‘We Used to Construct These Microdistricts Too...’: Elista in an oral narrative

Abstract

Introduction The article examines oral narratives about construction endeavors across Elista in the 1950s and early 1960s. Goals. The work analyzes narratives of earliest builders as a source to highlight somewhat universal features inherent to accounts of everyday life, feelings and moods associated with the restoration of the city on a specific example of stories narrating about the construction of Elista. This makes it possible to highlight universal elements and emphasize specifics of construction-related oral narratives, such as atypical plots in stories of residential building, features of architecture as a cultural factor, efficiency of use of local construction materials, as well as plans of the Soviet government. For this purpose, microurbanism is used both as a method of the city’s reconstruction and a way of describing its language. Materials. The study investigates field data collected in 2021–2022 in Elista. Results. Insights into oral narratives yield an opportunity, on the one hand, to examine the way of life of earliest builders, their active consumption and (re)construction of urban space marked by certain construction nuances, urban features and local contexts, and, on the other hand, to show the development of oral narrative about the city’s expansion in the 1950s–1960s — its universal and unique properties for microurbanism, and how these specificities are manifested (in what plots and topics).