Stalinist architecture
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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).
Just like any other form of art in the Soviet Union, architecture under
Stalin 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.
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.
Just after the end of World War II, Soviet authorities decided to
erect eight tall skyscrapers here in a design similar to that of the
Palace of the Soviets. Only seven were constructed. According to the
book "Architecture of the Stalin Era," by Alexei Tarkhanov and
Sergei Kavtaradze, the architects settled on a terrace-like or
tiered construction, often referred to as a "wedding-cake style", to
give each building a sense of "upward surge" toward a central tower.
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. |
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