After an interval of more than twenty years, the country again became frequented by foreign architects. Modernism was the gestalt of the time, and it would succeed in connecting the utopian Soviet state with the reality of the free world, even if only in terms of aesthetics. But Khrushchev’s unexpected opening of Russia ’s borders proffered an opportunity for these architects to explore the best Western examples of contemporary architecture firsthand, which they welcomed with great enthusiasm. By following the classical examples mandated by Stalin, they openly rejected the constructivist architecture developed by their countrymen one generation earlier. The task of developing contemporary architecture was handed to architects who had been trained in classical traditions (there were simply no other practitioners at the time) and who had comfortably and successfully been building in the neoclassical style. The core of modernism in the pre-World War II years was defined by the characteristic principles of the International Style of the ’20s and ’30s-radical simplification of form, expression of volume rather than mass, accent on the dynamism of asymmetry, exclusion of applied ornament, the use of contemporary materials (glass, steel, and concrete), and machine aesthetics.ĭuring this same time, the practice of architecture in the Soviet Union went through an absurd cycle of emotionally and politically charged u-turns, from constructivism (1919-32), to Stalin’s socialist realism (1932-54), then back to modernism (1955-85). Russia can also be counted among these, but only until 1932, when its architectural profession was reorganized by Stalin. In the twentieth century, contemporary architecture developed largely uninterrupted with sparks of great imagination in various parts of the world, including Western Europe, North America, Brazil, Australia, Southeast Asia, and Japan. In this anthology, he shared the story of how Stalinist architecture was overtaken by modernism, the goals set before the Soviet architects, the conditions of their practice, and presented an album of one hundred built works embodying this creative transformation. This is how it was defined by Felix Novikov, at whose initiative the exhibition Soviet Modernism: 1955-1985 was mounted at the Schusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow. Despite the fact that the period from 1955 through 1985 did not yield new Corbusiers or Melnikovs to the world, a distinctive architecture known as Soviet modernism emerged nonetheless. The speech of Nikita Khrushchev at the closing of the All-Union Builders’ Conference in the Kremlin on Decem, halted the fully developed architecture of the Stalin period and redefined the essence of the Soviet architects’ creative focus for three decades to come. But nowhere in the world was such a break with tradition and a transition to modernism as abrupt and broad-based as in the Soviet Union. The book features original black and white photographs of one hundred Soviet modernist buildings selected by architect Felix Novikov and Vladimir Belogolovsky.Ī clean break with history is the main feature of modernism. “The Empire’s Last Style” was published in English and Russian in Soviet Modernism: 1955-1985: An Anthology in October 2010 by TATLIN Publishers.
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