Invading the void: social time production as a developmental tool in the late Soviet periphery

This paper examines the multi-temporal character of postwar Soviet development. By analyzing personal histories of the timber production workers' settlement of Muezerka in northwest Karelia, the author argues that industrial development did not entirely standardize social space and time, but it initially served as a vehicle of disintegration in newly developed areas. She shows that, in order to start the development of a new territory, it was necessary to create a symbolic starting point - "zero time." Each time a new settlement emerged, the entire path to progress had to be traversed anew, and the production of a special temporality of development, which implied a temporary withdrawal from modernity, was an essential working element in this path.