Architecture theorist Jacob Dreyer explains how the Stalinist model of urbanism – a centrally planned component within a national economic unity – is thriving in modern China — theguardian.com

It is not rare for a civilisation to abruptly falter, give way and fold into a new one. This insight seems obvious in the territories of the former Soviet Union — a universe transformed into a memory overnight. [...] that a city turned ruin continues to be inhabited, that the collapsing buildings and boulevards stained by a thousand footsteps, after the apocalypse, host new forms of human life, new memories. Harbin, in the far north-east of China, used to be a very Russian metropolis. — calvertjournal.com