Encyclopedia
Stalinist Classicim,
Stalin's Empire style,
Socialist Classicism or
Stalinist Architecture are the terms typically applied to the years between 1933 and 1955 .
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 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
Constructivist architecture, 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 Classicism achieved its prime stage in the late 1940s - early 1950s. Among the most impressive examples of the Stalinist Classicism 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".
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 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 Ukraina 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 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 Classicism 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
, originally built as the Palace of Sino-Soviet Friendship. In the city of Kiev, Ukraine, the stretch of of Kreschatyk Street from Government Square to Tolstoy Square is often considered to be the largest unbroken string of Stalinist architecture anywhere.
Neo-Stalinist Classicism
In today’s Russia, it seems that there is a revival of Stalinist Classicism 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. At 264 meters in height, Triumph Palace is now the tallest building in Europe.
Sources
This article is largely based on an article entitled 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.
See also
External links
