Globalization Trends in Russian Landscape Architecture

Globalization is understood today as an "international process of global scale related to

investments in financial markets which were determinate by technical modernisation" (Smirnov,

2002). Some authors also distinguish three related aspects of globalisation: economic, cultural

and political (Short and Kim, 1999). The use of the term “globalisation” in Russia started in the

early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The most commonly asked question in recent

Russian sociological literature: is globalisation a phenomenon of only the 20th and 21st centuries

or were there globalisation processes in the history of culture? (Prosersky, 2003). In Russian

history the most visible cultural globalisation was connected to adaptation of Orthodox

Christianity and Byzantium culture in the 10th century AD. Byzantium traditions in gardening

were most influential in Moscow hanging gardens and monastery gardens (Ignatieva, 1997).

During the era of Peter the Great (beginning of the 18th century) fashionable “global” European

principles of French formal gardens (the symbol of absolute monarchy) were adopted. Peter’s

famous paradigm of the “open window to Europe” and the establishment of a new capital

(St.Petersburg) is a classical example of Russian integration in “global” European culture and

economy.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 introduced the idea of a united “proletariat” culture with its

unique landscape architecture language of large public parks of recreation and rest (“parki

culturi i otdicha”). This was a new type of Public Park, aiming to be a “complex of culture”

with a multifunctional programme (and connected zoning of a territory) which included sport,

cultural and political education of communities (Bogovaya, Fursova, 1988). The new Soviet

society needed such huge public parks that could accommodate thousands of people and give

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them the opportunity not only for recreation, but for sport and big events (political meetings and

big shows), “something as a huge club under the sky” (Kochno, 1986, 1985). Most of this

Russian Soviet landscape typology was used as a model in many Eastern Block countries.

At the end of the 20th century the process of globalisation was seen in Russia as a process of

Westernisation and Americanisation (Duquenne, 2006). In Russian sociological literature

Westernisation is identified as imposing Western social and economical development, ideology

and culture on non-Western countries. Most Russian authors also believe that in Russia,

Westernisation is touching all spheres of life, not only in politics and economics, but also in

ideology and culture (Zinoviev, 1999). The integration of Russia into a capitalist market

economy was going very fast and it had its own peculiarities. Russian society was divided in

two very unequal parts: a small proportion (5%) of very rich (”New Russians” or “Russian