me that there are people living here. It makes me remember how alive it was in the past and how it becomes emptier and emptier day after day.

This older generation, especially of elderly Russians, significantly lacks interaction. Their friends, their relatives

and sometimes their children migrated back to Russia or passed away. Some elderly people visit their friends in neighbouring buildings and some yards preserve and maintain benches in a good condition; however, unfortunately, these are the exception. More and more elderly people, such as Lyubov Ivanovna, spend their time at home alone,

sitting by the window in their tiny Soviet kitchens, which now seem even smaller because there are no friends to drop by and chat about life.

Lubov Ivanovna lives with her 19-year-old granddaughter, and wonders why the girl never comes outside. She once asked her and the answer was, “People have changed since you were young, grandma; nowadays I can go and chat with my friends online through internet—it’s more convenient”. Lyubov Ivanovna feels sorry for the younger generation when she compares it to her youth, when boys took care of girls and everyone came together to play games and sing in the yard. Nowadays, every building has cable television with up to 70 channels and broadband internet at a fairly affordable cost. Internet use in Kyrgyzstan increased from 56,100 (0.1 per cent of the population) in 2000 to 2,194,400 (39.8 per cent of the population) in 2010.19 From early childhood, many children become accustomed to watching television and, as teenagers, they download and watch films online. Many join online video game communities. The respondents in this research shared the stories of extreme unhealthy de-socialisation among young people when they become detached from the outside world and spend most of their time online. Young males nowadays are obsessed with the popular Bishkek online game, Dota. Many skip classes at school or university to go to internet cafés and play the game for hours. One young respondent mentioned, “It is a real treasure for a girl to find a boyfriend who will not be playing Dota”.

The social life of young people is no longer bounded by the territory of micro-districts. As a rule, young people do not know many of their neighbours, do not greet them, and do not spend time in the yards. They do come out to talk, smoke or play soccer and basketball in the sport grounds of the local school, but this does not occur often. The other active alternative neighbourhood place to meet is at a mosque. With Islam growing increasingly popular every year, neighbourhood mosques are becoming not just places for worship, but also places for socialisation, especially among the younger generation. Residents of the ninth micro-district visit a mosque located a 10-minute walk away. However, its popularity is only beginning to grow and it is limited to males—practising Muslim women meet only once a week on Sundays in one of the apartments inside the micro-district.

For the more secular group of young people, neighbourhood friends are replaced by friends in social networks, such as Facebook, Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, and benches in the yards are replaced by benches in shopping malls that offer free Wi-Fi connections. It is common to see young people sitting on benches in malls all looking at their mobile telephones. Partly because of the looser ties inside micro-districts and partly because of wider connections built online, young people are more likely to meet friends from distant areas of the city somewhere in the middle ground—such as in the same shopping malls. The map in Fig. 7-8 shows the meeting places of six university students living in different parts of the city, indicating that friendship networks are not bound by place of residence.

Fig. 7-8. The meeting places of six university students (the large dots are the meeting places and the smaller dots are the places of residence).

The gender difference is also acknowledged in the number of social ties and amount of time spent outside. While boys are more likely to come into yards, sport grounds and mosques, young females spent most of their time at home doing housework and relying on internet and telephones for socialisation. As Russian culture is replaced by the more conservative Kyrgyz culture, certain traditional cultural stereotypes are reinforced. As one young female respondent, Asel, explained, spending too much time in her neighbourhood would spoil her reputation among relatives and family friends because, in a traditional Kyrgyz society, young unmarried girls must be pure, hardworking and not 19 Internet World Stats, Usage and Population Statistics, Kyrgyzstan: Internet usage, broadband and telecommunications reports, last accessed at http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia/kg.htm

communicate with males who are not relatives. Therefore, Asel visits malls and cafés with her friends because this is a public space where she can get to know people, without fear of being seen by her relatives and neighbours.

In conclusion, during this post-Soviet time, the micro-districts and yards of apartment buildings have lost their significance as public territories and become unbounded. The boundaries between them are blurrier in terms of population mobility on a daily basis, but also in terms of their internal social and cultural cohesion. There is very little interaction between neighbours, while public space is destroyed and public life within these territories is almost non-existent. In addition, the private spaces of apartments are turned into fortresses and reinforced by metal doors and video surveillance. Therefore, private life is strongly bounded from the outside physical world, and is unbounded by the virtual space formed by cable television and broadband internet. Young people are particularly more likely to spend time socialising, playing games online and making new connections that are not attached to specific territories.

Conclusion

This paper has reviewed how the boundaries between public and private are transforming during the transformation from socialism to capitalism. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the transformation of physical settings and social life in the Soviet micro-districts in Bishkek reveal how social space becomes commercialised, communal lifestyle is replaced by individualism, physical is substituted by virtual, equality gives way to strong social stratification, cultural homogeneity is segmented and there is a greater diversity of lifestyles. In addition, during this process of segmentation, the public space breaks down into hundreds of strongly fortified private domains.

Communist ideology produced uniformity, but also a sense of community. During Soviet times, the physical space was identical: all micro-districts, all buildings and all apartments looked very similar. The residents of micro-districts were also socially, culturally and often occupationally quite homogenous. There was a strong sense of group, and boundaries between the public and private were blurry—the two domains were not strongly separated. A bench in the yard played the same function as two chairs in the kitchen—platforms for neighbours to socialise. People spent much of their time outside and visited each other frequently, thus constantly reinforcing and reproducing the public domain.

Capitalist logic favours individualism, commercialisation and privatisation. When referring to “privatisation”, this does not only mean property ownership, but more the privatisation of lives—the collapse of the public and domination of the private domains. The Socialist-era yards die out, the benches are destroyed and communal life disappears, while residents are forced to spend an increasing amount of time in their apartments. This may not be so apparent for middle-aged residents, who are busy with work and family duties; however, for the elderly and young, who have more free time, it makes a more significant difference. However, while both age groups are affected, they cope with it differently. Young people are able to unbound their private domains in the virtual world of social networks and videogames. Images of private life are hidden by young girls from their neighbours, yet are posted on Facebook for strangers from around the world to see. Boys from different micro-districts encounter each other not in the park between two micro-districts, as used to happen in the past, but in online videogames at internet cafés located in basements. In addition, both boys and girls have replaced the public spaces of their yards with new (often commercial) public spaces in the city centre. However, for the elderly residents of micro-districts, their private spaces have become their prisons, and their small Soviet kitchens can be perceived as their post-Soviet prison cells. Grandparents looking into their deserted yards from behind the iron bars of their kitchen windows are symbolic prisoners of their own nostalgia—memories of those wonderful times when the yard was filled with the life, laughter and joy of socialisation. There are very few opportunities for them to “break free” and unbound their private life.

This paper has contributed to the idea of the “unbounded” space analysed in this volume by placing it in the unique physical and sociocultural context of the post-Soviet micro-district in a large Central Asian city. By focusing on the post-Soviet transformation, this paper has strengthened the contrast between public and private domains, and considered it from a historical perspective. This has revealed two main conclusions. First, from the larger-scale urbanism perspective, micro-districts—which, in Soviet times, were strongly bounded and cohesive entities—have now become unbounded. The boundaries between regions have become blurry, with residents becoming more mobile and social networks no longer limited, but expanded to include residents from distant parts of the city. Second, from the smaller-scale perspective of everyday life inside micro-districts, residents’ lives have become more bounded and limited to their private domains, with boundaries between public and private reinforced by both physical (iron doors and grills) and sociocultural obstructions. The younger generation is able to overcome the boundaries of private space by broadening it in the virtual world of online communication and by expanding their friendship networks to include people from other areas of the city. However, for the elderly, the loss of the public domain seems permanent. They are the real victims of “privatisation” and are prisoners in their bounded private cells—the small Soviet kitchens that have a psychological tendency to “shrink” as these elderly people grow older.

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