National Taiwan Normal University

Graduate Institute of Art History

國立台灣師範大學藝術史研究所

Master’s Degree Thesis

碩士論文

The House of Soviets in Elista: Russian and the Process of the Construction of Socialist Society

Advisor: Candida Syndikus

指導教授: 辛蒂庫絲 博士

Graduate Student: Basan Kuberlinov

研究生: 巴桑

June 2015

中華民國 104 年 7 月

Table of Contents

English Abstract………………………………………………………………………...3

Chinese Abstract………………………………………………………………………..4

1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………5

2. State of Research……………………………………………………………………7

3. The Building History……………………………………………………………….10

a. Prehistory and Planning Process………………………………………………10

b. Construction………………………………………………………………...... 18

c. Destruction and Rebuilding……………………………………………………19

4. Defining a building type and its style……………………………………………...21

a. The Formal Analysis…………………………………………………………..21

b. Constructivist Houses of Soviets and the Development of a Building Type...... 27

c. Golosov’s House of Soviets…………………………………………………….34

5. The Issue of Style in the House of Soviets in Elista……………………………….37 a. Constructivism, Style or Method?...... 37 b. The Origins of Iliya Golosov’s style and his Theory of the Construction……...45 of Architectural Organisms 6. The House of Soviets in Elista and Constructivism in the Context of Soviet Everyday life and Ideology…………………………………………………………54 a. The Theoretical Conception of Constructivism………………………………...54 b. Everyday life, Ideology and Theater……………………………………………60 c. The Tower……………………………………………………………………….76 7. The Building in its Environment…………………………………………………....83 8. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….92 9. Bibliography………………………………………………………………………...99

Appendix: Glossary………………………………………………………………...103

Appendix: Illustrations……………………………………………………………..104

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English Abstract

The proposal presents the analysis of the House of Soviets in Elista. The building was designed by the famous Russian architect Iliya Golosov and its construction was a part of the first five-year plan (1928-1932). The House of Soviets should become the administrative and socio-cultural center of the newly built of the Autonomous Kalmyk Region, Elista. It also was one of new major types of buildings, which were developed in the RSFSR (Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic) in the first two decades after the October Revolution of 1917. The type was elaborated by architects of Constructivism, the avant-garde style––or rather method, where form had to derive from function––which was predominant in between 1923 and 1933. As at that time the idea prevailed that all art and architecture was to support the construction of the new socialist society, the House of Soviets should become an important factor in this process. The aim of this research is, first of all, to reveal the social and ideological functions of the building and to ask how they are expressed in its form. Second, it will be analyzed how, according to Constructivist architects, the building should help to organize the new socialist life.

Keywords: Constructivism, House of Soviets, Elista, Iliya Golosov, Avant-garde Architecture

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Chinese Abstract

本項研究計劃的主旨為分析埃利斯塔的蘇維埃眾議院。此棟建築物是由俄羅斯著名建築師

Iliya Golosov 所設計。蘇維埃眾議院的興建為第一個五年計劃（1928-1932）中的一部分， 而蘇維埃眾議院也成為當時為新興城區的埃利斯塔自治區中卡爾梅克一帶的管理和社會文

化中心。 此棟建築也是在十月革命後的第一個二十年間由建構主義建築師所發展出的新型建築物之

一。建構主義是 1923 年到 1933 年在俄羅斯的主流前衛風格。而在此期間，所有的藝術和

建築的目的皆是為了社會主義新社會的建設，而蘇維埃眾議院更是研究此段期間的重要議

題。

此次研究之目的，首先是要揭示本建築物所呈現出的社會和意識形態，並對其如何表現於

建築形式上提出疑問。其次則是為了解對建構主義的建築師而言，建築應如何建構出社會

主義的新生活。

關鍵字： 建構主義、蘇維埃眾議院、埃利斯塔、liya Golosov

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1. Introduction

In the turbulent time of the 1920s, artistic movements, such as Dutch De Stijl, German Bauhaus, Italian Futurism and many others, were born that inspired the whole century. Their foremost aim was the attempt to find a new language, which reflected the fundamental changes taking place in the society by combining theoretical studies with the reality that surrounded them. The artist-designer-engineer was regarded as a creator who would generate a new world of objects for the new individuals, embrace the art and architecture of many countries also leaving an imprint in different national cultures. Russian Constructivism played a significant role among these avant-garde movements. In comparison to its counterparts in the movement of modern art of other countries, Russian Constructivism explicitly considered ideological and social aspects. Its development was predominantly associated with the October Revolution of 1917. As a result, architects thought to build the first socialist country. Adopting the socio-political doctrine of the Soviet system, Constructivism made several attempts to realize utopian social projects through the comprehensive material “organization” of social life, the life, which now began to change rapidly against the background of industrialization and urbanization. Posters, monuments and stage design, everything was created in order to hail the revolution and the new social order. Architecture played a significant role in this process, as architects had to build a new environment for the new socialist society, which was meant to consist of modern buildings. Along with factories and plants, new types of buildings, such as house-communes, workers’ clubs, Palaces of Culture, were developed and built by the Constructivist architects. The Houses of Soviets were among these new types. The development of this type was strongly correlated with the country’s reorganization, when administrative-territorial division was reconsidered and new states and National Republics with new administrative centers were established. These new centers needed buildings for the government, communist party organizations and socio-cultural activities, which were called the Houses of Soviets. This was the situation, when the House of Soviets in Elista, which will be in the focus of this present study, was being built. It was in 1921 that Elista became the capital of the newly established Kalmyk Autonomous Region. As an absolutely new city, Elista rose in the very heart of the Kalmyk steppe located in the southeast of the European part of Russia, about 1,250 km south-east of .

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It is necessary to note that Elista city was at the beginning of a process, meant to break the traditional, nomadic way of life of the Kalmyk people. It was one of the few new cities with its central urban ensemble being composed exclusively of . The nucleus of this ensemble was the House of Soviets. It became the administrative and socio- cultural center of the city. Along with a pedtekhnikum (a college, which prepared teachers for elementary school) and a hospital, the building was designed by the famous Russian architect Iliya Golosov (1883-1945). The style of the House of Soviets in Elista is usually regarded to be Constructivist. Such a statement, however, is arguable, because the term used in this context is contradictory. Architectural Constructivism was not a style but a functional method, in which form had to be derived from function and construction.1 Although Golosov is often considered as one of the main representatives of Constructivism, his buildings were not always designed by applying strictly functional methods. It has been constantly repeated by Russian architectural historians that for Golosov, Constructivism was an “outward trend.” Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, for example, wrote that Golosov treated Constructivism as a set of stylistic features, which he used as means of expression.2 Vigdariya Khazanova called his projects “brilliant stylization in Constructivist spirit.”3 Taking into account the aforementioned facts, there are several aspects of the House of Soviets in Elista that I would like to study. In the first part of this proposal, I will regard the history of the building, on the one hand in order to reveal its involvement in the process of urbanization and the five-year plan; on the other hand, I will investigate under what circumstances and how the building process had progressed and how important the participation of the State had been. In order to achieve this goal, I shall analyze unpublished documents from the National Archive of the Republic of in Elista and the Passport of Architectural Monument, which is located in the Kalmyk State University in Elista. In the second part, I will analyze the building’s appearance—in its current form and as it was represented in drawings and photographs—in order to comprehend its main compositional elements. In the fourth part, I will regard the development of the building type in order to

1 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, p. 340. 2 Ibid, p. 442. 3 Vigdariya Khazanova, Sovetskaya arkhitektura pervikh let oktyabrya. 1917-1925 gg., Moscow 1970, p. 141.

6 reveal the main features of this new type of building. In the same part, I will also consider Golosov’s designs of other Houses of Soviets and examine their affiliation to the building type developed by other Constructivist architects. Subsequently, I will juxtapose the Houses of Soviets—those by the Constructivists and by Golosov—with the building in Elista in order to reveal the latter’s place in the architectural tradition of Constructivism. In order to understand the stylistic peculiarities of the House of Soviets in Elista, I will consider the building’s form in the context of the development of the Constructivist style and Golosov’s personal style. In the following research it will be asked what role the House of Soviets in Elista played in the organization of socialist life. In order to do that, first I will study the concepts of Constructivist architects and the Communist party about how the new socialist society should look like; second, I will try to answer the question, why the function of the meeting hall as theater was so important. Furthermore, I will also closely examine the vertical dominant of the building and its ideological implication. Finally, I will regard the building in its urban environment. The expected result is to reveal to what extend architecture could influence social life and to answer the question how utopian ideas, which were embodied by Constructivist architecture contributed to the consolidation of Soviet ideology; an ideology, which later would become an important tool for the manipulation of the people.

2. State of Research

The Houses of Soviets in general, and the example of Elista in particular, have never been studied comprehensively. Only one short monographic article by the historian of the Kalmyk region Ivan Borisenko, published in 2002 under the title Pamyatnik arkhitekturi. Zdanie Kalmytskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. Administrativnoe zdanie. (Byvshy Dom Sovetov, 1928-1930). Arkhitektor I. A. Golosov discusses the building in Elista.4 The author briefly regarded the history of the building and its physical environment in 1930s. He also carried out a formal analysis. Considering the history of the construction, the author did not mention the first architect of the building, Boris Velikovsky, but stated that Boris Mitelman were the first

4 Ivan Borisenko, Pamyatnik Arkhitekturi Zdanie Kalmyckogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. Administrativnoe zdanie (Bivshy Dom Sovetov), Arkhitektor I. A. Golosov, Elista 2002.

7 architect -in-chief, who in fact was only a collaborator.5 His formal analysis is inconsistent and also has a mistake. Borisenko claimed that the U-shaped plan of the building was supposed to provide shade for the inner yard.6 As the inner yard is opened at the south, this is impossible. Another considerable source is the monograph Arkhitektura Kalmykii (Architecture of Kalmykia), which was written by the Kalmyk Historian D. B. Purveev. In this book the author briefly considers the form of the building and the history of its construction. He also describes other constructions of the city built in 1930s, which constituted the environment of the House of Soviets.7 The House of Soviets was mentioned in the monographs Pioneers of Soviet Architecture (New York 1987) 8 and Iliya Golosov (Moscow 2007) by Selim O. Khan Magomedov, leading expert of Soviet architecture. In his book on Golosov, the author includes short remarks on the appearance of the building and its environment.9 The building is mentioned in books about the history of the city. Among them are a monograph by Ivan Nemichev, Rojdenie Goroda (1965)10, and the collection of documents and materials about the history of the establishment of the Autonomous Kalmyk Region, published in 1960 under the title K istorii obrazovaniya Avtonomnoy Oblasti Kalmytskogo Naroda.11 Both books give short remarks on the involvement of the building in different historical events. The only literary description of Elista in the 1930s, which also includes an account on the House of Soviets, is owed to the Russian novelist Konstantin Paustovsky (1892–1968). His essay Ispitanie Pustiney was part of the series of articles united under the title Our Achievements for the newspaper Pravda.12 As one of my major concerns is a more precise definition of Golosov’s style during his Constructivist period, the literature on Constructivism has to be taken into account. Selim O. Khan-Magomedov’s already mentioned Pioneers of Soviet Architecture provides a

5 Ivan Borisenko, Pamyatnik Arkhitekturi Zdanie Kalmyckogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. Administrativnoe zdanie (Bivshy Dom Sovetov), Arkhitektor I. A. Golosov, Elista 2002, p. 1. 6 Ibid. 7 Djangr B. Purveev, Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975. 8 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, p. 401; the book war first published in German under the title Pioniere der sowjetischen Architektur, 1983. 9 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Iliya Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 74; 1st edition 1988. 10 Ivan Nemichev, Rojdenie Goroda, Elista 1965, p. 32. 11 K istorii obrazovaniya Avtonomnoy Oblasti Kalmytskogo Naroda, Elista 1960, p. 82. The editor is unknown. 12 Konstantin Paustovsky, “Ispitanie Pustiney,” in: Povest o Jizni, vol. 6, Moscow 1967, pp. 461-464. An English translation was edited under the title The Story of a Life, vol 6, 1974.

8 comprehensive study of Russian avant-garde architecture of both Constructivism and Rationalism.13 In the first part of the book, “Aesthetic problems of design,” the author gives an overview over the development of Russian avant-garde architecture. In a first step, Khan- Magomedov considers the influence of , the “left” art, the first creative workshops of (Higher Art and Technical Studios) and Vkhutein (Higher Art and Technical Institute) and the theory of “productive art.” Then he concentrates on the works and theories of the main contributors of the Constructivist style. In the second part of the book, “Social Tasks of Architecture,” the author regards Constructivist architecture in its historical context and asks how an architect tried to solve the problems, which the society had to face during the first years of the USSR. The enlarged Russian edition of this book, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, published years later in two volumes, has also to be considered.14 Selim O. Khan Magomedov also wrote important monographs on Moisey Ginzburg and Iliya Golosov, published in 1972 and 1988. 15 Both monographs provide important information about the Houses of Soviets, which were designed by architects in 1920s. In her essential monograph from 1970 Sovetskaya arkhitektura pervikh let oktyabrya. 1917-1925 gg. (Soviet Architecture during the first years after the Revolution. 1917-1925 years), the Russian architectural historian Vigdariya Khazanova focuses Soviet architecture in the crucial period of 1917-1925.16 She regards the architecture in its socio-historical context, revealing how the development of architecture echoed social problems and needs in the first eight years after the Revolution. The journal Sovremennaya Arkhitektura (Contemporary Architecture), which was published between 1926 and 1930 by the union of Constructivist architects called OSA (Union of Contemporary Architects) includes numerous articles on architectural theory and designs of the main contributors of Constructivism.17 It is a major primary source for the topic, as it includes the Constructivist architects first-hand descriptions of their concepts of the Houses of Soviets.

13 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, p. 401. 14 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996; id., Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Vtoraya: Socialnye Problemy, Moscow 2001. 15 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Moisey Ginzburg, Moscow 1972; id., Iliya Golosov, Moscow 1988. I use the enlarged newer edition of the book of 2007. 16 Vigdariya Xazanova, Sovetskaya arkhitektura pervikh let oktyabrya. 1917-1925 gg., Moscow 1970. 17 Available online.

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The basic source of this study will be the unpublished documents about the House of Soviets of Elista in the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia and the Passport of Architectural Monument (Passport Pamyatnika Arkhitekturi), both in Elista.

3. The Building History a. Prehistory and Planning Process The history of the House of Soviets in Elista is, as the history of the entire city, inseparably related to the and the new socialist order which it implied. Three years after the Revolution, on 4 November 1920, the new government authorities, the VTsIK (All- Russian Central Executive Committee) 18 and Sovnarkom of Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (Council of the People’s Commissars of the RSFSR),19 issued a decree on the establishment of the Kalmyk Autonomous Region with its capital in Astrakhan, the location of which was close to the historical capital of the Golden Horde, Sarai.20 During that time, the majority of the Kalmyk people still lived a very traditional, that is nomadic, life, which did not fit the socialist order. Thereby, the new Soviet authorities and the regional government needed to be close to the people in order to guide them along the path of the new socialist reforms. Astrakhan did not meet these criteria as the city was situated at the periphery of the state. Consequently, on 15 October 1921 the Kalmyk Oblispolkom (Regional Executive Committee) voted for founding the future capital at Elista, a village located in the very heart of the region. Due to the country’s difficult economic and political situation, the real attempts to move the regional center to the new site was, however, implemented as late as in the second half of the 1920s.21 On 29 April 1926, the VTsIK issued a decree on moving the capital from Astrakhan to Elista. On 6 May of the following year, Sovnarkom RSFSR asked the Gosplan (State Planning Committee) to make a four years’ construction plan, which should transform the

18 This is abbreviation for Vserossijskij Central’nij Gosydarstvennij Komitet (All-Russian Central Executive Committee). The Committee as first elected in 1917 and functioned until 1937. 19 Abbreviation of Soviet Narodnix Kommisarov (Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR), functioned from 1917 to 1946. 20 Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multi-Ethnic History, New York 2001, p. 26. 21 K istorii obrazovaniya Avtonomnoy Oblasti Kalmytskogo Naroda, Elista 1960, p. 82.

10 village into a city. The Sovnarkom also suggested a list of buildings to be executed and the budget for their construction:

a) “A building for the Kalmyk Oblispolkom (later called House of Soviet Councils) – 100,000 rubles b) Building for the Council of Trade Unions – 100,000 c) Buildings for the Regional Prosecutor’s office, The State Political Directorate, Military Commissariat, Militia and Region Court – 500,000 rubles d) Finance Department – 180,000 e) Ispravdom22 – 200,000 f) Assembly point for recruits – 190,000 g) Regional Hospital – 300,000 h) houses for officials (approximately 10 houses) – 160,000 i) One garage – 50,000 j) One school with a dormitory – 300,000 k) A building for social organizations – 150,000 l) Typography – 70,000.”

On 12 December 1927, the main tasks for drafting the new administrative center of the Kalmyk region were issued. According to the materials, which were given by the Kalmoblplan (Kalmyk Regional Planning Committee) to the Gosplan, the first building to be constructed in 1927-28 was the House of Soviets. As we can see from the above-quoted list, the amount of money provided for this task, was originally only 100,000 rubles; hence, the initial project appeared to be very small and frugal. It should have been a two-storied building with a useful area of 1,362 m2 and a volume of 11,700 m3. All in all, 129 people should work there.23 Even though a rough plan had existed since 1927, the official contract for drafting, engineering calculations and preliminary technical estimates was signed between the chairman of the Kalmyk Oblispolkom Erdeni Kikeev and the renowned architect Boris Velikovsky (1878-1937) as late as on 16 February 1928.24 By that time, the type of rooms and

22 This was kind of prison. 23 Passport of an architectural monument. House of Soviet Councils of the Autonomous Kalmyk Region (Kalmyk State University), insert 1, p. 1, in the Russian Federation, Republic of Kalmykia, Elista, Kalmyk State University. Unfortunately the passport of an architectural monument did not provide information which materials was it. 24 Passport, insert 1, p. 2.

11 their sizes had already been decided.25 Thus, the building of the Kalmyk Oblispolkom should include a few working places, one meeting hall with an area of 72 m2 and fourteen different sections and departments; among them we find departments of planning, trade, statistics, social welfare, education, healthcare and also the Obkom VKP (a regional committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party), the Obkom VLKSM (a regional committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), the Zhenotdel (the women’s department), the Obkom MOPR (International Red Aid), the pioneer organization, the Obl. R.K.I. (Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate) and a regional land administration. The architect was given a very tight schedule: by 7 March 1928, he had to provide a draft design and approximate technical estimates, by 25 March 1928, he should provide a general project and preliminary estimates and one month later, on 25 April 1928, submit working and constructive drawings.26 According to the following correspondence the Representative of Kalmyk Autonomous Region in the VTsIK and Velikovskij, the architect initially worked on schedule. In March1928, he provided a draft of the project, the description of the concept and the budget (amount of materials and their costs) for a two-storied building with a semi-basement. The building should have been made of bricks and its skeleton of reinforced concrete. In June, he sent a plan, a project of the façade and a section of the building. The execution of the building, however, had not yet begun, when two months later, in August, Velikovsky was asked to stop the whole design work. This might have been related to the fact that after all documents had been presented to the Minor Soviet of the Sovnarkom RSFSR on 18 June 1928 the Minor Soviet decided to exclude from the plan the construction of a building for the Council of Trade Unions and provide 100,000 rubles, which were reserved for the building of the Kalmyk Oblispolkom. The Gosplan was, therefore, tasked to enlarge the volume of the building. In the following letter to Velikovsky, dated 26 September 1928, the Representative of the VTsIK in the Kalmyk State was asked to enlarge the building by including rooms for Regional organizations of Trade Unions in its plan. Furthermore, he should express his

25 It is necessary to note that, before the Revolution, Boris Velikovsky had been primarily associated with Neoclassicism, but after he designed a building for the Gostorg (State Trade Organization) in Moscow (1927), which followed the Constructivist style. He was also a teacher of some of the leaders of the Constructivist movement, such as Alexander and Vladimir Vesnin and El Lissitsky, who in the 1910s attended classes in his workshop. Vladimir Revzin, Zodchie Moskvi vremeni eklektiki, moderna I neoklassitsisma (1830-е–1917 godi), Moscow 1998, pp. 55-56. 26 Passport, insert 1, p. 2.

12 thoughts about possible changes to be made in the project and present these considerations in a paper by 1–2 October. They explained that such an emergency was needed in order to send the rough draft of a new project to the Kalmyk Oblispolkom for an approval and begin to execute it as soon as possible.27 The building of the Kalmyk Oblispolkom should have been made of hollow concrete stones of the “REKS” system with a filling of the hollow parts with an insulating material. The use of concrete stones for the future construction was due to a deficiency of local building materials. On 3 August 1928, in the presidium meeting of the Oblispolkom, a decree was issued to ask the Regional Organization Committee to help to produce machines for “REKS” stones and also to prepare the stones and red bricks for the next construction season.28 In the same document, they issued that the House of Soviets should be built of red bricks. Thus, the construction process was postponed until the following year. At the beginning of 1929, Velikovsky abandoned the project and left it to a famous Moscow architect with whom he cooperated, Boris Mitelman (1888–1975). Mitelman was one of the architects, who worked for the commercial construction cooperative Techbeton in Moscow. On 7 March 1929, a contract was signed between Techbeton and the Kalmyk Oblispolkom. Subsequently, the renowned architect Iliya Golosov (1883–1945), who also worked in the cooperative as consultant, was invited by Mitelman to join the project. The new following designs were signed by Mitelman, Golosov and the engineer Sergey Prokhorov and were elaborated from Velikovskij’s work.29 On 24 April 1929, after listening to the report of an architect Vladimir Semenov (1874–1960) on the meeting of the Naychniy Texnicheskiy Sovet (Scientific Technical Council), the Glanvoe Upravlenie Kommunalnogo Xozyajstva (Main Department of Communal Services) declined the design one again. In his report, Semenov wrote:

“The presented project for the ‘House of Soviets’ in Elista is insufficient and should be redesigned with respect to the following notes: 1. The meeting hall should be made in accordance to the needs of the institutions, which were planned to be placed in the building, without breaking a functional interrelation

27 Passport, insert 1, pp. 2-3. 28 Due to the climate situation in the region and the fact that there was no road lead to the constructing spot, it was impossible to build during a winter time. 29 Passport, insert 1, p. 3.

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between them. Because of the additional function of the Hall as a place for public occasions, it should be located in the building in order not to disturb the institutions’ work. 2. The ferroconcrete construction is acceptable due to its rationality in terms of the city Elista 3. The height of the meeting hall should be reduced; the extension of the stage is too excessive. 4. The location of the main vestibule, foyer and dining room is irrational. There should also be one separated vestibule for the Meeting Hall.

5. Using bilge as storage for theater decorations is considered to be unacceptable. 6. The dining room should be included in the theatrical area. 7. The new project should be made in accordance with Semenov’s notes. 8. To take a note that presenting the design to the central institution for approval and sending it concurrently to the place of the construction work violates the guidelines of Government rules of designing and constructing the buildings.”30

What is important in this letter apart from Semenov’s notes on the building project is the first mentioning of the theater or theatrical area and a storage area for decorations. By the “theatrical area,” they probably meant the meeting hall, which should also have been used as stage for theatrical performances. We can find at least two more instances of the use of a meeting hall as theater in other Houses of Soviets: one in Khabarovsk and another in Nizhnij Novgorod. It can be concluded that the presence of the theater or theatrical area was one of the features of this new building type, the House of Soviets. This feature and the fact that social organizations were accommodated in the building made the House of Soviet Councils a center not only of a state machine but also of social life. Another remarkable element, which supports the great importance of a building for the city is its function as a local boiler room or heating. In a letter sent to the commercial cooperative “VSK” in Moscow (14 October 1929), which was appointed to make a project for

30 Quoted from Протокол номер 23 Заседания Научно Технического Совета Управления Коммунального Хозяйства 24 Aprelya 1929 (Protocol No. 23 of the session of the Scientific Technical Council, Main Department of Communal Services of 24 April 1929), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 79, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista. (If not otherwise indicated, all translations from Russian are mine).

14 a heating system, ventilation and drainage, the representative of the Kalmyk Oblispolkom Burinov suggested that the boiler room of the building of OIK (Oblispolkom) should provide heat to the other buildings within a radius of 300 meters.31 According to the addition to the project description written in 12 April 1929 by the engineer of Techbeton, Alexander Polyakov, the basis for the construction design was derived from the experience of working on three other buildings, a pedtekhnikum, a garage and a clinic.32 He, then, very distinctly described the materials as well as their amount and price and how they should be used. The first story should be made of a ferroconcrete skeleton filled with “REKS” stones isolated with bulrush. Furthermore, the width of the inner stone wall should equal two stones. The same system must have been applied to the second and third story, with the only exception that the width should equal here only one stone. According to Polyakov, such a construction was supposed to be the best from the economical point of view. Since the authorities did not have any further demands to change this system, we can assume that the building was executed in the way described by Polyakov. The second revised project was submitted to the Glavnoe Ypravlenie Komunal’nogo Khoxyaistva (Main Department of Communal Services) on 17 July 1929. This time, the former architect of the building Boris Velikovsky examined the project and added conclusions. After the meeting of the Naychniy Texnicheskiy Sovet (Scientific Technical Council), the GYKKh issued that the new design was mainly acceptable. The execution could, however, only be approved with the following amendments: 1. “The tower should be reduced at least by one story, because of its economically and technically unreasonable height. 2. The restrooms should be more isolated. 3. The rationality of a chosen construction and its materials—such as the use of “REKS” stone—was approved, due to economical and technical feasibility. However you should also provide thermo technical calculations.

31 Буринов, письмо к «ВСК» (Burinov, letter to “VSK”, 14 October 1929), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 178, National Archive of Republic of Kalmykia. 32 As we can see from the letter these buildings were already executed, although they originally wanted to build the House of Soviets first. Unfortunately all three constructions did not survive.

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4. You should find a way to reduce the total cost of the building.”33

It is worth noting that an unclear statement of the last amendment and its contradiction to the third amendment became afterwards a reason of a lack of funding and as consequence a slow construction process. On the one hand the GYKKh approved the materials and the construction as economically and technically feasible and on the other hand asked to find a way to make the building cheaper, though without giving any suggestions how this should be implemented. We can assume that Techbeton could not reduce the total cost of the building by changing materials and construction, because it would have violated the third amendment and they were not able to find another way to do it. Although the meeting concerning the new project took place on 19 July, the design had already been submitted on 9 July. In a letter, which Techbeton addressed to the Kalmyk Oblispolkom on 2 October 1929, the following is stated:

“On 9 July Techbeton had sent – the design drawing of general plan, facades, sections, the plan of foundation, on 19 July – façades, sections and plans for floors, on 20 August – details for windows, on 3 September retaining wall of boiler room, on 11 September – purlins and slabs between beams, floor beams, 14 September – beams and slabs, on 24 September – types of cushions, a plan of foundation, a plan of basement, the overlap of a backstage space, on 26 September – strapping to maintain the balcony.”34

In another letter of 12 February 1930, the board of Techbeton reported about the completion of all details for the working design drawings preparing the building of the Kalmyk Oblispolkom, which, according to the contract of 7 March 1929, terminated the engagement of the cooperative. They also wrote:

“The board of Techbeton finds it necessary to notify, that, according to the contract of 7th March, the original tasks were to make a project and design drawings for the

33 Протокол номер 37 Заседания Научно Технического Совета Управления Коммунального Хозяйства (Protocol No. 37 of the session of the Scientific Technical Council, Main Department of Communal Services), 17 July 1929, Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 76, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista. 34 Список чертежей посланных на постройку Облисполкома и профсовета в г. Элиста (The list of working drawings sent to Elista for building of Olbispolkom and Profsovet), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 101a, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia.

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building, the volume of which is 17,250 m3 and which will cost 400,000 rubles. However, due to the demands of NKVD and your own suggestions, Techbeton elaborated the new project of the building, the volume of which is 30,729 m3 and which will cost 727,000 rubles. Compared to the original design you proposed, the complexity of the new project is much higher and consists in a significant amount of very complex working drawings.”35

Thus, the board of Techbeton explained to the Kalmyk Oblispolkom, why the costs of the work were higher than originally planned. The Oblispolkom should have been paid 5,452 rubles for the general project and 25 rubles for each working drawing. The total cost, therefore, amounted to15,826 rubles. At the end of the letter, they wrote that “we hope that the Kalmyk Oblispolkom will appreciate our outstanding and complex work, which was made in order to build in Elista city, the capital of Kalmyk state, a truly modern building by its architectural and constructive solution.”36 This letter is very important, because, first, we can assume that Velikovsky’s former project was designed according to the suggestions of the Kalmyk Oblispolkom itself and was, thereby, simple and very different from the new one proposed by Golosov;37 and, second, the fact that the NKVD demanded the project to be redesigned suggests that perhaps the simple project was considered ideologically inappropriate, because it did not express the high goals of the new socialist order. b. Construction Although the construction began as soon as the first design drawing had arrived, the building process due to the lack of funding was very slow. On 14 October 1929, the Kalmyk Oblispolkom had already sent a letter to all high authorities of the country such as the Sovnarkom, NKVD, and VTsIk. They explained that according to the new design the size of the building was significantly enlarged and whereby its approximate price rose to 700,000 rubles. As the Kalmyk state did not have this money, they asked the Sovnarkom to provide

35 Копия письма из кооператива Техбетон к Калмоблисполком 12 февраля 1930, для московского представительства (The copy of the letter from cooperative Techbeton to KALMOBLISPOLKOM of 12 February 1930, for Moscow Representative), No 274, 15 February 1930, Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 3, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista. 36 Ibid. 37 Unfortunately we do not know the appearance of the project made by Velikovsky, due to the lost of working drawings and a description note.

17 another 270,000 rubles. In the letter, they also mentioned for the first time the approximate number of staff of 350 people, which should have been working in the building.38 Despite the request of the Kalmyk Oblispolkom, the authorities did not hasten to send more money. During the next year, there was an extensive correspondence between the Kalmyk Oblispolkom and Sovnarkom about the financing of the building. In these letters, we can meet the repeated demand of the Kalmyk state to take over all financial obligations of the construction work, which was impossible.39 One reason among others for such a slow building process was the inconvenience of the location. The building site was located at a distance of 95 kilometers from the nearest train station. This rendered the delivery of the building materials very complicated and, as there were no roads, it was impossible to transport the materials from the train station to Elista, when the weather was bad.40 In the course of new attempt to provide necessary financing for the building in August 1930, the Kalmyk Oblispolkom sent a report of the examination of the causes of the rise in price to the Economic Council RSFSR. This letter contains the following notes:

1. “The wrong choice of a ferroconcrete structure for the building, when it was possible to use stone construction. 2. The increase of the building’s volume first to 17,000 cubic meters, then to 24,000 and finally reached 28,000 cubic meters. 3. The wrong calculation made by Techbeton about the approximate price of the building. 4. Lack of attention of NKVD to approval of the project in 1929, particularly to the volume of the building and its price. Thus, the Scientific Technical Council only focused on the plan of the building and they did not even check nor its estimated costs, neither the recommendations given with regard to the possibilities of reducing the price were clear. 5. The high price of the construction itself by applying a thick instead of thin wood.”41

38 Калмоблисполком письмо к Совнарком 14 октября 1929 (Kalmoblispolkom, letter to Sovnarkom, 14 October 1929) Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 86, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista. 39 Passport, insert 1, p. 5. 40 Калмоблисполком в Совнарком, 19 Июня 1930 (Kalmyk Oblsipolkom, letter to Sovnarkom, 19 June 1930), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 26, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia. 41 Председательство Калмыцкого представительства в Экономический Совет РСФСР, 12 Августа 1930 (The Chairmanship of Kalmyk representative, a letter to The Economic Council RSFSR), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 39, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia.

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Below, the Kalmyk Oblispolkom wrote that on 26 July 1930 the progress of the construction stood at 30 percent and they lacked now 200,000 rubles, in order to finish the building as planned by 1 August 1931, when the Kalmyk state would celebrate its 10th anniversary.42 Eventually money must have been provided, because the building was finished by the day of its anniversary in March 1932, it still was not usable due to the lack of the central heating system.43 However, all the needed works were completed by the time of the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution in honor of which on 6 November 1932 there was arranged the Ceremonial Session of Soviets.44 In the following ten years, the House of Soviets was used by all state departments, social organizations, as a theater and for the sessions of the new state machine VTsIK of Kalmyk ASSR. c. Destruction and Rebuilding During World War II, in 1942, most part of Kalmykia was occupied by German troops; so it also happened to Elista, where the House of Soviets was used as the headquarters of the 16th Motorized Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht. In the night from 31 December 1942 to 1 January 1943, the area near the building was taken by the 28th Soviet Army. On 1 January, a meeting of the Soviet Troops took place on the square in front of the House of Soviets Councils about the liberation of Elista, though the building was still under fire when the Soviet red flag was placed on its top by the men of the 28th Army Guard, Lieutenant Mikhail Kondakov, senior sergeant Vladimir Nikanorov and the political worker of army Budda Mandzhiev. Most part of the city was destroyed as well as all of Constructivist buildings, such as the pedtekhnikum, the department of communications and other important sites. Albeit severely damaged, the House of Soviet Councils was the only construction which survived.45

42 Ibid. 43 Представительство Калмобласти при президиуме ВЦИК к ВАКО, 12 марта 1932 (Representative of Kalmyk region in presidium VTsIK, letter to VAKO, 12 March 1932), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 77, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia. 44 Borisenko 2002, p. 1. 45 Nemichev, Rojdenie Goroda, Elista 1965, p. 32.

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The half -destroyed building was not reconstructed until 1959. This was due to the fact that during the World War II, on 28 December 1943, the were deported to various locations in Central Asia and Siberia. Kalmyk people were permitted to return home only in 1957. 46After the return of Kalmyks from the deportation the reconstruction of the building began and in 30 August 1960 it was included in the list of the country’s cultural monuments.47 During the slow reconstruction process, which was finished in 1970, considerable changes at the interior and exterior of the building were made. In the same year, the Kalmyk State University moved into the House of Soviets. The University is based there until today.48 There are hardly any accounts about the appearance of Elista and her buildings during the 1930s, which could witness the impression the new construction made on contemporary people. A description of the city included in the essay The Underwater Winds of 1932 by the Russian Romanticist novelist Konstantin Paustovsky is, therefore, all the more precious. The essay was first published in the newspaper Pravda for which Paustovsky worked as a corresponded. During that time, the writer travelled around the country and described the undergoing changes in the series of articles united under the title “Our Achievements.” 49 After his visit at Elista, Paustovsky wrote:

“An economist who was sent to Elista from Moscow, called this city ‘cheap exotic.’ Puckered like a monkey with horn-rimmed glasses and clad in a white suit, he was just angry. Elista is not a cheap exotic. She is a prairie mirage, which got a dense and tangible form. Hundreds of people work in this mirage. She appears in this way: after 300 kilometers of journey, the steppe begins to weigh. Only two villages with houses made of adobe our group encountered on the way, Yashkul and Ulan-Erge. Then, after I climbed the hill, below in blue dust and blue lakes of shade formed by clouds, a toy city appeared. It makes a very strong impression with its white, milk-like, festive appearance and mirrored windows. All this is placed in a virgin steppe, where drivers have to bypass golden eagles, which do not listen to car signals […] Elista has exotic, if you want […] it is exotic of constructing and creating. Thus, the small and well-calculated

46 See: Konstantin Nikolaevich, Kalmykia in Russia’s Past and Present National Policies and Administrative System, 2008, pp. 309, 312. 47 Совет Министров РСФСР. Постановление от 4 Декабря 1974, дополнение к документу от 30 августа 1960 (The Council of Minister of RSFSR. Resolution of 4 December 1974, addition to the document of 30 August 1960) Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 404, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia. 48 Borisenko 2002, p. 4. 49 Sergey L`vov, Konstantin Paustovsky, Moscow 1956, pp. 33-34.

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city grows: radio station, garages, a museum, hotels, an eating venue, a telegraph, a hospital, clinics, kindergarten and cooperatives. But Elista does not have streets. The buildings are placed in the steppe […] white cubical buildings, with light square towers and balconies made of concrete and wide windows, which are sparkling with transparent purity. They are separated from each other by plantations of acacias and ailanthus. And only a wind blows around a yellow black cap on the mast of the aerodrome.”50

Elista, evidently, appeared before Paustovsky’s eyes as a completely modern city. Located in the bare steppe, it had all the buildings needed for modern life. The buildings in turn were erected in the pure contemporary style characterized by white concrete walls, square forms and extensive use of glass, which gave the impression of transparency.

4. Defining a building type a. The Formal Analysis The House of Soviets of Elista (fig. 1) situated in the center of the city on the intersection of two arterial roads, Pushkin Street and Lenin Street. The directions of the streets correspond to the cardinal points. According to the general plan, the building should provide the dominant, in order to bind them (fig. 2, A). A square for public meetings located at the west side of the building across Pushkin Street (fig. 2, B). 51 Subsequently, it was called after the Lenin monument erected in the 1930 before the main entrance. Behind this statue, an alley leads to a small park with a fountain, an “arch-like construction” (as Borisenko put it), a dance floor and an obelisk dedicated to Kalmyk revolutionary Kharti Kanukov.52 The House of Soviet is an asymmetrical three-storied construction consisting of a multifaceted conglomerate of flat-roofed horizontal blocks. The building has an irregular U- shaped plan with an inner yard, which opened at southern side. It consists of three wings and one distinct corner part with the vertical dominant provided by a tower (fig. 3).

50 Konstantin Paustovsky, “Ispitanie Pustiney,” in: Povest o Jizni, vol. 6, Moscow 1967, pp. 461-464. 51 The literal translation of the square is administrative square. It was used for the public meetings as well as the meetings of Communist party members, which could gather there in order to listen to the leaders of the party. It was also used for parades and festivals. 52 Borisenko 2002, p. 1. We do not how exactly the arch construction looked like and what its function was. Borisenko is the only one to mention that there was such a construction.

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T he most prominent and elaborate part of the building marks the corner of the northern and western wings; unfortunately, this section had been partly destroyed during World War II and was reconstructed afterwards (fig. 1, mark A).53 From this perspective, the play of the superimposed and sometimes projecting rectangular blocks of different height and flatter slabs is most impressive. The corner is conceived by a low one-storied block covered by a high projecting roof. The main entrance is rather concealed then noticeable at the right end of its western wall, from where a tunnel-like passage leads to the inner yard. It is divided by glassed semicircular element (fig. 4, mark A); we can assume that it is a place for a receptionist. The glassed door of the main entrance is located in the wall at the left of the receptionist’s booth; above the door, curved ribbon windows, which lead inside the passage (fig. 4, mark C). Such semicircular and convex forms are repeated in several parts of the building (figs. 5, 6). Contrasting with the dominating rectangular lines of the blocks, they are supposed to soften sharp corners and enliven the composition. The north side of the first story has an additional entrance. It is topped by a rectangular flat roof, which protruded above the walls constituting a kind of cornice. On the ends of the western and eastern sides, the cornice enters the space of the three-storied wings and thereby creates an effect as if the slab was cleaved into the mass of the building. Its horizontal contour on the one hand emphasizes the visual independency of the corner part and on the other forms a transition from the western to the northern wing. In former times, the flat roof of the first story was used as a tribune for the Communist Party officials in order to address the people, which usually crowded on Lenin’s square. In 1949, for example, the Communist Party officials hailed the participants of the celebrations dedicated to the fifth centenary of the national epos Dzhangar standing on that roof.54 Another important component of the corner is the vertical dominant provided by the tower. Golosov visually emphasized it as an individual figure, which seems to rise from the flat roof of the first story, inserted between the two wings. Seen from the north side, the tower has a stepped structure. This results from the different horizontal heights of the walls of second, third and fourth, fifth stories and the high platform of the narrow block of the sixth story. Golosov “decorated” this complex construction with a loggia in the second floor, which

53 During the reconstruction, the small loggia of the third story was closed and one more story was built on the flat roof of the additional vestibule. 54 Borisenko 2002, p. 2.

22 is cut into the corner; a rectangular pillar marks the angle and, at the same time, supports the roof of the third floor. The loggia is topped by a long stage-like platform or balcony. Its floor is slightly cantilevering at the western side, protruding over the opening of the loggia and cutting into the western wall (fig. 4). Consequently, the upper part is markedly separated from the three stories below, which is on the same level with the rest of the building. Thus, it plays a rather decorative than functional role. The same quality is applied to the platform-like roof of the fifth story. With the fencing around and an antenna in the center its appearance formerly resembled a ship deck. The ribbon windows below, on the two upper stories of the western wall, gave the building a very modern look. Apart from the loggia of third story, the west wall of the tower is solid and does not show any openings. In former times, the acronym of Central Executive Committee (CIK or in Russian “ЦИК“) was presented in the upper part with monumental letters (fig. 4). This plain wall was also used for displaying posters with communist slogans (fig. 7). Such a stress on the corner was not a new invention. It was already prefigured in Golosov’s project for the Zuyev Workers’ Club in Moscow (1927–29), where a monumental glass cylinder dominates the corner situation (fig. 8). Selim Khan-Magomedov remarked in his monograph on Golosov: “According to his (Golosov’s) ideas: cylinder as absolutely symmetrical figure with a vertical axis and thereby can keep independency and play a main role, although it inserted in a complex sculptural composition of a building.”55 A similar effect is to be observed in the House of Soviet Councils in Elista; however, instead of a cylindrical element, which penetrates the mass of the building, we have a vertical of the tower. The similarities between two elements can also be supported by the fact that, analogously to the cylinder of the Zuyev Workers’ Club, the tower contains the main staircase of the building. Another noteworthy parallel between the Workers’ Club and the House of Soviets in Elista is the multiple use of loggias and balconies. At the Workers’ Club, three loggias are superimposed above the main entrance, whereas in Elista the same theme appears on the recess at the left end of the northern wing. Balconies lined with railings set horizontal accents on the façades of both buildings. The tower also provides a key component for the composition of the building, which unites its different wings. The last one is a simple three-storied rectangular block. It has a

55 Quoted from Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 77.

23 two-storied recess on the west wall of the right end with a side door in it (fig. 9 and fig. 1, mark B). On the left side before reaching the vertical dominant, the wall recedes and thereby forms a kind of transitional area (fig. 4, mark B). It stresses the independency of the corner part and opens a space for the tribune of the flat floor of the first story. According to Golosov’s working drawing, the wall of the transitional part was originally supposed to be made of glass, but probably due to difficulties related to the construction material, it was not executed (figs. 10, 11). Among other sections, which differ from the original design, there are windows of the western wing. They had been planned as ribbon windows running through its whole length. The most prominent feature of the building’s northern wing is the great meeting hall (fig. 1, mark C). Golosov put this two-storied space in a separate rectangular block. At the exterior, its height is expressed by six vertical windows; according to the original design, instead of having windows, the entire wall should have been made of glass. The height of the meeting hall is 7,7. m. Its seating capacity is 500. 56 The second floor of the northern part rises behind the flat roof of the meeting hall. Its windows correspond to the high vertical windows of the block below and thereby visually unite the two different horizontal blocks. It is necessary to note that, unlike the corner part, the flat plane of the roof of the meeting hall did not have any additional function. In the design of the south-western corner, we have already seen how Golosov used the flat protruding elements as decoration; in the northern wings, the akin decorative function had a vertical plane of wall of the meeting hall. Golosov raised the wall of the block of the meeting hall at the point where it met the first story of the corner part. The wall exceeds the height of the roof and appears as a fence between them. Such a solution should probably stop the movement of stepping upwards and confine it exclusively to the corner part. On its opposite end, the northern wing has a recess with loggias. The recess projected from the upper two stories of the wall and provided the visual transition to the eastern wing. The original appearance of the eastern wing is unknown due to the lack of original photographs. In comparison to other parts of the building, the eastern wing has the simplest form. It looks like a three-storied rectangular block (fig. 12). The only significant aspects can be perceived from the inner yard; at the right side of the wall, there is a solid one-storied cubic

56 Djangr B. Purveev, Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975, p. 110.

24 block, which is attached to the ground floor of the building. On the left side, the wall has a projecting cylindrical staircase (fig. 13). Its body rises from the ground and exceeds the height of the roof, thereby visually releasing it from the mass of the building. Its elevation has a glass window over the full height, which opens the view to the staircase inside. A similar element is to be seen on the opposite wall of the western part. Here, the staircase is allocated by a rectangular recess, which has three narrow vertical ribbon windows on its sides (fig. 14). As in the case of the enveloping of eastern part, the height of its elevation surpasses the roof of the building and thereby stresses its visual self-sufficiency. In addition, it is worth noting that the view to the main staircase is also opened with high vertical windows in the right end of the northern wall (fig. 15). As I have mentioned before, the main entrance is located on the west side of the building (fig. 3, mark A). Inside, behind a vestibule, a wide central staircase connects the first three stories (fig. 16 and fig. 3, mark B). Golosov opened it on one side by eliminating the wall between the corridor and the staircase and on the other side he opened a view to the inner yard by including high windows in the wall (figs. 16, 17). He released the staircase from the closed mass of the interior and connected the vestibule with the two floors above, thus creating a continuous flowing space. As at the outside, where the corner part serves as an anchor point for the whole composition, the staircase inside redistributes the movement of the people, who work in the building. Being next to the main entrance, it provided quick access to the first and second floors; above it, a smaller staircase lead to the additional fourth and fifth floors of the narrow tower (fig. 18). A horizontal movement by the corridors with the offices on both sides runs through the whole building (fig. 3, mark E). Public institutions occupied the rooms of the western wings, while the governmental institutions settled in the northern and eastern parts. The access between them was assured through passages on the first and second floors. Due the elongated plan of the building, it would not have been convenient to return to the main staircase every time when someone wanted to get to another floor; therefore, Golosov planned two extra stairs (fig. 3, mark F). One was located almost at the end of the western part and another was in the eastern part, close to the point, where it connected the northern; both had side exits on the ground floor. Their rectangular and half cylindrical shapes has already been mentioned in the context of the exterior of the building.

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A t the left side of the main staircase, there was, on the ground floor, an additional vestibule of the meeting hall with its own entrance (fig. 3, marks C and D). From the outside, it looked as an independent one-storied part of the corner. Such an appearance was not insignificant; inside the building, its space was separated from the rest of the interior by a wall with four doors. The same can be applied to the meeting hall, which from outside appeared as an independent rectangular block. Hence, we can see that the meeting hall and its vestibule were designed as an independent structure within a building. It could operate autonomously without disturbing the work of the institutions, when it was used for public occasions such as theatrical performances or concerts. The construction rests on a concrete fundament reinforced with metal pillars and a skeleton made of reinforced concrete, cored parts of which were filled with hollow concrete stones of the “REKS” system, which were produced of high-quality cement. The analysis has shown that the composition of the building was made in the tradition of Constructivist architecture by conjunction of different geometric figures on an asymmetrical plan. However, Golosov also tried to expand the artistic means of Constructivism by using loggias, balconies and visors like decorative elements, which were supposed to enliven the appearance of the construction. Another important idea, which is embodied in the building, is unity between form and content. All the functional elements of the building are expressed in its exterior, as it was designed from inside. We have seen that on the example of the enveloping of additional staircases, visually independent blocks of the meeting hall and the additional vestibule and the corner part which contains the main staircase. b. The Constructivist House of Soviets and the development of a building type The development of the new building type of the House of Soviets began in the middle of 1920s. Building started in the Republics and provinces, where the new organ of state machine, did not have places, which meet their requirements.57 Big influence on their development as well as the development of all types of administrative buildings was exercised by the project of the for the competition of 1923 for the Palace of Labor in Moscow (figs. 19–21). The building’s design

57 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, p. 400.

26 consisted of superimposed cubic figures, which are attached to each other; a circular structure, the congress hall, was added at one side. In order to provide light to the rooms, which are located deep inside the building, they opened the space on the lower floors between the rectangular and circular parts and thereby created a big passage through the building with a height of 38.34 m and a width of 38.08 m. The passageway is topped by the small hall for the Moscow City Council; the big circular congress hall for the “national assembly” is located next to it.58 The halls are separated by iron shutters. Their space can be united by opening them. The idea was that the Moscow City Council could participate at the “national assembly” without leaving the small hall. The rectangular block with a tower or vertical dominant included a meteorological station, the astrophysical observatory, the central Moscow radio station, an information office, the Museum of the Social Sciences, a library and other facilities. Outside, on top of the tower there is a screen for “indicating the time and other observations of meteorological and astronomical station,” as well as screens “for the socio-economic and political information.”59 In the issue of 1924 of the journal “LEF” (The Left Front of Arts), the Vesnin’s brothers themselves explained the main ideas, inherent in the project:

“While working on the design of the building of the palace, authors tasked to solve all the requirements of the contest, in the principles of: constructiveness, utility, rationality, efficiency. All forms of the building are derived from: the most efficient location of the required facilities in terms of their utilization, their size in three dimensions and the most constructive use of the materials which were taken for the construction of structures: iron, concrete, glass.”60

Important in this building are the following aspects: first of all, its design expressed the desire of the new proletarian society in order to unite different institutions and organizations in one building, which should become the political and cultural center of the country; and second, the graphic representation of the building manifested the principles of Constructivism, which gradually evolved during that period. Thus, the Vesnins’ Palace of Labor turned out to be programmatic for all types of public buildings in Constructivist style, such as the Palaces of Culture and Houses of Soviets.

58 The literal translation if the “national assembly” means “the meeting of all people.” It is necessary to note that it was not a kind of administrative organ in common sense. It literally meant that every person could come and participate at the meeting and listen to the speeches of the leaders of the communist party. 59 Vigdariya Xazanova, Sovetskaya arkhitektura pervikh let oktyabrya. 1917-1925 gg., Moscow 1970, pp. 134-135. 60 Alexander, Leonid and Vladimir Vesnin, “Proekt Dvorca Tryda,” in: LEF 4, 1924, pp. 59-62. 27

The result of its great impact was immediate. In 1924, on the competition for the House of Soviets in Bryansk, one of the most renowned Constructivist architects, Alexander Grinberg, presented his project (figs. 22–25). Although the building’s appearance is characterized by Neoclassical spirit, its plan and multi-functionality related to the Palace of Labor. It consists of two buildings, which are visually united by a gallery. One of the buildings is three stories high and contains a central hall for 1200 people. It was indented for the sessions of the Regional Soviets as well as for club activities and public theater performances. The other building, which was called the administrative block, had four stories and contained most of the Soviet institutions as well as the Communist party’s and trade union organizations.61 The functional method, which was proposed by the Vesnin brothers in the project for the Palace of Labor, was used by Moisey Ginzburg in the design for the competition of the House of Soviets for the capital of the Republic of Dagestan, , in 1926 (fig. 26). Although his project did not win the first prize, its design had, due to its numerous publications in architectural journals, a fundamental importance and exercised significant influence on the formation of this building type.62 In his design, Ginzburg wanted to create optimal conditions for employees and visitors of the House of Soviets by strictly dividing the functions of the individual parts of the building. Hence, he developed the type of the pavilion plan. Ginsburg designed three independent four-storied blocks for each department. Each block has separate entrances from the street. The fourth block had an L-like plan with an increased six-storied part and was designed for the CIK (Central Executive Committee), Sovnarkom and meeting hall. The buildings are connected by walkways between the second and third stories. The square is constituted by the intersection of two main streets on one side and one another side by a four-storied block and the block with U-like plan. It supposed to be used for public meetings. Another square with bleachers for spectators is located within the complex. It is designed for assemblies and sports performances. A major problem, which he wanted to solve in his design, was the problem of the relations between national and

61 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, p. 400. The Communist Party’s organizations included: the Obkom VKP (a regional committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party), the Obkom VLKSM (a regional committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League), the Zhenotdel (the women’s department), the Obkom MOPR (International Red Aid), the pioneer organization, the Obl. R.K.I. (Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate). 62 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Ginzburg, Moscow 1972, pp. 41-43.

28 international aspect in the Soviet architecture. Because RSFSR as today’s Russia, was first of all a multinational country with about 182 different nationalities, which have different traditions and live in locations with different climatic conditions. In his project Ginzburg wanted simultaneously to make an appearance of a building universal and to take into account the peculiarities of traditions and climatic conditions of the given region. In an article dedicated to the project of House of Soviets in Makhachkala, he wrote: “A correct application of the functional method can provide a solution to the issue of national identity in architecture. When designing the building an architect should take into account all the preconditions that define the modern face of the national Soviet Republics: 1) the preconditions related to the centuries-old way of life and climatic peculiarities, which determine the individual, national face of the republic; 2) the preconditions related to the new social order, new forms of life and achievements of the modern technologies, which are common and uniform for the entire USSR; the preconditions that determine the growth of new, All-Union forces of Socialism in the construction process. The right solution can be provided only when preconditions of both categories were taken into account. From this point of view, of course, the resurrection of old architectural decorative forms of a national style is fatuous.”63

Ginsburg adds that in the House of Soviets in Makhachkala, the first precondition was solved by locating the building in the ensemble of a typical eastern town, the “kishlak”.64 The second precondition was solved by applying the functional method described above.65 In the same year, the brothers Leonid and submitted their project for the House of Soviets in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) (figs. 27–29). As in the projects of Ginzburg and Grinberg, the building is multifunctional and has a very complex asymmetrical plan (fig. 30). Besides the Soviet institutions and Communist party’s and trade union organizations, the building should house the Regional Court, a library, a reading room as well as telephone and radio stations. The Regional Court is located near the meeting hall and has an independent entrance. Another important element is vertical dominant. The dominant is given by a tower, which clearly refers to Vesnin’s Palace of Labor. As the Palace

63 Moisey Ginzburg, “Nacional’naya Arkhitektura Narodov SSSR,” in: Sovremennaia Architektura 5-6, 1926, pp. 113-114. 64 Kishlak is a rural settlement of semi-nomadic Turkic peoples of Central Asia and . The literal translation from Turkish mean “wintering space.” 65 Ibid.

29 of Labor, it should house a local radio station at the top floor and outside, on the top of its wall, display a big clock.66 A very important competition for the House of Soviet took place in the new capital of Republic of Kazakhstan, Alma-Ata, in 1927. Most of the projects were sent by Constructivist architects. In their designs, we can see all the developed features of the new style. Georgy Gur’ev-Gurevich offered a construction composed of different rectangular blocks and slabs (fig. 31). They are attached to each other and sometimes even penetrate each other, as in the case of a cubical four-storied section of the corner and a three-storied cube of the side wing. The profile of the smaller cube rises from the mass of the corner part. The project by Daniil Fridman has a U-shaped plan with a stress on the vertical dominant of a tower rising above the height of the building and a semicircular vestibule (fig. 32). Another semicircular element—of an even larger volume—contrasting with a vertical dominant characterizes the design of David Burishkin, Petr Duplicky and L. Malishev (fig. 33). The first prize was awarded to Moisey Ginzburg’s project. As in the case of the House of Soviets in Makhachkala, he mentions at the beginning of his description of the concept that his design was based on the preconditions related to the centuries-old way of life and climatic peculiarities of Kazakhstan. The result was a building with a very complex but rational structure (figs. 34, 35). It is divided on two blocks, one independent block of rectangular plan for the meeting hall and another block of an irregular L-shaped plan. The separation of the meeting hall from the rest of the building is due to its additional function as a movie theater. Its first floor is opened into a loggia. The loggia faces the square for public meetings and can be used as a tribune for speeches. The block of the meeting hall is supported by pillars and thereby, as Ginzburg writes “opened a space for terrace under it, which is very useful in the condition of your climatic condition.”67 Deep inside the terrace, the main entrance with two staircases leads to the main vestibule on the first floor. This vestibule connects the meeting hall with the rest of the building. On both sides of the vestibule, there are huge windows, which should be opened during the summer time and turn the vestibule into a kind of loggia. The rectangular enveloping of the staircase of the meeting hall also shows an interesting solution. Its elevation surpasses the height of the roof. The contour of the enveloping is

66 Alexander Vesnin, Leonid Vesnin, “Entwurf des Kraispolkomgebäude in Swerdlowsk. Archit. L. A. u. A. A. Wessnin Moskau 1926. Poyasnitelnaya Zapiska,” in: Sovremennaia Architektura 5-6, 1926, pp. 124-125. 67 Moisey Ginsburg, “Haus der Regierung in Alma-Ata,” in: Sovremennaia Architektura 3, 1928, p. 77.

30 horizontally continued above the roof, constituting a cornice above the exit (fig. 36). Hence, all the elements of the building, which participated in the formation of its exterior design and whereby constitutes its aesthetic appearance was derived from its functional purpose; the extreme climatic conditions of Kazakhstan were, moreover, expressed by the open structure of the building, characterized by a terrace, loggias and cornices, which should provide shady open spaces during the hot summer time.68 The House of Soviets in , by contrast, which was built by Alexander Grinberg in 1929-31, has a more closed structure (fig. 37). The building has a T-shaped plan with one wing stretched from west to east and another from north to south (fig. 38). The west- east wing has a big semicircular element, a recess on the second, third and fourth story of its east side. The recess rests on pillars. On the second and third floor, it has a band window. The main entrance with glassed semicircular vestibule located under it, behind the pillars. A meeting hall is located inside the recess. At the opposite end of the wing, the corner is stressed by the horizontal parapet of balconies on each floor (fig. 39). The second story of the west end of the wall has also a balcony, which stretches across its entire width. Apart from the door of the balcony, the wall above is completely solid. It produces a strong contrast and makes the door look dwarfish. The monumental inscription “DOM SOVETOV” (House of Soviets) is placed on its upper part (fig. 40). The side entrance with a logia are located under this balcony. The staircases at the west end of the west-east wing and at the north end of the north-west wing have a semicircular and rectangular glassed enveloping respectively (fig. 41, 42). It is necessary to note that, as in the Houses of Soviets in other cities, Grinberg tried to isolate the meeting hall from the rest of the building by arranging it in a semicircular tribuna at the end of the block [protruding from the main wing] and providing a side entrance. Grinberg described his concept in the following way:

“In recent years […] a meeting hall has been developing to the complete theater, both, in its content and terms. […] Many cities and small provincial town became new regional and district centers, which do not have their own theaters. This

68 Ibid. During the construction process some elements of Ginsburg’s project were, unfortunately, changed by the builders. Later Ginsburg wrote that the executed building did not resemble his design. Therefore, my formal analysis is exclusively based on Ginsburg’s design as it was presented by him in the journal quoted above, because the aim is here to present the functional methods he applied when designing the composition. For the changes, which were made in the project, see Selim Khan-Magomedov, Ginzburg, Moscow 1972, p. 43.

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explains the fact that during the construction of the House of Soviets the meeting hall is often designed in a fully developed and complete theater.”69

In 1928, a new type of the House of Soviets, the Raisovet or House of District Soviets, began to develop in big cities such as Moscow and Leningrad (). One of the first was the Raisovet of the Moscow district Krasnaya Presnya (fig. 43). The building was designed by the architects Georgiy Golubev and Nikolai Shcherbakov and executed between 1928 and 1939. The Raisovet has an irregular U-shaped plan, with an inner yard open on one side (fig. 44). The meeting hall was put in one of the side blocks. One of the most prominent Raisoviets was built in the Navra District of Leningrad between 1930 and 1935 after a design of Nikolay Trotsky (figs. 45–47). It is a huge flattened four-storied building with a contrasting high-rising tower. The tower provides the dominant not only for the composition but also for the entire complex of the district. The building consists of three blocks situated parallel to each other and one main block which crosses them at a right angle (fig. 48). In front of the main block there is a square for public meetings. As in the case of Grinberg’s House of Soviets in Nizhny Novgorod, Trotsky put the meeting hall in a semicircular recess on one of side blocks. Among other significant elements we should mention very extended bands of windows of the main block and the tower. The latter is embellished by corner balconies at one side, whereas it displays the communist symbol, the crossed hammer and sickle, on top.70 The following characteristics of the House of Soviets discussed above can be distinguished: 1) A square for public meetings, which was usually located in front of the main entrance of a building; 2) a U-shaped plan or another kind, embracing an inner yard; 3) a multifunctionality and accordingly a tendency to distribute different departments and organizations in independent blocks; 4) related to the last aspect is the fact that the meeting hall was used as a local theater, which was isolated from the rest of the building.

69 Alexander Grinberg, “Stroitelstvo pravitelstvennix zadany,” in: Stroitelnaya Promishlennost’ 8-9, 1930, pp. 648- 649. 70 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, p. 400. 32

With regard to the exterior of the House of Soviets, we can also distinguish typical elements, but it is necessary to note that these features were common for all types of public buildings. Among them are: 1) a big semicircular recess or tribuna; 2) semicircular and rectangular glassed enveloping of the staircase; 3) occasionally a tower; 4) a tendency to stress the corner by providing balconies. In relation to the features regarded above, the House of Soviets in Elista, was a typical representative of this building type. Its main entrance faced a square for a public meetings; it has an irregular U-shaped plan, which encloses an inner yard; the building is divided in a western, northern and eastern block, which were respectively occupied by public and governmental institutions; as in the case of other houses of soviets its meeting hall also functioned as a local theater and could be isolated from the rest of the building. Apart from the big semicircular recess for a meeting hall, the House of Soviets in Elista possesses all the above-quoted features at its exterior. It was designed by applying the functional method, which was proposed by Ginzburg in the House of Soviets of Alma-Ata, because the climatic preconditions of Elista are comparable to the situation at Alma-Ata. For this reason, the tribune, which was constituted by a flat roof of the ground floor and the balcony of the fourth floor, were designed to benefit from the shade of the tower. The same principle we can apply to the loggias, which are all located at the northern side in order to avoid the direct sunlight. c. Iliya Golosov’s House of Soviets As mentioned above, the competitions, which were held in the provinces and Republics played the major role in the development of House of Soviets; as many other architects, Iliya Golosov participated in them. In 1924, Golosov made a design for one of the first competitions for the House of Soviets. It was held in the new provincial center Bryansk. Although he did not win the first prize, his project stood out of the rest, because of its very modern look (fig. 49). According to Golosov’s design, it should have been a five-storied building on a rectangular plan enclosing an inner courtyard (fig. 50). The facade of the office wing is divided by three rectangular recesses, a feature that produces a steady rhythm. Their

33 front walls are highly glassed with big windows and create a strong contrast to the solid walls on their sides. The interesting solution was made on the top of the rectangular recesses. Golosov used the side walls as decorative elements continuing their contour by raising them above the height of the roof. It constitutes a kind of fences on sides of the roofs. These fences stress the independency of each recess and make the rhythm even more discernible. The cultural and social section is attached to the right of the wing with the three recesses. Golosov designed it as a stair-like composition. The composition consists of a compact rectangular block of a meeting hall, which was put on the a two-storied rectangular block of a vestibule with an indent at the corner of the building. Next step was provided by vertical rectangular enveloping of the staircase which located behind the block of a meeting hall and raises above the rest parts.71 Two years later, in 1926, Golosov participated in the above-mentioned competition for the House of Soviets in Alma-Ata (fig. 51).72 Although we do not know much about his design, the close examination of a drawing representing the elevation of what was probably the main façade, which is apparently the only remaining source, shows that it was a three- storied building with at least two distinct parts. The left part counts fifteen bays. They are constituted by white contours, which frame the windows of the first and second floor. The third bay has balconies instead of windows. Between the first and second floor from eighth to eleventh bays there is a flat horizontal recess. The right part has a stair-like appearance produced by the indent of the second floor and its second and third stories are glassed with band windows. The left and right parts are divided by a vertical block, which protrudes from the rest of the structure. On the ground floor at the left it has a one-storied block attached to it. The block has a main entrance and its walls made of glass. The House of Soviets in Khabarovsk is one of the first realized Golosov’s projects. As in other cases the design was selected through a competition in 1928, where Golosov won the first prize. According to the program of the competition, along with the offices for Communist party’s and trade union organizations, the building should have provided a space for a socio-cultural area with a large hall.73

71 Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 72. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid.

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Golosov’s original design has one four-storied part for offices and one two-storied part for socio-cultural activities with a meeting hall, which are connected by a long walkway one the level of the first floor (fig. 52). The overall composition of the House of Soviets looks has a complex appearance. It consists of blocks and slabs of different volume. The left side of four-storied part has semicircular recess, which perturbs on the level of first three stories and has logia on its second storey. On the other side of this part Golosov made a rectangular recess and connects it to the walkway on the level of the second storey. The other end of the walkway is put on one-storied recess of the socio-cultural part. Other interesting elements of this part are a long balcony, which is constituted by the indent of the second storey and small rectangular block connected to a radio tower. The House of Soviets in Khabarovsk was built between 1928 and 1930. Due to the need of increase of the total volume of the building, the design was refined and the composition was simplified (fig. 53, 54). The part for offices was increased up to six stories. All the recesses and indents were discarded as well as the radio tower. The walkway was turned into a kind of transitional two-storied part. Among the elements, which were added, we should note a very long semicircular enveloping of the staircase. It is located at the left side of the six-storied part and has balconies on third, fourth and fifth part. The result was a very severe and official appearance of the building.74 In 1930 Golosov participated in the competition for the House of Soviets in Rostov- on-Don. Two years before, Rostov-on-Don was significantly enlarged by uniting it with the neighboring city Nakhichevan-on-Don, and therefore it needed new administrative and public buildings. As Houses of Soviets in other regions, according to the program of competition a building should have become an administrative as well as socio-cultural center of the city and because Rostov-on-Don now became a big city, the scale of its House of Soviets must have been much bigger compare to the Houses of Soviets that we have regarded before.75 Golosov designed the building by dividing it on three distinct parts: administrative, socio-cultural and a part with one rectangular, small meeting hall and one circular, big meeting hall (fig. 55, 56). Part of the offices Golosov puts in six-storied blocks. They are grouped around the yard and thereby constitute a rectangular plan with four branches, which

74 Ibid. 75 Ibid.

35 are set perpendicular to the long sides. The twelve-storied administrative part stands perpendicular to one of the short sides of the rectangular. On the other end the twelve-storied block of administrative part is connected to the socio-cultural part. The last one consists of one circular block of the big meeting hall and one rectangular block of small meeting hall, which connected through a walk way on the level of second storey. The whole construction is extremely transparent: the six-storied blocks have band windows at its full-length, as well as all the walkways and meeting halls and the twelve-storied block have a whole wall being made of glass. Compare to the Houses of Soviets, which were regarded before, here Golosov do not use so many details for creating a composition and mostly operates with big volumes. The architectural lexicon, however, in general remains the same. Thus, as in other building it has a rectangular block of the small meeting hall, the walkways, the rectangular enveloping of staircases, the semicircular recess of the House of Soviets in Khabarovsk were turned in to a circular block of the big meeting hall and the rectangular recesses became a branches.76 From the examples regarded above we can conclude that, although Golosov followed all the conventions related to the House of Soviets as a building type, which were deduced in the previous part, the style of his buildings cannot be regarded as purely Constructivist, because one of the main features of the Constructivist style was the functional approach to the design of a building, as the Vesnin brothers proposed in their project for the Palace of Labor and later on specified by Ginzburg in his designs for the Houses of Soviets in Makhachkala and Alma-Ata. Golosov’s projects do not always follow this rule. In the design for the House of Soviets in Bryansk the three rectangular recesses have no function other than to provide a rhythm; the same applies to their raised side walls. The original design of the House of Soviets in Khabarovsk has too opened structure with many balconies and openings, which did not fit to this northern city, with its very cold and long winters and cold summers. The House of Soviets in Elista, as we conclude in the end of the previous part, was built with respect to the climate of its location but the functionality of some of its elements is still under question. Among them are: the raised wall of the rectangular block of the meeting hall, the protruding flat roof of the ground floor and the narrow block of the second floor of

76 Ibid. In the last two examples I refer to the semicircular recess and rectangular recesses in the design drawing of the House of Soviets in Khabarovsk, not to executed building. 36 the eastern part at the place where it attached to the northern part and the block of the meeting hall (fig. 57).

6. The Issue of the Style in the House of Soviets in Elista

Having considered the development of the building type in the previous chapter, such elements as the big semicircular recess or tribuna, the semicircular and rectangular glassed enveloping of the staircase, and the tendency to stress the corner by providing balconies, were determined as typical features of the Constructivist Houses of Soviets. Despite the construction in Elista posses all these features, it stylistically looks different from the buildings in other cities. This dissimilarity, however, can only be found when the whole compositions are considered. As in the case of the , which uses the same elements as Classicism, and can be distinguished from it only by different application of them, in comparison with the Houses of Soviets in Nizhniy Novgorod, Novosibirsk and the Raisoviet of Navra District in Saint Petersburg, which have a very severe and monumental appearance, the design of the House of Soviets in Elista appears to be more artistic and picturesque as all the aforementioned elements shows strong interrelation. Hence, in order to understand the particularities of the style of the building we need to consider the development of both, Golosov personal style and the style of Constructivists. a) Constructivism, Style or Method? One of the main features of the avant-garde movements of the beginning of 20th century is the strong interrelation between painting and architecture. One of the leaders of the Dutch artistic movement De Stijl (1917-1931), the painter Theo Van Doesburg, strived to the unity between all art forms, which he clearly expressed in his writings and architectural drawings. 77 In 1919 architect , who had just become director of the Bauhaus, wrote in his “Programm of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar:”

“Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one

77 See, for example, Richard Padovan, Towards Universality: , Mies, and De Stijl, …, p. 1; Theo van Doesburg, “Der Kampf um den neuen Stil,” in: Neue Schweizer Rundschau, 1929, pp. 41–63 ['Der Kampf um den neuen Stil', Neue Schweizer Rundschau, 22, nr. 3, March 1929, pp. 171-175.]; reproduced in Dutch and English translation in: De Stijl, De Nieuwe Beelding in de Architetuur / Neo-Plasticism in Architecture, Delft 1983, pp. ….

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day rise to the heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of the new faith.”78

Russian avant-garde art and architecture also advocate this notion of unity, as the origins of Constructivism begins in the paintings of , El Lissitsky, and Kasimir Malevich. The latter was one of the pioneers of . He worked in such media as painting and printmaking, and also wrote many theoretical works. Malevich was a central figure in the development of avant-garde movements in Russia between 1905 and 1917 and after the October Revolution. He was the inventor of the style of geometric abstraction known as Suprematism and was a leading force in the development of Constructivism (figs. 58, 59). 79 In his letter to the editorial office of the Constructivist journal, “Contemporary Architecture,” of 1928 Malevich wrote: “Suprematism, which appeared in 1913, (flat phenomenon of static and dynamic order) was painted first of all in black, red and subsequently white colours. Although the white Suprematism appeared for the first time on the exhibition of 1919, the works had already been made in 1917. The volumetric Suprematism began to develop in 1918, the elements of which had already appeared in 1915. Their form you can see on the drawing (two diagonally placed parallelepipeds represented in the axonometric projection). The volumetric installations, which were printed in your journal “Contemporary Architecture” in 1927, had been made in 1923 (two architectons). Thus, all the way of the new art in all aspects of culture developed in to contemporary art – architecture.”80

It is necessary to note that his stress on the fact, that first “architectons” were produced in 1923, was not only due to establishing the natural turn from painting to architecture in his works, but possibly also because this year coincides with the first architectural project, which was made in Constructivist style, the Palace of Labour by the Vesnin brothers. Being a rival of another avant- garde artist, who usually considered as the inventor of Constructivism in art, Alexander Rodchenko, Malevich wanted to confirm himself as the initiator of contemporary architecture. Despite it is only an assumption, Malevich, nonetheless, was very influential for such renowned

78 Quoted from Walter Gropius, “Programm of the Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar,” in: Programs and Manifestoes on 20th-century Architecture, edited by Ulrich Conrads, London and Cambridge 1970, p. 49. 79 Troels Andersen. "Malevich, Kazimir." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed March 15, 2015, http://0www.oxfordartonline.com.opac.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/subscriber/article/grove/art/T053504. 80 Quoted from Kasimir Malevich, “Pismo v redaktsiu,” in: Sovremennaya Arkhitektura, 1928, No. 5, p. 156. 38

Russian Constructivist architects as , , El Lissitsky, Moisey Ginzburg, Alexander Nikolsky, Iliya Golosov and others. He helped architects to see the artistic capacities of simple geometric forms and showed the inexhaustible possibilities of creating different combinations of these forms for the expression of complex three-dimensional compositions in his “architectons” (figs. 60-62). The “architectons” are three dimensional compositions or rough models of original architectural compositions where vertically and horizontally placed parallelepipeds of different shapes and sizes were joined or interpenetrated at the right angles. In these works Malevich developed spatial combinations, which had been hardly ever used in the architecture of the past, such as: horizontal and vertical indents and shifts of volumes related to each other; cantilevered of one volume over the other; the placing of a large and massive shape over a small scattered one and the denial of symmetry.81 All these combinations can be found in the House of Soviets in Elista, and especially with regard to the architectural drawing. This is traceable in the protruding part with the loggias on the first and second floor, which is located at the end of the northern wing behind the highly glassed part of the wall of the meeting hall (fig. 10). The protruding rectangular flat roof of the first story, which constitutes a kind of cornice and creates an effect as if the slab was cleaved into the building’s mass, also strongly resembles the situation in Malevich’s “architectons” (fig. 1).82 The projects of other Constructivist architects also strongly remind these works of the artist. The Lenin Library, the design of which was made by Vesnin brothers in 1928, consists of a mass of vertically and horizontally placed parallelepipeds of different shapes and sizes, which are joined and interpenetrated at the right angles (fig. 63). The same can be applied to the project of Moisey Ginzburg for the organization “Orgmetall” and the House of Soviets in Alma-Ata (figs. 64, 34). It is necessary to note that in all instances the architectural drawings, and not the buildings, bear the strongest resemblance to Malevich’s “architectons.” I would argue that it is due to the two-dimensional origins of the “architectons,” as they were developed from Suprematist painting. This is important as it helps to understand the contradictive statements of Vigdariya Khazanova and Khan-Magomedov that for Golosov Constructivism was not a purely

81 Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, pp. 63-64. 82 Some of these elements can be observed in the building for commodity exchange in by well-known Dutch architect Hendrick Petrus Berlage. 39 functional method, but rather the outward trend. This made possible to consider Constructivism as a style, because the part of its aesthetic tradition originates in these “architectons,” which in themselves do not have any function. They are rather sculptures, than constructions. The impulse for the “constructiveness” in Constructivism was given in the works of other well-known artist, Vladimir Tatlin, who, along with Alexander Rodchenko, is often considered as one of the originators of Constructivism in art. Tatlin conducted his formal-aesthetic research almost simultaneously with Malevich. As Malevich, he sought a way for the geometrical abstract painting to become architecture. In 1914, this search led him to “relief paintings” (figs. 65, 66). These were three-dimensional compositions consisting of materials of different form, which were fixed on a plane. Tatlin was primarily concerned with facture and texture of different materials. With their combination he wanted to reveal artistic capabilities. The artist also believed in the necessity of the correlation between the inner qualities of material and the construction in which these materials are used. In the following year Tatlin released “relief paintings” from the picture plane and created the “corner counter reliefs,” the composition of which was hanging in the air (figs. 67, 68). In these works, Tatlin first transformed a picture into an existing object and second, introduced the importance of correlation of different materials. It was a sculptural discovery of the crucial point where two planes meet at an angle of 90 degree, consequently constituting the natural evidence of spatial volume and thereby can be seen as a point of transition between sculptural space and architectural space. 83 Moreover by placing counter reliefs in a corner he also used the contradiction to the artistic tradition of the past in order to reinforce the aesthetic effect, as the relief is something that cannot be placed in a corner.84 Here it is necessary to refer to the peculiarity of the House of Soviets in Elista with its corner of the western and northern wings being the most artistically developed part analogously with the façade in the traditional architecture. These Tatlin’s experiments presented the aesthetic qualities of engineer constructions. They had a strong influence on his followers Vladimir and Georgy Stenberg, Konstantin

83 Benjamin H.D. Buchloch, Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955-1975, Cambridge 2003, p. 57 84 Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, pp. 108-109; Mastera Sovetskoj Arkhitekturi ob Arkhitekture, T. 2, Moscow 1975, p. 77.

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Medunecky and others, who now began to focus on accuracy, practicability and the rational use of materials in their constructions.85 Tatlin’s most important work is “The Monument to the Third International,” also known as Tatlin’s Tower (fig. 69). The tower was created in 1919-1920 and had a great impact on the Constructivist movement in the following years. First of all it showed a connection between art and technique. The Tatlin’s Tower was simultaneously very simple and complex construction, which consisted of two cylinders and a pyramid surrounded by a huge spiral. The cylinders should have rotated in the opposite directions with different speeds. The whole construction was made of modern materials such as still and glass. Thus, Tatlin disclosed the body of the building in order to combine inside and outside.86 In other words, he constructed the building with the bearing structure outside. Both Tatlin’s counter reliefs and his tower introduced Constructivist conception of the process of construction being the inseparable part of the creation of artistic form. Before that the process of the construction was only a part of the technical foundation for artistic form. In other words in past, an architect first designed a form or appearance of the building and then made engineering calculations in order to make bearing construction for previously made design. After Tatlin’s experiments, the design of the appearance turned out to be dependent on the bearing construction and vice versa. This was the origins of “constructiveness.”87 In the following three years, after the creation of Tatlin’s tower, Constructivism had been developing in all art forms such as stage design in theater, propaganda posters and prints. Consequently, in 1923, the first architectural design in Constructivist style was made by Alexander Vesnin and his brothers, who, before, had practiced Constructivism in painting and stage design. This project was the Palace of Labor, which I have already mentioned in the previous chapter. The Palace, however, was not the only one of Vesnin brothers’ early architectural designs, which had a great impact on the development of Constructivism. Another significant construction was the building for the Moscow office of Leningrad’s (Saint Petersburg) newspaper “Lingradskaya Pravda” (fig. 70) Unlike the Palace of Labour, this supposed to be a

85 Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, p. 109; Victor Shklovsky, “O facture kontr-reliefov,” in: Zhizn’ iskysstva, 20 October 1920 (“About the facture of counter-reliefs,” in: The life of arts). 86 Ludwig Hilbersheimer, “Kasimir Malevich and the Non-Objective World,” in: Art Journal, 20, No. 2, Winter 1960-1961, p. 82. 87 Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, p. 113.

41 considerably small building.88 As the land allocated for the construction was only 6 x 6m, the Vesnins designed it as a building with a vertical structure. It has six stories with the upper story being more narrow and higher than five below. The whole construction is made of iron construction and glass. This choice of materials made building transparent for the viewer. The lift shaft appears to be an independent parallelepiped attached to the building at the right side of the main entrance. Its transparent glassed construction provides a view on the elevators. Elevators, in turn, have windows and thereby open a view on the city for the person inside them. This was a very modern idea. A significant feature of the design is the signs, adds, advertising and other features of the modern city. The significance of the design was expressed in the desire to reveal the interior of the building for an external observer. Furthermore, in comparison with the Palace of Labour, the appearance of “Leningradskaya Pravda” looks less complex with respect to the use of the volume. This tendency of simplifying would continue in their next projects for the building of the British-Soviet trade company “Arkos” of 1924 and the supermarket “Mostorg” of 1925 (figs. 71, 72).89 For the House of Soviets in Elista, the attempt to reveal the interior of the building for an external viewer was made at the same time by means of materials and form. In respect to the latter, each significant part of the building’s interior is stressed as an independent geometrical element of the exterior: the rectangular block of the meeting hall, the vertical parallelepiped of the main staircase and the one-storied block of the foyer. By using such a material as glass Golosov opened for the viewer all staircases and the meeting hall (figs. 1, 13). According to the architectural drawing he also planned to open the walkway, as its wall highly fenestrated in it (fig. 10). After the success of the Vesnins brothers’ projects considered above, and especially of “Arkos,” other Soviet architects began to follow the new trend. Due to this, Constructivist leaders focused on the formulation of artistic principles and foundation of an organization uniting the new movement’s supporters. This was called OSA (abbreviation of The Union of Contemporary Architects) with Alexander Vesnin as chairman, Moisey Ginzburg and Victor

88 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987p. 155. 89 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, pp. 156, 193.

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Vesnin as deputy chairmen and another Soviet architect, Georgy Orlov, as a secretary. Iliya Golosov was one of the many members of the organization.90 Between 1926 and 1930, the OSA published the journal, “Sovremennaya Arkhitektura” (Contemporary Architecture), which became a very important instrument for promoting modern architecture among the Soviet architects (fig. 73). The content was significantly vast. It varied from the publication of the project designs of the buildings and theoretical writings to more applied articles of a more practical matter like the use of different materials and engineering. Moreover, the journal “Contemporary Architecture” became an important tool for the correlation with other European avant-garde movements. In different issues of the journal we can find articles on works of such famous European and American architects as Gerrit Rietvield, Erich Mendelsohn, Walter Gropius, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe and others. A well-known Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier, had an especially great influence on Constructivism.91 In the first published volume of 1926, we can already meet the article on Le Corbusier’s ideas about urbanism. In the same year when Le Corbusier put his Villa Cook on pillars (the pilotis) in order to open the space beneath, Constructivist architect Andrei Burov did the same in his full scale model of a dairy breeding complex for the film set of Sergei Eisenstein’s “General Line” (figs. 74, 75).92 Raising the whole building or different parts of it on pillars became extremely trendy in Russia at that time. From 1926 onwards, Corbusier’s idea of the pilotis was applied at the House of Soviets in Alma-Ata and the apartment building for “Narkomfin” of 1928 by Ginzburg (fig. 76), in the House of Soviets in Nizhny Novgorod by Grinberg (1929-31; Fig. 37), and in the Palace of Culture in the Moscow Proletarsky District by the Vesnin brothers (1930-34; fig. 77), to mention only a few examples. The last two projects strongly resemble to the situation with the main entrance of Le Corbusier’s the “Centrosoyuz Building” in Moscow, which is dominated by a semicircular recess resting on pillars (fig. 78) (1928-36).

90 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, p. 193; During the period of its existence, the members of OSA were Mikhail Barshch, Andrei Burov, Georgy Vegman, Vyacheslav Vladimirov, Alexei Gan, Iliya Golosov, Ivan Leonidov, , Alexander Nikolsky, Nikolai Krasilnikov, Alexander Pasternak, Nikolai Sokolov, Roman Khiger, Fedor Yalovkin and two engineers, Artyr Loleit and G. Karlsen. 91 Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, p. 404. 92 Eisenstein’s movie was released in 1929; Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, p. 439.

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In the House of Soviets in Elista, influence of Le Corbusier is manifested in different features. Golosov’s original project has skillfully arranged banded windows and the spiral staircase, which according to the original architectural drawing, supposed to be at the center of the passage to the inner yard and lead to the roof of the foyer (fig. 10). In respect to the staircase Golosov’s reference to Le Corbusier is most likely true as in the same year when Golosov began to work on the House of Soviets, Le Corbusier designed his “Villa Savoye,” which has the same spiral staircase (fig. 79). Moreover, the French architect to Moscow and Leningrad in the late 1920s in order to participate in the competition for “Centrosoyuz Building.” It is also known that he met with Vladimir Tatlin, who along with Iliya Golosov taught in the Vkhutein during that time.93 From abovementioned, we can see that the well-known Swiss-French architect, in all respects was extremely influential for Constructivist ‘style’. Here, however, arises a contradiction. If Constructivism was a method, and not a style, how could it be influenced by Le Corbusier. Architectural style can be defined as “the formal components making up a complex pattern which lends itself to analysis.”94 In this respect architectural style refers to something outward and thereby do not fit in the conception of “functional method.” Selim Khan- Magomedov explains it in this way:

“Innovative architects who were struggling against traditionalism during the 1920s relied on the achievements of science and technology, and constantly stressed the importance of a rational approach to architectural work. This led them to tip scales in favor of rational factors in architectural design, as opposed to emotional ones. It also increasingly directed to the functional justification of the structure, often at the expense of artistic consideration, particularly in Constructivist designs. […] Conservatism as many innovators saw it was chiefly matter of drawing on the past for architectural forms and methods. These architects were not always clearly aware as they fought against eclecticism and Classicist stylization that an equally serious threat

93 Steven Logan, “Automobility, Utopia, and the Construdictions of Modern Urbanism, Concerning Karel Teige,” in: The Organization of Transport: A History of Users, Industry, and Public Policy, edited by Massimo Moraglio and Christofer Kopper, New York 2015, p. 118; Corbusier’s visits to Moscow are also discussed by Katerina Klark, Moscow, The Fourth : Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism and the evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931-1941, Cambridge 2011, pp. 76-77; on the “Centrosoyuz Building” and the visit to Moscow in 1928, see Jean-Luis Cohen, Moscow, Le Corbusier, 1887-1965: The Lyricism of Architecture in the Machine Age, 2004, p. 49; on the Villa Savoye, see Jean-Luis Cohen, Le Corbusier, 1887-1965: The Lyricism of Architecture in the Machine Age, Bremen 2004, pp. 43-48. 94 Quoted from Werner Szambien, “The meaning of style,” in: Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought, edited by Ben Famer and Hentie Louw, London and New York 1993, p. 447.

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to every new movement from within was a conservative tendency to erect its own means and methods into canons.”95

The author also mentions that another reason was due to a long time of eclecticism and stylization in , which had conditioned architects in favour of canons that restrained creative imagination. 96 Some of the Constructivist architects were sometimes hampered by a simplistic view on the interrelation between the basic functional structure of a building and its shape.97 However, the problem of this explanation is that Khan-Magomedov does not clarify what these canons were. I would assume, they were actually an asymmetry and the elements of exterior which were deduced in the chapter concerned with the building type. Thus, according to Khan-Magomedov some of the architects, and especially those who were not at the origins of architectural Constructivism, often did not fully understand what the functional method was and thereby considered Constructivism as a set of artistic means, which could be applied when designing the building.

b) The Origins of Iliya Golosov’s style and his Theory of the Construction of Architectural Organisms Iliya Golosov was born in Moscow on 31 July1883. Between 1898 and 1907 he studied at the Stroganov School for Technical Drawing, which later would become one of the main institutes of Russian Avant-garde art. After graduating from the Stroganov School, Golosov studied architecture at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1907–12). During World War I, and more precisely between 1914 and 1917, Golosov served in army as an engineer.98

95 Quoted from Selim Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, p. 196. 96 It is also necessary to note that many of architects, who built in Constructivist “style,” used to be Neoclassicist before the revolution, as for example Alexei Shchusev, Alexander Grinberg, and even Alexander Vesnin and his brothers. For further information about the eclecticism and neoclassicism in Russian architecture see: Selim Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, pp. 19-24 or Dmitriĭ Olegovich Shvidkovskiĭ, Russian Architecture and the West, London 2007, pp. 368-379. 97 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture. The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s, New York 1987, p. 196. 98 Andrej V. Ikonnikov, “Golosov,” in: Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, http://0- www.oxfordartonline.com.opac.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/subscriber/article/grove/art/T033094pg2 (accessed on March 11, 2015).

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The teaching practice at Golosov’s last school implied that students must learn how to work in different manners, such as classical, modern, Russian traditional and Byzantine styles. The most considerable work of this period is his graduation project of the museum dedicated to the so-called Patriotic War of 1812 (in Europe known as the “French Invasion of Russia”) (1911) (fig. 80).99 The building was designed in a severe Neoclassical or rather Palladian style, which is expressed in the raised portico and strong symmetry produced by it and two smaller porticos on the sides. The composition resembles the type of Palladian villas with wings. After the October Revolution of 1917, Golosov entered the newly established Architectural and Art Workshop of the Moscow City Council where he worked with the rigorous Neoclassicist , who by that time had already become a well-known architect. As a teacher with outstanding ability to express his thoughts about architecture in the most appropriate way, he exercised a strong influence on everybody who worked with and learned from him. In this respect, Golosov was not an exception. From Zholtovsky he learned the difference between the eclectics and artistic stylization, as well as absorbed the idea of the significant importance of the artistic form in architecture.100 Hence, it was under the impact of Zholtovsky’s ideas in the first years after the Revolution that Golosov worked in the Neoclassical style. In comparison to the works of other Neoclassicists, as to the renowned master Ivan Fomin (fig. 81), he used the classical language in more unconventional way.101 This is clearly expressed in his project for a school in Yasnaya Polyana of 1919 dedicated to Leo Tolstoy (fig. 82). The right side of this asymmetrical building strongly resembles Palladian villas with porticoed wings. Golosov placed a portico with seven columns at the center of the building and a closed structure at the left.102 Its left end is occupied by a tower-like element, which rises above the building by one more story. On the level of the first story Golosov attached a colonnade to it. Considering this project, Selim Khan-Magomedov points out:

99 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 6. 100 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 11. 101 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 12. 102 The resemblance of this design with the villas of Palladio is, however, indecisive. In Palladio’s villas with lateral wings (the barchesse for agricultural use) the central portico is generally raised, because in this way, the noble part of the building was supposed to be separated from the working parts in the wings. In Golosov’s project the central portico and the portico at the right wing are on the same level. This might be related to the new ideology, which did not accept class inequalities. Another significant difference is that the central portico has seven columns with a column in the central axis. In Palladio’s architecture, the columns of a central bay are always situated symmetrically in respect to the entrance. On this aspect in Palladio’s villa architecture, see: Bruce Boucher, : The Architect in his time, New York 1994, pp. 142-147.

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“Golosov strives to reveal to what extent the classical language could be simplified and, at the same time, to preserve its main artistic qualities. He sought to find out which part of the architectural image bares the strongest artistic expressions, which part is subordinated and, in the end, what determines the architectural image and what only enriches it. In other words, Golosov wanted to learn what in the classic order determines the artistic structure. […] The experiments revealed that architectural forms bare different levels of artistic expression. […] It is necessary to note that these observations are concerned not with the architectural form of the building as a whole but with the elements of the classic language.”103

Although Khan-Magomedov must have been right about Golosov’s study of the capacities of the classical language as means of artistic expression, I would argue that the main result was the architect’s discovery of the capacity to design the different architectural structures by shaping large forms of the building, so to say creating the structure as a sculpture. In other words, in this project as well as in the project of the House of Soviets in Elista and the original project of the House of Soviets in Khabarovsk, Golosov contrasted the heights between the different parts and thereby created a stair-like appearance. This endows the construction with dynamic (figs. 1 and 52). The same strive for the use of large form can be found in Golosov’s contribution to the competition for the Moscow Crematorium of 1919 (fig. 83). Due to the Revolution and the Civil War the building was regarded as a memorial and thereby many architects, who contributed to the competition, designed it in large monumental scale. This was also the case of Golosov’s unexecuted project. The architectural form of the building was mainly determined by a large rectangular block of the first story at the bottom and the high cylindrical body above, which would have been closed with semispherical cupola. Horizontal parts of the building were attached to this high central construction at the left and right sides. Despite the fact that Golosov’s crematorium has a decorative portico at the façade and other classical elements, these elements play only a secondary role in the creation of artistic form.104 It is also necessary to note that Golosov’s characteristic compositional method, the interplay between diverse monumental geometrical forms, which is most clearly expressed in his project of the Zuev Worker’s Club, can already be noticed here (fig. 8). Thus, in the 1920s Golosov’s change to Constructivism was not

103 Quoted from Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p.13. 104 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 16.

47 only owed to the attraction of the simple geometrical forms of avant-garde architecture but also due to his own artistic development.105 In 1921, Golosov began to teach at the VKhUTEMAS, where he headed one of the workshops, along with the well-known Constructivist architect Konstantin Melnikov (1890– 1974), and at the faculty of architecture in the Moscow Polytechnic Institute.106 Due to this new architectural school of “Symbolic Romanticism” was formed around the architect. The part of that school were such architects as G. M. Ludwig (1893–1973), Aleksandr Vlasov, G. G. Vegman (1899–1973), Z. M. Rozenfel’d (?–1904) and R. Ya. Khiger (1901–85).107 Selim Khan- Magomedov defined the main features of this style in the following way:

1) “striving to express the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses and the dynamics of the social life by the means of spatial composition and architectural forms of the buildings” 2) “applying severe, ascetic forms in order to create a new aesthetic” 3) “contrasting of the new forms and the old ‘sybaritic’ and ‘luxury’ forms of the past” 4) “searching for the symbolic-representational qualities of the artistic image, architectural forms and means of artistic expression” 5) “focusing on the collective consumer of architecture – architectural image was made primarily in order to be contemplated by the revolutionary masses and architecture itself considered as inseparable part of this masses” 6) “considering the quantities criteria as a part of the evaluation of artistic quality – striving to design huge, squares, esplanades, construction, halls, monuments.”108

In regard to these features, the ideas of the importance of expressing the revolution and the architecture being an inseparable part of revolutionary masses (or the new socialist society), had been important for Golosov before he became Constructivist.

105 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 18. 106 It is important to note that despite Konstantin Melnikov is usually considered as one of the most prominent representative of Constructivism, his style is very individual and distinguished from it. For more information see: Catherine Cooke, “Mel’nikov, Konstantin,” in: Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, http://0-www.oxfordartonline.com.opac.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/subscriber/article/grove/art/T056701 (accessed on March 22, 2015). 107 Andrej V. Ikonnikov, “Golosov,” in: Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, http://0- www.oxfordartonline.com.opac.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/subscriber/article/grove/art/T033094pg2 (accessed on March 11, 2015). 108 Quoted from Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 19. 48

One of the first buildings designed by Golosov in the style of “Symbolic Romanticism” was the Central City Bakery (1920) (fig. 84). Its composition is created around a simple dominant cylindrical body of the main block. On the ground floor it is surrounded by a one- storied arcade, which is continued by a sequence of barns attached to the vertical dominant. The barns are connected by semicircular canopies for the transport. Another work in that style was the project for a radio station dated 1921 (fig. 85). Golosov designed it as a stair-like sequence of blocks of different heights with roofs sloping in one direction. One of the corners of the highest block has a visually independent high rectangular element. It constitutes a kind of pedestal for the antenna on the top. Such a construction produces an effect of the building, which is rapidly growing from the ground and simultaneously moving forward as if it were the rising revolutionary masses. The symbiosis of these two projects was made by Golosov in the design of an observatory (1921) (fig. 86). Like the radio station, it consists, on the one hand, of sequentially rectangular blocks of different heights attached to one another, with the effect of a stair-like appearance. On the other hand, it is dominated by a vertical cylindrical body. Golosov attached this body to the highest block and emphasized it as a visually independent figure by raising it above the whole building by few more stories.109 From the example of these projects we can see the gradual progression of Golosov’s style towards Constructivism. In these works he had already refused classical elements and used the interplay between geometrical forms as a compositional method. Another significant feature of his style, which can also be found in his later projects, is the indent between stories, which creates a stair-like appearance. At the first glance the compositions of these buildings, designed in the style of “Symbolic Romanticism” looks very modern and open minded, especially with regard to Golosov’s early Neoclassical works. However, as once being under the strong influence of Neoclassicism, he sought an order in his new style and this order was expressed in the inviolable limitations in the use of certain methods when creating composition, which he never violated. This can be clearly seen on the example of his theory of construction of architectural organisms.110 Golosov’s theory was developed in the early 1920s and became the foundation of the architectural school of “Symbolic Romanticism.” It is necessary to note that all the works of that

109 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, pp. 33-35. 110 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 21.

49 school were paper architecture. This was a common feature of Russian architecture of that period. Initially the ideas of architects and their followers were elaborated in the creative workshops or laboratories by trying different approaches of designing. Subsequently these theories were used in practice.111 Golosov’s theory is based on two basic principles: first is the concept of the mass and form in the architectural composition and second is the concept of the lines of gravity and movement. In regard to the first he said, that when creating architectural composition, it is important to distinguish between the architectural mass and form. The architectural mass is neutral in respect to such characteristics as structure, material and consistency. All the physical characteristics are the attributes of form, not the mass. The architectural mass does not have any content and thereby it is not a consequence of any subjective architectural idea. The architectural form, on the contrary, has certain content and depends on this content. The architectural form is created by the set of the mass and ideas (architectural content), which in the end defines the architectural object. Thus, any architectural structure can be understood as the mass, which expresses its position in relation to space, and as the form (or a set of them), which bears the imprint of certain functionality of its inner content. Further Golosov defines the conception of the architectural mass and form more clearly, by dividing them on the objective and subjective. It is needed in order to determine their role in the creation of the artistic image of an architectural structure, which are the abstract geometric volumes (architectural masses).112 After delineating the basis of the architectural structure, Golosov writes about how this structure is organized or composed. In Golosov’s theory a composition is based on the lines of gravity. The lines of gravity are invisible in the common sense but perceived by an artist; they constitute the skeleton of the composition. They give a visual integrity to an architectural body and bind it. These lines, Golosov saw only as a graphical expression of geometric characteristics of three-dimensional forms, or artistic and compositional possibilities, which are inherited in these forms.113 Another important idea in Golosov’s theory is the notion of the “individually existing masses” by which he means the “geometric three-dimensional figures with all sides of equal size,” for example: a cube, cylinder, pyramid, vertically placed parallelepiped and cone. When creating

111 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 22. 112 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 23. 113 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 25-26. 50 a composition an architect must be very careful in the use of these masses (geometric three- dimensional figures). Due to their perfect symmetry they are independent and thereby can enter in the organism of masses (a composition) only once, these masses (geometric three-dimensional figures) cannot be repeated in the composition. They play a role of the main element of the composition as such masses always have a central vertical axis and thereby can provide the point of direction for the development of other masses. The application of this can be clearly seen on the example of the cylinders in Golosov’s projects for the British-Soviet trading company “Arkos” (1924) (fig. 87) and the Zuev Workers’ Club (fig.8). In the House of Soviets in Elista, such an “individually existing mass,” is probably the tower. Although its sides are not perfectly symmetrical, Golosov evidently emphasized it as an individual geometrical object, which constitutes the point of direction for other compositional elements of the building. A composition with a point of direction should have a movement and the principle of movement in architecture was one of the major concerns in Golosov’s theory. He primarily connects it with a common desire of modern architecture to reflect the specificity of his era in its forms and through spatial composition. On one of his lectures in regard to this notion Golosov said:

“The architecture of our time can be conceived only in the terms of intimate union with technology and the actual impulse of our lives. Life is extremely mobile, and architecture should reflect a rapid mutability of life and mobility.”114

For both, Golosov and Constructivists, the idea of a strong interrelation between architecture and life was extremely important. At the same period when Golosov was developing his own style, the leaders of Constructivism elaborated their functional method. Thus, although he is often regarded as one of the main Constructivist architects, Golosov was not at the origins of the movement. As many other architects Golosov began to work in Constructivist ‘style’ in the second half of 1920s under the influence of Vesnins’ project for the competitions for the buildings of “Arkos” and the newspaper “Leningradsaya Pravda.” Beginning from 1925 Golosov participated almost in all architectural competitions. One of the first is the competition for the house of textile workers (1925) (fig. 88), where the architect won the first prize. The close examination of the perspective drawing reveals Golosov’s passion

114 Quoted from Iliya Golosov, “Novie Puti Arkhitekturi: Lektsiya Prochitannaya v MAO v 1922 g.,” in: Iz Istorii Sovetskoy Arkhitenturi, Moscow 1965, p. 27.

51 for using large forms, which had already been expressed in his designs in style of “Symbolic romanticism.” Here, however, Golosov uses more pure geometrical figures, such as placed vertically parallelepipeds. They rise from the mass of the main body of the building constituting a certain rhythm. Another considerable feature of this project is Golosov’s exploitation of the artistic capabilities of windows. The windows of the front side of the parallelepipeds are given a certain repeated pattern, which creates an ornamental look. He also emphasizes the upper story of the main body by designing it with double framed windows. It is necessary to note that in the original project of the House of Soviet in Elista, the upper story of the west wing is also fenestrated differently. The same emphasizing of the upper story with different type of windows can be found in the project for the competition for the building of “Elektrobank” (1926) (fig. 89). Here he designs the upper story with extremely wide band windows, which run through the whole length of the walls. The most considerable element in this work is the cylinder with the main staircase inside. The building has an L-shaped plan with the cylindrical body in the corner between two wings. It appears that the round geometrical figure was carved from the rectangular mass of the building or on the contrary inserted in it. This strongly resembles the situation in the Zuev Workers’ Club, but the similarity between the two projects is only the concern of the exterior. If we look inside the building it has analogies with the tower of House of Soviets in Elista. As in the latter, the “Elektrobank” has long corridors, which run through the whole building and connect two wings and the main staircase is placed at the corner of two wings (fig. 90). The corner of the building as the most elaborated part appears to be one of the features of Golosov’s architecture. In the project for the competition for the building of the “Rustorg” (1926) (fig. 91), for example, the tower-like part rises and protrudes above the rest of the building. It is located almost at the corner of two wings. The exclusivity of the corner itself is emphasized by corner balconies and highly glassed walls. The different type of balconies and loggias were used by Golosov as the means of the expression or a kind of decorations in the House of Soviets in Elista and many other projects. In the design of the Palace of Labour in Rostov on Don (1925) (fig. 92), the balconies round the protruding from the rest of the building glassed parallelepiped. This creates a gradual movement upward. Loggias and balconies are one of the main elements, which constitute the aesthetic appearance of the project of the Hotel in Sverdlovsk (fig. 93). They are placed at the corner of two wings.

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Indeed, Golosov’s projects of the second half of 1920s are brilliant works in a constructivist spirit. The basis of the exterior compositions in the considered projects is always constituted by a large, complex form. This form is created by using the techniques developed by Golosov in his theory of the construction of architectural organisms. His principle is that the basis of an architectural image is a large form, which should be expressive, even if all decorations will disappear or will be replaced by others - this principle continues to define much in his work in Constructivist period. It influenced his approach to the artistic system of Constructivism. Khan-Magomedov described the main principles of Golosov’s method:

“Golosov wrote that when creating a composition it is necessary to take into account the requirements of the functional and constructional basis of the building. However he always stressed that the good resolution of these requirements did not dictate the final spatial construction of the building. He believed that within the program of the functional and constructional requirements, an architect could offer an unlimited number of options for the spatial construction by relying on the artistic regularities of the construction of architectural organisms. […] Golosov never tried to pretend that his spatial compositions were transformed naturally by taking into account functional and constructional requirements of the program. He always emphasized the important role of artistic demands when creating architectural image. He did not hide the fact that he had his own concept of architectural form, which determines his approach to the search for the spatial composition.”115

This is exactly, what differentiates the House of Soviets in Elista and buildings of Golosov in Constructivist style from, for example, the Houses of Soviets in Nizhny Novgorod by Alexander Grinberg and Novosibirsk by Boris Gordeev and Sergey Tyrgenev. It is the extreme importance of the artistic component in the composition of the building, which primarily expressed in the strong artistic interrelation between all parts of the building and tendency to stress one part (often a corner) as more artistically elaborated than others.

6. The House of Soviets in Elista and Constructivism in the context of Soviet Everyday life and Ideology

The time, when the House of Soviets in Elista was built, was crucial for the history of the as well as for the history of Constructivism. On the one hand, it was the controversial period of the First Five-Year Plan and Cultural Revolution when Stalin completed his power

115 Quoted from Selim Khan-Magomedov, Golosov, Moscow 2007, p. 57.

53 consolidation process.116 On the other hand, the start of the building’s construction in 1928 coincided with the peak of the Constructivist movement when its theoretical conception had reached maturity. Similarly, the completion of the building, in 1932, is associated with the reformation of all avant-garde organizations, including the Constructivist OSA (Union of Contemporary Architects), which would eventually lead to the end of the movement.117 a. Constructivist Theoretical Conception At the time when Iliya Golosov began to work on the House of Soviets in Elista, Constructivism as an artistic movement had already reached its maturity. The maturity was primarily expressed in a formulated theoretical conception. This conception was built around one crucial point that “the idea of Constructivism is the idea of the art work, which builds and organizes life.”118 According to one of the main theoreticians and propagandists of Constructivist architecture, Moisey Ginzburg, the tool in the task of constructing and organizing life was the functional method. In the opening article of the first issue of the Constructivist journal “Contemporary Architecture,” entitled the “New Method of Architectural Thinking” (“Novie Metodi Arkhitektyrnogo Mishleniya”) the architect explained that, this was the professional method of taking into account all factors, which affect the formation of an architectural construction. Among these factors he mentioned social, technical, artistic and economical requirements. Ginzburg thought that modern architecture was characterized by a united, inseparable, comprehensive aspiration, which drove the creative process from the beginning to the end. In this respect a contemporary architect should 1) analyze all the peculiarities of the future building, 2) divide it into different elements, 3) categorize these elements, 4) organize the building by relying on results of the aforementioned three steps. As this system took the organization of the space as point of departure of the designing process, Ginzburg considered the functional approach to be the only way of dealing with it. This could

116 Katerina Clark and Evgeni Dobrenko, Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917-1953, New Haven 2007, p. IX (first published under the title Vlast’ yi Khudozhestvennaia Intelegentsia: Dokumenty TsK (b)- VKP (b), VChK-OGPU-NKVD, o kul’turnoi politike, 1917-1953 gg., Moscow 1999). 117 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, pp. 418, 649. 118 Quoted from: “Ot redaktsii,” in: Sovremennaia Architektura, No. 4-5, 1927, p. 1; the quote was taken from the editorial opening article. 54 lead an architect to design a building by moving from inside/interior to outside/exterior. In other words, an architect should first organize the space inside with respect to the functionality of its different elements (rooms, corridors, staircases, etc.). The next stage included the correlation of the volumes of the interior and the exterior, the combination of architectural masses of the latter, their rhythm and proportions. The outer form of the building at this stage should have been derived naturally from the four aforementioned steps of the work; as a consequence, the outer form of the building should be the manifestation of the functionality of the interior space. In accordance to Ginzburg’s idea, this method would make an architect to move from the most important things to the secondary elements and to search the artistic expression in the most important components.119 By speaking of the functional approach in the designing of the building he interpreted the function as a very complex purpose of the architectural construction in everyday life of the society. First and foremost, it was a social function.120 For a correct application of the functional method it was necessary to reveal all unknowns, which affect architecture. First of all these were the unknowns of the general character.121 They were associated with the emergence of a new social consumer of architecture, the workers’ class. The class that had not only been organizing its modern everyday life, but had also been developing the complex forms of a new economic life of the state.122 With this respect the work of an architect should have absorbed the notion of planning, which is peculiar for the USSR. In other words every new creation of an architect, for example apartment building, club, fabric, should have been considered as the invention of the ideal type and thereby must have been ready for the mass production. This circumstance made an architect to focus on the improvement of his standard and clarification and typification of all parts of the building. Moreover, from Ginzburg’s point of view architects should not think of a single architectural unit, but of a whole

119 Moisey Ginzburg, “Novie Metodi Arkhitektyrnogo Mishleniya” (The New Method of Architectural Thinking), in: Sovremennaia Architektura, No. 1, 1926, pp. 1-2. 120 Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, pp. 419-420; Moisey Ginzburg, “Novie Metodi Arkhitektyrnogo Mishleniya” (The New Method of Architectural Thinking), in : Sovremennaia Architektura, No. 1, 1926, pp. 1-4. 121 Ginzburg used the notion of unknown in the mathematical sense, as X, which an architect should have found by solving an architectural task. 122 It is necessary to note that Ginzburg used the Russian word “khoxyajstvenniy,” which does not exactly correspond to the English term “economic.” Its meaning also implies everyday life, economics and house holding. 55 village, district, town or city. They should be engaged in the development of the new principles of rational planning.123 Ginzburg’s article contains two main points, which would be absorbed by Soviet architects, that is, first to rely primarily on the building’s social function when designing it, and second, to develop and standardize new building types. The House of Soviets was one of the results of the program proposed by the architect. With regard to the development of the building type, it is evident that the different Houses of Soviets designed by different architects have a similar plan, which corresponds to the buildings’ function. For example the tendency to design the construction as conglomerate of different blocks made the traffic inside the building more convenient. It allowed locating offices for relevant organizations in one wing. Along with the Workers’ Clubs and Palaces of Culture the developing of the Houses of Soviets was the success of the Constructivist architecture. However Ginzburg’s conception, which was presented in the article, did not guarantee the correct application of the functional method in the designing of the exterior of the building. 124 It happened due to the excessively generalized and abstract explanation of the creative process of a contemporary architect. Especially in respect to the last stage where the exterior must have appeared somehow naturally from the previously organized space of the interior of the building. In the following article, which was published in another issue of the journal, “Functional Method and Form” (“Funktsional’niy Metod yi Forma”), Ginzburg tried to clarify the process of the application of the functional method. He argued that “the new architecture does not need a façade or any kind of embellishment. The form of the construction is derived naturally as the function of the correctly comprehended new relationships between production and everyday life, and new materials and methods of their application.”125

Subsequently Ginzburg advised that, when designing a building, an architect should be very concentrated on the function; otherwise the form of the building could be affected in a negative way. On the example of a stool, the architect demonstrated how the comprehensive analysis of

123 Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, p. 420; Moisey Ginzburg, “Novie Metodi Arkhitektyrnogo Mishleniya” (The New Method of Architectural Thinking), in : Sovremennaia Architektura, No. 1, 1926, pp. 1-4. 124 As we have seen when regarding the building type, some of the exterior elements of the House of Soviets in Elista do not correspond to the functionality of the interior. See p. 37. 125 Quoted from Moisey Ginzburg, “Funktsional’niy Metod yi Forma” (Functional Method and Form), in: Sovremennaia Architektura, No. 4, 1926, p. 90.

56 the function should be conducted. According to him the function of the stool is, at the first glance, the creation of an object for sitting, but actually this is not enough for finding the correct form. It is necessary to take into account all the circumstances comprised in this function, such as what work will be done by a person, who is going to sit on this stool, in which kind of room this stool will be and what the conditions will be in this room, of which kind of materials this stool will be made and so on. Only such an analysis could lead to a conclusive and comprehensive material for the formalization of the correct stool.126 According to Ginzburg the following issues of the “materialization of the function” are essentially matter of architectural skill.127 Among them are the consideration of all peculiarities of the used material and the consideration of the psychological and optical effect. 128 The architect clarifies: “In other words material should not only be proper for direct purpose, but should also be functionally satisfactory with respect to its secondary characteristics, like the natural possibilities of the color, facture and the way of processing etc.”129

From Ginzburg’s point of view the best example of the correct choice and application of materials could be found in modern technical constructions, such as airplanes, cars or any other machine. All the materials, which were usually used for the creation of these constructions, are always functionally reasonable.130 Under psychological and optical effect, the architect understood first of all the psychological perception of the architectural monument by a person in both ways, visual and by sensing of the space physically. For him this was the issue of psycho-hygiene. He called architects to take into account the psycho-physiological peculiarities of the color in architecture as one color is more suitable for one function than another. Another example, to which Ginzburg referred as the concern of visual psycho-hygiene, was the fenestration. The size of windows and

126 Ibid. 127 It should again be emphasized that for Ginzburg the most important part of the building was not any material element, such as a façade, but the function. Thus, all other elements of the construction must be designed in respect to it. This is what Ginzburg meant by “materialization of the function.” 128 Moisey Ginzburg, “Funktsional’niy Metod yi Forma” (Functional Method and Form), in: Sovremennaia Architektura, No. 4, 1926, p. 90. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid. 57 their rhythm was very important, because their irrational composition could affect the psychological state of a spectator.131 With respect to the second issue of psycho-hygiene, Ginzburg wrote that, when designing a meeting hall, it was important not only to take into account the approximate number of everyday users, but also to create an environment, which would be comfortable for users to perform their function.132 For Ginzburg all abovementioned amendments were the principles of the formalization/decoration. 133 He called the contemporary architects to search the artistic capacities in the functionally justified elements of the building. In the past the artistic creation in architecture had been associated with decoration and embellishment. In the modern architecture its meaning should be displaced to “the organization of the architectural tasks” and to the “formal use of all utilitarian and constructive capacities.”134 From the article it can be seen that Ginzburg again insisted on the functionality of the construction and its different elements being the foundation of the design. In comparison to the first article, here he tried to clarify the process of the investigation of the function. In his ideas an architect performs as engineer who has to solve the constructional issues in order to make an architectural machine work. And as engineer, who creates tools or machines for human beings or for everyday life, an architect should always take into account human beings when designing every, and even the most insignificant, element of the building. However it was only a method.

131 Quoted from Moisey Ginzburg, “Funktsional’niy Metod yi Forma” (Functional Method and Form), in: Sovremennaia Architektura, No. 4, 1926, p. 91. 132 Ibid. 133 The word, which the architect actually used is “oformlenie” (оформление). In the meaning of this word has a dual sense, that is to decorate and to form, as to give something a material body. 134 Moisey Ginzburg, “Funktsional’niy Metod yi Forma” (Functional Method and Form), in: Sovremennaia Architektura, No. 4, 1926, p. 91. 58

The ultimate goal of Constructivism, as Ginzburg and other leaders of the movement saw it, was the abovementioned “construction of the life” and “organization of forms of the new life.”135 In order to comprehend in which way exactly the functional method should have organized the new life, we should first go back to the notion of Constructivism as a result of the “social revolution” and particularly the October Revolution of 1917, which created the new consumer of architecture, the proletariat and new economic and social relationships.136 On the basis of the new technologies and inventions Constructivist architects should build the new life by providing the new material environment for it. This new material environment should have consisted of particular architectural features, which was sensuously perceived by the new socialist man and affected his mind. Ginzburg claimed that the cognitive perception of the form was natural for the new epoch, especially the perception of its social meaning. The form in the architectural task of Constructivists was defined as X; and it should have been investigated by applying the functional method described above. 137 In order to be more precise I would again like to quote Ginzburg himself, who underlined that among the materials of the study of Constructivist architecture there are:

1) “a plane as a surface, which bears or which is carried by something; a plane as a shell that can isolate 2) a volume as the system of planes or as a homogeneous organism; including the role of a volume in the construction or isolation 3) the volumetric coexistence of the number of bodies

135 Moisej Ginzburg, “Konstruktivism kak metod laborotornoy I pedagogicheskoy raboti” (Constructivism as a method of laboratory and pedagogical work), in: Iz Istorii Sovetskoy Arkhitektyri, 1926-1932 gg., ed. by K. Afanas’ev, Moscow 1970, p. 86; In the case of the “construction of life,” Ginzburg actually used the word “zhiznestroenie” (жизнестроение). It is a verb, which is formed by the noun “life” – zhizn’ (жизнь) and the verb “to build” – stroit’ (строить). By using this word Ginzburg probably wanted to reinforce the notion of architecture as something that can build a life. This was a new word, which appeared in the Russian cultural environment in the beginning of the 20th century and was a result of thinking that art, poetry and literature could create a new life. See Natalia Kornienko, “Literary Criticism and Cultural Policy During the , 1921-1927,” in: A History of Russian Literary Theory and Criticism: The Soviet Age and Beyond, ed. by Evgenii Dobrenko, Pittsburgh 2011, p. 31. 136 Constructivists often called it the “social revolution” probably due to the common belief, that the October Revolution of 1917 was only the beginning. The leaders of the Soviet state believed that it would trigger similar proletarian revolutions all over the world. Lenin for example claimed that Russian proletariat was the vanguard of the Revolutionary proletariat of the whole world; see James Ryan, Lenin's Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence, New York 2012, p. 61. 137 Moisej Ginzburg, “Konstruktivism kak metod laborotornoy I pedagogicheskoy raboti” (Constructivism as a method of laboratory and pedagogical work), in: Iz Istorii Sovetskoy Arkhitektyri, 1926-1932 gg., edited by K. Afanas’ev, Moscow 1970, p. 86-87. 59

a) physically intersected and interpenetrated bodies b) osculated bodies c) bodies, which are compositionally (organically) interrelated, but physically separated 4) a space a) a time and movement as the means of the organization of the space b) the space as the interrelation of the different elements of the volumes between themselves and in respect to the subject, which perceives it c) the location of an object in space d) the space as something that isolates (the internal volume) e) the space as the organization of the environment that can be only partly isolated (square, street, city etc.).”138

It is necessary to note, that Golosov was certainly introduced into the theoretical conception of Constructivism as he was not only a member of the OSA, but also the member of the editorial board of the journal “Contemporary Architecture” in 1926.139 This was the same year when Ginzburg published two of his articles concerned with the functional method, considered above. Thus, Iliya Golosov’s background had premises to design at least the interior of the House of Soviets in Elista with respect to Constructivist theoretical conception. In chapter four considering the building type, my conclusion was that the construction in Elista from the point of view of function was a typical Constructivist House of Soviets. This is important as in my following chapter I will concentrate on the role of the building in the organization of the socialist society in Elista. In order to do that I need to deal with ideology, and the ideology will be the concern of the next chapter. b. Everyday life, ideology and theater In the introduction to this thesis, I mentioned that one of the main characteristics of Russian Constructivism is its clear ideological implication or, to be more precise, its relation to the Revolution of 1917 and the following construction of the first socialist country in the world with

138 Moisej Ginzburg, “Konstruktivism kak metod laborotornoy I pedagogicheskoy raboti” (Constructivism as a method of laboratory and pedagogical work), in: Iz Istorii Sovetskoy Arkhitektyri, 1926-1932 gg., edited by K. Afanas’ev, Moscow 1970, p. 87. 139 See Selim Khan-Magomedov Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, p. 403.

60 the first socialist society. One of the most important tasks was the transformation of people’s everyday life in terms of living arrangements, family, sexual relationships, friendships, personal appearance, leisure activities and behavior. It was primarily considered as a cultural development of Soviet society. The main ideologist in this issue was one of the leaders of the Communist party and well-known Soviet revolutionary Leon Trotsky (1879-1940). In the 1920s he published a series of articles in the newspaper “Pravda” about the problems of the everyday life, where he considered the subject from different angles. In one of his first writings Trotsky claimed that the State should change its point of view on Socialism. The difference is that in the past (1917-1920) the main aspirations were political struggling, the Revolution and taking the power in the country. After the Revolution, when political struggling fight was over and the power was taken, the State should mainly focus on the peaceful cultural and organizational works.140 Trotsky described the cultural and organizational work in the following way:

“In my opinion, the Revolution was transformed into several particular problems, such as: repairing the bridges, teaching, lowering the price of the boot production on the Soviet factories, dealing with mud, catching frauds, providing electricity to the countryside and so on. […] But this practical daily work on the basis of the Soviet cultural and economic development – even the Soviet trade and retail! – is not a practice of small things. There are a lot of small things in human life. And throughout history the big things have never happened without small things. More precisely: small things in a big era are the integral part of a larger issue and thereby they cannot be regarded as small anymore. We deal with the construction of the working class, which for the first time is constructing for itself and by its plan. Although this historic plan is still very imperfect and confused, it should unite all parts of the work, every nook and cranny in one comprehensive creative idea. All our individual and small tasks – as for example the Soviet retail trade – are components of this plan of the working class, and its purpose is to overcome its economic and cultural weakness.”141

It is interesting to note that in the following year after this article was published in “Pravda,” Trotsky’s appeal of focusing the attention on the solving small practical problems of everyday life, was resonated in the theoretical work of the Constructivist architect Moisey Ginzburg, who

140 Leon Trotsky, “Ne o “Politike” Edinoy Zhiv Chelovek,” in: http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl911.htm (accessed on April 1, 2015); first published in: “Pravda,” Moscow, 10 July 1923, No. 152, p. 2-3. 141 Quoted from Ibid.

61 in 1924 published the book “Style and Epoch.” Much of this book is dedicated to the discussion of the issue of style in the Soviet architecture such as the irrelevance of Neoclassical architecture in a modern world. The architect also considered the role of production growth as well as scientific and technological progress in the development of modern architecture. In order to do this Ginzburg began his discourse by going back to the very starting point of architecture as a shelter from the rain and cold. This defined the essential characteristic of architecture as artistic activity, which is simultaneously selfless and useful for everyday life. Then he deduced that the first task of architecture is the necessity of isolating and limiting the space by means of a particular material form. The second task is the organization of the isolated space.142 What is important here is that in the very beginning of his book Ginzburg gave the direction for the discourse about architecture as a primarily utilitarian art. This was expressed especially clearly in the part of the book dedicated to the typical features of the new style. He believed that the creation of a new type of new/socialist human’s everyday life through the organization of space would give the starting point for the search for a new style. As a constructor or an engineer, the architect of modern time should solve specific practical tasks, which contain data and unknowns. In this way an architect can be transformed from the decorator of the new life to its planner or organizer. Another important notion of the modern architecture is its standardization; Ginzburg argued that different elements of the construction should be mass manufactured by machines. This would make possible the production of the blocks of buildings, which in turn would allow to design and build whole cities.143 Ginzburg’s theoretical work contains several points, which correspond to Trotsky’s thoughts about the new tasks of the Revolution, such as the focusing on small things or tasks, the importance of the organization of everyday life and finally the transformation of the comprehension of Socialism. In respect to the last, Trotsky’s idea was that in the past such notions as political struggling, the Revolution and taking the power were extremely important for the State’s perspective of Socialism. This can be seen on the example of the Art and Architectural works, which were made between 1919 and 1923, such as Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International (1919-1920) and Golosov’s project for the Crematorium in Moscow (1919) considered above. These were monuments, which were supposed to hail the Revolution

142 Moisey Ginzburg, “Style and Epoch,” in: Mastera Sovetskoj Arkhitekturi ob Arkhitekture, Moscow 1975, p. 281. 143 Moisey Ginzburg, “Style and Epoch,” in: Mastera Sovetskoj Arkhitekturi ob Arkhitekture, Moscow 1975, pp. 293-294, 297-298.

62 of 1917; thus, their purposes were to support the political struggling of the Communist party and to promote the power of the proletariat. In 1924, the main concern of architecture changed from the glorifying of the Revolution to the organization of the new, socialist, life. We can see that in the thoughts of Trotsky the transformation of the everyday life was essential for the next step towards Socialism and the architects, as replying to this, wanted to help in the organization of this life. Another important suggestion by Trotsky is the Marxist claim that:

“An individual is the product of conditions rather than their creator. In comparison to the economy, everyday life, in an even greater extent, develops ‘behind the backs of the people’ (Marx’s expression). […] Everyday life is formed spontaneously by the accumulating experience and changes spontaneously under the influence of technologies and by the means of the revolutionary struggle.”144

In the following discourse Trotsky criticized the everyday life of the proletariat of his time, as that of the peasant class. The peasant class’s life was characterized by the brutal treatment of students, cringing before the masters, alcoholism, and hooliganism; consequently, it had an extremely low level of culture. These, however, were solvable problems. The main and most complex issue was the inequality in the relationships between husband and wife as well as parents and their children within the household. Trotsky believed that the resolution of this issue was crucial to the development of the socialist society. In his ideas the household determined everyday life and everyday life determined production. The solving of household issues would make possible the rationalization of the industry and socialist accumulation, which in turn would make the society more socialist. 145 Hence, the main task was the radical reconstruction of everyday life, first of all in the household tradition and particularly the liberation of women from being domestic slaves, public parenting of children, the liberation of marriage from the elements of household compulsions.146

144 Quoted from Leon Trotsky, “Chtobi Postroit Bit, Nado ego poznat’” [In order to build the everyday life, first it is necessary to study it], in: http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl910.htm (accessed on April 1, 2015); first published in: Krasnaya Krov’, Moscow 1923. 145 Socialist accumulation is planned use of the national income of socialist society for the development and expansion of the production sector and non-productive sphere of social production, as well as educational material and financial reserves. See Peter J. Boettke, Socialism and the Market: The Socialist Calculation Debate Revisited, London 2000, pp.183-184. 146 See note 144.

63

In the field of architecture this issue was expressed by the Soviet architects’ search for a new type of apartment building. Among the Constructivist architects the most significant contribution came from El Lissitsky. He did not only design apartment buildings but also articulated a thesis for a new type of housing. In his article “Culture of housing” of 1926 Lissitzky formulated his approach to the designing of housing against the background of the new social conditions. For him the forms of housing were the material expression of the essence of a new everyday life, and thereby it required the architects’ attention.147 By answering the question about the objective factors and conditions for the formation of a new type of home in the USSR, Lissitsky underlines three foundations of Soviet everyday lifestyle:

1. “the equation of all population groups in their needs; the increasing social homogeneity and the lack of contrast on material level create a real basis for the development of standard solutions of planning and equipment of mass housing. 2. The State’s introduction of standards of housing during the first years of Soviet power gave the new set of tasks for the architects and focused their attention on the most economical type of home, which required from architects to work on the rationalization of the plan and equipment. 3. The new family with the actual equality of husband and wife sets new requirements for the housing.”148

The last proposal corresponds to Trotsky’s thoughts about the household. This and Ginzburg’s book “Style and Epoch” reveal the unanimity of architects and Communist party in their goals during the 1920s. On the administrative level the liberation of a woman from being a domestic slave was a concern of the “Zhenotdel” or Women’s Departments. Being a section within the Central and Regional Committees they were accommodated in the Houses of Soviets, as in Golosov’s building in Elista. The task of the women’s departments was female education in the spirit of Socialism and their involvement in the economic development and public administration; moreover, they should coordinate the transformation process of the institutions of marriage and

147 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, p. 390. 148 Ibid; El Lissitsky, “Kultura Zhil’ya,” in: Stroitelnaya promishlennost 12, 1926, pp. 877-881.

64 motherhood as well as changing living conditions.149 It was an important tool which helped to transform everyday life. In this respect another considerable aspect of the House of Soviets in Elista, the exploitation of its meeting hall as theater, should be closely examined. In the pronouncements of both politicians and cultural activists of the Communist party, such as Lenin, Trotsky and Lunacharsky, we can find calls for using theater as a tool of political enlightenment and education for the new way of life.150 Soviet theater of the 1920s indeed carried social and political meaning; it became a laboratory, showcase and symbol for the new life, the life, which artists, architects, and politicians wanted to build. The theorist of “Production Art,” Boris Arpatov, for example, claimed that daily life was disorganized and uncontrolled by humans and that theater could demonstrate the spectator how to control and organize the daily habits of life. The well-known Soviet historian and critic of theater Iliya Berezark argued that the stage must show models of the new rationally, economically, comfortably and beautifully furnished living space. Then, the spectator would become convinced of the efficiency of the new conditions of daily life by comparing them with his own living space. The metaphorical comparison was given by the well- known publicist, dramaturge and poet Sergei Tret’yakov who drew an analogy between scaffolding of a building under construction and a model for a new type of theater, which would actively engage the audience in the mental process of construction of the play’s meaning.151

149 For more information see Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, “Sexual equality in Soviet Policy,” in: Women in Russia, edited by Dorothy Atkinson, Redwood 1977, pp. 119-124. 150 Roann Barris, “The Constructivist Engaged Spectator: A Politics of Perception,” in: Design Issues 15, No. 1, Spring, 1999, p. 31; Central State Archives, Narkompros fnd 2306, op. 24: d. 545/6: materials related to a 1919 conference on a workers/peasant theater; Politprosvetrabota i Teatr, Moscow and Leningrad: 1927, -a collection of articles on the work of “political enlightenment in the theater;” Aleksei Alekseevich Gvozdev and Adrian Piotrovskii, "TEO Narkompros i Teatral'naia Teoriia," Istoriia Sovetskogo Teatra, 1, edited by V.E. Rafaelovich, Leningrad 1933, pp. 127-142; Anatolij Lunacharskii, Sobranie Sochitenii, T 3: Dorevoliutsionnyi Teatr, Sovetskii Teatr, Moscow 1964. 151 Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, p 47; Sergei Tret’yakov, “Iskusstvo Revolutsii I Revolutsiya v iskusstve,” in: Gorn 8, 1923, pp. 111-118; Iliya Berezark, “Vesch na stsene,” in: Novij Zritel’ 32-33, 1929, p. 30; Boris Arpatov, “Teatr I byt,” in: Zrelishcha 55, 1923, p. 6; and Boris Arpatov, “Ot rezhissyri teatra k motazhu byta,” in: Etmitazh 11, 1922, p. 3; “Production Art” or “Productivism” (Proizvodstvennoe iskusstvo) meant an artistic movement in Soviet culture of the country in the 1920s. In the first years of its existence (1918-1921) it was closely associated with leftist movements in painting and sculpture. The movement set the goal of merging art, the development of capitalism detached from the craft, with industrial production on the basis of highly developed industrial machinery. But they are mistaken, ignoring the actual practice of social transformation seen in industry reducible to the direct creation of utilitarian things universal means for converting the whole subject environment on the principles of social desirability and thereby the establishment of socialist forms of human communication. New

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What is important here is that at this point, Constructivist theater and architecture had strongly reciprocal dynamics. In a series of articles dedicated to the relationship between Constructivist architecture and theater Roann Barris, specialist of Russian art at Redford University, builds a paradigm by relying on the notion of the urban carnival. According to her, the connection between two artistic activities lies

“in the construct of theatricality as a model for a new relationship of the stage set to the theatrical production and a metaphor for the engagement of architecture with social life and of the user/spectator with art, architecture, and society. The machine and industry were undeniably present in the Constructivist stage set, but they do not represent its narratives or meaning. They served as rhetorical strategies-metaphors and metonymy-in a narrative of the reconstruction of society. As a narrative that reconceptualized theater as carnival and architecture and concomitantly reconceptualized architecture as theater, it united the language of machines and science with the language of the fantasy world of carnivals. Visually, such a union may seem untenable. In fact, it was a union of process and goals, a union that derived from and reflected a commitment to kinetic, mechanical, and psychological movement, to dynamism and transformation, as the generative principles of design-of the environment, the object, and the human being.”152

Thus, Barris considers a union between the goals of theater and architecture. The scene of the theater transformed from its Constructivist origin as an actual and metaphorical machine to an encompassing environment, whereas the construction, as for example workers’ clubs changed from being an environment into a “theatrical” machine. First of all these changes were due to the new relationship between a work of art and human being where the latter became now an “engaged spectator,” a person who can and will perform the transformation. Because one of the main features of the carnival is the engagement of the spectator into the performance, it can be used as a paradigm for the recognition of a “theory- and narrative-determined reciprocity between constructivist architecture and theater and recognition of symbolic meaning.”153

architecture, new types of residential and public buildings, furniture, equipment, clothing “production workers” is considered an important means of the socialist transformation of society, the elimination of an instrument of bourgeois philistine attitudes, traditions, habits inherited from the old Soviet society, politically broken system and enshrined in the material surroundings – in things, dwelling in the whole object environment. See Selim Khan- Magomedov, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Pervya: Problemy Formoobrazovaniya, Moscow 1996, pp. 336-341. 152 Quoted from Roann Barris, “Culture as a Battleground: Subversive Narratives in Constructivist Architecture and Stage Design,” in: Journal of Architectural Education 52, No. 2, November 1958, p. 109. 153 Ibid.

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In Russian folk tradition the Urban Carnival finds itself in the annual holidays known as Maslianitsya or simply the “gulian’e” (pre-Easter).154 One of the main features of the “gulian’e” is the wooden mountains or slides. They were constructed out of the demountable wooden parts especially for the holiday and taken down after its end. The “gulian’e,” as a place for fun, was developed from rituals with symbolic meanings and functions. First are the ritualistic constructions of the snow cities and the performance of battles to destroy them. Second the celebrations of spring. This was a pagan holiday with the implication of the centrality of the solar cycle to primitive life, where the battles of snow city denoted the battle between winter and spring, which later would become a metaphor for the rebirth of Russia as a paradise.155 Along with the development of the “gulian’e,” these ritualistic objects became “props” in a theatrical sense, as the sleds, which were fit up with decoration and assumed the role of the movable stages. But if originally the props and stages of the “gulian’e” were made of ordinary objects and materials, which had the symbolic meaning, after the development of the “gulian’e” into a true “theatrical event,” these objects were constructed with the intention of designation of the ordinary things and thereby by coincidence anticipated the Contructivist conception of the making life out of art.156 One of the main features of the large “gulian’e” is the “balagan” theaters, which dominated the holiday activities (fig. 94). They were usually large, ungainly barns with decorated entrances and exits on the sides and a special balcony or gallery on the top for clowns and actors, which were supposed to advertise the production inside. Like the wooden slides, the “balagans” were temporary structures built especially for the holidays. In order to give them a new and surprising look, the exterior of the structures was embellished with colorful “lubok” posters and architectural decorations.157 Such an appearance concealed their architectonic nature and made

154 The word gulian’e (гулянье) means the celebration of a holiday, but this word also has an implication of movement as its root comes from the verb “to walk,” “guliat’” (гулять). 155 Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, pp. 48-50; Aleksei Alekseev-Iakovlev, Russkie narodnie gulian’ia, Moscow–Leningrad 1948, pp. 28-29; Nikolai P. Volkov, Russkaia Maslianitsa I istorichekiia dannyia o nei, 1897, pp. 6-10. 156 Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, p. 50; N.P. Volkov, Russkaia Maslianitsa I istorichekiia dannyia o nei, Vladikavkaz 1897, pp. 6-10. 157 “Lubok” is a Russian popular woodcut, which originated from the 17th century. They were similar to English chapbooks. Initially “lubok’s” subjects were religious, then political. These woodcuts were produced in the town for circulation among peasantry. See Camilla Gray, The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863-1922, New York 1962, pp. 87, 93.

67 them look like a two dimensional collage.158 Here Roann Barris discovered parallels with the works of Tatlin and Rodchenko, whose two-dimensional relief paintings suggestively have an architectonic nature, whereas their architectural designs, on the contrary, appear collage-like.159

“Architecture as collage – a two dimensional medium – defied the idea of a monumental architecture, and in the confusion of media boundaries, it became a chaotic aggregation of forms which evoked the ambience of a carnival and its people’s theaters covered with posters, newspapers, and unfolding panoramic scenes.”160

In between the “balagan” theaters, stood different amusement facilities and the “raek” was the most popular among them. This was a box with peep holes for one or two spectators with a panoramic picture inside. The picture was usually a travelogue-type illustration, which unrolled before the spectator’s eyes. While the picture was unfolding, the operator of the “raek” told a narrative for the attraction of the consumers. The same function was fulfilled by puppets. They were placed on the top of the box and animated by the operator of the “Raek.” In the course of time the “raek” developed into a sort of “oral people’s newspaper,” as the travelogue subjects were replaced by the subjects related to daily life. This was due to the illiteracy of the majority of . The predominantly illiterate population was also the reason for the theater being chosen as the most popular medium in the first year after the Revolution. 161 Roann Barris comments this in the following way:

“While a connection to commercialization and commodity culture appears somewhat undeniable in this context of the fairground spectacle/market, the true commodity here was not a product but an adventure – a theatrical exposition of history and current events, performed within and without these nineteenth-century fairground theaters, and an opportunity for subversive protest against the prevailing political and social norms. By the 1920s, these outlying poles of the theatrical adventure had been fused into a singular critical expression taking the form of a Utopian image. To the

158 Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, pp. 50-51; A.M. Konechnyi, “Raek v sisteme Peterburgskoi narodnoi kuk’turi,” in: Russkii folk’lor 25, 1989, pp. 123-138; Aleksandr Vasil’evich Leifert, Balagany, Petrograd 1922, pp. 31-32. 159 Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, p. 53. 160 Ibid. 161 Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, pp. 50-51; A.M. Konechnyi, “Raek v sisteme Peterburgskoi narodnoi kuk’turi,” in: Russkii folk’lor 25, 1989, pp. 123-138; Aleksandr Vasil’evich Leifert, Balagany, Petrograd 1922, pp. 31-32.

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extent that an image or concept resists commodification, the risk was not the risk of commodification but the risk of reification.”162

After the Revolution, Soviet cultural activists paradoxically turned to this folk spectacle, the ”gulian’e” as its esthetics had a potential for grotesque deviation, which was appropriate for the revolutionary theater reformers. Well-known Russian directors and theoreticians of the theater were drawn to the “balagan” for its ability to arouse passion in the spectator. A well- known writer and theatrical activist Georgii Kryzhitskii (1895-1975) later would call the “balagan” being “a world outside of logic, which could force a spectator to understand life not through his head, but through the entire body.”163 One of the earliest instances of the application of the idea of carnival in design can be found in the pre-Constructivist work of well-known Russian artist Giorgii Iakulov (1884-1928), who “transformed the well-known ‘Kafe Pittoresk’ in Moscow into a vision of the city as a carnivalistic marketplace.”164 This was expressed in different ways. For example, the stage of the café presented the musical, comedic and dance numbers, which were featured at market festivals. The stage itself was covered with a cupola decorated with geometricized dancing figures of theatrical characters like Pierrot and Harlequin made of cardboard and plywood, which reminded of the dancing puppets of “raek.” Wall lights also had a form of these theatrical characters and were illuminated. Everything was in motion in the café’s interior. In this way, Iakulov’s design solution transformed the café into the theatrical event itself with the dominating spirit of a market place. Consequently, it became a prototype of the architectural urban carnival.165 A more evident instance of the amalgamation of stage design and architectural thought under the paradigm of architectural urban carnival can be found in Alexander Vesnin’s work for the Kamerni Theater production (1923-24) of “The Man who was Thursday” (Chelovek kotoryi

162 Quoted from Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, pp. 51-52. 163 Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, p. 52; Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, Bloomington 1984, p. 7; Vsevolod Meierkhol’d and D. Bondi, “Balagan,” in Liubov k trem apel’sinam 2, 1914, pp. 24-33; Nikolai Evreinov, The Theater in Life, edited by A.I. Nazaroff, London 1927; Kafe Pittoresk (Café Pittoresque) was a basement theater/café in Moscow where Russian avant-garde artist, poets, writers, critics, architects and theater directors meet and spent their time. See Camilla Gray, The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863-1922, New York 1962, pp. 196-197. 164 Quote from Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, p. 56. 165 Ibid.

69 byl chetvergom) based on the novel of English writer Gilbert Keith Chesterton (fig. 95). According to the producer, (1885-1950), the objective of the play was to portray a capitalist city which turns persons into machines. In order to improve the fluency of the action, Vesnin designed the stage as a mechanized construction, which visually resembled the design for the “Palace of Labor.” The construction was made up of mechanized windmill forms, moving ramps and towers with moving lifts. The suggestion of the constant movements in both the parts of set and the performance of actors characterized an urban environment, like in urban carnival of the “gulian’e” where continually movement of participants were subsumed in the architectural machine that evoked urban forms. But unlike the situation in the “gulian’e,” the movement of the actors on stage seemed to follow a mathematical plan. It was restricted and almost mechanized.166 Another significant example of an architectural urban carnival in theater is the stage of well known Russian theater figure Vsevolod Meierkhol’d’s (1874-1940) play “A window to the country” (Okno v derevniu) (fig. 96). Its main concern was the influence of proletarian revolution on the peasantry. The text and production of the play can be characterized as “unity of disunity,” which is revealed on two levels. First is the “overall montage and episodic construction of filmed and theatrical images, slogans and songs as well as fairground amusements taken from peasant carnivals and imported onto the stage.” Second is “the form of the stage itself, which was made of visual references to a round circus, the carnival’s parabolic wood slides as well as to another artist’s model of the stage set for a revolutionary or heroic play.” According to Barris the design of this construction was a result of “Meierkhol’d’s interest in a round stage and in a complete reconceptualization of nature and form of theater.”167 His idea was that in the new theater the stage and hall should be unified in order to make the spectator perceive the action axonometrically in vertical and horizontal planes. It should also be accessible to people and machines. The latter, in fact, created this new theater and the new art of theater.168

166 Roann Barris, “Culture as a Battleground: Subversive Narratives in Constructivist Architecture and Stage Design,” in: Journal of Architectural Education 52, No. 2, November 1958, p. 116; K. Feldman, “Chelovek kotoryi byl chetvergom,” in: 7 dnei, December 18, 1923, in the Kamerni Theater fond, 2030-2-54; Alexander Vesnin, Notes for an autobiography, Vesnin fond, kniga 1573/543,5-1-1 (Schusev Museum, Moscow). 167 Roann Barris, “Culture as a Battleground: Subversive Narratives in Constructivist Architecture and Stage Design,” in: Journal of Architectural Education 52, No. 2, November 1958, p. 118; Meierkhol’d’s “directorial explication” in the meiekhol’d theater fond RGALI (963-1-523 and 517), Moscow; a notebook in the Shestakov at RGALI (2343-1- 286), Moscow; “Proekt Teatral’nogo zdaniia,” Protocol besedy Meierkhol’da s Lisitskim in the Meierkhol’d fond in the Bakhrushin Museum (305776/1034). 168 Ibid.

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As stage design was very important for the development of Constructivism, the notion of the architectural urban carnival was transferred to Constructivist architecture. Vesnin’s stage set for “The Man who was Thursday” served as a model for the communal housing projects. Both the stage sets and communal housing projects implied the idea of the construction/building as a city. In respect to the latter it was primarily due to the notion of a city being a complex of standardized elements. Like the city these elements were the living units and the communal or social structures. Because they visually paralleled with the model of the demountable “gulian’e” and followed in the path of Vesnin’s stage construction, the communal housing projects became a residence as a city and as an urban carnival or stage sets for the “theater of life.”169 The notion of the architectural urban carnival is also clearly traceable in Konstantin Melnikov’s (1890-1974) Rusakov Workers’ clubs (fig. 97), as Roann Barris explains it: “[…] Konstantin Melnikov’s workers’ clubs embodied the idea of a mechanized theater which became a building or conversely, a building which became theatrical machine. In his Rusakov club […], which least ambiguously of all his clubs recreates the rounded, multifaceted form, with its balcony protrusions, of a balagan theater […]. More literally and also symbolically, Mel’nikov made his workers’ clubs into stage sets when he designed moving interior walls. Facilitating transitions in the use of interior space, clubs with moving walls became carnivals, as it were – or theaters of political, educational or cultural actions, all presumably equal. To the extent that a carnival is an eclectically unplanned aggregation of unrelated styles and to the extent that the architecture of the carnival suggested transformation and demountability, Mel’nikov’s club-theaters, with their often ambivalent formal and functional evocations engaged, even if tentatively, the narrative of the urban carnival, a perception which quite likely underlay the criticism directed at Mel’nikov’s clubs. […] The implication was a theatrically engaged spectator who must take responsibility for the future – but like the Constructivists’ communal housing projects, this wasn’t theater; it was real life.”170

I believe that the paradigm of the architectural urban carnival can, a similar way, be applied to the Houses of Soviets in general as well as to the building in Elista in particular. First of all an evident parallel can be drawn between the protruding balconies of the “balagan” theater above the main entrance of Melnikov’s Rusakov club and the tribunes of the Houses of Soviets, which similarly were often placed above the main entrances, in front of the squares for public meetings.

169 Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, pp. 59, 61. 170 Quoted from Roann Barris, “Russian Constructivist Architecture as an Urban Carnival: The Creation and Reception of a Utopian Narrative,” in: Utopian Studies 10, No. 1, 1999, pp. 61-62.

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The resemblance between the tribunes and the balconies of the “balagan” theater becomes even more apparent, if one considers the way these tribunes were used. As in the “balagan,” they served for the mono performance of a person, who addressed the people crowded beneath. The difference consisted in the fact that in the case of the “balagan” it were actors, who advertised, whereas the tribunes of the Houses of Soviets were made for the Communist Party officials and activists, who addressed the people. Accordingly, they were a kind of stage. However, as the paradigm of architectural urban carnival implies the notion of the theatrically engaged spectator, the stage/tribune could become a kind of auditorium. People could sit there and watch the parade on the square. It is also noteworthy that Golosov’s original design had a spiral staircase, which should have provided direct access from the square to the tribune and vice versa. It has to be pointed out that Meierkhol’d sought a new form of theater where stage and hall space would be unified and accessible for everyone.171 In the case of the House of Soviets in Elista, it is also probable that the tribune could be derived from the feature of the architect’s own personal style and thereby it is not related to the Constructivists’ paradigm of the architectural urban carnival. One of the main features of Golosov’s style is the indent between the stories, which provide a stair-like appearance and in some cases constitutes a kind of balcony. This could already be noticed in his pre-Constructivist works in the style of “Symbolic Romanticism,” as in the projects for the radio station and the observatory (figs. 85, 86). In the first, though, the roofs are sloping in one direction and in the second, the roofs of the blocks are only balconies and obviously do not have a purpose of being used as tribunes. The paradigm of the urban carnival is also manifested in the multifunctionality of the meeting hall and particularly in the way, in which it was resolved. Like carnival architecture, which suggested transformation and demountability, the meeting hall of the House of Soviets in Elista could be transformed into a theater by closing the four doors between the main foyer and the additional foyer. This would isolate the meeting hall from the rest of the building, as the additional foyer had its own side entrance. Moreover, analogously with the architecture of the “gulian’e,” which was demounted after the end of the holidays, the theater could be demounted or transformed back to the meeting hall after a play or any other cultural event. It can be concluded that the narratives and metaphors of Constructivism such as the urban carnival or the active reconstruction of society, were inherently connected to the reception, or the

171 See note 28. 72 effect produced on an environment of users or an audience. This eventually would become the reason for the reduction of Constructivism, as these narratives implied the notion of the engaged spectator, which meant that all people/spectators should be actively involved in the construction of the socialist society; they should change themselves and society. However, political and cultural activists feared that by relying on such a paradigm people could be confused and thereby could be taken down the wrong road. The Constructivist stage sets, for example, were criticized for not providing clues to the location of the play or to the ideas in the text. This deprived the theater of its agitational mission and revolutionary pathos and thereby could prevent the communication from a profounder meaning.172 The political and cultural leaders wanted a more figurative and realistic theater, which would transmit the ideology in a conventional way, as Trotsky wrote:

“Show us – and first and foremost yourself – what is going on at the factory, in the working environment, in the co-op, at the club, at school, on the street, in the pub, do your best to understand what is going on in order to find the prospects for fragments of the past and the germ of the future. […] Show us the life that came out of the revolutionary oven.”173

According to the aforementioned appeal, although Russian politicians, cultural activists and Constructivists had the same goal to build the socialist society, the means by which this society should be constructed were different in their ideas. Thus, in summer 1934, when was established by the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers as an approved method in all media, Constructivism practically vanished.174 Hereafter Constructivist Workers’ Clubs, Houses of Soviets and Palaces of Culture continued to serve as theaters and places for the cultural activities, but now it was the spirit of

172 Roann Barris, “Culture as a Battleground: Subversive Narratives in Constructivist Architecture and Stage Design,” in: Journal of Architectural Education 52, No. 2, November 1958, pp. 120-121; Rudolf Pel’she, Nasha Teatral’naia Politika, Moscow and Leningrad 1929, pp. 35-36; Pletnev, thesis statement in the Proletkul’t fond, 1230-1-464, undated; Rudolf Pel’she, Puti Sovremennogo Teatra, Moscow–Leningrad 1929, p. 26; Boris Alpers, Teatr Revolutsii, Moscow 1928, p. 36; Pavel Novitskii, “Razmyshleniia o Teatral’nikh Khudozhnikakh,” in: Teatr I Dramaturgiia 7, 1935, p. 4; Ia. Braun, “Za Teatr Cheloveka,” in: Programmi Moskovskikh Gos. I Akad. Teatrov I Zrelishchnikh Predpriiatii 10, May 15-20, 1923, pp. 3-6. 173 Quoted from Leon Trotsky, “Chtobi Postroit Bit, Nado ego poznat’” [In order to build the everyday life, first it is necessary to study it], on: http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl910.htm (accessed on April 1, 2015); first published in: Krasnaya Krov’, Moscow 1923. 174 David Elliott and Piotr Juszkiewicz, “Socialist Realism,” in: Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, http://0www.oxfordartonline.com.opac.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/subscriber/article/grove/art/T079464 (accessed on April 19, 2015).

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Socialist Realism and Stalinist propaganda, which prevailed in these events. The first meeting of the Association of the Kalmyk Proletarian Writers, for example, took place in the House of Soviets in Elista in 1935.175 After the meeting the first chairmen, the Kalmyk poet Nimgir Mandzhiev described Elista in his poem in the following way:

“The weird time has gone, The king was shaken off of our neck, We left our yurts, We are building our capital now, Elista – the center of Kalmykia, The radiation of the Soviet sun, You shed the light of the culture, On the uluses of the renewed step.”176

On 17 May of the same year another significant cultural event was held in Elista, the First Olympiad of Amateur Art (fig. 98).177 The festive arches with slogans were constructed at the Eastern and Northern entrances to the city. The red flags were hung on all buildings. The wall of the western wing of the House of Soviets displayed the paintings of Kalmyk artists, which represented the past and the present of the Kalmyk people. The Olympiad lasted four days. On the first day a parade with the column of the Kalmyk people in national dresses playing national music took place on the square in front of the House of Soviets. Kalmyk Communist party leaders and activists hailed the participants from the tribune. One of the major events of the Olympiad was the mass play “Ulan Sar.” It involved 300 people. 178 The title of the play translated from Kalmyk language means “Red Month” and it most likely referred to the national Kalmyk holiday “Tsagan Sar” (the “White Month”), which celebrates the coming of Spring and the revival of all life forms in the steppe. The use of the color red instead of white in the title of the play suggests the ideological implication. This assumption can be supported by the fact that

175 Ivan Nemichev, “Sozdanie natsional’nogo tsentra goroda Elista – vahznij factor konsolidatsii Kalmytskoj sotsialisticheskoj natsii,” in: Vestnik Instityta 3, Elista 1968, p. 115, Kalmitskij Naychno Issledovatel’skij Instityt, Yazika Literatyt i Istorii, pri Sovete Ministrov Klamytskoj ASSR. 176 Quoted from Nimgir Mandzhiev, in: Ivan Nemichev, “Sozdanie natsional’nogo tsentra goroda Elista – vahznij factor konsolidatsii Kalmytskoj sotsialisticheskoj natsii,” in: Vestnik Instityta 3, Elista 1968, p. 115, Kalmitskij Naychno Issledovatel’skij Instityt, Yazika Literatyt i Istorii, pri Sovete Ministrov Klamytskoj ASSR (my translation). The term “ulus” meant an administrative unit of the Kalmyk Autonomous Region in the USSR. 177 Ivan Nemichev, “Sozdanie natsional’nogo tsentra goroda Elista – vahznij factor konsolidatsii Kalmytskoj sotsialisticheskoj natsii,” in: Vestnik Instityta 3, Elista 1968, p. 115, Kalmitskij Naychno Issledovatel’skij Instityt, Yazika Literatyt i Istorii, pri Sovete Ministrov Klamytskoj ASSR. 178 Ibid.

74 the Olympiad was held not long after the May Day or the International Workers’ Day, which had been one of the biggest state holidays since 1918.179 On the face of it, the First Olympiad of Amateur Art immediately reminds of the traditional Russian winter festival, the “gulien’e,” with its temporary architecture and “lubok” posters. However, as carnivalesque or theatrical activity, the “gulian’e” implied spontaneous action, while the Olympiad in Elista was not spontaneous in any way. It consisted of planned actions like the parade or the mass play of “Ulan Sar.” It was not a theatrical activity, but a theater, in the sense that everything was planned and controlled. The House of Soviets in Elista was also associated with the birth of the Kalmyk Professional Drama Theater. In 1936, in the meeting hall of the building the first Kalmyk drama “Onchin bok” (The Struggler Orphan) by Khasyr Syan-Belgin was staged.180 In the following year the First Exhibition of Painting, Sculpture and Prints was held in the House of Soviets. Among the artists who participated in the exhibition were painters such as Sergej Khazikov, Rodion Bogoslovkij (1916-1995), Pelageya Ivanovna Emchigirova (1907- 1992), Lidji Ochirov (1914-1949), printmaker and painter Ivan Sidorovich Nuskhaev (1910- 1944), and the wood carver Erdni Sharaev. Due to the destruction of Elista in World War II and the Stalinist repression of the Kalmyk people, almost no paintings of that period have been preserved. However, based on the titles of the paintings we can assume that the predominant themes at the exhibition were historical (about the Revolution), everyday life and epic (mainly based on the Kalmyk epos “Dzhangr”). Lidji Ochirov presented the paintings “Kalmyk Yurta,” “The old Kalmyk,” “The Kalmyk bride” and “Peter the Great at the court of the Kalmyk Khan.” The paintings of Radion Bogoslovkij had subjects of Soviet everyday life, such as “The Saturday during the construction of the road in Elista” and “The holder of the order of Goryaev among the children.” The first and most well-known Kalmyk female artist, Pelageya Emchigirova presented her painting “Meeting in the Kolkhoz” and portraits of people and children from kolkhozes.181 I would argue that these paintings were most likely figurative and Realist. The idea about their style can be captured from the later paintings of Ivan Nuskhaev, who was one of the supervisors

179 James Von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920, Los Angeles and London 1993, p. 88. 180 Ivan Nemichev, “Sozdanie natsional’nogo tsentra goroda Elista – vahznij factor konsolidatsii Kalmytskoj sotsialisticheskoj natsii,” in: Vestnik Instityta 3, Elista 1968, p. 116, Kalmitskij Naychno Issledovatel’skij Instityt, Yazika Literatyt i Istorii, pri Sovete Ministrov Klamytskoj ASSR. 181 Kolkhoz was a collective farm.

75 of the exhibition, “The Hero of “Dzhangar” Khongr” of 1940 (fig. 99) and the self-portrait of Pelageya Emchigirova of 1940 (fig. 100).182 b. The Tower Those who want to understand the role of the House of Soviets in Elista in the consolidation of Soviet Ideology, should take into account not only the functional peculiarities of the building, but also the form of the construction itself. This because the plan the House of Soviets was to provide a landmark for the city, and it did. The five-storied tower with the narrow part of the sixth story above it was the highest construction in the city’s newly built administrative center (fig. 4). Taking into account the geographical region, a steppe, it can be assumed that such, in a contemporary sense, low construction, was perceived by the local people as a skyscraper. This certainly made a strong impression on locals who during the construction process still lived in “yurtas,” as we can see on a photograph which depicts the livestock market located around the city (fig. 101).183 The only non-nomadic constructions, which were known to Kalmyk people, were the one-storied houses made of adobe brick. With regard to the notion of skyscraper, it is necessary to mention the evident resemblance between the appearance of the tower of the House of Soviets in Elista and Walter Gropius’ project for the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition, which took place in 1922 (fig. 102). The similarity is primarily expressed in two basic aspects, which constitute the esthetic appearance of both constructions. The first is the stair-like appearance; second is the tendency to stress corners with balconies. Where the tower of the House of Soviets in Elista is concerned, it is not exactly a free corner balcony, which stresses the angle, but the similarity is, nonetheless, obvious, as the railing links both sides. In chapter four, which considers the building type, we have seen that corner balconies were a common feature for many other projects, as the Raisoviets of Navra District in Saint Petersburg and the House of Soviets in Nizhniy Novgorod (figs. 41, 45). Like the construction in Elista the former has a tower, the corner of which is stressed by the vertical succession of the balconies. The building in Nizhny Novgorod does not have a tower and the balconies are placed at the corner of west-east wing. Another element similar to Groupius’ Chicago Tribune Tower is

182 Svetlana Batyreva, “Izobrazitelnoe Iskusstvo Kalmykii 1930kh – nachala 1940kh,” in: Elistinskaya Panorama 123, 22 August 2014, p. 11. 183 “yurta” is a portable housing of the Turkic and Mongolian nomads made of a wooden skeleton covered with felt. 76 a loggia under the tribune at the opposite end of the wing. Such similarities might not be a coincidence as there was a connection between Walter Gropius, who was one of the contributors of “Contemporary Architecture,” and members of Constructivist movement. It is also known that Constructivist architects were very well aware of the Chicago Tribune competition and considered the project of the German architect as the best among others. In the article dedicated to the American architecture Constructivist architect and engineer Alexander Pasternak expressed his disappointment about the fact that the first prize was given to the project of John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, which was designed in neo-Gothic style, whereas the brilliant work of Walter Gropius remained unnoticed (fig. 103).184 The article briefly reviews the development of skyscrapers and the skeleton type of constructions in the US. This shows the concern of Constructivist architects about this new building type, which for them was primarily a demonstration of great achievements of modern architecture and engineering. On the example of the skyscrapers Pasternak displayed the correlation between the development of an engineering and transformation of the exterior of the buildings (figs. 103-107). He wrote about it in the following way:

“To make one extra car, to make an extra edition, to build a couple of stories above or to improve the car, to remove the unnecessary cog, which is not reasonable for the structure and did not facilitate the work – that’s all the incentive of an engineer. This eventually will be transferred on the engineering part of the construction. This will convince an architect of the importance of engineering in the building. And now we are observing a slow shift in the urban architecture. This is not a random phenomenon, but continuing evolution. […] We can trace the steps of its evolution: 1914 it is still Woolworth building by Cass Gilbert (1859-1934). Then the main post office building was built in Washington in 1922 by the same architect, in this project we can observe the touch of the new ideas. […] In 1924, the architect Arthur Loomis Harmon erected a Shelton Hotel in New York. In 1924-25, with the construction of Pacific Telephone building, the American style is established, the main features of which is vertical monolith, with the exclusion of unnecessary decorations.”185

184 Alexander Pasternak, “Amerika,” in: Sovremennaya Arkhitektyra, No. 4, 1926, p. 94. 185 Quoted from Alexander Pasternak, “Amerika,” in: Sovremennaya Arkhitektyra, No. 4, 1926, p. 94; It is necessary to note that the names of some buildings were changed since the article was published. The office building in Washington, which was built by Cass Gilbert in 1922, is no longer a main post office, today the building known as The 4th & Wine Tower or PNC tower, under the name of the bank. The building Pacific Telephone, which was built by the company of architects james Rupert Miller and Timothy L. Pflueger, is currently known as 140 New Montgomery Street or PacBell building. 77

This article was not the first instance where Constructivist architects discussed American architecture. In the first issue of the journal “Contemporary Architecture,” Alexander Pasternak published an article about the modern urban environment in the US and the role of the skyscrapers in it. The latter was regarded by the architect as a perfect construction for the contemporary city due to its capacity to replace the slow horizontal movement by the fast vertical, which was provided by lifts. He also wrote that this principle should be absorbed by Russian architects. Pasternak, however, emphasized that American urbanism and particularly the experience in the construction of skyscrapers, should be displaced onto Russian soil with a great caution. According to him the skyscrapers should not be built erratically, as it could affect the cityscape in the negative way. On the contrary they must be organically placed as a landmarks in particular parts of the city districts. In this way, it would be possible to make a homogeneous picture. Pasternak admitted that the issue of American urbanism was not relevant to the USSR in its current state, as it was extremely difficult and expensive to construct the building with a lift, and without the latter it was not possible to provide rapid vertical traffic.186 However, Russian Constructivist architects were inspired by American skyscrapers and consequently designed projects of buildings with a vertical structure, as in the project of typography by Ivan Leonidov (108), the House of Trade Unions by the student of Vkhutemas N. Krasilnikov (fig. 109), the extremely high administrative block of the House of Soviets in Rostov-on-Don by Iliya Golosov and one of the blocks of the Central Lenin’s Library by the Vesnin brothers (fig. 55,63). However, none of these projects were executed. This wish to design high buildings was due to the aspiration to demonstrate the unlimited capacities of modern architecture. Despite the fact that these projects were only paper architecture, they, nonetheless, showed that at least on paper, with all engineering calculations being correct, it was possible to build such constructions. Thus, it can be assumed that one of the reasons to include the tower in the construction of the House of Soviets in Elista was the wish to exploit the achievements of modern engineering. In Golosov’s original design this part should have been higher and eventually was evaluated as functionally unreasonable by the consultant architect of the Scientific Council NKVD Boris Velikovsky, who in the list of amendments required reducing its height at least by one story. The same functionally unjustified tower can be observed in the Raisoivets of Navra District in Saint Petersburg (fig. 45). However, unlike the buildings with vertical structure in these two projects,

186 Alexander Pasternak, “Urbanism,” in: Sovremennaya Arkhitektyra, No. 1, 1928, pp. 6-8.

78 the aspiration to demonstrate the modern achievement of engineering was not the main reason for the including towers. I shall clarify this below. Another source of the aspiration of Constructivist architects to design buildings with vertical structures obviously was the very first, iconic project of the movement, Vesnins’ Palace of Labour (fig. 20). What important here is that Vesnins’ building must have been inspired by the skyscraper design of Chicago Tribune Tower designed by Walter Gropius and Ludwig Hilbersheimer. Many Russian and western architectural historians emphasized the evident resemblance between two projects and assumed the possibility of Vesnins’ reference to Gropius’ design.187 First of all the similarity is obvious in respect to the stair-like appearance of both buildings and the tendency to emphasize the skeleton construction of the building by showing its steel frame on the exterior. It is necessary to note that the competition for Chicago Tribune Tower, where Gropius presented his project, was an important event in the history of the American architecture, as it revealed the fact that in 1922 architectural practice in the US was still not ready to accept European avant-garde development. Thus, all the designs, which were submitted by American architects, hold Romanesque, Gothic or stylistic features. This tendency to make reference to tradition had been a common feature for the development of architecture of skyscrapers since its beginning, as architects had to deal with an absolutely new type of construction with the dawn of extremely high vertical structures. For example, one of the first skyscrapers in Chicago, “Home Insurance Building” built by William Le Baron Jenney in 1885, had an appearance of a Renaissance palace, which was extended in all directions (fig. 110). Another architect, Louis Sullivan, thought that tall buildings should be divided into three sections like a column with a base, a shaft and a capital.188 The execution of this idea can be observed on the example of Wainwright Building in St. Louis, which was built by him in collaboration with Dankmar Adler in 1890-91 (111). Unlike these two buildings with block-like structure, in New York there was initially an inclination for “towers.” In 1908 American architect Ernest Flagg built the Singer Tower in New York, the tip of which echoed the corner

187 See Oleg Aleksandrovich Shvidkovskiĭ, Building in the USSR, 1917-1932, New York 1971, p. 49; Selim Khan- Magomedov, Aleksandr Vesnin yi Konstruktivism, Moscow 2007, p. 127; Alan Colquhoun, Modern Architecture, Oxford 2002, pp.126-127. 188 Louis H. Sullivan, “The tall office building artistically considered,” in: Lippincott’s Magazine, March 1896, pp. 403-409, available online on: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/4-205-analysis-of-contemporary-architecture- fall-2009/readings/MIT4_205F09_Sullivan.pdf (accessed on May 31, 2015) 79 turrets of the Louvre in (figs. 112, 113); and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower built by Napoleon LeBrun and Sons in 1909 followed the example of the Campanile di San Marco in (fig. 114, 115). The main feature of the two buildings is that their tower structure itself did not rise from the street level but only above the stories of the complex of lower structures.189 In this respect the structures of the Singer Tower and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower are similar to the architecture of other buildings with towers – historic city or town halls. The Palazzo Pubblico in Siena or the even more obvious example the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence both have the towers rising above the main body of the buildings (figs. 116,117). And here I would like again to refer to the House of Soviets in Elista and the Raisoviet in Navra district, which both had the same kind of towers. This can be explained by the fact that like skyscrapers the Houses of Soviets were new constructions and thereby in the beginning of the development of the building type Soviet architects who worked on their designs searched for models in the architectural tradition and the town hall became the model that architects chose to be the prototype. In order to make it clear initially it is necessary to consider one of the most marvelous buildings in architectural history, the town hall of the Republic of Florence, the Palazzo Vecchio. This Florentine palazzo was built around 1300. The original name of the Palazzo Vecchio was Palazzo della Signoria. The construction of the building is inherently connected to the Florentine political history and particularly to Republicanism. In 1282 when guilds overpowered the old ruling class, Florentines established two new administrative organs; one was the Gonfalonier of Justice which included only citizens belonging to one of the Major Guilds and another was the Priors (Priori). The latter represented the middle class or “popolo grasso” (the rising middle class enriched by trade and business). Together, they were called the Signori (Lords). Since the beginning of their rule, the Signori wanted to build a special place for meetings, which could protect them from the assaults of hostile faction. The place for the future palace had particular symbolic meaning as it was founded on the ruins of the houses and towers of the Ghibelline Uberti family. They were one of the former rules, the faction of which was defeated in 1266. During the construction the tower of the Foraboschi family was incorporated into the Palazzo Vecchio up to the battlement and consequently constituted its bell tower. The

189 Andres Lepik, Skyscrapers, New York 2008, pp. 6-8, 36.

80 buildings around the palace were bought up and destroyed in order to open the space in front of the palace for its defense. Today it is known as Piazza della Signoria (119).190 The Palazzo Vecchio is closed like a fortress with rusticated walls and protruding battlements on corbels. The building has an irregular trapezoidal plan and an asymmetrical foundation. This was most likely an effort to utilize the foundations of pre-existing buildings. The ground floor of the building has the Sala d’Arme which located at the left of courtyard. The council room or Sala dei Dugento was above it. The second floor of the building had a second meeting hall, which subsequently was broken up in the Sala dei Gigli and Sala d’Udienza. Apart from these halls the building had rooms for offices of officials and their bedrooms, as they had to live inside the palace throughout their two-month term.191 The functionality of some of the Palazzo Vecchio’s elements is connected to the republican form of government. In former times the palace had a tribune, which was constituted by the fortified wall in front of the palace (118). The Signori and other magistrates of the Republic were seated on it during the public ceremonies. 192 In later times the Piazza della Signoria, which originally was made for the protection of the palace, was used as a space where all the citizens of Florence could participate in the “parlamenti.” The latter took place on the tribune and later in the Loggia dei Signori. The bell tower was supposed to summon people to participate in it. Consequently, the verbal and visual image of “palazzo-piazza” began to reflect the two main concepts of Florentine Republicanism, liberty and equality. This image stood for an open system of government, compared to the secrecy of the courts and princely states.193 What is important here is the evident similarity, which can be traced between the Palazzo Vecchio and the House of Soviets in Elista with respect to the combination of a tribune and square. This was not a coincidence as both constructions have cognate ideological implications. Like in Florence, one of the functions of the square for public meetings in Elista is a place for people of the city to gather together and to listen to political leaders and agitations, which would

190 Fiorenza Scalia, Palazzo Vecchio: History and Art, Firenze 1979, pp. 3-6. 191 Ibid. 192 Fiorenza Scalia, Palazzo Vecchio: History and Art, Firenze 1979, pp. 6. 193 James Hankins, Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, New York 2000, pp. 187-188; Nicolai Rubinstein, “Florentine Constitutionalism and Medici Ascendancy in the Fifteenth Century,” in: Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, ed. by Nicolai Rubinstein, London 1968, pp. 442-455; Niccolò Machiavelli, Legazioni e commissarie, ed. by Sergio Bertelli, 3 vols., 1964, here vol. III: 1187, from Mantua, 20 November 1509: “perché questo è uno luogo dove nascono, anzi piovono le bugie, e la Corte ne è più piena che le piazze.” 81 stand on the tribune. Furthermore, the idea of an open system of government in Florentine Republicanism akin to Lenin’s idea that the entire political arena should be open to the public view as a theater stage to the audience. 194 And it can be assumed that a square for public meetings as well as the use of the meeting hall for socio-cultural purposes, was derived from this idea of transparency between people and the state. This idea was actually very explicitly expressed in the first Constructivist project: the Palace of Labour. The building had two meeting halls, one for the Moscow City Council and another for the “all-people’s meeting.” They could be transformed into one unified meeting hall, so all the people could present on the session of the Moscow City Council. When drawing the Victorian and Edwardian buildings in Britain into the comparison, the resemblance between town halls and the Houses of Soviets becomes even more evident. Along with a space designated for administrative purposes, British town halls of that era also included auditoria for concerts, lectures and large scale festivities, as well as a banqueting hall, a library as well as a museum or gallery. Thus, like the Houses of Soviets, they were multifunctional, for example Leeds Town Hall (1853-1858) by Cuthbert Broderick or Manchester Town Hall (1868- 1877) by Alfred Waterhouse (figs. 120, 121).195 In order to support the idea of the similarities of the two building types, I would like to refer to one of the earliest known designs of the Houses of Soviets, the Volostnoj Soviet of 1921 by Soviet Constructivist architect Alexander Nikolsky (1884-1953) (fig. 122). In this project the spirit of traditional architecture is still preserved and it bares greater similarity to traditional town halls. Although its design bares the embryo of modern architecture with its play with the volume of the building, the overall appearance of the construction looks rather traditional. This is due to the material, wood, the sloping roofs and the symmetrical composition of the main elements of the building. The latter consists of a central block, which is dominated by the bell tower in the center and the two lateral wings. What is important here is that the building has a bell tower, which allows the assumption that the towers of the later Houses of Soviets as well as the House of Soviets in Elista are the remains of this traditional element. In the case of the Palazzo Vecchio and British Town Halls, the bell tower was not only supposed to call the people for a meeting or

194 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, What is to be done? Chapter VI, in: https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/iv.htm#v05fl61h-440-GUESS (accessed on May 10, 2015); first published as Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Chto delat?,” in: Iskra, No. 19, 1 April 1902. 195 Ben Rogers, Reinventing Town Hall: A handbook, London 2004, pp. 14-15. 82 to announce the time, but also to provide a landmark for the town or city; and this notion of the establishment of a landmark by building a tall vertical construction is something that unites the Houses of Soviets, Town Halls and American Skyscrapers. In the last two, the establishment of a landmark was a way to express power. I would argue that this was also the case in the tower of the House of Soviets in Elista. Thus, the people who lived in Elista in the 1930s, who during the construction process still lived in “yurtas” and had probably never seen high buildings, must have been greatly impressed by this construction. As its top bore the acronym of the representatives of the new state and the socialist order, the Central Executive Committee, the expression of power provided by the tower was primarily associated with it.

7. The House of Soviets and the City: the Building in its Environment

I have mentioned above that the city of Elista was a completely new municipality built in the naked steppe as the administrative center of the Kalmyk Autonomous Region of the USSR. As its construction period coincided with the rapid development of Soviet avant-garde art and architecture as well as with the following shift towards Socialist Realism, all these historical events were reflected in the urban environment. Since the establishment of the USSR, Soviet architects focused on the issues related to urban planning. This was due to the actual construction of cities and towns, as well as the necessity to understand the complex and contradictory social, economic and technical problems of the urbanization. The impulse for the first discussion about urban planning was given by the leader of the October Revolution, . Being the follower of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Revolutionary attentively considered the issue of the socialist settlement. In his book “The agrarian question and the critics of Marx,” which was published in 1908, long before the Revolution, Lenin wrote that the ideal for the socialist country would be neither city nor village. The ideal would be the kind of settlement, which could blur the boundaries between these two oppositions. This would make it possible to provide the access to science and art, not only for the inhabitants of the city, but for the whole world. It primarily should be done in order to destroy rural people’s detachment from the culture. Here he referred to Marx, who called this situation the idiocy of the rural life. According to Lenin the main characteristics of the modern time were the possibility to provide electricity over long distances as well as the increase of the speed of

83 transportation and the amount of the passengers. Due to this it was possible to spread all the advantages of the city, like science and culture, throughout the country evenly, so all the citizens of the country could have an access to them. Thus the destruction of the opposition between countryside and city was achievable.196 This idea to blur the differences between the city and countryside would eventually become a part of Communist party’s program, which was approved on the seventh session of the Russian Communist party in March 1919. In the program it was underlined that the destruction of the opposition between countryside and city is crucial for the construction of Communism.197 This would eventually lead to the first big discussion about urbanism between Soviet architects and urban planners. The discussion had been going between 1922 and 1923. One of the main concepts of urban planning was proposed by the Russian urban planner V. Bykov. It was called the project for the “New Village.” The aim of this project was to erase the difference between countryside and city. Bykov developed a concept of a new kind of agricultural villages, which should have a circular plan with six different zones surrounded one another: 1. the central square and all administrative building, which is the building for the government and Communist party’s organizations, theater, library, movie theater, Palaces of Culture, and Workers’ Clubs 2. the residential quarters: low-rise apartment buildings, dormitories for singles as well as parks and gardens. 3. the institutions of culture and education 4. hospitals, agricultural laboratories and meteorological station 5. industrial and communal zone: a grain elevator, a mill, a garage, a depot for tractors, an airport, a power plant, a tram depot, a repair shop 6. the last zone: a stud farm, a farm, poultry houses, stockyards, a veterinary station.198 What is important in this concept is that such villages or towns should resolve the issue of the destruction of the differences between countryside and cities not by de-urbanization of the

196 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Vtoraya: Socialnye Problemy, Moscow 2002, p. 33; Vladimir Iliych Lenin, Sochineniya, 4 izdanie, Tom 21, p. 55. 197 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Vtoraya: Socialnye Problemy, Moscow 2002, p. 33; Vladimir Iliych Lenin, Sochineniya, 4 izdanie, Tom 5, pp. 137-138. 198 Selim Khan-Magomedov, Arkhitektura Sovetskogo Avantgarda, Kniga Vtoraya: Socialnye Problemy, Moscow 2002, p. 33; Vladimir Iliych Lenin, Sochineniya, 4 izdanie, Tom 5, pp. 150-151; V. Bykov, “Novaya Derevnya,” in: Stroitel, No 6, 1923. 84 latter, but by the urbanization of villages. These small towns were planned to be built instead of rural communities. According to Bykov’s concept one of the approach, which would allow erase the difference between the two oppositions is the industrialization of agriculture, which would free peasants from the individual farming.199 The concept developed by Bykov is very similar to the situation of the city of Elista in the beginning of its construction. According to the plan the newly built administrative, public and apartment buildings should transform the village, which was located near the construction site, into the city. Hence the response to the idea of the necessity to destroy the differences between countryside and city are evident. The execution of this idea, however, did not completely correspond to the concept of Bykov. In order to clarify this, initially, it is necessary to consider the history of the construction of the city in 1920s and 30s. As I have mentioned in the chapter on the history of the House of Soviets, the decision to build a new administrative center had been made in 1925, but the actual construction process began in 1927 and should last for four years. This period coincided with the founding of the Constructivist organization OSA, which played a significant role in the formation of the appearance of the future city. Among those who were assigned for the design of urban environment and buildings were the architects and engineers Boris Velikovsky, Iliya Golosov, Boris Mittelman, S. Polyakov, Boris Korshunov (1885-1961) and Vladimir Semenov (1874- 1960). Apart from the latter, all of them were the members of the construction company “Techbeton” (figs. 123, 124)200 On 25 May 1927, Boris Korshunov presented his plan for the future city to the Kalmyk Executive Committee. One of the main features of his design was a special focus on the planting of greenery. It should occupy 26% of the city area. This was necessary due to the extremely hot climate of the region. The green areas should provide shade and play a role of natural filters, which would protect the city from the dry and dusty south-eastern winds.201 Significantly, the buildings of the first necessity were under construction, while the elaboration of the general plan of the future city was still in progress. The final plan of Elista was approved by the Scientific Council of GYKKh under the chairmanship of the well-known Soviet

199 Ibid. 200 Djangr B. Purveev, Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975, pp. 94-95. 201 Djangr B. Purveev, Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975, pp. 95-96. 85 architect Vladimir Semenov on 9 May 1929.202 According to Korshunov’s design the residential quarter should form diagonals, which would be parallel to the meridian. In this way he wanted simultaneously to provide much light for the buildings and to protect them from winds. Each quarter should have a green area. The big central park was planned at the west side of the city’s administrative center. The height of all residential and administrative buildings was planned to be no more than two or three stories; so their elevation could not overtop tree crowns, which should have been protected from the scorching southern sun. Moreover, Korshunov planned to create two long green boulevards, one should be located along Lenin Street and the other should surround the center of the city. Due to the primarily administrative character of Elista, the main focus of the plan was put on the central square, which was located on the highest point of the city. All the administrative buildings including the House of Soviets should be located around this square.203 In this respect the plan of the city referred to Bykov’s concept. The most rapid growth of the city was between 1931 and 1934. During this period the construction of the House of Soviets was finished, which became the last element of the central ensemble of the city. The historian of the Kalmyk region, D. B. Purveev, described it in the following way:

“The architectural appearance of Elista of that period (1931-1934) clearly expressed the trends and tendencies prevailing in the Soviet architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. The central part of the city was accentuated by the building of the Central Executive Committee (the House of Soviets). The architectural composition and the directions of the building connected the city’s arterial roads. Along with other public buildings of Elista the House of Soviets outlined the square for public meetings, which was accentuated by Lenin’s monument. This was the highest part of the city, the part which consisted of public buildings built in the spirit of Constructivism. These were such buildings as: the building of the Central Executive Committee (the House of Soviets), the post office, pedtekhnikum, national museum, printing house and ambulant clinic. […] The House of Soviets was the dominant of the city due to its height; and it also dominated in the central architectural ensemble of Elista, as all the buildings, which surrounded it, repeated its composition.”204

202 By November of the same year the construction of the most necessary buildings had been already finished. These were several administrative buildings, pedtekhnikum, ambulant clinic, printing house, telegraph and post office, radio station, two schools, ambulant clinic, auto-station with garages, electrical power station, brick factory and slaughterhouse. The presence of a printing house in this list is particular interesting as it was probably due to the necessity to set up the work of propaganda in the region quickly. 203 Djangr B. Purveev, Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975, pp. 96-97. 204 Quoted from Djangr B. Purveev, Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975, pp. 98, 110. 86

Due to the absence of a plan and clear panoramic view of the pre-war Elista, this description, which, besides, is not in all respects precise, is particularly precious as it gives a list of the buildings, which constituted the architectural environment of the House of Soviets. First of all, it is certain that at least two of these buildings stood in one line along the Pushkin Street. First in the line was the post office, which was situated at the northern side of the House of Soviets across the Lenin Street (figs. 125, 126). As it had been in the list of the most necessary buildings, the construction of the post office was finished before 1930. Unfortunately, we do not know exactly, but the architect of the building was Boris Velikovsky or Boris Mittelman205 Although the construction has Constructivist features, its style cannot be considered as Constructivism. The post office has a rectangular plan. Its façade is directed towards the House of Soviets at the south. The façade has two main entrances at the left and right ends of the wall. The structure of the building is closed. The sloping roof of the second story has three chimneys. These provide a very severe and traditional appearance to the construction. The only feature of the building, which breathes Constructivist spirit, is the asymmetry produced by the three-storied tower located at the left part of the construction. Its first story has one of the entrances with a long vertical window above. The window indicates that the tower probably contained the main staircase. The roof of the tower is flat and lined with railings. Along with two white lines, which run through the whole length of the wall in the upper part of the first and second stories, these railings set a horizontal accent on the façade of the building. Thus, the tower of the telegraph and post office naturally echoed the tower of the House of Soviets. Moreover, like the latter it was topped with the flag and an acronym of the People’s Commissariat of posts and telegraphs of the USSR, NKPT (НКПТ). Unfortunately, the building was destroyed during World War II, as well as two other constructions built by Golosov, the “pedtekhnikum” and ambulant clinic. The careful study of old photographs made it possible to assume that the “pedtekhnikum” and ambulant clinic designed by Golosov were located at the south of the House of Soviet (figs. 127, 128). As the post office, the latter was built earlier than the House of Soviets. The only photographs that remain were taken from the back of the building (fig. 129, 130). Thus, it is difficult to consider its style and composition. According to the picture it was a white two-storied construction with an L-shaped plan. From this point of view the building has two features typical

205 Djangr B. Purveev, Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975, p. 99. 87 for Constructivism. The first is the vertical band window, which probably opened a view to the staircase inside. The second is the tower. It rises above the rest of the building by two more stories. One of its stories is extremely transparent. In combination with a flat roof lined with railings, this glassed story gives to the building an exceptionally modern appearance. The sloping roof and the chimneys are the only elements, which break this hegemony. The rows of the big windows along the ground and first floor indicate that the ambulant clinic was built by applying a skeleton construction method, the same which was used in the House of Soviets. This can be also supported by the fact that one of its corners is glassed, which would be impossible in a construction made of brick. Another of Golosov’s buildings, the “pedtekhnikum,” has the most particular appearance. In comparison to the buildings of the post office and ambulant clinic considered above, where architectural traditionalism is disclosed only by the sloping roofs and chimneys, the design of the “pedtekhnikum” clearly refers to the tradition (figs. 131, 132).206 The building has an L-shaped plan and consists of two blocks separated by a tower. The latter has a high vertical band window, which is divided by a stone slab of a dark color at the level of the third story. One of the entrances is located at the left of the tower. The small two-storied rectangular block is attached to the tower’s right part. It has an additional entrance at the side. Unlike the rest of the building this block has a sloping roof. The other block has an L-shaped plan and three stories. At the end opposite to the tower, this block has a rectangular enveloping of an additional staircase opened to the viewer by a high vertical window. The situation strongly resembles the rectangular enveloping of the House of Soviets as both are located on the inner yard wall. Despite all these features, which echo the architecture of other buildings of the city, the appearance of the “pedtekhnikum” clearly refers to the classic tradition. First of all, this is due to embellishments. Golosov decorated the building with giant pilasters placed between windows. Their extremely elongated necking is ornamented with squares. The pilasters visually support the cornice with brackets. This is topped by balusters, which line the roof. They echoed the railings of the House of Soviets, ambulant clinic and post office. It is difficult to comprehend Golosov’s reason for such a design. The project was made in 1927, the year when the architect had already become a

206 It is necessary to note that as the appearence of the buildings revealed the particular wish to build modern architecture, the sloping roofs in these early constructions of Elista were probably made due to the lack of the skills of the builders. It is known that because of the absence of the latter, in 1927 the Central Institute of Labour created courses for the builders write on the construction spot. Djangr B. Purveev, Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975, p. 97.

88 part of the Constructivist movement where the use of classic elements was considered as a crime. By this time, he had already built one of the most iconic Constructivist monuments, the Workers’ club in Moscow. What important here is that this fact confirms the thoughts of the Russian art historians Vigdariya Khaznova and Selim Khan-Magomedov that Golosov had never been entirely converted to Constructivism. The most important element in the environment of the House of Soviets is the square for public meetings (fig. 98). It is located at its western part, which lets assume that this side was considered the façade. This situation expressed the ambivalent thoughts of Constructivist architects in respect to the latter. On the one hand, Ginzburg wrote that modern architecture does not need a façade.207 On the other hand, among many projects of the buildings, which were published in “Contemporary Architecture,” there were many drawings of elevations entitled as façade. Initially, the function of the square was to provide a place where all people could join the political life of the country: to participate in the open meetings of the Central Executive Committee, to listen to the speeches of Communist party leaders and agitations. However, the square has never served its original function, as by the year when the House of Soviets and the square were finished Stalin had already consolidated his absolute power. On the contrary, the square became an important tool for his propaganda. In 1930, the statue of Lenin was erected (fig. 133). It faced the main entrance of the House of Soviets. This was a part of the propaganda method associated with the cult of Lenin’s personality, which the Soviet government began to develop after his death. The former Communist Party leader was hailed as the hero of the Revolution. Along with statues, images of Lenin appeared in many other forms. These images were supposed to motivate the population to imitate his commitment to the Revolution.208 Hence, the square, which originally had been meant to provide the transparency between state and people, became a place for worshipping the leader of the Revolution and the Communist Party. The square for public meetings was eventually named after Lenin. At the southern side the border of Lenin’s square is contoured by a park (fig. 134). Its form repeated the rectangular plan of the square with the accent shifted to the northern side, as the main entrance is located there, beside the statue of Lenin. The statue stood at the border of

207 See note 124. 208 Steve Philips, Stalinist Russia, Oxford 2000, pp. 122-123. 89 the park area and was surrounded by a semicircular track. Four alleys diverge from this track. Two of them lead to the south and north along Pushkin Street. A smaller one is situated diagonally. At the other end of this alley, there was a small square with sculptures inside the park. The main alley is located behind the statue of Lenin. It leads to a fountain with an obelisk dedicated to the Kalmyk revolutionary Kharti Kanukov and an arch-like construction, which are positioned at its sides. What important in the design of the park is that it strongly resembles the traditional Baroque gardens not only due to the presence of a fountain, sculptures and classic constructions, but also due to the strict geometrical order. The park in Elista has an orthogonal grid of avenues combined with diagonal alleys just like the parks of the Baroque period. Another important feature of the Baroque garden was the element of hierarchy in the grid, as some axes were more important than others.209 The same can be observed in the design of the park in Elista where the particular accent was put on the alley located behind the statue of Lenin. Such a design of the park strongly resonated with the modern appearance of the House of Soviets and other buildings. The application of the methods of the traditional landscape architecture in the city, which was built by avant-garde architects, can be explained by two reasons. First is the Constructivists’ neglect of this area of the architecture in their discourse. Second is due to the fact that the park was built in the 1930s, when the Socialist Realism was established as the official style of the Soviet state.210 With respect to the latter it is necessary to note that since the end of the construction of the House of Soviets, the environment of the building changed dramatically several times. In the second half of the 1930s, the central part of the city was built up with the constructions designed in Classical spirit, for example the building of the medical college, clinic, sanatorium “15 years of VKLSM” and movie theater “Rodina” (figs. 135-138).211 The next period of the intensive construction was in the 1960s and 1970s. After the return from the deportation the Kalmyk people needed to rebuild their city from ruins, which were left

209 Han Lörzing, The Nature of Landscape: A Personal Quest, Rotterdam 2001, p. 126. 210 Although there are no data about the construction date, the absence of the park on the photograph, which depicts the solemn opening of the statue of Lenin in 1930, assumes that it was built afterwards. 211 Unfortunately apart from the architect of “Rodina,” Victor Kalmykov, the architects of other buildings are unknown. 90 after World War II.212 As a result the area around the House of Soviets changed significantly. First of all the House of Soviets was not an administrative building any more. In 1960s the construction was assigned to the newly established Kalmyk State University. The new six-storied administrative building for the Kalmyk government and Communist party was constructed in front of the House of Soviets (fig. 139). Although the new construction was built in a modern style, its design is not as ingenious as Golosov’s construction. The building has a simple rectangular plan with a main entrance shifted to the northern side. This must be due to the aspiration to locate it closer to the statue of Lenin. This new construction closed Lenin’s square at the west side. The square was cemented. A new bronze statue of Lenin was made by the sculptor Matvej Manizer (1908-2005). It was placed on a wide black granite plinth designed by the architect Igor Rozhin. The monument was erected exactly on the same spot, where the old statue used to be (fig. 140). Another modern construction, the city hall, was built at the northern side of the square across Lenin Street (fig. 141). The building is a conglomerate of two vertical rectangular constructions, which were built one beside another with a shift. Each block has its own entrance. The windows are framed by vertically running recesses on the wall. Overall the building has a closed structure, which gives it a severe appearance. The same characteristics can be applied to the exterior of the National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, which is located at the southern side of the House of Soviets (fig. 142). It is a four storied vertical construction with a rectangular plan. Its façade is embellished with rows of extremely elongated vertical band windows and a wide cornice on pillars above the main entrance. Two galleries are attached to the left and right side of the cornice. This is a place where the pictures of honorary citizens are exhibited. In 2004, the statue of Lenin was removed from the square and was placed at the southern side. Two years later the square was redesigned. The symbols of the Communist past were demolished. A Buddhist pagoda and fountain were designed and built by the Kalmyk architects A.N. Boschaev, O. B. Getsilova, V. B. Kokusheva, V.B. Oshpanova and the sculptor N. Galushkin. The fountain was called “Three Lotuses.” It simultaneously symbolizes the official

212 During the World War II, on 28 December 1943, the Soviet government accused the Kalmyks of collaborating with the Germans and deported the entire population, including Kalmyk soldiers, to various locations in Central Asia and Siberia. Kalmyk people were permitted to return home only in 1957. See: Konstantin Nikolaevich, Kalmykia in Russia’s Past and Present National Policies and Administrative System, Budapest 2008, pp. 309, 312.

91 state religion, , and refers to the flag of the Republic, which has an image of white lotus in the center (figs. 143, 144). The Buddhist pagoda was named “Pagoda of Seven Days.” The construction was built at the same spot where the statue of Lenin used to be. Another significant symbol, which represents the Republic of Kalmykia, a chessboard with figures, was placed next to the pagoda; people go there to play and to watch others playing.213 It can be concluded that beginning from the construction of the city, the square in front of the House of Soviets has always been a place endowed with ideological implications. Thus, it is exceptionally symbolic that the religious construction of the “Pagoda of Seven Days” replaced the object of Communist cult, the statue of Lenin.

8. Conclusion

The present master thesis tried to conduct a comprehensive study of the House of Soviets in Elista; the results can be summarized as follows. First of all, the building history revealed that the construction of the House of Soviets was a part of the First Five-Year Plan according to which it should become an administrative and socio-cultural center of the new capital of the Kalmyk Autonomous Region, Elista. The fact that the House of the Soviets was supposed to be the first building to be constructed reveals its exceptional significance. This is also expressed in the decision of the Minor Soviet of Sovnarkom RSFSR to exclude from the construction plan of the city the building for the Council of Trade Organization, in order to provide money for enlarging the volume of the building of the House of Soviets. The particular importance of the this construction as a symbol of the new socialist order can also be supported by the fact that due to the lack of funding the House of Soviets was not finished by the originally planned date of 1 August 1931 (the 10th anniversary of the Kalmyk state), nevertheless the money was provided in order to finish the construction by the 15th anniversary of the October Revolution. The formal analysis and the study of the development of the building type revealed the House of Soviets in Elista in its content being a typical representative of Constructivism. The building has all the conventional features, such as an administrative square in front of the

213 In 1998, by the initiative of the former president and head of the Republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilumzhinov, who has been the president of the FIDE World Chess Organization since 1995, Elista held the . Beginning from that time, the Republic of Kalmykia has been always associated with chess and chess class became one of the obligatory disciplines in junior school.

92 main entrance; a plan with an inner yard; the division into different blocks following their function; the multifunctional meeting hall and the tendency to isolate it from the rest of the building. Furthermore, it can be concluded that Golosov designed the construction in Elista by applying the functional method, which was proposed by Ginzburg in the House of Soviets of Alma-Ata, as the climatic preconditions of Elista are comparable to the situation in Alma-Ata. For this reason, the tribune, which was constituted by a flat roof of the ground floor and the balcony of the fourth floor, were designed to benefit from the shade of the tower. The same principle was applied to the loggias, which are all located at the northern side in order to avoid the direct sunlight. When regarding Golosov’s designs of the Houses of Soviets, we have seen that the architect, in spite of this, did not always strictly follow the functional method when conceiving the exterior of the buildings. In the case of the House of Soviets in Elista the functionality of three elements is under question: the raised wall of the rectangular block of the meeting hall, the protruding flat roof of the ground floor and the narrow block of the second floor of the eastern wing at the place where it is attached to the northern wing and the block of the meeting hall. Being only a kind of decoration, these elements did not have a direct influence on the functionality of the building’s interior. The study of the style of the House of Soviets revealed the strong connection between Constructivist architecture and Malevich’s “architectons,” which helped to understand the contradictive statements of Vigdariya Khazanova and Selim Khan-Magomedov that for Golosov Constructivism was not a purely functional method, but rather an “outward trend.” This made possible to consider Constructivism as a style, because the part of its esthetic tradition originates in these “architectons,” which in themselves do not have any function. The stylistic homogeneity of the “architectons,” the House of Soviets in Elista and other Constructivist projects was found in the application of such spatial combinations as the horizontal and vertical indents and shifts of volumes related to each other; the cantilevering of one volume over the other; the placing of a large and massive shape over a small scattered one and the denial of symmetry. By considering the works of the inventor of Constructivism, Vladimir Tatlin, and the first projects of the Vesnin brothers, we discovered that one of the main features of Constructivist style was the desire to reveal the building’s interior for an external observer. In the House of Soviets in Elista this was made at the same time by means of materials (glass) and form. With respect to the latter,

93 significant parts of the interior were emphasised as geometrical elements independent of the exterior. Finally, the study of the influence of Le Corbusier on Constructivism made it possible to argue that the skilfully arranged banded windows and the spiral staircase of the House of Soviets were inspired by the works of the Swiss-French architect. The following analysis considered the development of Golosov’s personal style, which revealed that at the same time when the leaders of Constructivism were developing their functional method, Golosov elaborated his own style and theoretical conception of the “Symbolic Romanticism.” The latter was an outcome of the process of the gradual simplification and distortion of the language of Classical architecture. As result of Golosov’s progressive refusal of traditional elements and the use of the interplay between geometrical forms as a compositional method, the architect’s turn towards Constructivism was natural. It was also due to the fact that for both, Golosov and the Constructivists, the idea of the strong interrelation between architecture and life was extremely important. However, after considering Golosov’s works in Constructivist style it was concluded that the basis of the exterior compositions in the considered projects is always constituted by a large, complex form. This form is created by using the techniques developed by Golosov in his theory of the construction of architectural organisms. His principal is that the basis of an architectural image is a large form, which should be expressive, even if all decorations will disappear or will be replaced by others. This principle continues to define much of his work during the Constructivist period. It influenced his approach to the artistic system of Constructivism. If we compare other Houses of Soviets by Constructivist architects, it is obvious that Golosov particularly emphasised the artistic component of the building in Elista. This is primarily expressed in the strong artistic interrelation between all parts of the construction and the tendency to stress one part, respectively the corner, as more artistically elaborated than others. The theoretical writings of Moisey Ginzburg revealed that his conception did not guarantee the correct application of the functional method in the design of the buildings’ exterior. Therefore some of the Constructivist architects, as Golosov, did not always follow the functional method in the exterior design. This happened due to an excessively generalized and abstract explanation of the creative process of a contemporary architect, which confused some of the followers of Constructivism. Two main points of Ginzburg’s conception, however, were absorbed by Soviet architects; first, to rely primarily on the building’s social function when

94 designing it, and second, to develop and standardize new building types. These two points were respected by Iliya Golosov in the House of Soviets in Elista. First, the construction was a part of the standardized building type. Second, Iliya Golosov paid particular attention to the building’s social function, when designing the space of interior. He, for example, made an additional foyer and side entrance for the meeting hall in order not to disturb the work of the institutions, when it was used for socio-cultural purposes. This is important as according to Ginzburg’s ideas the man could become more socialist through the cognitive perception of a form’s social meaning. By means of a cross textual analysis of Trotsky’s writings and the Constructivists’ theoretical works, it was confirmed that the leaders of Constructivism followed the Soviet socialist policy when elaborating their conception of the new architecture. This was true especially in respect to the transformation of everyday life. This was an important goal on the way to the construction of Socialism and socialist society. Constructivist architecture should have been actively involved in this transformation, first, by providing the new living conditions and second, by the agency of the social meaning of the form. According to Roann Barris, the paradigm for this form was an urban carnival, which Constructivist architecture inherited from Russian pagan festivities, the “gulian’e.” The carnival was used as paradigm due to the fact that it implied the notion of the engaged spectator, which meant that all people/spectators should be actively involved in the construction of the socialist society; they should change themselves and society. Political and cultural activists feared that by relying on such paradigm people could be confused and thereby could be taken down the wrong road. This eventually became the reason for the reduction of Constructivism. It was concluded that although Russian politicians, cultural activists and Constructivists had the same goal to build the socialist society, the means by which this society should be constructed were different in their ideas. After the establishment of Socialist Realism the theatricality of the constructions was used for well planned or, in other words, controlled activities. The same was observed in the exploitation of the meeting hall. Hence, although Constructivist buildings implied the notion of the engaged spectator, using Socialist Realism and unequivocal propaganda the Soviet government ensured that these constructions and their exploitation could be interpreted only in one way, the way appropriate for their plans. The study of the tower of the House of Soviets revealed two reasons for the inclusion of this element in the construction. The first is the Constructivists’ awareness of American

95 architecture, and the development of skyscrapers in particular. The extremely high vertical structure of skyscrapers emphasized the achievements of modern engineering. By including the tower Golosov wanted to show the unlimited possibilities of the skeleton structure. The second and most important reason was due to the fact that, as a building type, the Houses of Soviets was related to the City or Town Halls. In this case, the tower of the House of Soviets in Elista is a remnant of a traditional element, the bell tower, which was supposed not only to call people for a meeting or announce the time, but also to provide a landmark. This notion of the establishment of landmark by building a vertical construction unites the Houses of Soviets, Town Halls and American Skyscrapers. For all three types it was a way to express the power. Subsequently, it was concluded that as the House of Soviets in Elista was topped by an abbreviator of the representatives of the new state and the socialist order, the Central Executive Committee, the expression of the power provided by the tower was primarily associated with it. Finally, the environment of the House of Soviets in Elista changed significantly several times. It was designed with respect to the socialist plan of destroying the differences between countryside and city. Communist party leaders emphasized that this was an important task in the process of the construction of Socialism. In Elista, this should be done by the transformation of the nearby village into a city. All administrative buildings and the central square should be placed in its heart. The extremely hot climate of the region also had an impact on the building’s environment. Due to considerations of the climate, no construction around the House of Soviets should be higher than three stories. This made the House of Soviets the highest building in the city. On the basis of old photographs, the architectural environment of pre-war Elista could be reconstructed. One of the results is the discovery of the fact that the House of Soviets was the only construction built in the genuinely Constructivist style. Other modern constructions, which along with the House of Soviets constituted the central ensemble of the city, showed traditional features like sloping roofs, chimneys and, in the case of the construction of the post office, a rather closed structure. As both, the post office and the ambulance clinic were built earlier than the House of Soviets, these features were probably the result of the work of inexperienced builders. This is supported by the fact that the design of these buildings had a clear inclination for modern style, which is expressed by the absence of any embellishment, asymmetry and vertical band windows. Another construction, the pedtekhnikum, was significantly different from

96 them as it was designed in the spirit of classical architecture. All four constructions, however, fitted organically together. It was discovered that in front of the western side of the House of Soviets was a park, which was designed in Baroque spirit. This contradicted the modern appearance of Golosov’s construction. The most significant element of the environment of the House of Soviets was a square for public meetings. The square, however, has never served its original function, as by the year when the construction of the House of Soviets and the square were finished, Stalin had already consolidated his absolute power. Consequently, the square became an important tool for propaganda and the cult of Lenin. The following review of the contemporary reconstruction confirmed its role as the place for ideological symbols. This fact is rooted in the minds of the Kalmyk people. The House of Soviets in Elista can be regarded as a complex architectural monument, which bears an imprint of all historical events, ideological tenets as well as theoretical conceptions and stylistic tendencies of Russian and European avant-garde architecture of the turbulent times of the 1920s. Moreover, the building played an important role in the everyday life of local people and was symbol of the new, socialist order. My master thesis opens a way for further research of these remarkable constructions known as the Houses of Soviets.

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Philips, Steve, Stalinist Russia, Oxford 2000 Purveev, Djangr B., Arkhitektyra Kalmykii, Moscow 1975 Batyreva, Svetlana, “Izobrazitelnoe Iskusstvo Kalmykii 1930kh – nachala 1940kh,” in: Elistinskaya Panorama 123, 22 August 2014, p. 10-11 Revzin, Vladimir, Zodchie Moskvi vremeni eklektiki, moderna I neoklassitsisma (1830-е– 1917 godi), Moscow 1998 Rogers, Ben, Reinventing Town Hall: A handbook, London 2004, pp. 14-15 Scalia, Fiorenza, Palazzo Vecchio: History and Art, Firenze 1979 Shvidkovskiĭ, Oleg Aleksandrovich, Building in the USSR, 1917-1932, New York 1971 Trotsky, Leon, “Chtobi Postroit Bit, Nado ego poznat’” [In order to build the everyday life, first it is necessary to study it], in: http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl910.htm (accessed on April 1, 2015) Trotsky, Leon, “Ne o “Politike” Edinoy Zhiv Chelovek,” in: http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl911.htm (accessed on April 1, 2015) Vesnin, Alexander and Leonid, “Entwurf des Kraispolkomgebäude in Swerdlowsk. Archit. L. A. u. A. A. Wessnin Moskau 1926. Poyasnitelnaya Zapiska,” in: Sovremennaia Architektura 5-6, 1926, pp. 124-125 Vesnin, Alexander, Leonid and Vladimir, “Proekt Dvorca Tryda,” in: LEF 4, 1924, pp. 59-62 Von Geldern, James, Bolshevik Festivals, 1917-1920, Los Angeles and London 1993 Werner Szambien, “The meaning of style,” in: Companion to Contemporary Architectural Thought, edited by Ben Famer and Hentie Louw, London and New York 1993, p. 444- 448. Буринов, письмо к «ВСК» (Burinov, letter to “VSK”, 14 October 1929), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 178, National Archive of Republic of Kalmykia. Калмоблисполком в Совнарком, 19 Июня 1930 (Kalmyk Oblsipolkom, letter to Sovnarkom, 19 June 1930), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 26, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia Калмоблисполком письмо к Совнарком 14 октября 1929 (Kalmoblispolkom, letter to Sovnarkom, 14 October 1929) Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 86, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

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Копия письма из кооператива Техбетон к Калмоблисполком 12 февраля 1930, для московского представительства (The copy of the letter from cooperative Techbeton to KALMOBLISPOLKOM of 12 February 1930, for Moscow Representative), No 274, 15 February 1930, Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 3, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista Председательство Калмыцкого представительства в Экономический Совет РСФСР, 12 Августа 1930 (The Chairmanship of Kalmyk representative, a letter to The Economic Council RSFSR), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 39, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia Представительство Калмобласти при президиуме ВЦИК к ВАКО, 12 марта 1932 (Representative of Kalmyk region in presidium VTsIK, letter to VAKO, 12 March 1932), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 77, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia Протокол номер 23 Заседания Научно Технического Совета Управления Коммунального Хозяйства 24 Aprelya 1929 (Protocol No. 23 of the session of the Scientific Technical Council, Main Department of Communal Services of 24 April 1929), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 79, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista Протокол номер 37 Заседания Научно Технического Совета Управления Коммунального Хозяйства (Protocol No. 37 of the session of the Scientific Technical Council, Main Department of Communal Services), 17 July 1929, Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 76, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista Совет Министров РСФСР. Постановление от 4 Декабря 1974, дополнение к документу от 30 августа 1960 (The Council of Minister of RSFSR. Resolution of 4 December 1974, addition to the document of 30 August 1960) Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 404, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia Список чертежей посланных на постройку Облисполкома и профсовета в г. Элиста (The list of working drawings sent to Elista for building of Olbispolkom and Profsovet), Building of Elista, Folder No. P3, Document No. 101a, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia

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Appendix: Glossary

CIK – central executive committee Glavnoe Ypravlenie Komunal’nogo Khoxyaistva, GYKKh - Main Department of Communal Services Gosplan - State Planning Committee Kalmoblplan - Kalmyk Regional Planning Committee Kalmyk Oblispolkom, OIK – Kalmyk Regional Executive Committee Naychniy Texnicheskiy Sovet - Scientific Technical Council NKVD – The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs Obkom MOPR - International Red Aid Obkom VKP - a regional committee of the All-Soviet Communist Party Obkom VLKSM – a regional committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League Obl. R.K.I. - Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate OSA - the Union of Contemporary Architects Pedtekhnikum - a college, which prepared teachers for the primary school Sovnarkom - Council of the People’s Commissars of the RSFSR Vkhutein - Higher Art and Technical Institute Vkhutemas - Higher Art and Technical Studios VTsIK - All-Russian Central Executive Committee Zhenotdel - the women’s department

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Appendix: Figures

1. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, Elista, c. 1932

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2. Elista, the scheme of city center, 2014: A – House of Soviets, B – a former Administrative Square

105

3. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, ground plan, Elista, 2014

106

4. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, the western side, Elista c. 1932

5. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, detail, 6. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, Elista, c. 1932 detail, Elista, c. 2008

107

7. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, detail, 8. Iliya Golosov, The Zuyev Workers' Elista, c. 1970 Club, the design made in 1925, built between 1927-1929, colorized photograph, Moscow, 1931

9. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, the western wing, Elista c. 1932

108

10. Iliya Golosov, The working drawing of the House of Soviets in Elista, perspective, date unknown

109

11. Iliya Golosov, The working drawing of the House of Soviets in Elista, elevation, date unknown

110

12. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, the eastern wing, Elista, 2014

13. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, 14. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, the the eastern wing, view from inside western wing, view from inside the the yard, Elista, 2012 yard, Elista, 2012

111

15. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, western 16. Iliya Golosov, The House Soviets, the and eastern parts, view from inside the yard, central staircase, Elista, 2014 Elista, 2012

17. Iliya Golosov, The House Soviets, the central 18. Iliya Golosov, The House Soviets, the staircase, Elista, 2014 upper staircase, Elista, 2014

112

19. Alexander, Leonid and Vladimir Vesnin, 20. Alexander, Leonid and Vladimir Project for the Palace of Labor in Vesnin, Project for the Palace of Labor Moscow, perspective, 1923, totalarch.com in Moscow, perspective, 1923, (accessed on June 8, 2015) totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

21. Alexander, Leonid and Vladimir Vesnin, Project for the Palace of Labor in Moscow, plan, 1923, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

113

22. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, Bryansk, 1923

23. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, Bryansk, 1923

114

24. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, the 25. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, interior of meeting hall, Bryansk, Ground plan, Bryansk, 1924, 1924-27 totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

26. Moisey Ginzburg, Project for the House of 27. Alexander and Leonid Vesnin, Project Soviets in Makhachkala, 1926, for the House of Soviets in Sverdlovsk, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015) perspective, 1926, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

115

28. Alexander and Leonid Vesnin, Project for the House of Soviets in Sverdlovsk, façade, elevation, 1926

29. Alexander and Leonid Vesnin, Project for the House of Soviets in Sverdlovsk, façade, elevation, 1926, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

116

30. Alexander and Leonid Vesnin, Project for the House of Soviets in Sverdlovsk, ground plan, 1926, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

117

31. Georgy Gur’ev-Gurevich, Project for the 32. Daniil Friedman, Project for the House House of Soviets in Alma-Ata, of Soviets in Alma-Ata, perspective and perspective, 1927, totalarch.com (accessed ground plan, 1927, totalarch.com on June 8, 2015) (accessed on June 8, 2015)

33. David Burishkin, Project for the House of Soviets in Alma-Ata, perspective, 1927, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015

118

34. Moisey Ginzburg, Project House of Soviets in Alma-Ata, perspective, 1927, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

35. Moisey Ginzburg, Project House of Soviets in Alma-Ata, ground plan and section, 1927, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

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36. Moisey Ginzburg, House of Soviets, Alma-Ata, c. 1930s

37. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, Nizhny Novgorod, 1929-31

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38. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, detail, Nizhny Novgorod, 1929-1931

39. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, ground plan, Nizhny Novgorod, 1929-1931, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

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40. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, Nizhny Novgorod, 1929-31

41. Alexander Grinberg, House of Soviets, Nizhny Novgorod, 1929-31

122

42. Georgiy Golubev and Nikolai Shcherbakov, 43. Georgiy Golubev and Nikolai Raisovet of Moscow district Krasnaya Shcherbakov, Raisovet of district Presnya, ground plan, Moscow, 1928-1939 Krasnaya Presnya, Moscow, 1928- 1939

44. Nikolay Trotsky, Raisoviets of Navra District, Saint Petersburg, 1930-35

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45. Nikolay Trotsky, Raisoviets of Navra District, Saint Petersburg,1930-1935

46. Nikolay Trotsky, Raisoviets of Navra District, Saint Petersburg, 1930-35

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47. Nikolay Trotsky, Raisoviets of Navra District, Saint Petersburg, 1930-35

48. Nikolay Trotsky, Raisoviets of Navra District, ground plan, Saint Petersburg, 1930-1935, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

125

49. Iliya Golosov, Project for the House of 50. Iliya Golosov, Project for the House of Soviets in Bryansk, perspective, 1924, Soviets in Bryansk, plan of the ground totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015) floor at the left, plan of the first floor at the right, 1924, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

51. Iliya Golosov, Project for the House of Soviets in Alma-Ata, 1928, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

52. Iliya Golosov, Project for the House of Soviets in Khabarovsk, elevation and perspective, 1928, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

126

53. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, Khabarovsk, 1928-1930

54. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, Khabarovsk, 1928-1930

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55. Iliya Golosov, Project for the House of Soviets in Rostov-on-Don, perspective, 1930, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

56. Iliya Golosov, Project for the House of Soviets in Rostov-on-Don, plan of the first floor at the left, plan of the ground floor at the right, 1930, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

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57. Iliya Golosov, The House of Soviets, the northern side, Elista, 1929-1932

58. , Suprematist composition (blue rectangle over purple beam), 1916 , Oil on canvas ,88 x 70.5 cm., Collection of the Heirs of Kazimir Malevich

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59. Kasimir Malevich, Supremus No. 56, 1916, oil 60. Kazimir Malevich, Architekton on canvass, 71 x 80,5 cm, Russian State Gota, 1923, Plaster, 85.3 x 56 x Museum, St. Petersburg 52.5 cm, Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg

61. Kazimir Malevich, Architekton Alfa, 1923, plaster, 31.5 х 80.5 х 34cm., Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg

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62. Kazimir Malevich, Architekton Beta, 1926, plaster, 27 x 60 x 99 cm., Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg

63. Alexander, Victor and Leonid Vesnins, Project for the Lenin’s Library, perspective, 1928, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

131

64. Moisey Ginzburg, Project for the competition for the building of organization “Orgmetall,” perspective, 1926, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

65. Vladmir Tatlin, Counter-Relief, 1914, Metal 66. Vladimir Tatlin, Pictorial Relief, and leather on wood, 62.9 x 53 cm, private 1915, wood, plaster, tar, glass, metal collection leaves, 110 x 85 cm (whereabouts unknown)

132

67. Vladimir Tatlin, Complex Corner Relief, 68. Vladimir Tatlin, Corner Counter- 1915, iron, zink, aluminium, 78.8 x 152.4 x Relief, 1914, metal, wood, and wire, 76.2 cm., Annely Juda Fine Art, London, 118 x 71 cm., State Russian Museum, (reconstruction of 1979) St. Petersburg (contemporary reconstruction)

133

69. Vladimir Tatlin, The Monument to the Third International, 1919, glass, steel, iron, The Modern Museum, (contemporary reconstruction)

134

70. Alexader, Victor and Leonid Vesnin, Project 71. Alexander, Victor and Leonid of the building for the newspaper Vesnin, Project for the building of “Leningradskaya Pravda, perspective, the British-Soviet trade company elevation, plan, 1924, totalarch.com “Arcos,” perspective, 1924, (accessed on June 8, 2015) totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

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72. Alexander, Victor and Leonid Vesnin, The supermarket “Mostorg,” Moscow, 1927-28

73. Alexei Gan, “Contemporary Architecture,” vol. 1, 1926, frontispiece

136

74. Le Cobusier, Villa Cook, Paris, 1926

75. Andrei Burov, The full scale model of Dairy Breeding, 1926, still from Sergei Eisenstein’s movie “General Line,” 1929

137

76. Moisey Ginzburg, The apartment building for the organization “Narkomfim,” Moscow, 1928

77. Alexander, Victor and Leonid Vesnin, The Palace of Culture of Proletarsky District, Moscow, 1930-34

138

78. Le Corbusier, The Centrosoyuz building, Moscow, 1928-36

79. Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, interior, Paris, 1929-30

139

80. Iliya Golosov, Design of the museum dedicated to the Patriotic war of 1812, elevation, 1911, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

81. Ivan Fomin, The Amabelek-Lazarev House, Saint Petersburg, 1913-1914

82. Iliya Golosov, Design of the School-monument for the Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, elevation, 1919, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

140

83. Iliya Golosov, Design of the Moscow Crematorium, elevation, 1919, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

84. Iliya Golosov, Design of the Central City Bakery, perspective and elevation, 1920, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

141

85. Iliya Golosov, Design of the radio station, perspective, 1921, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

86. Iliya Golosov, Design of observatory, perspective, 1921, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

142

87. Iliya Golosov, Project for the British-Soviet trading company “Arkos,” 1924, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

88. Iliya Golosov, Project for the house of textile workers, perspective, 1925, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

143

89. Iliya Golosov, Project for the “Electrobank,” perspective, 1926, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

90. Iliya Golosov, Project for the “Electrobank,” plan, 1926, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

144

91. Iliya Golosov, Project for the “Rustorg,” perspective, 1926

92. Iliya Golosov, Project for the Palace of Labour, perspective, 1925, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

145

93. Iliya Golosov, Project for the hotel in Sverdlovsk, perspective, 1930, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

94. Andrei Andreevich Popov, Balagany v Tule na Svyatoj Nedele, 1873, oil on canvas, The Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg

146

95. Alexander Vesnin, The stage design for the Kamerni Theater production of “The Man who was Thursday,” 1923, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

147

96. Vsevolod Meierkhol’d, A window to the country (Okno v derevniu), photography, The Aleksei Bakhrushin Central Theater Museum, Moscow

97. Kostantin Melnikov, Rusakov Workers’ club, Moscow, 1929

148

98. The parade on the First Olympiad of Amateur Art on the Lenin’s Square in Elista, 17 May 1935, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

149

99. Ivan Nushkaev, The Hero of 100. Pelageya Emchigirova, Self-portrait, “Dzhangar” Khongr, 1940, National 1940, oil on canvas, National Museum Museum of the Republic of Kalmykia, of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista Elista

101. Elista’s market, 1933, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kamykia, Elista

150

102. Walter Gropius and Ludwig 103. Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, Hilbersheimer, Project for the Chicago The Tribune Tower, Chicago, 1923-25 Tribune Tower Competition, perspective, 1922, Walter Gropius Archive, Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University

151

104. Cass Gilbert, The Woolworth Building, 105. Cass Gilbert, The PNC Tower (The New York, 1914 main post office building), Washington D. C., 1922

106. Arthur Loomis Harmon, Shelton Hotel, 107. Rupert Miller and Timothy L. Pflueger, New York, 1924 PacBell building (Pacific Telephone building), San Francisco, 1924-25

152

108. Ivan Leonidov, Project for the 109. N. Krasil’nikov, Project for the House typography of the newspaper of Trade Unions, perspective, 1923, “Izvestiya,” perspective and elevation, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 1926, totalarch.com (accessed on June 2015) 8, 2015)

153

110. William Le Baron Jenney, Life 111. Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, Insurance Building, Chicago, 1885 Wainwright Building, Saint Louis, 1890-91

154

112. Ernest Flagg, Singer Tower, New York, 113. Jacque Lemercier, The Pavilion de 1908 l’Horloge, Louvre, Paris, 1624-1654

155

114. Napoleon LeBrun and Sons, 115. Campanile San Marco, Venice, 12th Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower, century, Reconstructed in 1912 New York, 1909

116. Palazzo Pubblico, Siena, 13th century 117. Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, 13th century

156

th 118. Bas-relief with St Zenobi, 14 century 119. Bernardo Bellotto, View of Piazza della Palazzo Vecchio, Florence Signoria, 1742, oil on canvas, 610 x 900 mm, Esterhazy Collection, Budapest

120. Cuthbert Broderick, The Town Hall, 121. Alfred Waterhouse, The Town Hall, Leeds, 1853-58 Manchester, 1868-77

122. Alexander Nikolski, The Project for the Volostnoj Soviet, 1921, totalarch.com (accessed on June 8, 2015)

157

123. Groundbreaking cerimony for Elista’s first building, 1927, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

124. Elista in 1928, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

158

125. View of Pushkin Street: The Building of the Post Office and the House of Soviets in Elista, c. 1930s, photography, National Archive of Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

159

126. Post Office, 1930s, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

160

127. Parade on the First Olympiad of Amateur Art on the Lenin’s Square in Elista, 17 May 1935, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

161

128. Elista, panorama, 1935, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

162

129. Kalmyk Yurta and the Ambulant Clinic in Elista, c. 1930, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

163

130. Iliya Golosov, The Ambulant Clinic, Elista, c. 1928-30s

131. Iliya Golosov, The Pedtekhnikum, Elista, c. 1928-30s

164

132. Iliya Golosov, The Pedtekhnikum, Elista, c. 1928-30s

133. Raising of the statue of Lenin on the Square for Public Meetings, photography, 1930, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

165

134. The Park in front of the House of Soviets, c. 1930s, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

135. The old medical college in Elista, c.1970s, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia

166

136. The Clinic in Elista, c. 1930s, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

137. Sanatorium 15 years of VKLSM in Elista, c. 1930s, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

167

138. Cinema “Rodina,” 1939, photography, National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista

139. The House of the Government, Elista, c.1960-70s

168

140. Matvej Manijer and Igor Rozhin, 141. The City Hall, Elista, c. 1960-70s Lenin, Elista, c. 1970

142. National Archive of the Republic of Kalmykia, Elista, 1960s-70s

169

143. A. N. Boschaev, O. B. Getsilova, V. B. Kokusheva, V.B. Oshpanova and sculptor N. Galushkin, “Pagoda of Seven Days” and the fontain “Three Lotuses” (the former Lenin’s square), Elista, 2006

144. The flag of the Republic of Kalmykia

170