The Druzba Project

The Druzhba – Friendship Pipeline, a web of lines stretching 4,000 kilometers from Siberia, through the Baltic states, into Eastern and Central Europe. Druzhba, or “friendship” in Russian, is a master signifier, a grand-narrating, imperial structure meant at its inception in 1960 to “lead the world into a new dawn.” It is an immense machinery of infrastructure and capital, ideology and sentiments, labor and leisure, meant to tie together in friendship, regions under immense political pressure and mutual suspicion, from the Cold War to the present day. This pressure twists and distorts the path of Druzhba.