Nikolay Erofeev 

Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Kassel, Department of Architecture, State planning and Landscape design

I am a historian of socialist architecture and urban development, which a specific interest in mass housing and socialist development assistance to the Global South. My forthcoming book Experiments in Concrete: Manufacturing Soviet Mass Housing, 1955–1990 explores the understudied architectural story of the ‘bureaucratic modernism’ of prefabricated housing. In contrast to a rather simplistic view of standardised housing development as the ‘end’ of architecture, and a takeover of the profession by construction experts, the book reconstructs a complex and uneven history, as the housing drive became central to the formation of late-Soviet design culture, construction industry and urban sociology.

My postdoctoral research focuses on the development of Mongolia during the Cold War. The project explores how exchanges with the Soviet Union, Eastern European states and China fundamentally reshaped the urban space and daily life in Mongolia. The project establishes a multidisciplinary framework to explore the experiences of local and foreign specialists, workers, and citizens alike, engaged in transnational construction projects. More broadly, the project seeks to provide new understandings about the urbanisation processes in the Global South during the Cold War and sheds light on the complexities and dynamics of transnational cooperation in shaping the built environment.

I have received my D.Phil (PhD) in History from the University of Oxford in 2020 and a specialist degree in the History of Art from Moscow State University in 2014. I was a postdoc at Department of Urban Studies at the University of Basel and at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University. My fellowship at the University of Kassel has been possible due to the support from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Previously I have benefited from generous scholarships from the Hill Foundation at Oxford and the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship, among others.

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

N. Erofeev, ‘Extractive Assistance: Copper Mining, Socialist Development and Urban planning in Cold War-Era Mongolia.’ Urban History (Submitted, forthcoming)

N. Erofeev, ‘Complementary Assistance: Exchanges Between Mongolia, the Soviet Union, China, and Poland during the Cold War.’ Cold War History 24/3 (2024), 453–473. https://doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2024.2328702

N. Erofeev, ‘Building Spaces of Internationalism: Socialist Assistance to Mongolia in 1950-70s.’ In P. Betts, M. Colla (eds.) Rethinking Socialist Space in the Twentieth Century ‘St Antony's Series’ (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024), 159–83. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54581-8_7

N. Erofeev, ‘Late-Soviet Collective Housing: Self-Help Construction and Self-Management in Youth Residential Complex Housing Movement.’ Journal of Urban History (2024) https://doi.org/10.1177/00961442231226327

N. Erofeev, ‘Shabashniki.’ In Alena Ledeneva (ed.) The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality, Volume 3: A Hitchhikers Guide to Informal Problem-Solving in Human Life (London: UCL Press, 2024), 325-29. https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800086142

N. Erofeev and Ł. Stanek, ‘Integrate, Adapt, Collaborate: Concerns of Comecon’s Technical Assistance to Mongolia During the Cold War.’ In Between Solidarity and Economic Constraints, ed. by C. Bernhardt, A.Butter and M. Motylinska (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2023), 43-72. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110658491-003

N. Erofeev and Ł. Stanek, ‘Integrate, Adapt, Collaborate: Comecon Architecture in Socialist Mongolia.’ ABE Journal 19 (2021) https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.12604
 

N. Erofeev ‘The I-464 Housing Delivery System: A Tool for Urban Modernisation in the Socialist World and Beyond.’ Fabrications 29/2 (2019), 207-230. https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2019.1611255
 

N. Erofeev and M. Sapunova, ‘Urban Standard and Norm and Their (Post)-Socialist Transformation.’ Urban Studies and Practices 3/4 (2018), 7-11. https://doi.org/10.17323/usp3420187-11

NON-PEER-REVIEW PUBLICATIONS

N. Erofeev, ‘“Camus est petit, Rozanov est grand”: Soviet housing production and technological transfer from France.’ In Natalia Solopova (ed.) Panel Master: the Raymond Camus Story (Berlin: DOM Publishers, forthcoming)

N. Erofeev, ‘Kira Kartasheva, Architect, urban sociologist, teacher.’ Second World, Second Sex: Women in Architecture under Socialism (10.10.2022) https://womenbuildingsocialism.org/kira-kartasheva/

N. Erofeev and Michał Murawski ‘Political aesthetics of Russian urbanism’ Sygma (26.06.2022), https://syg.ma/@sygma/poliestietika-rossiiskogho-urbanizma

N. Erofeev ‘Cybernetics & Standardization: Revisiting a Soviet Vision for Better Urbanism.’ Strelka MAG 10/04 (2021).
 

N. Erofeev ‘The I-464 Housing Delivery System: Technological Transfers from France to Moscow, from Moscow to Alma-Ata, from Alma-Ata to Havana.’ Project Russia 96 (2021), 239-64.

N. Erofeev, ‘The President of Our Country Is a Real Estate Developer. Interview with Kimberly Zarecor and Vladimir Kulić.’ Urban Studies and Practices 3/4 (2018), 12-17. https://doi.org/10.17323/usp34201812-17

N. Erofeev, ‘Ot Periptera k «Korobke»: Teatry Epokhi Modernizma’ [From peripter to the box: theatres of the modernist era], in A. Stepina and A. Petrova (eds.) Mir – Teatr. Arkhitektura i Stsenografiia v Rossii (Moscow, 2017), 373–75.

N. Erofeev, 'Tbilisi: Otar Kalandarishvili’s Apartment Buildings’, in Michaela Geboltsberger and Georg Schöllhammer (eds.), The Empire Strikes Back? A Traveling Academy through the Post-Soviet Cityscape (Vienna, 2016), 60–64.

N. Erofeev, ‘Pavilʹon-Muzei «Traurnyi Poezd V.I. Lenina».’ TATLIN 1/82 (2015), 97-103.

DPhil (PhD) Dissertation

Erofeev, Nikolay. "Experiment in the Architecture of Soviet Mass Housing, 1956–1990."D.Phil thesis, Oxford University, History faculty, 2020.

Book Reviews

N. Erofeev ‘Review: Moscow Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin's Capital, By Katherine Zubovich’ Social History, 46/3 (2021), p.336-338.