The Ultimate Palladianist, Outliving Revolution and the Stalin Period: Architect Ivan V. Zholtovsky

Abstract

The generally accepted view of the architectural development from the Russian Revolution (1917) until Stalin’s death (1953) is simple enough: first, a true revolution of the concepts of space, that is, a purity of ‘modernity’ that surpasses and outshines all Western endeavours of this kind (‘Bauhaus’, ‘neues bauen’, ‘CIAM’) and also quite often antecedes them chronologically; Then, a fatal twisting of the arguments under Stalin that results in a blown-up version of ‘Cake Decorators’ Baroque’. The watershed between these two contradictions is generally seen as occurring in the decisions at the Competition for the Palace of Soviets, which was drawn out over several phases from 1930 to 1935. Already in 1931–32, the jury of this international competition begins to give prizes to names which promise little, measured by the expectations of the European avantgarde. One of these names is Ivan Vladislavovich Zholtovsky, born 1867 (12 years before Stalin), who died in 1959 (six years after Stalin). In 1931–32 he receives a First Prize, next to the two additional First Prizes for the Russian Yofan and for the American Hamilton. In the third phase (1933–35), ‘the project of comrade Yofan’ is qualified ‘as the basis’, and as partners to Yofan are added the architects Shchuko and Gel’freich.¹