Kyrill M. Kunakhovich

Ubiquitous today, the word “heritage” was rarely used before the 1960s. This project traces how the term emerged by examining one the first sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List: the Old Town of Warsaw. Demolished by the Nazis during WWII, the Old Town was then systematically rebuilt—not as it was, but as a fantasy of what it should have been. The reconstruction was widely hailed abroad amid concerns that Western cities, too, were losing their identity to modernization. Warsaw’s example inspired historic preservation codes in Western Europe, the United States, and eventually UNESCO, where Polish architects helped write the World Heritage List’s rules. This project shows how a Stalinist construction project turned into a global model, shaping our contemporary notions of heritage.

This dissertation explores efforts to construct a distinctive socialist culture in two major cities of the Soviet Bloc: Krakow in Poland and Leipzig in East Germany. Local officials in both cities treated culture as a political priority and devoted much time and resources to organizing cultural life on the ground. This dissertation investigates what they sought to accomplish and what they did to bring this about. It uses a comparative approach to examine the Polish and East German cultural projects and trace their evolution over time. It also assesses how these changing projects affected each city's cultural scene. The dissertation explores key artistic developments in Krakow and Leipzig, as well as shifting patterns of popular cultural participation. It follows the triangular relationship between cultural officials, artists, and audiences, and analyzes how the interaction between these three groups shaped cultural life in both Krakow and Leipzig.