The city as the stage for a war of narratives: the case of the Yekaterinburg tower

Abstract

The article analyzes the reaction of the city community to the demolition of an unfinished TV tower in Yekaterinburg. In the course of collective storytelling about the tower, an extensive archive of verbal narratives was formed. This archive has become the object of analysis focused on the interrelated problems manifested in the competition of narratives about the fate of the tower. These problems represent a harmonization of urban communications and the adequacy of technocratic rationality in understanding the values of urban development. The paradox of the Yekaterinburg case is that a sharp controversy involving the authorities, business and city communities broke out around the ruins — a “useless” object from the point of view of technocratic rationality. The analysis of competing narratives of the tower in the article is based on the concept of urban narratives as a constructive element of the urban environment. The article attempts to highlight the main master narratives that formed the basis of controversy around the tower. While the authorities appealed to the urban community from the standpoint of the modernist narrative of a “bright future,” the citizens opposed this technocratic rational narrative with an array of personal stories. These stories are united by a master narrative, which could be tentatively defined as poetic. An important role in substantiating the value of the tower was played by the master narrative of the greatness and mysteries of the mythologized Soviet past. The history of the tower has clearly demonstrated the clash of rational and symbolic order in the development of the modern city and illustrated the value and persistence of the symbolic. The city community rallied to defend the “useless” object in spite of the authority’s rational arguments since the tower had become a significant symbolic locus of the city, the generator of city stories.