Industrial areas of the city as a phenomenon of communication

Ilivitskaya Larisa Gennad'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-3339-9946 Doctor of Philosophy Associate Professor, Associate Professor of the Department of Philosophy and Culturology, Samara State Medical University 443099, Russia, Samara, Chapaevskaya str., 89 laraili@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The study of the city from the point of view of its communicativeness has a rather long and rich history. Thus, at the beginning of the formation of urban themes, G. Simmel talked about the phenomenon of "insensitive indifference" characteristic of urban residents. It was about their inability to emotionally interact with other people in the conditions of life in a big city ^[1]. Modern researchers, turning to communication processes, see them not only as one of the basic characteristics of urban space. From their point of view, they make up its essence, which will allow us to talk about a "communicative city" (S. Hamelink), meaning an environment whose conditions facilitate the free search, receipt and transmission of information by its inhabitants ^{[2, p. 198]}.

In general, by now there has been a fairly significant range of problems within the framework of the stated topic, which is included in the circle of interest of various disciplinary discourses. The research optics chosen by them largely depend on how the city is described, who is considered as participants in communication interaction, what mechanisms, methods, forms of communication are analyzed, what functionality of the communication process itself is taken into account, etc.

The culturological approach to the problems of urban communication in most cases operates with the understanding of the city, which is considered as an intersubjective space characterized by the emergence and functioning of meanings. Such an interpretation necessarily implies the unfolding of a dialogue between a person and a city, since the latter in this case is possible only if there is a connection that arises between him and the subject perceiving him. As I. I. Mitin notes, "the existence of an individual, a social group or society as a whole somewhere, in some space, presupposes one or another understanding of this space" ^{[3, p. 12]}. A city is a locality surrounded by human meaning" ^{[4, p. 209]}. Communicative action becomes a way (process) of producing urban reality.

The basis for clarifying the essence and specifics of the communicative nature of the city in this case are three basic concepts: text, understanding and meaning. The city is a complex, multi–layered and unfinished text. It is written using different alphabets and in different languages. According to V. N. Toporov, the city "has its own "language". He tells us with his streets, squares, waters, islands, gardens, buildings, monuments, people, history, ideas..." ^{[5, p. 22]}. But the existence of the text ensures the process of reading it. Therefore, it is extremely important for the city to be read. It is "readability" that is one of the basic conditions of its existence. K. Lynch, in his book "The Image of the City", defends the position that "readability is of key importance in the composition of the city" ^{[6, p. 16]}. In turn , M. de Serto points out that the city is an immense texturology, a certain kind of list that a person unfolds to read ^{[7, p. 25]}. The perception and understanding of the city by residents constructs it by endowing it with meanings and meanings. As E. Husserl noted, any reality acquires existence for us only through "giving meaning" ^{[8, pp. 10-11]}. The city is constructed by people in the process of its signification, which is part of the communicative experience. In this regard, a number of researchers defend the idea that the medial communicative existence of the city, in fact, is the only possible one for it ^[9].

The city as a communicative phenomenon is not a static, frozen reality. It is dynamic and fundamentally incomplete. No set of images, meanings, meanings can be considered final and exhaustive. The city communicates continuously with its residents. According to A. Lefebvre, he both sends and receives messages, which, in turn, can be perceived or not perceived ^{[10, p. 70]}. The search for answers to questions about what messages the city sends, why some of them are ignored, or how others are interpreted is not only theoretical "curiosity". This is also quite a practical lesson related to solving a large number of urban problems. We will focus only on one of them. We are talking about the presence, and quite painful, in the space of Russian cities of industrial areas. The latter, thanks to communication processes, turned out to be, from the very beginning of their appearance, in fact, deleted from the urban space, having received an extremely negative imagery of the industrial zone and the outskirts. Let's make a reservation right away that this state of affairs is typical not only for Russian reality. Regardless of the "citizenship", in most cases, industrial areas are assigned the role of urban "outcasts", having the appropriate labeling: "bad", "dangerous", "criminal" ^[11].

Our attention will be focused on the historically first industrial district of the city of Samara – Bezymyanka. It arose, like many other areas of this type (Uralmash – Yekaterinburg, Sotsgorod – Kazan, etc.), on the wave of industrialization, in attempts to build an ideal residence for a Soviet person (the embodiment of the concept of "sotsgorod") (The history of Bezymyanka begins in 1903, when this toponym actually arose, as the name of the station on Samara-Zlatoust railway. However, in this case, we take as a starting point the time when it began to form precisely as a district of Samara). Thus, according to the plans, during the reconstruction of the city and the development of the new territory, the socialist city of Kuibyshev was to be created, whose population by 1948 would have reached 620,000 people. The "conceived space" (A. Lefebvre) of the new district was drawn as follows: "Let's draw a conditional scheme of a socialist city. We are drawing a transport line. It will easily divide the city in two, leaving, on the one hand, industrial quarters: factories and laboratories in them. Now let's step over the narrow line of transport. And we will be among the bright quarters of dwellings surrounded by a wide belt of tree plantations. And then, overcoming the new green barrier, you can be in the blocks of public buildings" ^[12]. Needless to say, these plans were not destined to come true. Bezymyanka has not realized itself as a social city in which the principles of functioning of a socialist society would be embodied. It was not destined to become a new, Soviet city center (as opposed to the old, historical, pre-revolutionary one). In 1940, the infamous Nameless Camp was located on its territory (according to official data, 11,165 people died during its existence). And at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, large factories from the western regions of the country were evacuated here. Gradually, they were overgrown with houses in which employees of enterprises received housing. Moreover, the construction was not chaotic. V. E. Stadnikov notes that the construction "was carried out systematically, in accordance with the general plan, using the most economical projects designed for local construction materials, the construction of barracks was avoided, if possible" ^[12]. The new district was formed as an association of residential blocks having a rectangular shape. Moreover, the quarter was conceived to a certain extent as a self-sufficient unit. The location of the houses made it possible to create safe courtyards inside it. Part of the household and social infrastructure facilities were also located here: playgrounds, nurseries, kindergartens, outbuildings, garages, etc. And on the first floors of the houses facing the street, there were shops, canteens, etc. The height of the buildings was different. 4-5-storey houses were located along the central transport highways, two–storey buildings and individual residential buildings with private plots were located on the side streets. This solution favourably distinguished Bezymyanka from the microdistricts of the later Soviet and modern post-Soviet periods, which are characterized by uniformity of building with the same type of houses. Experts note that "the low-rise character ..., the abundance of squares, parks and green boulevards allow us to speak about the external similarity of this area with the garden city of the post-revolutionary period" ^{[13, p. 91]}. It should be noted that Bezymyanka tried on this urban planning concept in the 1920s. Residents of the village, which was formed around the Samara Railway Repair Plant, located just on its territory, tried to implement it.

By the 1960s. Bezymyanka was an independent, isolated area of the city, which, in fact, did not need a historical center. As a confirmation, we will give the dialogue described in the book of memoirs by B. Kozhin. In the city center, on Leningradskaya Street, a young man asked the author about the location of the main post office. For a resident of the center, the question was strange, and the ignorance of the young man was surprising. During the conversation, it turned out that the young man's ignorance is due to the fact that he is a resident of Bezymyanka and came to the city for the first time ^[14]. The described situation cannot be considered as a funny curiosity, it is a reflection of the widespread state of affairs.

Having formed as a district, Bezymyanka largely determined the further unfolding of urban space. She actually defined the communication structure of Samara. Thanks to her, the rigid city boundaries were blurred, and the old center and new residential areas began to grow towards each other ^[12].

But only from the point of view of urban planning can we talk about the importance of Nameless for the city. Thanks to her Samara (at that time already (and still) Kuibyshev) survived the industrial revolution, became one of the largest centers of heavy industry (in the middle of the twentieth century. it was one of the ten most industrially developed cities of the USSR). It probably wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that Samara owes its status as a million-plus city to this district.

The Nameless woman was not limited to local significance. A number of events related to her stories allow us to talk about her on a national and even global scale. In particular, we are talking about the labor feat of factory workers during the Great Patriotic War. Or, for example, about space exploration. After all, it was at one of its factories, Progress, that launch vehicles were created, which brought Vostok with Yuri Gagarin into near–Earth orbit, as well as the ships of other Soviet cosmonauts. By the way, from the Saratov region, where the first cosmonaut landed, he was brought to Samara. The plane was landed at the Bezymyanka airfield.

All the above data and facts are intended to show that a significant part of the "messages" transmitted by the first industrial district of Samara did not imply its interpretation in a negative way. Bezymyanka had (and still has) a large corpus of "texts" that talked about her as a significant and important phenomenon for the city. But this understanding of hers did not find support. For residents, it has become an industrial zone, a periphery devoid of any positive qualities. They recognized it as a distant, alien, dangerous, empty space ^{[15, p. 160]}. This does not mean that it is impossible to provide facts confirming these estimates. They certainly were and are. But as we have shown above, the textology of the Nameless is much more diverse. It is not reducible to a small set of negative and negated meanings, which, by the way, were mostly produced by residents of the old part of the city. Those who lived on Bezymyanka often evaluated (and looking ahead, let's say that they evaluate) its different. This idea was very accurately expressed by the director of the Samara branch of MTS A. Melamed, whose childhood was spent on Bezymyanka. "How did we see Nameless every day? Nice, quiet neighborhood. We didn't know the legendary part of the Nameless, which was used to scare children from the center, we didn't even know where it was located" (Knorr A. We didn't know the Nameless, which was used to scare children from the center. https://drugoigorod.ru/melamed-bezymyanka).

The appeal to the communication processes that are unfolding today between the Nameless and the residents of the city required finding indicators with which to assess their content and effectiveness. Such indicators were: cognitive, value-semantic and behavioral. The cognitive aspect acts as a prerequisite for urban communications, largely determining the success (or failure) of contacts between the city and a person. It shows what information citizens have about events, sights, outstanding people, etc. Without such information, further unfolding of the communication process is impossible. The value-semantic aspect reflects the interpretation of the available information, the result of which is the construction of meanings and meanings of a particular urban space. Their representation in urban culture is fixed with the help of symbols, metaphors, images, representations present in the mentality of citizens. Semantic constants, in turn, refer to the behavioral aspect of communication associated with identification processes in relation to both citizens and the city as a whole. It is through symbolic forms that are significant for a person that the connection with the city is established, identification with it takes place.

The cognitive indicator of the communication process unfolding between the Nameless and the townspeople revealed the differentiated nature of communication. It is quite predictable that the awareness of those who live in Bezymyanka is higher compared to residents of other districts of the city.

The units of awareness about the Nameless Woman, first of all, were information about her history. The appeal to history as a significant communication element is not accidental. As S. S. notes Avanesov, "the attitude to the city as a complex spatial complex that exists in a large time of culture, gives its inhabitants the opportunity to form and positively experience their personal and social identity, which is formed only in the context of a unique history" ^{[16, p. 21]}.

Respondents were asked to indicate whether they knew the history of the Nameless Woman. Half of the residents of Bezymyanka gave a positive answer. Among representatives of other districts, only one in five could answer this question in the affirmative (Table 1).

Table 1 – Knowledge of the history of the Nameless Woman (in %% of the total number of respondents)

The answers to the question of what historical events are actually known to the townspeople showed that the history of Bezymyanka is perceived as "spot". It was pulled together in a very short time period associated with the events of the Great Patriotic War ("evacuation of factories", "construction of factories", "feat of factory workers", "release of IL-2"). But the fact that only 24.9% of respondents were able to point out even these events indicates that the district in the eyes of citizens is actually devoid of historicity.

The situation is even worse with outstanding personalities whose fate is somehow connected with the Nameless. Only for 13.6% of the city's residents there is its "history in faces". Those who live on Bezymyanka are better informed. 43.0% managed to name their "geniuses of the place". But even in this case, it is alarming that basically only two names appear in the list of famous people of the district: the director of the Kuibyshev Metallurgical Plant (now Samara Metallurgical Plant) P. P. Mochalov and the general designer of the State Union Experimental Plant No. 2 (now Samara Scientific and Technical Complex named after N. D. Kuznetsov) N. D. Kuznetsov. Moreover, if the first one occupies a leading position among the residents of Bezymyanka (21.5% vs. 3.4%), then the second one is most known to residents of other districts (7.6%).

The comparison of the personal plan with the event plan makes it possible to detect a certain paradox. If in the second case the Nameless Woman's past is connected with the wartime, then in the first – with the post-war period. It can be assumed that this state of affairs is due, on the one hand, to the practices of commemoration (the presence of monuments to these outstanding people), and, on the other, to the personal history of the interviewed residents of the city. But regardless of the time, both plans refer, first of all, to the industrial imagery of the district.

In general, the respondents' awareness of outstanding personalities suggests that the path traveled by the Nameless person is actually impersonal. Of course, the space of the historical time of the Nameless Woman is not limited only to the figures presented. It is again richer and more diverse, but a significant majority of the characters of its components are turned off from the communication process.

Attention to the sights of Bezymyanka from the point of view of their fame is due to the fact that they, marking the urban space, represent "one of the types of symbolic intermediaries connecting citizens and the urban environment" ^{[17, p. 42]}. The degree of awareness about them is the highest in comparison with other analyzed units. 84.1% of residents of Bezymyanka and 39.8% of representatives of other districts reported their awareness of them.

Clarifying the question of what, in fact, is estimated by the townspeople as the main attractions of Bezymyanka showed that it is relevant only for its residents. The percentage of respondents living in other areas who were able to name its iconic places is extremely small. In other words, outside the boundaries of the district, they actually lose their significance. The nameless area becomes an unmarked territory, an "empty" space. 

As for the residents of Bezymyanka itself, its most popular attraction is the Alley of Labor Glory (21.5%), which is a pedestrian zone with monuments in honor of factories and enterprises located on it. Three times the place is occupied by the Monument to S. M. Kirov and the square of the same name, which are considered the center of the district (18.7%). In third place is one of the oldest squares – M. I. Kalinin Square (17.8%), considered the birthplace of Samara furags. The following attractions were also named: the ZIS car in memory of the drivers who died during the Great Patriotic War (15.0%), the park named after the 50th anniversary of October (14.0%), the monument to the Il-2 attack aircraft (10.3%) Druzhba Park (8.4%), the bust of N.D. Kuznetsov (6.5%).

Attention is drawn to the fact that residential buildings completely fell out of the communicative space of the district, which at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries were recognized as identified objects of cultural heritage. Being a testament to Soviet history, containing "symbols and timestamps", they essentially create a unique architectural appearance of the district. But they are not read by the townspeople in a historical, cultural and/or architectural way. They see them, most likely, in the context of everyday life as ordinary and habitual "housing". This fact once again confirms the fact that "adding new buildings to the "protection lists" does not solve the problem, but in fact only takes a step towards its formulation" ^{[18, p. 217]}.

Assessing the level of informativeness of residents, its low level should be recognized. The information that the townspeople have about Bezymyanka does not allow them to see its historical, cultural, and town-planning significance. It turns out to be a place with a silent, impersonal history, the sights of which are mostly connected with the daily life of its inhabitants.

The logical continuation of this state of affairs is the content of the value-semantic component of communication, the indicators of which were chosen symbols and images of the Nameless.

The fact that the Nameless Woman has her own symbols was pointed out by every second respondent (54.2%). However, again, their set is extremely limited. The leading place is occupied by the public spaces of the district. We are talking again about its central square (Kirov Square – 11.9%), its central street (Pobedy Street – 4.9%) and one of the oldest squares (Kalinin Square – 3.6%). In second place are symbols reflecting the industrial orientation of the area. These are industrial enterprises and factories. They were chosen by 8.9% of respondents. The third place is occupied by the Samara metro (8.4%). Its inclusion in the symbolic system is justified by the fact that the first metro line was opened on Bezymyanka (the end of the 1980s). For a short time, the metro became a place of obligatory visits of Samaritans and guests of the city, which led to the interest of residents in this area.

If there are no serious disagreements between residents of the city and Nameless in the above symbols, then recognition, for example, of the construction market ("Bird Market") as its significant constants is characteristic, first of all, for representatives of other districts (5.9% vs. 0.9%). It seems that the "attraction effect" is triggered here again. The market is the place that motivates many Samaritans to come to Bezymyanka (as in the metro at the time). But the fact that one of the symbols of the district for the residents of the city is the market is very alarming.

As for the imagery of the Nameless Woman, no one doubts her industrial orientation. The data of the study clearly indicate that in the views of the townspeople, Bezymyanka is still seen as a working area (see Table 2).

Table 2 – The imagery of the Nameless (in %% of the total number of respondents)

At the same time, other vectors of its assessment significantly depend on the place of residence. Residents of Bezymyanka mostly use positive or at least neutral images, seeing in Bezymyanka the second historical center of the city, an ordinary urban area, convenient for living. Negative imagery is not dominant for them. The opinion of residents of other districts is rather the opposite. Its interpretations as an industrial zone, a sleeping area, and an urban suburb are added to the characteristics of the working area. But it is extremely difficult for them to see the second historical center of the city and a convenient place of residence in it.

In general, the presented data suggest that the semantic meaning of the Nameless Name is stable. At the moment, neither its more than a century-old history, nor the emergence of new urban areas (more remote and less thought-out), nor the closure of some of its enterprises does not change the attitude towards it. At the same time, there have been certain shifts within the borders of the Nameless Woman herself. The circle of "perceived" messages gradually began to include those of them that testify to the past of the district, which gives grounds for moving away from the idea of Bezymyanka as an industrial part of the city devoid of history. In general, it should be noted that this is a general, growing trend that is characteristic of other Russian cities. And in this regard, we can refer to the projects that are being implemented at Uralmash in Yekaterinburg or in Sotsgorod in Nizhny Novgorod. In Kazan, the village of S. Ordzhonikidze (Sotsgorod) is recognized as an object of cultural heritage of regional significance. Whether this trend will gain citywide coverage remains to be seen.

As already noted above, the behavioral aspect of communication is correlated by us with the ability of a particular territorial locus to influence the formation of urban identity. Being by its nature a social construct, it presupposes intensive interaction of residents with the city, during which an emotional connection, a sense of belonging and belonging to urban life should arise ^{[19, p. 47]}.

In relation to the Nameless Woman, negative identification finds its manifestation on the part of residents of other districts. They are characterized by a negative format of experiences, the lack of recognition of its value value for the city. If we turn to the residents of Bezymyanka itself, then we can talk not only about a more loyal position regarding the identification of the area, but also about their own identity, i.e. about stable ideas about themselves as residents of this area. A study of this aspect has shown that for the majority of residents, Bezymyanka has a relatively high resource of attractiveness. The majority of respondents (83.2%) like to live in this area. The reasons for their positive attitude towards Nameless can be grouped into two blocks. The first is related to the attractiveness of the area as a place of residence. Residents talk about its developed infrastructure (19.6%), in general about the comfort of living (11.2%), about a convenient transport interchange (9.4%), etc. The second is due to the extensive experience of living in this territory. 14.9% of respondents indicated a "sense of homeland". Evidence of the affection of residents is also their unwillingness to change their place of residence. Only one in four respondents (24.3%) indicated that they would like to leave Bezymyanka. More than half of the respondents (60.7%) disagreed with them.

In general, we can say that the residents of Bezymyanka do not feel alienated towards her. On the contrary, positive feelings about this area prevail. However, the catalysts of identification mechanisms are considerations of everyday convenience and the duration of residence in this territory.

Thus, the existence of a Nameless Woman in the space of the city from the point of view of communicative experience demonstrates the existence of a clear contradiction between having potential opportunities to take place as a significant urban locus and the extremely limited way of reading it. This contradiction is evidence of the ineffectiveness of the dialogue between the Nameless and the citizens, without which its successful integration into the urban space is impossible. This is of particular importance due to the fact that in modern conditions of postindustriality, with the loss of perhaps the only positive element of the image – a reference to industrial potential, the future of such an area becomes blurred.

The situation in which Bezymyanka found themselves today can be described as "bifurcation". The "movement" of the communicative process presupposes its unfolding in various directions, demonstrating multi-vector trends in the understanding of its text. The weakening of industrial themes does not automatically mean the acquisition of positive imagery. To date, only within the boundaries of the district itself, it is possible to state certain changes in the communicative experience, which make it possible to connect historical aspects, the everyday component to the dialogue and, as a result, form the basis for a positive "readability" of the district. Unfortunately, this cannot be said about residents of other urban areas. The lack of awareness, the stability of previous attitudes, the poverty of the district itself for iconic citywide places do not allow us to set a positive content to the communication process.