Russia

Modern Architectures in History

Richard Anderson

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781780235035
• eBook ISBN: 9781780235547
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

This book offers a comprehensive account of Russia's architectural production from the late nineteenth century to the present, explaining how its architecture was both shaped by and came to embody Russia's rapid cultural, economic, and social revolutions over the past century. Richard Anderson looks at Russia's complex relationship to global architectural culture, exploring the country's central presence in the Rationalism and Constructivism movements of the 1920s, as well as its role as a key protagonist during the Cold War. Looking deeply at Soviet Russia, he brings the relationship between architecture and socialism into focus through detailed case studies that situate buildings and architectural concepts within the socialist milieu of Soviet society. He tracks the way Russian architectural institutions departed from the course of modernism being developed in capitalist countries, and he reappraises the architecture of the Stalin era and the final decades of the USSR. Finally, he traces the influence of Soviet conventions on contemporary Russian architecture—which is now a more heterogeneous mix of approaches and styles— and how itmade a lasting and little-known impact on territories extending from the Middle East, to Central Asia, and into China. A bold new assessment of Russia's architectural legacy and contemporary contributions, this book is a fascinating exploration of a tumultuous place—and the creativity that has come from it.

References

A note on transliteration and translation

In the references, a simplified version of the Library of Congress conventions for transliteration has been used. In the main text, diacritics for hard and soft signs have been omitted, and common Anglicized variants of names (Ulyanovsk, not Ul’ianovsk) have been adopted. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

Introduction

1 On Vertov’s film see Oksana Sarkisova, ‘Across One Sixth of the World: Dziga Vertov, Travel Cinema, and Soviet Patriotism’, October, CXXI (2007), pp. 19–40.

2 See William Craft Brumfield, ed., Reshaping Russian Architecture: Western Technology, Utopian Dreams (Cambridge, 1990); D. O. Shvidkovskii, Russian Architecture and the West (New Haven, 2007).

3 Recently, Russian authors have begun using the terms avangard (avant-garde) and konstruktivizm (Constructivism) as labels applicable to all the innovative work of the 1920s and early ’30s. In the interest of specificity, this usage is avoided here.

4 See, for example, A. V. Riabushin and A. Shukurova, ‘Tvorcheskie protivorechiia v noveishei arkhitekture Zapada’, Arkhitektura SSSR (October 1982), pp. 54–9.

5 Hergé, The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, trans. Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner (New York, 2007), p. 78.

6 See in particular Jean-Louis Cohen’s The Future of Architecture Since 1889 (London, 2012), which incorporates Russian and Soviet contributions throughout the twentieth century.

7 See, for example, Alessandro De Magistris, URSS, anni ’30–’50: Paesaggi dell’utopia staliniana, exh. cat., Accademia Albertina delle Belle Arti, Turin (Milan, 1997); Danilo Udovički-Selb, ‘Between Modernism and Socialist Realism: Soviet Architectural Culture under Stalin’s Revolution from Above, 1928–1938’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, LXVIII/4 (2009), pp. 466–95.

chapter one: National Forms, Rational Techniques

1 A.I.U. Polunov, Russia in the Nineteenth Century: Autocracy, Reform and Social Change, 1814–1914 (Armonk, NY, 2005).

2 F. M. Dostoevskii, ‘Dnevnik pisatelia’, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Leningrad, 1980), vol. XXI, p. 107.

3 L. Dal’, ‘Istoricheskoe issledovanie russkogo zodchestva’, Zodchii, I/2 (1872), p. 3.

4 Apollinarii Krasovskii, Grazhdanskaia arkhitektura: Chasti zdaniia (St Petersburg, 1851), p. 29.

5 See V. V. Eval’d, Konstruktivnye osobennosti Amerikanskikh zdanii i estestvennye kamni, primeniaemye v sooruzheniiakh v soedinennykh shtatakh (St Petersburg, 1895).

6 Cited in Soiuz arkhitektorov SSSR, Sto let obshchestvennykh arkhitekturnykh organizatsii v SSSR, 1867–1967: Istoricheskaia spravka (Moscow, 1967), pp. 9–10.

7 R. A. Gedike, ‘Rech’ predsedatelia I-go otdela’, in Trudy I s’’ezda russkikh zodchikh v Sankt-Peterburge: 1892 god (St Petersburg, 1894), p. 2.

8 M. D. Bykovskii, O neosnovatel’nosti mneniia, chto arkhitektura grecheskaia, ili grekorimskaia, mozhet byt’ vseobshcheiu i chto krasota arkhitektury osnovyvaetsia na piati izvestnykh chinopolozheniiakh (Moscow, 1834), p. 4.

9 V. G. Lisovskii, Leontii Benua i peterburgskaia shkola khudozhnikov-arkhitektorov (St Petersburg, 2006), p. 37.

10 Cited in T. A. Slavina, Konstantin Ton (Leningrad, 1989), p. 91.

11 Cited in Lisovskii, Leontii Benua, p. 42.

12 Dostoevskii, ‘Dnevnik pisatelia’, p. 106.

13 See Ivan Zabelin, Opyty izucheniia russkikh drevnostei i istorii (Moscow, 1872). On Zabelin see Ivan Zabelin, V. B. Muraveva and Elena Tonchu, Cherty moskovskoi samobytnosti (Moscow, 2007).

14 Cited in T. A. Slavina, Issledovateli russkogo zodchestva: russkaia istoriko-arkhitekturnaia nauka XVIII–nachala XX veka (Leningrad, 1983), p. 83.

15 On these exhibitions see E. I. Kirichenko, ‘K voprosu o poreformennykh vystavkakh Rossii kak vyrazhenii istoricheskogo svoeobraziia arkhitektury vtoroi poloviny XIX v.’, in Khudozhestvennye protsessy v russkoi kul’ture vtoroi poloviny XIX veka, ed. G. Iu. Sternin (Moscow, 1984), pp. 83–136...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Russia: Modern architectures in history
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• one National Forms, Rational Techniques, 1861–95
• two Style, Innovation and Tradition, 1896–1916
• three Laboratories of Soviet Architecture, 1917–23
• four Socialist Construction, 1924–31
• five Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution, 1932–41
• six World War, Cold War, 1941–53
• seven Architecture without Excess, 1954–68
• eight Architecture in Developed Socialism, 1969–82
• nine From Perestroika to ‘Capitalist Realism’, 1983 to the Present
• References
• Select Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• Photo Acknowledgements
• Index