Stalinist architecture
The same building could be declared a formalist blasphemy and then receive the greatest praise the next year, as happened to Ivan Zholtovsky and his Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya in 1949–50.
[citation needed] Authentic styles like Zholtovsky's Renaissance Revival, Ivan Fomin's St. Petersburg Neoclassical architecture and Art Deco adaptation by Alexey Dushkin and Vladimir Shchuko coexisted with imitations and eclecticism that became characteristic of that era.
It was not as important to Stalin's urban plans, so most industrial buildings (excluding megaprojects like the Moscow Canal) are not part of the Stalinist category.
Experience was not gained quickly, and many Constructivist buildings were justly criticized for irrational floor plans, cost overruns and low quality.
[6][7] For a brief time in the mid-1920s, the architectural profession operated in the old-fashioned manner, with private companies, international contests, competitive bidding and disputes in professional magazines.
Theorists devised a variety of strategies that created politicized discussions without much practical result; State intervention was imminent.
Stalin's personal architectural preferences and the extent of his own influence remains, for the most part, a matter of deduction, conjecture and anecdotal evidence.
The facts, or their representation in public Soviet documents, largely concerns the Palace of Soviets contest of 1931–33:[11] The architects invited to direct these workshops included traditionalists Ivan Zholtovsky, Alexey Shchusev, Ivan Fomin, Boris Iofan, Vladimir Schuko as well as practising constructivists: Ilya Golosov, Panteleimon Golosov, Nikolai Kolli, Konstantin Melnikov, Victor Vesnin, Moisei Ginzburg and Nikolai Ladovsky.
The three most important Moscow buildings of this time are on the same square, all built between 1931 and 1935, yet each draft evolved independently, with little thought given to overall ensemble (see prewar movie stills 1936 1938 1939).
It can be traced both to simplified Art Deco (through Schuko and Iofan), and to indigenous Constructivism, being converted slowly to Neoclassicism (Ilya Golosov, Vladimir Vladimirov).
The Plan, among other things, included Stalin's urban development ideas: These rules effectively banned low-cost mass construction in the old city and "first-rate" streets, as well as single-family homebuilding.
Low-cost development proceeded in remote areas, but most funds were diverted to new, expensive "ensemble" projects which valued façades and grandeur more than the needs of overcrowded cities.
A 1937 statue by Vera Mukhina, Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, atop the USSR pavilion of the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (1937) (Paris Expo of 1937), was rebuilt at the entrance gates.
Pavilions were created in the national styles of Soviet republics and regions; a walk through the exhibition recreated a tour of the huge country.
Such propaganda pieces were not built to last (like Shchusev's War Trophy Hangar in Gorky Park); some were demolished during the de-Stalinization of 1956.
The construction of the present Volga–Don Canal, designed by Sergey Zhuk's Hydroproject Institute, began prior to the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945, which would interrupt the process.
Oktyabrskaya station by Leonid Polyakov was built like a Classicist temple, with a shiny white-blue altar behind iron gates – a complete departure from prewar atheism.
The second section of Ring line was a tribute to "Heroic Labor" (with the exception of Shchusev's Komsomolskaya, set up as a retelling of Stalin's speech of November 7, 1941).
[23] On April 4, 1953, the public learn that a 1935 stretch from Alexandrovsky Sad, then Kalininskaya, to Kievskaya is closed for good and replaced with a brand-new, deep-alignment line.
Stalin's 1946 idea of building many skyscrapers in Moscow resulted in a decree of January 1947 that started a six-year-long publicity campaign.
Eight design teams, directed by the new generation of main architects (37 to 62 years old), produced numerous drafts; there was not any open contest or evaluation commission, which is an indicator of Stalin's personal management.
All major architects were awarded Stalin prizes in April 1949 for preliminary drafts; corrections and amendments followed until very late completion stages.
The toll of this project on real urban needs can be judged from these numbers: Similar skyscrapers were built in Warsaw, Bucharest, and Riga; the tower in Kiev was completed without crown and steeple.
At present buildings which form the Nezalezhnastci Avenue ensemble are inscribed on the State List of Historical and Cultural Values of the Republic of Belarus.
The architectural ensemble itself, with its buildings and structures, the layout and the landscape is protected by the state and inscribed on the List as a complex of historical and cultural values.
Central Kiev was destroyed during World War II when the Red Army abandoned the city and employed remote explosives to detonate bombs, and deny it to German forces.
He joined architects Mikhail Posokhin[32] and Ashot Mndoyants, and in 1948 this team built their first concrete frame-and-panel building near present-day Polezhaevskaya metro station.
A year later, this line of action – establishing prefabricated concrete plants – was made a law by the XIX Party Congress, Stalin attending.
Lev Rudnev's Palace of Culture and Science, which was dubbed a 'gift from the Soviet people', was perhaps the most controversial of the importations of Stalinist architecture.
The building, designed by architect E.S.Grebenshthikov, has a certain resemblance to Buckingham Palace in London; this is said to be due to the then Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov's liking for the official residence of the British monarch.
