2011 Participants
Aina Bergum
Since the Second World War and throughout the Cold War the socialist model industrial town Pyramiden bloomed within Norwegian sovereignty on the archipelago of Svalbard. Through the Svalbard Treaty of 1920 the Soviet Union had territorial rights and settled Pyramiden not only for its coal reserves, but also as a Soviet civilian outpost to the Western capitalistic world. Even though Pyramiden was abandoned in 1998 it still survives in northern collective memory. How could a model socialist town exist within Norwegian sovereignty, in the midst of the cold war? And was Pyramiden really the socialist utopia it was pictured as?
Funding Source: Newcastle University