Russia on the Edge: Imagined Geographies and Post-Soviet Identity

Abstract

In January 1986, the new Borovitskaia Metro Station opened by the Kremlin wall in central Moscow. Built to remind the visitor of the low-arching hallways of the medieval Kremlin, the station’s visual centerpiece is a vast, gold and burnt orange mural depicting the map of the Soviet Union and its peoples growing as a tree among the towers of the Kremlin. Fifteen impassive human figures stand for the fifteen Soviet republics. This image conveys an unconven-tional view of national identity, not as a grassroots formation out of which emerged a state. Rather, for the Soviets nationality was a plant cultivated, developed, and controlled by the state, symbolized here by the Kremlin.