On the Armenian border of Turkey, Kars was under the rule of tsarist Russia between the years 1877 and 1917. In this period, Kars was rebuilt with a gridded urban plan and furnished with magnificent churches and other public buildings. This article studies the urban and architectural history of Kars in order to gain a deeper understanding of the complex relations between modernity, Russian colonization, and the memories of the city’s traumatic past. An embryo of modern urban bourgeois life emerged in Kars during the Russian occupation. Symbols of urban modernity—regular street patterns, European-style buildings, public squares, city parks, monuments decorating public spaces, macadamized streets and squares, public spaces lit at night, a vivid cultural life, banks and loans, shops with luxury goods—all came to fruition in Kars at this time, not only to modernize the city, but also to lighten its depressed look.
Gurallar, Neşe. "Russian Modernization in East Anatolia: The Case of Kars", Muqarnas 37, 1 (2020): 247-264
18 pp.
