DOI: https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2026-6(1)-6-23
Spatial semiotics and urban morphology of Greater Sochi: from Soviet utopia to Olympic simulacrum
Beniamin Mailyan
Russian-Armenian University, Yerevan, Armenia
Institute of Oriental Studies of NAS RA, Yerevan, Armenia
ORCID: 0000-0003-0293-7895
ABSTRACT
This article constitutes the first part of a comprehensive semiotic and urbanistic study of Greater Sochi – a unique linear agglomeration along the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. Drawing on post-structuralist urbanism, spatial semiotics, and cultural geography, the author examines Sochi as a complex heterogeneous text to be decoded through its sign systems, mythologemes, and ideological strata. The analysis centers on the historical evolution of the agglomeration's spatial codes: from Stalinist totalitarian neoclassicism, which encoded proletarian escapism and state paternalism through palace-sanatoriums, to Soviet modernism of the 1960s–1970s with its aesthetics of transparency and mass recreation. Particular attention is paid to post-Soviet transformation – the disintegration of the “All-Union health resort” myth, the commodification of space, and the emergence of new signs of social inequality. The 2014 Olympic mega-project is analyzed as a radical instrument of re-semiotization that produced three semiotic nuclei: the historic center of Sochi, the Coastal Olympic cluster in the Imereti Lowland, and the mountain cluster of Krasnaya Polyana. The phenomena of “favellism” and informal morphology are examined as counter-texts to the official resort narrative, alongside the railway's barrier role as a semiotic trauma of the city's separation from the sea. Analysis through Lefebvre's spatial triad – conceived, perceived, and lived space – reveals deep rifts between the utopian projects of power and residents' everyday reality. The article concludes with an examination of the city's linear structure, its “kinetic urbanism”, and the phenomenon of “semiotic displacement” – the marginalization of indigenous memory and early Soviet history – which together define the first arc of this ongoing investigation.
KEYWORDS: spatial semiotics, urban morphology, Greater Sochi, Soviet neoclassicism, Soviet modernism, Olympic simulacrum, linear city, kinetic urbanism, semiotic displacement, Lefebvre's spatial triad.
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Information about the author
Beniamin V. Mailyan
Cand. Sci. (Historical Sciences),
Associate Professor, Head of the Department
of World History and Foreign Regional Studies
Russian-Armenian University
123, Hovsep Emin St., Yerevan, 0025, Armenia
Senior researcher
Institute of Oriental Studies NAS RA
24, Marshal Baghramyan Ave.,
Yerevan, 0019, Armenia
ORCID: 0000-0003-0293-7895
e-mail: [email protected]
For citation:
Mailyan, B. V. (2026). Spatial semiotics and urban morphology of Greater Sochi: from Soviet utopia to Olympic simulacrum. Urbis et Orbis. Microhistory and Semiotics of the City, 6(1), 6–23. https://doi.org/10.34680/urbis-2026-6(1)-6-23
