Stalinist architecture

Stalinist Architecture, Stalin's Empire style or Socialist Classicism are the terms typically applied to the years between 1933 (the date of the final competition to design the Palace of the Soviets) and 1955 (when the Soviet Academy of Architecture was abolished).

History

Just like any other form of art in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union, architecture was destined to serve the purpose of glorifying communism as the ideal social order. It was Stalin's goal to "wipe clean the slate of the past...and rebuild the world from top to bottom." To do this, Stalin subjected architects (though not as dramatically as artists and writers) to a considerable amount of state control. On April 23, 1932, the Communist Party Central Committee passed the resolution "On Structural Changes in the Literary and Artistic organizations". The resolution outlawed all independent organizations. The formerly independent organizations were forced to form unions where the communist party could decide what was "fruitful, creative and correct". By July of 1932, all independent organizations were abolished and replaced with the Union of Soviet Architects, a government-funded membership organization charged with architectural censorship. The following year, 1933, the Soviet Academy of Architecture was founded; this marked the "official" beginning of the time of Stalinist Architecture. Since the party guidelines were not as clear as those for writers and artists, the first years of the period were a difficult time for architects. Ironically, instead of further developing innovative architectural styles inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, particularly the Constructivism, Soviet architects looked into the distant past for guidance. Modernism had been proclaimed by the party functionaries as "bourgeois" and "decadent" and swept away in favor of Neo-Renaissance, neoclassicism and the Empire style, which were chosen as best suited for the purpose of expressing socialist realism in architecture.

Briefly interrupted by the Second World War, the era of Stalinist architecture achieved its prime stage in the late 1940s - early 1950s. Among the most impressive examples of the Stalinist style are the pavilions at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow, the first stations of the Moscow Metro, the Seven Sisters series of tall buildings in Moscow, the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw, as well as a number of apartment and administrative buildings throughout Russia and in major cities of the Eastern Bloc.

The abolishment of the Soviet Academy of Architecture in 1955, two years after Stalin's death, has lead to the rapid demise of the Stalinist style in architecture.

Moscow's Seven Sisters

There are seven tall buildings in Moscow which were built in the 1950s: the so-called "Stalin's Skyscrapers".

Moscow State University
Block of flats on Kotelnecheskaya enbankment
Block of flats on Krasnaya Presnya
Hotel "Leningradskaya"
Hotel "Ukraina"
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Transport

No. 1 Kudrinskaya Square was one of seven tiered, neoclassic towers that were built in the early 1950s. Modelled on a turn-of-the century Russian food shop in Moscow, they were resplendent with red and white inlaid marble, floor-to-ceiling windows, luminescent chandeliers and mighty central columns. The idea then was to create food "palaces" for the people.

The spires on the buildings were made of metalized glass in order to reflect the sunlight. One political reason for adding the spires (which were not in the original architects’ plans) was to distinguish the towers from American skyscrapers of the 1930s. According to Tarkhanov and Kavtaradze, the design of the buildings and the external decoration recall the Kremlin towers and Muscovite baroque, and the ornate exteriors are drawn from Gothic cathedrals. German prisoners of war were largely responsible for the construction of the Moscow State University building on the Lenin Hills. For years, the university tower was the tallest building in Europe.

The other “sisters” include the Ukraine Hotel overlooking the White House of Russia; and the Foreign Ministry headquarters, near the Old Arbat, central Moscow's pedestrian street. Two of the buildings are hotels; two of them house government ministries; two are apartment houses; the seventh is Russia's most prestigious university. The towers owe their design to a monumental building that was never built, the Palace of Soviets. Starting in the early 1930s, planning competitions were held for the proposed 1,410-foot-high (about 430 m) structure, which was intended to stand on the banks of the Moskva River where Stalin had ordered the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour to be destroyed in 1931. But despite 25 years of plans and revisions, the gigantic palace never materialized. The cathedral was rebuilt on the same site in the 1990s.

Stalinist architecture elsewhere

Stalinist architecture was for a time employed in the post-war Eastern Bloc, notably the Stalin Allee of East Berlin, the Press Palace in Bucharest and the Palace of Culture and Science in Warsaw. In East Asia, some examples may be found in North Korea and China, e.g., the Shanghai10.JPG, originally built as the Palace of Sino-Soviet Friendship.

Neo-Stalinist architecture

In today’s Russia, it seems that there is a revival of Stalinist architecture among the buildings being constructed nowadays, as a way of linking with the past. One building in Moscow is the Triumph-Palace, a massive tower rising just off Leningradskoye Shosse, marketed as the long-planned but never built eighth “Stalin’s Sister”. The building has modern Western-style luxuries, but its design is copied directly from the workshops of socialism. Triumph Palace is, at 264 meters in height, said to be now the tallest building in Europe.

Sources

This article is largely based on an article entitled “Stalinist architecture” on the New York City Architecture website, which includes a reproduced article by David Hoffman entitled “Stalin’s Seven Sisters”, originally published in The New York Times on July 29, 1997, and another entitled “Stalinist High Rises Now In Vogue” by Susan B. Glasser of “The Washington Post”. There are many photographs of Stalinist-era buildings, including those in former Soviet satellite states.

External links

Architecture of the Soviet Armenia (digitized book)

Architectural styles | Russian architecture | Soviet art

Sozialistischer Klassizismus | Сталинский ампир | Stalinistisk arkitektur