Order the autumn edition here

The Soviet architecture

Book review written by Hans Henrik Fafner
Architecture in Global Socialism. Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East in the Cold War
Forfatter: Lukasz Stanek
Forlag: Princeton University Press (USA)
DIPLOMATI: The Soviet Union and the Eastern European satellite states gained influence in the world through a so-called gift diplomacy that spawned streaks of architectural beauties. By Hans Henrik Fafner

Up through the 1950s, there were big plans for the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. At the beginning of the decade, oil revenues grew considerably. There was money to do well with, which was invested in the future. Agriculture was able to raise production, new roads were built, and the extensive destruction was secured when the Tigris River crossed its banks.

Baghdad

The capital Baghdad should have . . .

Dear reader.
To continue reading, create a new free reader account with your email,
or logg inn if you have done it before. (click on forgotten password if you have not received it by email already).
Select if necessary Subscription (69kr)

Hans Henrik Fafner
Fafner is a regular critic in Ny Tid. Residing in Tel Aviv.

You may also likeRELATED
Recommended

What should Europe do?

EUROPE: Europe and EU co-operation have developed in step with society's crises and challenges. On that occasion, MODERN TIMES has asked a number of Norwegian opinion leaders questions about the future of Europe. The EU's Green Deal shows leadership on the environment and climate, in addition to digital services. We ask which areas the EU should prioritize, with appropriate political, legal or industrial initiatives and forms of cooperation.
Paal Frisvold -

To challenge a Eurocentric perspective

IDEA HISTORY: African and African-European personalities were central in building what we today call Europe – from the dawn of time to the present day. Africans founded cities in Spain and Italy before ruling the Roman Empire. And Ethiopia also helped Europe advance in the 1400th century.
Dag Herbjørnsrud -

The invaders among us – stink bugs, king crabs, Nile perch and coronavirus

TRAVEL-ESSAY: In our time of catastrophic extinction of species, you may risk overlooking the catastrophic spread of some species. As we experienced on our journey with the four-wheeled home with the beetle Halyomorpha halys – or what about the king crab in Norway?
Ranveig Eckhoff -

Democracy in French-speaking Africa

SAHEL IN ENGLISH: France has strangely managed to preserve the hegemony over its former colonies, including in the dissemination of knowledge. This book is a much needed exception, which provides the background for understanding the recent coup in Mali.
Ketil Fred Hansen -

Latest books:

More books

The danger of modified nature

ECOLOGY:With technological measures in all directions, researchers are faced with sky-high challenges. One of them is human ignorance linked to indifference.

A gigantic loss project

THE DISCLOSURES: For 20 years, US authorities lied about the war in Afghanistan.

Challenging climate sobriety

ECOLOGY: We need such voices as Holly Jean Buck, who criticizes wishful thinking – precisely to help bring forward a hopeful, serious and long-lasting climate fight, beyond all easy optimism.

The comprehensive self-insulation

COVID19: SARS in 2003, bird flu in 2005, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, combined with the financial crisis, massive refugee flows, and revolutions in the Middle East and Greta Thunberg's shrill doomsday voice, had largely immunized the population against something as abstract as Covid19.

We call it precariat

WORK: Precarious working life is perhaps alluring with its freedom and flexibility. But with the precarious also comes the uncontrollable, the unpredictability and the lack of rights. Precarious work has become widespread in a subject such as journalism. Nevertheless, I am still tempted by the flexible tasks, by the sense of variability, freedom almost.

An ever-creeping feeling of loneliness

INSULATION: Acute loneliness affects both winners and losers. Daniel Schreiber visits a wealth of hermit literature – such as Thoreau's Walden and Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. But what does social withdrawal mean today – whether it is the occupational or pandemic condition?

An incantation against neo-fascism

CAPITALISM: Is not the struggle now about the right not to be exploited, but the right to be allowed to participate? There is much that is valuable in Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen's short book about the possible return of fascism in today's world – but it is weak in terms of empirical documentation.

The aesthetic manifestations of fascism

FASCISM: This does not necessarily manifest itself through mass spectacles and revolutionary fractures, and it is not a primarily European phenomenon. But like a product of political crises in the modern capitalist states.

Late fascism is here

CAPITALISM: The West's 'thin' fascism, which Bolt analyzes, is there especially because there is currently nothing else. Which does not rule out that it will one day grow as "thick" as Russian and Chinese fascism.

Ecology is playfully serious

ECOLOGY: Penguins' newly launched green series presents old and new books that change the way we think and talk about the living earth. You are in the age of mass extinction, but the philosopher Martin Heidegger brings us here on the trail of what we need.

The Israeli mentality and the militaristic undertones of society

ISRAEL: Two Swedish authors portray the people of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a large reportage book.

The world's best Catholics?

CANADA: With the discovery of children's graves in Canada, the Canadians are arguably making the Irish rank as "the world's best Catholics". Children from First Nations were outright stolen, imprisoned in isolation, forced into a foreign culture, a foreign language, subjected to sexual abuse and general neglect.

The battle is between carbo-fascism and eco-socialism

CARBON FASCISM: Climate change facilitates economic speculation and political positioning. Against corruption, we must prepare not only for a state of emergency, but for a climate war against declared enemies, writes Marc Alizart.

The animated paradigm

TECHNOLOGY: What can we say about the ever-increasing technological and state-of-the-art sphere we live in? Animations and simulations appear more and more as "living organisms", while biological life has increasingly become "artificial".

The pandemic exhibits dictatorship states

LATIN AMERICA: Mexican Sabina Berman's novel, HDP, is self-experienced from the interior of a mega-group. In a Latin America with 9 percent of the world's population, and 32 percent of the world's covid 19 dead.

Exploring sexuality unrestrained without being judged by others

DATING: Marie Bergström looks at modern love and sexuality in connection with online dating. But is online dating really as safe as she claims?

A wish – for a new reality

GLOBALIZATION: When the concept of «globalization› took over the academic and political language, and since everyday language, it was not primarily a description of reality that fit into a post-Cold War capitalism, argues new book.

Every war is a war against children

DIPLOMA: The life stories of Ich lebe reflect some of the worst war scenes we know from the last century.

Experiences with death

SORROW: This book pretends that we are together about something that every single human being is basically really alone about.

It turns on some alarm bells with me

SORROW: With the book Good Grief, Shelley F. Knight has sympathetically set out to write a work that will help her reader understand and process grief.

When history needs to be rewritten: Teotihuacán, Mesopotomia, Tlaxcala

"BULLSHIT THEORIES": We have been wrong: Advanced societies did not come with agriculture. Rather, people have lived freely and egalitarianly both before and after some became farmers, Graeber and Wengrow show in The Dawn of Everything. While Nikole Hannah-Jones provides a whole new understanding of American history with her 1619 book.

There is hope for better times for the past

HISTORY: National-cultivating historiography has characterized Norway for several decades, but Leidulf Melve and Eivind Heldaas Seland show the way out of disability.

What is the direction of the UN with the world's richest multinational companies as partners?

WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM: The book Covid-19: The Great Reset is about a transformation of a social structure where the nation state is out, and global governance is in.

The iron grip of power on the population

CAPITALISM: The economic sphere, just like the political sphere, is a set of social relations within the domination system – something the author Søren Mau addresses.

The Internet is designed to reinforce social contradictions

SOCIAL MEDIA: Mike Watson compares internet lefties to selfie makers who create awareness around themselves.

Full 100-page MODERN TIMES including the appendix Orientering and Modern Times Review comes out quarterly (March 1, June 1, September 1 and December 1) with international book reviews, essays and comments – in addition to the physical newspaper and PDF, the articles are eventually published online here (see also the newsletter).

© MODERN TIMES & Orientering AS Dronningensgt. 16, 0152 Oslo Chief editor: Truls Lie

Newsletters