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'Soviet Architectural Avant- Gardes: Architecture and Stalin's Revolution H-SHERA Battsaligova on Udovički-Selb, 'Soviet Architectural Avant- Gardes: Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution from Above, 1928-1938' Review published on Saturday, June 12, 2021 Danilo Udovički-Selb. Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes: Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution from Above, 1928-1938. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020. Illustrations. 264 pp. $115.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4742-9986-2. Reviewed by Liana Battsaligova (Yale University)Published on H-SHERA (June, 2021) Commissioned by Hanna Chuchvaha (University of Calgary) Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=56120 Architecturally speaking, one would be hard-pressed to find two buildings that differ more drastically than the main building of Moscow State University (the alleged symbol of Stalinist architecture) and a khrushchevka (the standardized multifamily housing introduced under Nikita Khrushchev). Yet both buildings belong to the same “architectural method,” even if only ideologically.[1] Such a paradox reflects the tumultuous history of the term “socialist realism” in architecture, the main style and artistic method to be adopted by Soviet architects following the example of Soviet writers and artists. In Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes: Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution from Above, 1928-1938, Danilo Udovički-Selb counters reductionist analyses of the period as conservative, revivalist, largely historicist, or totalitarian, and instead offers a more nuanced and complex reading of the modernist architectural forms that were incorporated into the eclectic silhouette of socialist realist architecture, even finding their way into the “historicist” forms of Stalinist architecture of the 1940-50s. Udovički-Selb intends not to provide a catalogue of all buildings imagined and built in the 1930s but rather to “bring to light important examples that can support the claim of a strong presence of modern architecture” at the time (p. 3). Throughout the book, the author insists that modernist architecture and avant-garde movements coexisted with “proletarian architecture,” a vague term used to indicate new constructions that answered the immediate demands of proletarian revolution. In 1932, the term “proletarian architecture” was replaced by the equally ambiguous designation of “socialist realism.” The author creates an intricate map of architectural thought which challenges the widely accepted belief that 1932 signaled the death of the architectural avant-garde and the all- encompassing conservative turn in Soviet architecture. The author traces the chronological chain of political and public events that framed the last, yet active, decade of the second generation of constructivists, while inlaying the narrative with individual cameos of legendary figures, such as architects Ivan Leonidov and Konstantin Melnikov, and offering detailed and eloquent readings of their projects. The first chapter opens with an innovative investigation of the role played by the Vsesoiuznoe obshchestvo proletarskikh arkhitektorov (All-Union Society of Proletarian Architects, VOPRA), created in 1929 by Lazar Kaganovich, Joseph Stalin’s closest ally in the Politburo at the time, in the Citation: H-Net Reviews. Battsaligova on Udovički-Selb, 'Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes: Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution from Above, 1928-1938'. H-SHERA. 06-12-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/166842/reviews/7832784/battsaligova-udovi%C4%8Dki-selb-soviet-architectural-avant-gardes Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-SHERA dissolution of the constructivists’ main journal,Sovremennaia arkhitektura (Contemporary architecture, 1926-30); the closing of Vysshie khudozhestvenno-tekhnicheskie masterskie (Higher Art and Technical Studios, VKhUTEMAS); and the character assassinations of several modernist architects. Through a detailed analysis of reports of secret party meetings, Udovički-Selb shows how VOPRA acted as a “Trojan horse amidst the Avant-Gardes”; through the vulgar polemics and empty accusations of “formalism,” they destabilized the work of modernists and helped establish the state’s monopoly in architectural discourse and ultimately architectural forms (p. 16). The second chapter focuses on the survival strategies and the institutional positions of the leaders of the avant-garde after the 1932 decree on the dissolution of independent artistic societies. In architecture, the transition to socialist realism was twofold and especially complicated. As Udovički- Selb notes, the international fame of the Soviet state as a hub of progressive architectural thinking made “the party’s supreme authority ... cater to at least two audiences—the conservative domestic population (meaning the nomenklatura) and the progressive international intelligentcija” (p. 48).[2] Here, as throughout the book, the author maintains that despite its wide use, the term “socialist realism” was elusive not only to constructivists but also to the trendsetters themselves. By analyzing numerous articles published by architects of different artistic inclinations, the author compellingly shows how the ambiguity of the term could become a reason for criticism in one case and for appreciation in another, depending on how well the architect could articulate the socialist meaning of his project. Moisei Ginzburg’s highly praised project for the Sanatorium of People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry in Kislovodsk (finished in 1937) is one example. With time, the ambiguous term “socialist realism” in Soviet architecture became associated with historicism and classicism. Yet Udovički-Selb compellingly argues (and here he echoes the ideas of Selim O. Khan-Magomedov and Vladimir Paperny) that in the 1930s, socialist realism as imagined by Stalin was embodied in Arkadii Langman’s sober modernist aesthetics of the building for the Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet (the State Planning Committee, GOSPLAN; the building was finished in 1935 and today houses the Russian Duma) and in Kazimir Malevich’s arkhitektons and the “power and stability” of American skyscrapers as shown in Boris Iofan’s Palace of Soviets in its 1933 rendition, rather than in Ivan Zholtovskii’s “classicism” as presented in his 1934 Dom na Mokhovoi (House on Mokhovaia Street) in Moscow (p. 48).[3] The third chapter further problematizes the monopoly of socialist realist style in Soviet architecture. Here, the author focuses on the construction of the Moscow Metropoliten (begun in 1931) and the 1937 Soviet pavilion in Paris. Udovički-Selb considers Alexei Dushkin’s Maiakovskaia metro station (finished in 1938) an example of the modernists’ persistence in realizing their progressive ideas contrary to the demands to build “beautifully” (krasivo) and “solidly” (prochno). Dushkin’s original project for the metro station, notes the author, replete with details appropriate to socialist realist values, differed significantly from the final result: an innovative lighting system and wittingly concealed ventilation system replaced expressive murals and the futuristic stainless-steel arches triumphed over the granite veneering. Here, as in the case of Ginzburg’s Kislovodsk sanatorium, the author concludes that architects avoided censorship from the competition committee by first presenting them with a project that answered the needs of socialist realism only to change its forms in the process of construction. Udovički-Selb does not go into the details of or the reasons for such a transformation, but further investigation and research into this architectural strategy would likely yield fruitful results. In this chapter, the author, in his attempt to show that constructivist thought was still viable in the 1930s, expands the geographical area of his focus to also consider the Citation: H-Net Reviews. Battsaligova on Udovički-Selb, 'Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes: Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution from Above, 1928-1938'. H-SHERA. 06-12-2021. https://networks.h-net.org/node/166842/reviews/7832784/battsaligova-udovi%C4%8Dki-selb-soviet-architectural-avant-gardes Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-SHERA construction sites of peripheral yet growing and strategically important centers, such as Kuibyshev, Baku, Voronezh, Rostov-na-Donu, Sverdlovsk, and Novosibirsk. It is there, as the author contends, far from the political center, that the architects had more freedom and opportunities to build in a cosmopolitan manner. In the fourth chapter, Udovički-Selb continues his reevaluation of the creative power dynamics in Moscow and contends that even after 1932, the modernists’ presence in the leading positions of the architectural infrastructure was still very strong. The author shows that modernists occupied the editorial board and the pages of the internationally renowned journal Arkhitektura SSSR (Architecture of the USSR, 1933-92) through the end of the decade; they also headed half of the twelve ARKHPLAN (arkhitekturno-planirovochnye masterskie) workshops, created by Kaganovich. Through the juxtaposition of the polemics in the pages ofArkhitektura SSSR with the archival records of party meetings at the Soiuz sovetskikh arkhitektorov (Union of Soviet Architects, SSA), Udovički-Selb emphasizes not only the absence of a clear understanding of what socialist realism in architecture was but also the uncertainty of what direction Soviet architecture should take. Through close reading of the archival records, which document
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