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Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes challenges conventional readings of the history of Soviet art and architecture, in which utopian modernism was practically prohibited by 1932 under Stalin's totalitarianism. Radically redefining the historiography of the period, it reveals how the relationship between the Party and practicing architects was much more complex than previously believed, and shows, in contrast to the conventional narratives, how the architectural avant-garde was able to persist at a time when it was widely considered to have been driven underground. In doing so, this book provides an essential new perspective on how to analyze, evaluate, and "reimagine" the global history of modernist expression, and offers a new understanding of the ways in which 20th-century social revolutions and their totalitarian sequels inflected the discourse of both modernity and modernism.
Exploring iconic Soviet architecture including the Palace of Soviets and the Soviet Pavilion at the Paris 1937 World Exposition, and revealing many remarkable works that until now have been neglected by architectural historians inside and outside Russia,
Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes provides a revealing new account of the 'hidden' modernism which persisted through Stalinism. In a fascinating final chapter, it also reveals for the first time the details of Frank Lloyd Wright's triumphant welcome in Moscow in 1937, at the height of Stalin's Terror.
List of contents
Dedication
Comparative Chronology
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. A Call for the Party to Defend Modern Architecture:Stalin's "Cultural Revolution" and the Aporia Of "Proletarian Architecture"
2. Continuity and Resistance: Designed Before 1932, Completed Down the Decade
3. Building Modern Architecture: "An Atmosphere Of Genuine Creativity," 1933-1939
4. The Shaping of Architecture Ideology within the Stalinist Project: Unreachable "Proletarian" Architecture Yields to Unattainable "Socialist"
5. The Improbable March to the Congress: "Soviet Architecture Eaten by a Gangrene"
Conclusion
Bibliography and Sources
Index
About the author
Danilo Udovicki-Selb holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.
Summary
Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes challenges conventional readings of the history of Soviet art and architecture, in which utopian modernism was practically prohibited by 1932 under Stalin’s totalitarianism. Radically redefining the historiography of the period, it reveals how the relationship between the Party and practicing architects was much more complex than previously believed, and shows, in contrast to the conventional narratives, how the architectural avant-garde was able to persist at a time when it was widely considered to have been driven underground. In doing so, this book provides an essential new perspective on how to analyze, evaluate, and “reimagine” the global history of modernist expression, and offers a new understanding of the ways in which 20th-century social revolutions and their totalitarian sequels inflected the discourse of both modernity and modernism.
Exploring iconic Soviet architecture including the Palace of Soviets and the Soviet Pavilion at the Paris 1937 World Exposition, and revealing many remarkable works that until now have been neglected by architectural historians inside and outside Russia, Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes provides a revealing new account of the ‘hidden’ modernism which persisted through Stalinism. In a fascinating final chapter, it also reveals for the first time the details of Frank Lloyd Wright’s triumphant welcome in Moscow in 1937, at the height of Stalin’s Terror.
Foreword
A provocative new interpretation of how modernist architecture persisted and survived under Stalin in 1930s Russia.
Additional text
Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes is an important, engaging book . One of the most original contribution in this specific field of History of architecture and the XX century History of Architecture at large, which marks a significant step forward.
Danilo Udovicki-Selb deserves a lot of credit for the essential contribution given to the questioning of what has long been undisputed. The author has succeded in breaking down long-standing historiographical narratives, revealing the complexity and ambiguity of the relationships between the Verkhushka, the Stalinist political power and the multifaceted sphere of professional culture, and how the architectural avant-garde has been in able to persist and develop in in original, sometimes unexpected, and geographically articulated forms, within the unstable and nuanced rhetoric frame of the “Socialist Realism”.
