The war on indeterminacy Rethinking Soviet urban legacy in Mariupol, 2014–2022

Abstract

Drawing on fieldwork material from Mariupol collected between 2015 and 2018, this article investigates how the municipality and residents addressed the indeterminacy surrounding Soviet urban legacies in the context of wartime transformations before the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022. First, it discusses attempts by the local government to reposition the city from a Soviet industrial center to a symbol of an independent, “European” Ukraine, relegating most elements of the Soviet urban legacy to the category of “waste”. Afterward, it shows how a group of artists and activists challenged rigid dichotomies of waste and value through practices of urban walking, re-embedding the same materialities in a present where the role of the Soviet past is acknowledged but reconsidered through a critical lens.