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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 November 2020
Architectural practice in the Stalinist USSR saw the sudden and rapid revival of historical forms and styles. One approach interprets this development as part of a reactionary shift in Soviet temporal culture, a “Great Retreat” across all spheres of social and political life. The rival conception sees in historicism an aesthetic of “timelessness” and “perfection,” which expressed Stalinism's self-characterization as an eternal, utopian present. This paper presents a third perspective, arguing that the revival of historicism stemmed, paradoxically, from a future-oriented impulse. This revolved around the charge that Stalinist architecture “immortalize the memory” of the era, to ensure posterity's gratitude and admiration. Accordingly, Stalinist architects drew upon supposedly enduring historical styles, which they expected to remain understandable to future generations. Further, time-tested traditional materials, forms, and decorative mediums were employed to ensure the physical durability of Stalinist architectural monuments. The paper concludes by situating this logic in the global context of interwar monumental architecture and considering some implications for our understanding of Stalinist temporality.
I would like to thank my academic supervisors, Profs. Polly Jones, Dan Healey, and Heather Coleman, as well as two anonymous reviewers, for their most helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. I would also like to recognize the assistance of the Clarendon Fund, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, the Government of Alberta, and the British Association of Slavonic and East European Studies for their financial support throughout the project.
1 Quoted in Taranov, E., “Gorod kommunizma (idei liderov 50-60-kh godov i ikh voploshchenie),” in Moskovskii arkhiv: Istoriko-kraevedcheskii al΄manakh, vyp. 1, ed. Kozlov, Vladimir et al. (Moscow, 1996), 372Google Scholar.
2 Sergei Kavtaradze, “Khronotop kul΄tury stalinizma,” Arkhitektura i stroitel΄stvo Moskvy, no. 11–12 (1990).
3 Clark, Katerina, Petersburg: Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 301–7Google Scholar; Clark, Katerina, Moscow as Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931–1941 (Cambridge, Mass., 2011), 78–135Google Scholar. The latter monograph characterizes architecture as second to literature in the Stalinist hierarchy of artistic genres.
4 Papernyi, Vladimir, Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two, trans. Hill, John and Barris, Roann (Cambridge, Eng., 2002)Google Scholar.
5 Cooke, Catherine, “Socialist Realist Architecture: Theory and Practice,” in Bown, Matthew Cullerne and Taylor, Brandon, eds., Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917–1992 (Manchester, 1993)Google Scholar.
6 See Stalin’s letter to Politburo members Lazar΄ Kaganovich, Viacheslav Molotov, and Kliment Voroshilov, in which he expressed specific preferences for the design of the Palace of the Soviets, in Robert Davies, Oleg V. Khlevniuk, E. A. Rees, Liudmila P. Kosheleva, and Larisa A. Rogovaya, eds., The Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence, 1931–36 (New Haven, 2003). The above three were members of the Palace of the Soviets Construction Council (which Molotov chaired).
7 Sovet stroitel΄stva Dvortsa Sovetov, “Ob organizatsii rabot po okonchatel΄nomu sostavleniiu proekta Dvortsa sovetov SSSR v gor. Moskve,” Stroitel΄stvo Moskvy, no. 3 (1932): 16.
8 Richard Anderson, “The Future of History: The Cultural Politics of Soviet Architecture, 1928–41” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2010), 78–83; Tat΄iana Samokhina, ed., Iz istorii sozdania Soiuza sovetskikh arkhitektorov (Moscow, 2007), 17.
9 Isaak Eigel΄, Boris Iofan (Moscow, 1978), 80–124.
10 Anderson, “The Future of History,” 77.
11 On the significance of this project for the general turn to historicism in Soviet architecture, see ibid., 124–35; Selim Khan-Magomedov, Ivan Zholtovskii (Moscow, 2010), 133–51; Papernyi, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, 8–11.
12 Anatole Kopp, Town and Revolution: Soviet Architecture and City Planning, 1917–1935, trans. Thomas Burton (New York, 1970), 227.
13 “Uroki maiskoi arkhitekturnoi vystavki: Tvorcheskaia diskussiia v Soiuze sovetskikh arkhitektorov,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 6 (1934): 5.
14 See Hugh Hudson, Blueprints and Blood: The Stalinization of Soviet Architecture, 1917–1937 (Princeton, 1994); Dmitrii Khmel΄nitskii, Arkhitektura Stalina. Psikhologiia i stil΄ (Moscow, 2007).
15 Alexei Tarkhanov and Sergei Kavtaradze, Architecture of the Stalin Era, trans. Robin and Julia Whitby and James Paver (New York, 1992), 16–18, 60.
16 Papernyi, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, 8. The resemblance is also noted in Khan-Magomedov, Ivan Zholtovskii, 133; Tarkhanov and Kavtaradze, Architecture of the Stalin Era, 13.
17 Tat΄iana Prudnikova, “Arkhitekturnyi konkurs v kontekste ‘kumuliativizma’ (na primere konkursov na proekt rekonstruktsii i zastroiki prospekta im. I. V. Stalina 1940–1950-kh gg.),” Izvestiia Rossiiskogo gosudarstvennogo pedagogicheskogo universiteta, no. 164 (2014).
18 For an analysis of this terminological profusion, see Marsel΄ Iskandarov and Andrei Mikhailov, “Sovetskii neoklassitsizm: Issledovatel΄skie interpretatsii arkhitektury 1930–1950-kh gg,” Izvestiia Kazanskogo gosudarstvennogo arkhitekturno-stroitel΄nogo universiteta 15, no. 1 (2011).
19 The approach has a long pedigree, pioneered in the eponymous book by Nicholas Timasheff, The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia (New York, 1946). For a similar conception, which expresses a diametrically opposed normative evaluation of this shift, see Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? (London, 1991 [1937]).
20 Dmitrii Khmel΄nitskii, Zodchii Stalin (Moscow, 2007); Kopp, Town and Revolution, 225; Tarkhanov and Kavtaradze, Architecture of the Stalin Era, 21, 209. For a broader discussion of the (partial) reliance of Stalinist cultural production on popular taste, see Evgenii Dobrenko, “The Disaster of Middlebrow Taste, or, Who ‘Invented’ Socialist Realism?,” in Socialist Realism without Shores, ed. Thomas Lahusen and Evgenii Dobrenko (Durham, 1997).
21 Frank Lloyd Wright, “Architecture and Life in the USSR,” Architectural Record 82, no. 4 (1937): 59.
22 Pamela Davidson, Cultural Memory and Survival: The Russian Renaissance of Classical Antiquity in the Twentieth Century (London, 2009), 17; Tarkhanov and Kavtaradze, Architecture of the Stalin Era, 110.
23 For the rise of “National Bolshevism,” a Stalinist ideological hybrid embracing Russian nationalism at the expense of socialist internationalism and class ideology, see David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931–1956 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002); David Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror under Stalin, 1927–1941 (New Haven, 2011).
24 Catriona Kelly, “The Shock of the Old: Architectural Preservation in Soviet Russia,” Nations and Nationalism 24, no. 1 (January 2018): 95–97; Steven Maddox, Saving Stalin’s Imperial City: Historic Preservation in Leningrad, 1930–1950 (Bloomington, 2014).
25 Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art: In the Soviet Union, the Third Reich, Fascist Italy, and the People’s Republic of China, trans. Robert Chandler (London, 2011 [1990]), 3; Kopp, Town and Revolution, 226.
26 Respectively, Anders Aman, Architecture and Ideology in Eastern Europe during the Stalin Era: An Aspect of Cold War History, trans. Roger Tanner and Kerstin Tanner (Cambridge, Mass., 1992); Peter Lizon, The Palace of the Soviets: The Paradigm of Architecture in the USSR (Colorado Springs, 1992), 15; Tarkhanov and Kavtaradze, Architecture of the Stalin Era, 9, 209.
27 Lars Erik Blomquist, “Some Utopian Elements in Stalinist Art,” Russian History 11, no. 2–3, Special Issue on Utopia in Russian History, Culture, and Thought: A Symposium (Summer-Fall 1984): 298–99; also see James Rann, “Maiakovskii and the Mobile Monument: Alternatives to Iconoclasm in Russian Culture,” Slavic Review 71, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 769.
28 Evgeny Dobrenko, Stalinist Cinema and the Production of History: Museum of the Revolution (Edinburgh, 2008), 6.
29 Evgeny Dobrenko, “Socialist Realism and Stasis,” in Christina Lodder, Maria Kokkori, and Maria Mileeva, eds., Utopian Reality: Reconstructing Culture in Revolutionary Russia and Beyond (Leiden, 2013), 194; also see Sergei Kavtaradze, “Khronotop kul΄tury stalinizma: Prodolzhenie,” Arkhitektura i stroitel΄stvo Moskvy, no. 12 (1990): 5.
30 Papernyi, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, 19.
31 Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Princeton, 1992), 47–48.
32 Ibid., 73.
33 Monica Ruthers, “Sovetskaia rodina kak prostranstvo gorodskoi arkhitektury,” Ab Imperio 2 (2006): 229; also see Dmitry Shvidkovsky, Russian Architecture and the West, trans. Antony Wood (New Haven, 2007), 368.
34 Clark, Moscow as Fourth Rome, 117–19; also see Andrei Ikonnikov, “Andrei Ikonnikov,” in Alessandra Latour, ed., Birth of a Metropolis, Moscow 1930–1955: Recollections and Images (Moscow, 2002), 104.
35 Leonid Heller, Vselennaia za predelom dogmy: Razmyshleniia o sovetskoi fantastike (London, 1985), 69–71; Patrick L. McGuire, Red Stars: Political Aspects of Soviet Science Fiction (Ann Arbor, 1985), 13–18; Richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (Oxford, 1989), 236.
36 Theodore Denno, The Communist Millennium: The Soviet View (The Hague, 1964), 67–73; Andrzej Walicki, Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom: The Rise and Fall of the Communist Utopia (Stanford, 1995), 440, 447.
37 Andrei V. Ikonnikov, Istorizm v arkhitekture (Moscow, 1997), 461; Papernyi, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, 17; Yuri Slezkine, The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution (Princeton, 2017), 362.
38 See I. Sushkevich, ed. Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov. Materialy V plenuma Pravleniia SSA SSSR (Moscow, 1939).
39 Vlas Chubar΄, “Rech΄ zamestitelia Predsedatelia Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov SSSR tov. V. Ia. Chubaria,” in Postanovleniia i materialy. Pervyi vsesoiuznyi s”ezd sovetskikh arkhitektorov, ed. A. Barkhudarian and N. Kirsanova (Moscow, 1937), 26.
40 Arkadii Mordvinov, “Dolg sovetskikh arkhitektorov,” Izvestiia, December 30, 1944, 1.
41 Architects of Moscow’s high-rises, for example, explicitly testified to this function, see Dmitrii Chechulin, Zhizn΄ i zodchestvo (Moscow, 1978), 97; Vladimir Gel΄freikh and Mikhail Minkus, “Vysotnoe zdanie i gorodskoi ansambl,’” in Problema ansamblia v sovetskoi arkhitekture: Sbornik statei, ed. K. Trapeznikov (Moscow, 1952), 55; Mikhail Posokhin, Arkhitektura okruzhaiushchei sredy (Moscow, 1989), 198–99, 202.
42 For a discussion of this truly ubiquitous term, see Galina Makarova, “‘Pamiatniki epokhi’ v sovetskoi arkhitekture kontsa 1940-kh—nachala 1960-kh gg. Poslevoennaia rekonstruktsiia VSKhV (1947–1954 gg.) i proektirovanie vsemirnoi vystavki v Moskve (1961–1962 gg.)” (PhD diss., Nauchno-issledovatel΄skii institut teorii arkhitektury i gradostroitel΄stva, 1992), 6–10.
43 The pages of Arkhitektura SSSR provide good examples of such framing. See, respectively, Iakov Kornfel΄d, “Sovetskaia arkhitektura obshchestvennykh zdanii,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 17–18 (1947): 63; A. Burov, “Obraz i masshtab—material i forma,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 12 (1946): 35; Iu. Shaposhnikov, “Dostoinstva i nedostatki arkhitektury novykh stantsii metropolitena,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 4 (1952): 16; “Ideinost΄ i masterstvo v tvorchestve zodchego,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 3 (1952): 3.
44 Mikhail Kalinin, “Bol΄shaia obshenarodnaia zadacha,” Izvestiia, December 10, 1943, 2.
45 Alois Riegl, “The Modern Cult of Monuments: Its Character and Its Origin,” in Kenneth Michael Hays, ed., Oppositions Reader: Selected Readings from a Journal for Ideas and Criticism in Architecture, 1973–1984 (Princeton, 1998), 621. Reigl did not use the term “prospective monument,” but this later concept is evocative of future-oriented memorialization, see Jan Assmann, Cultural Memory and Early Civilization: Writing, Remembrance, and Political Imagination (Cambridge, Eng., 2011), 45–48, 54.
46 Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, 46–50; Papernyi, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, 19–24.
47 Respectively, Tsentral΄nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv g. Moskvy (TSGAM) f. 534, op. 1, d. 108, 1. 255–68 (Stenogrammy zasedanii Arkhitekturnogo soveta, 1947), Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (RGALI) f. 674, op. 2, d. 31, 1. 9 (Stenogramma 1-go Vsesoiuznogo s”ezda sovetskikh arkhitektorov, 1937); Il΄ia Golosov, “O bol΄shoi arkhitekturnoi forme,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 5 (1933): 34.
48 Aleksandr Deineka, “K voprosu o monumental΄no-dekorativnoi zhivopisi,” in Monumental΄no-dekorativnoe i dekorativno-prikladnoe iskusstvo. Trudy nauchnoi konferentsii Akademii khudozhestv SSSR po monumental΄no-dekorativnomu i dekorativno-prikladnomu iskussve, sostoiavsheisia v Moskve 21–24 fevralia 1951 g, ed. F. Fedorovskii (Moscow, 1951), 51.
49 Georgii Borisovskii, “Narodnoe tvorchestvo, klassicheskii order i sovremennyi standart,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 13 (1946): 30.
50 RGALI f. 674, op. 2, d. 185, 1. 22 (Stenogramma soveshchaniia po monumentam, 1946).
51 It is perhaps this empirical trial-by-history which privileged historicism’s claims to “universality” vis-a-vis the modernist, “International style” that, eschewing historical and national markers, had similar pretentions. For a general discussion of the above two as “global, international superstyles,” see, Khan-Magomedov, Ivan Zholtovskii, 7–27.
52 Moisei Ginzburg, “Organicheskoe v arkhitekture i prirode,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 3 (1939): 77.
53 Nikolai Sokolov, “Klassika i sovremennost,’” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, June 8, 1945, 2.
54 Mikhail Tsapenko, O realisticheskikh osnovakh sovetskoi arkhitektury (Moscow, 1952), 349.
55 “Narodnoe tvorchestvo,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 1 (1937): 13; also see Ginzburg, “Organicheskoe v arkhitekture i prirode,” 77; Ivan Zholtovskii, “Traditsii narodnogo iskusstva,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, March 5, 1937, 4.
56 Nikolai Brunov, “Prof. N. I. Brunov,” in T. Sushkevich, ed., Zadachi arkhitektorov v dni Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Materialy X Plenuma Soiuza sovetskikh arkhitektorov SSSR, 22–25 aprelia 1942 g. (Moscow, 1942), 46; Zholtovskii, “Traditsii narodnogo iskusstva,” 4; Ivan Zholtovskii, “Vospitanie mastera arkhitektury. Doklad na 1-m s”ezde arkhitektorov SSSR,” Arkhitekturnaia gazeta, June 26, 1937, 3; Ivan Zholtovskii, “Vospitanie zodchego,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, November 30, 1945, 2.
57 Thus, Aleksandr Gabrichevskii’s historical survey of monumental architecture at the aforementioned 1946 SSA conference wholly ignored “Far Eastern, Asian and American art, if only because the language of this art is too distant from us and its achievements did not make it deeply into our heritage,” RGALI f. 674, op. 2, d. 185,1. 11–12.
58 Andrei Bunin and Mariia Kruglova, Arkhitekturnaia kompozitsiia gorodov (Moscow, 1940), 1.
59 Anna Barkhina, “Zdanie panoramy, kak pamiatnik v gorode-geroe” (PhD diss., Akademiia arkhitektury SSSR, 1949), 283; Bunin and Kruglova, Arkhitekturnaia kompozitsiia gorodov; Mariia Kruglova, Monumenty v arkhitekture gorodov (Moscow, 1952), 94–97; Vladislav Tukanov, “Monumenty v sovetskom gradostroitel΄stve” (PhD diss., Moskovskii arkhitekturnyi institut, 1953), 163–74.
60 Georgii Gol΄ts, “Ob ideinoski v arkhitekture,” Stroitel΄naia gazeta, March 8, 1940, 3.
61 Aleksei Shchusev, “Natsional΄naia forma v arkhitekture,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 10 (1940): 57.
62 Tsapenko, O realisticheskikh osnovakh, 63–64, [italics mine].
63 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE) f. 339, op. 1, d. 1196, 1. 168 (Materialy po konskursu na proekt sooruzheniia Panteona, 1954–1955).
64 I am thankful to Jan Plamper for this formulation.
65 Andrew Jenks, “A Metro on the Mount: The Underground as a Church of Soviet Civilization,” Technology and Culture 41, no. 4 (October 2000): 710.
66 Mikhail Yampolsky, “In the Shadow of Monuments: Notes on Iconoclasm and Time,” in Nancy Condee, ed., Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia (Bloomington, 1995), 98–99; also see Ol΄ga Zinov΄eva, “Kontseptsiia vremeni i prostranstva stalinskoi Moskvy,” Al΄manakh ‘Gorod i vremia,’ no. 2 (2012): 12.
67 “The pavilions’ solidity was important not for its own sake, but as a symbol of strength and permanence of the entire Soviet order,” Evgenii Dobrenko, Politiekonomiia sotsrealizma (Moscow, 2007), 439; Papernyi, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, 157, 161.
68 Ol΄ga Zinov΄eva, Vos΄moe chudo sveta. VSKhV-VDNKh-VVTs (Moscow, 2014), 206.
69 See, for instance, the discussion of the “Veterinary Sciences” pavilion in ibid., 228.
70 Andrei Bunin and Oleg Shvidkovskii, “Arkhitektura,” in Istoriia russkogo iskusstva. Tom XII. 1934–1941, ed. Igor΄ Grabar΄ (Moscow, 1961), 141.
71 Anatolii Lunacharskii, “Sotsialisticheskii arkhitekturnyi monument,” Stroitel΄stvo Moskvy, no. 5–6 (1933): 3.
72 Arkadii Mordvinov, Khudozhestvennye problemy sovetskoi arkhitektury. Doklad vitse-prezidenta Akademii Arkhitektury SSSR A. G. Mordvinova (Moscow, 1944), 6.
73 See Ihor Junyk, “‘Not Months but Moments’: Ephemerality, Monumentality, and the Pavilion in Ruins,” Open Arts Journal, no. 2 (Winter 2013–2014).
74 Papernyi, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, 151.
75 As Aleksandr Zinov΄ev summarizes: “all new constructions were capital, wooden buildings were a thing of the past,” Aleksandr Zinov΄ev, Ansambl΄ VSKhV. Arkhitektura i stroitel΄stvo (Moscow, 2014), 86.
76 Here I present the statistical projections made in 1939. Quoted in Evgenii Lansere, “Monumental΄naia zhivopis,’” Izvestiia, June 30, 1939, 3; Boris Iofan, “Stroitel΄stvo Dvortsa Sovetov i sodruzhestvo iskusstv. Doklad akademika arkhitekury B. M. Iofana,” in I. Sushkevich, ed., Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov, 20.
77 RGAE f. 4372, op. 34, d. 110, 1. 32 (Poiasnitel΄naia zapiska k proektu Dvortsa Sovetov, 1936).
78 RGAE f. 4372, op. 34, d. 110, 1. 32, Nikolai Atarov, Dvorets Sovetov (Moscow, 1940), 69–70; A Vladimirskii, ed. Otdelochnye materialy dlia Dvortsa Sovetov (Moscow, 1945), 16–17.
79 Sergei Merkurov, “Osnovnaia skul΄ptura Dvortsa Sovetov—statuia V. I. Lenina,” in I. Sushkevich, ed., Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov, 35.
80 A. Peganov, “A. A. Peganov (Moskva),” in I. Sushkevich, ed., Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov, 70; also see G. Krasin, “Konstruktsii i materialy. Doklad zam. Nachal΄nika stroitel΄stva Dvotsa Sovetov inzh. G. B. Krasina,” in I. Sushkevich, ed., Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov, 23–26.
81 Vladimirskii, Otdelochnye materialy dlia Dvortsa Sovetov, 124–30.
82 Anatolii Lunacharskii, “Dvorets Sovetov. Tov. A. V. Lunacharskii ob arkhitekturnysh proektakh,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, January 26, 1932, 1.
83 Soiuz Arkhitektorov SSSR, Tvorcheskie voprosy sovetskoi arkhitektury i zadachi Soiuza sovetskikh arkhitektorov. Postanovlenie Prezidiuma Sovetskikh arkhitektorov SSSR 23 oktiabria 1946 goda (Moscow, 1946), 6; also see Karo Alabian, “Aktual’nye voprosy arkhitekturnogo tvorchestva,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, October 25, 1946, 2.
84 Aleksei Tolstoi, “Poiski monumental΄nosti,” Izvestiia, February 27, 1932, 2. Published the day after the aforementioned report of the Palace of the Soviets Construction Directorate, the article was considered eminently authoritative.
85 “Monumental΄nost,’” in O. Shmidt, ed., Bol΄shaia sovetskaia entsikolopediia. Tom 40 (Moscow, 1938), 132.
86 TsGAM f. 694, op. 1, d. 137, 1. 17 (Materialy po oblitsovke Dvortsa Sovetov, 1938). Also see similar reservations regarding the experiments on affixing stone facing with cement, TsGAM f. 694, op. 1, d. 137, 1. 2.
87 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF) f. R5325, op. 9, d. 2567, 1. 1, 5–6 (Perepiska s arkhivami o sooruzhenii pamiatnikov, 1932–1933).
88 TsGAM f. 694, op. 1, d. 137, 1. 5–6.
89 TsGAM f. 694, op. 1, d. 137, 1. 14. After all, it was pointed out, granite had successfully “held together” five-thousand-year-old Egyptian pyramids, TsGAM f. 694, op. 1, d. 137, 1. 9–10.
90 Respectively, B. Blokhin, “K voprosu o monumental΄nom iskusstve,” Iskusstvo, no. 4 (1934): 3; M. Sar΄ian, “Narodnyi khudozhnik Armenii M. S. Sar΄ian (Erevan),” in I. Sushkevich, ed., Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov, 60; also see A. Viner, “A. V. Viner (Moskva),” in ibid.,
91 Ivan Rakhmanov, “Skul΄ptor I. F. Rakhmanov (Moskva),” in I. Sushkevich, ed., Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov, 54. Relatedly, one visitor of a 1934 exhibition of Palace of Soviets designs expressed skepticism over the long-term structural integrity of the 300-meter composition, instead proposing a horizontally-stretching “palace in the form of the old style,” along with “a large sphinx of [Vladimir] Il΄ich [Lenin. . .] for this would be a monument that would last several centuries,” TsGAM f. 694, op. 1, d. 44, 1. 22 (Otzyvy posititelei vystavki, 1934).
92 Atarov, Dvorets Sovetov, 80.
93 RGALI f. 2943, op. 1, d. 352, 1. 12 (Stenogramma zasedaniia po obsuzhdeniiu doklada akademika Ginzburga, 1944).
94 Aleksandr Gerasimov, “A. M. Gerasimov,” in Voprosy razvitiia sovetskoi skul΄ptury. Nauchnaia konferentsiia. 28–30 maia 1952 g, ed. Matvei Manizer (Moscow, 1953), 154–55.
95 I. Sosfenov, “Problema sinteza v metro. Sintez v oformlenii stantsii ‘Ploshchad΄ revoliutsii’ Moskovskogo metro,” Iskusstvo, no. 2 (1938): 29–30.
96 See Elena Shunkova, ed. Masterskaia monumental΄noi zhivopisi pri Akademii arkhitektury SSSR, 1935–48 (Moscow, 1978).
97 Vladimir Frolov, “Mozaika v arkhitekture,” Arkhitketurnaia gazeta, February 8, 1935, 3.
98 Aleksei Dushkin, “Iz poiasnitel΄noi zapiski k proektu stantsii ‘Maiakovskaia,’” in Aleksei Nikolaevich Dushkin. Arkhitektura 1930–1950-kh godov. Katalog vystavki, ed. Natal΄ia Dushkina (Moscow, 2004), 173.
99 Vladimir Frolov, “Mozaika Dvortsa Sovetov,” Dvorets Sovetov, January 11, 1940, 3; also see Vladimir Frolov, “Vozrozhdennoe iskusstvo,” Udarnik Metrostroia, July 6, 1938, 3; Vladimir Frolov, “Prof. V. A. Frolov (Leningrad),” in I. Sushkevich, ed., Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov, 73. Noting their water-resistance in Roman baths, Deineka (who designed “Maiakovskaia” station’s mosaics) also suggested using mosaics above and below water in Soviet swimming pools, in outdoor stadiums, and on public squares, Aleksandr Deineka, “Khudozhniki v metro,” Iskusstvo, no. 6 (1938): 80.
100 Aleksandr Deineka, “K voprosu o monumental΄nom iskusstve,” Iskusstvo, no. 4 (1934): 4–5.
101 Robert Genin, “Nastennaia zhivopis΄ i ee tekhnika,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 6 (1939): 26; also see Robert Genin, “O podgotovke k rospisi Dvortsa Sovetov,” Iskusstvo, no. 4 (1939): 125. Also see art historian Nikolai Chernyshev’s comments at a meeting at the Moscow Artists’ Club, RGALI f. 2932, op. 1, d. 99, 1. 8–9 (Stenogramma doklada N. M. Chernysheva, 1932).
102 Nikolai Chernyshev, “O rabotakh nashikh monumentalistakh,” Iskusstvo, no. 4 (1934): 33–34; Boris Iofan and Vladimir Gel΄freikh, “Nekotorye problemy stroitel΄stva Dvortsa Sovetov,” Stroitel΄stvo Moskvy, no. 5 (1939): 7; S. Tavasiev, “Skul΄ptor S. D. Tavasiev (Moskva),” in I. Sushkevich, ed., Arkhitektura Dvortsa Sovetov, 72. For tapestries, see Aleksandr Deineka, “Zhivopis΄ v inter΄ere,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 6 (1939): 25. For encaustic painting, see RGALI f. 2943, op. 1, d. 1527, 1. 43–44 (Stenogramma zasedaniia po obsuzhdeniiu oformleniia stantsii metro “Kievskaia-kol΄tsevaia,” 1953).
103 Respectively, Viacheslav Oltarzhevskii, Stroitel΄stvo vysotnykh zdanii v Moskve (Moscow, 1953), 214; A. Voronkov and S. Balashov, Dvorets nauki (Moscow, 1954), 30.
104 Ibid., 135.
105 Anna Opochinskaia, “Ansambl΄ vysotnykh zdanii Moskvy i natsional΄nye traditsii russkikh zodchikh,” Sovetskaia arkhitektura, no. 5 (1954): 162; Vsevolod Predtechenskii, Arkhitektura i konstruktsii vysotnykh zdanii Moskvy (Moscow, 1952), 10; Voronkov and Balashov, Dvorets nauki, 26–27.
106 Voronkov and Balashov, Dvorets nauki, 167–69; also see Konstantin Antonov, Vysotnye zdaniia Moskvy—vydaiushcheesia dostizhenie sovetskoi arkhitektury i stroitel΄noi tekhniki (stenogramma publichnoi lektsii, prochitannoi v Tsentral΄nom lektorii Obshchestva v Moskve) (Moscow, 1953), 27; Oltarzhevskii, Stroitel΄stvo vysotnykh zdanii v Moskve, 176–78.
107 Nikolai Tomskii, “Khudozhestvennoe oformlenie dvortsa nauki,” in V. Pospelov, ed., Dvorets nauki. Rasskazy stroitelei novogo zdaniia Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta (Moscow, 1952), 127.
108 RGALI f. 2458, op. 1, d. 454, 1. 10 (Protokoly zasedanii Khudozhestvenno-ekspertnogo Soveta po priemke skul΄ptur dlia MGU, 1951); RGALI f. 2943, op. 1, d. 2222, 1. 48 (Stenogramma zasedaniia po obsuzhdeniiu skul΄ptury dlia MGU, 1953); also see Voronkov and Balashov, Dvorets nauki, 170.
109 Ibid., 162–63.
110 William Rhoads, “Franklin D. Roosevelt and Washington Architecture,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 52 (1989): 162.
111 Robert A. M. Stern, Modern Classicism (New York, 1988), 35.
112 Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–44: His Private Conversations, trans. Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens (London, 1973), 82. These demands were taken seriously: Germany’s quarries were exploited at full capacity, and shipyards were founded to build an enormous fleet for transporting additional granite from Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy, Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York, 1970), 181.
113 Quoted in Thomas Friedrich, Hitler’s Berlin: Abused City, trans. Stewart Spencer (New Haven, 2012), 227. Fascist Italy was pioneering the stripped classical style that was rapidly gaining global dominance; indeed, Franco Borsi goes so far as to label the entire movement “the Novecento style” (after one of the Italian schools), Franco Borsi, The Monumental Era: European Architecture and Design, 1929–1939 (New York, 1987).
114 Speer, Inside the Third Reich, 168.
115 Azizian, Irina, “Inobytie ar-deco v otechestvennoi arkhitekture,” in Kosenkova, Iuliia, ed., Arkhitektura Stalinskoi epokhi: opyt istoricheskogo osmysleniia (Moscow, 2010), 60Google Scholar.
116 Papernyi, Architecture in the Age of Stalin, 18.
117 I am preparing a monograph on the subject, provisionally entitled Monuments for Posterity: Constructing Stalinism’s Alternative Future.
118 Vladimir Tolstoi, “Leninskii plan monumental΄noi propagandy v deistvii,” Iskusstvo, no. 1 (1952): 64.
