Ștei-Dr. Petru Groza.Pledoarie pentru patrimoniu construit în micul oraș secret marcat de istoria războiului rece

Ștei / Dr. Petru Groza belongs to the category of small towns located in direct connection with important natural resources - in this case uranium mining. For this reason, the Soviet interest in this locality manifested itself since the first years of the socialist system in Romania. As such, the town can be considered as having a strategic importance at the beginning of the Cold War. However, the town’s development remained a secret matter, and it was not represented on official maps. Starting with 1952, Ștei/ Dr. Petru Groza was developed as a new small-scale urban locality (approx. 10,000 inhabitants at the height of its industrial development), built on the architectural principles of socialist realism. The different typologies of buildings (both individual dwellings and socio-cultural facilities) stand out through their unity of style and architectural coherence. Furthermore, it should be noted that the new urban locality developed in parallel with the already existing rural settlement, which contributed to the definition of a hybrid built environment that is defined today by both urban and rural (rurban) characteristics. Like similar cases of Romanian mono-industrial cities affected by the effects of globalization and post-1989 de-industrialization, Ștei is nowadays a city in demographic, economic, social, and cultural decline, seeking to (re) define its own identity. This article has two main objectives. First of all, it aims to address the history of building this mono-industrial town in the context of the beginning of the Cold War, emphasizing the direct influence of the Soviet model and its specificity in the context of postwar urban development. Second, the article will analyze the post-1989 context and the difficulties encountered in recognizing and preserving its built heritage, which is associated with a political regime surrounded by negative public perception. The purpose of this approach is to emphasize the potential for valorizing the built heritage of Ștei, by comparison with similar initiatives, developed in the former ex-Soviet space.