LAUSR

591 Where Crawford departs from recent literature (including Kachurin’s Making Modernism Soviet, 2013, and Utopian Reality, edited by Lodder, Kokkori, and Mileeva, 2013) is in treating ideology and pragmatism as mutually exclusive. The lack of systematic engagement with the notion of ideology lends a sense of tension to Crawford’s discussion, especially in instances when the absence of an explicit mention of ideology is taken as evidence of its secondary or marginal place within these projects. Crawford’s insistence on drawing a hard line of separation between theory and practice in her analysis is also problematic. Statements to the effect that “it was no longer the time for theories, manifestoes, or pictures of the communist future. It was time to build” sit uneasily next to discussions of research libraries, specialist debates, and study trips that informed the conception of these projects (p. 6). Architecture and planning specialists will, however, ultimately find a good deal of thought-provoking material in this carefully and extensively researched account of early Soviet space-making. Crawford’s skillful handling of technical detail ensures that Spatial Revolution remains accessible for nonspecialists, allowing it to provide a valuable entry point into this area for scholars and students of cognate disciplines. Perhaps most important, the work highlights the fact that the lessons from these revolutionary efforts to materialize environments based on principles of livability, social equity, and sustainability have significant currency for us today.