City of the Sun, City of Pain. The Identity of an East European City (the Example of Minsk)

Abstract

The current political situation in Belarus, and especially the civil protests in the area of Minsk, encourage reflection on the cultural landscape of the city shaped by totalitarianism. The aim of the article is therefore to analyse one of the few representations of Minsk in the litera­ture available to the Polish reader: the book by Artur Klinau Minsk. A guide to the City of the Sun. The analysis uses the perspective of the sociology of literature. The specificity of the text genre, which is a tourist guide, has been emphasized. The findings of childhood sociology and the category of biographical memory are also referred to. In order to reconstruct and understand the original vision of Minsk, the author first describes how Klinau presents the taming of the architectural utopia of the City of the Sun from a child’s perspective. Next, the category of the fight for space is mentioned, in which the weapons are architecture and urban planning. An example of a skirmish in this fight is the fate of the Niemiga district described by Klinau. The summary is a reference to the strategies Klinau uses to defend his biography against appropriation by a totalitarian utopia.