ABSTRACT
The technical infrastructures were integral to the self-conception of the Soviet party state. Vladimir Lenin elevated his electrification plan, which entered into Soviet history under the acronym GOELRO, into the position of 'the second party programme'. The party leadership understood the modern spaces, created by the construction and expansion of infrastructures, to be important melting pots. The construction and expansion of modern infrastructures contributed to the increasing power of the party leadership in Moscow. In the perestroika period, the ailing state of Soviet infrastructures mirrored the miserable situation of the entire country. Lenin, himself, eloquently stated that technological infrastructures had a central function within the Soviet state as instruments of economic and political integration. Soviet infrastructures emanated a power of intimidation, and a power of seduction, acting as terrible disciplinary agents. The wearing down of infrastructures and the loss of integrative power were two interconnected processes, which resulted in the collapse of the Soviet empire, and the entire Eastern Bloc.
