Abstract
Public and professional interest in the arts and architecture of the ethnic groups living within the borders of the Russian Empire has been growing since the beginning of the twentieth century, but it gained considerable strength after the Bolshevik Revolution. During the earlier centuries of Russian expansion in Asia, however, the nationalities residing in this vast territory generally were treated as savage tribes or as enemies to be subjugated, and their culture and architecture was either overlooked or destroyed. The European Russians who began settling in Turkestan Province, for example, consisted mostly of peasants: landless Cossack clans settled by the government to garrison the frontier and freed peasants (after the abolition of serfdom in 1861) helped by favourable government policies and financial aid. This flood of immigrants was facilitated by the completion of the Trans-Caspian Railroad (1898) and the Orenburg—Tashkent Line (1906). Between 1896 and 1916 alone, over one million Russian peasants settled in Turkestan.’ They brought their own customs, religion and building traditions; lived separately from the local population; and contributed substantially to the atmosphere of suspicion and animosity that prevails in the region today.
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Notes
The best English language source on Russian migration is Donald W. Treadgold, The Great Siberian Migration: Government and Peasant in Resettlement from Emancipation to the First World War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
Mikhail Heller and Aleksandr Nekrich, Utopia in Power (New York: Summit Books, 1986) p. 151.
N. N. Palgov and M. Sh. larmukhamedov (eds), Kazakhstan (Moscow: Mysl’, 1970) p. 283.
M. Ia. Ginzburg, ‘Proekt pravitel’stvennogo doma sovetov Dagestana v MakhachKala’, Sovremennaia arkhitektura no. 5–6 (1926) pp. 113–15. The article actually explains Ginzburg’s design for the House of the Soviets in Makhachkala, the capital of the Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
The winning projects of the Alma-Ata competition were published in ‘Dom pravitel’stva v g. Alma-Ata’, Stroitel’naia promyshlennost’ no. 5 (1928) pp 375–77. The second prize was awarded to G. S. Gurevich-Gurev and K. I. Solomonov and the third prize to Ivan Leonidov.
S. O. Khan-Magomedov, M. la. Ginzburg (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo literatury po stroitel’stvu, 1972) p. 55.
The project for the Alma-Ata House of Government was originally illustrated in Sovremennaia arkhitektura no. 3 (1928) pp. 75ff. The master plan and housing units are illustrated in ‘A.P. Ivanitskii’, Arkhitektura SSSR vol. 3 (1973) pp. 47–50.
The planning of Baku and its satellite settlements is summarised in S. K. Regame, ‘K formirovaniiu general’nogo plana razvitiia sotsialisticheskogo Baku (1920–30g.)’, Iskusstvo Azerbaidzhana (Baku: Akademiia nauk Azerbaidzhanskoi SSR, 1964) 10, pp. 137–66.
The architecture of Azerbaijan is discussed at length in L. Bretanitskii and A. Salamzade, Arkhitektura sovetskogo Azerbaidzhana (Moscow, Stroiizdat, 1973).
Sosfenov, ‘Novyi Baku’, Arkhitektura SSSR, vol. 6 (1934) p. 39.
S. Pen, ‘Dvorets knigi v Baku’, Arkhitektura SSSR 6 (1934) p. 55. Pen paid special attention to the comfort of the workers. In 1930 he had designed the Printing Workers’ Club in Moscow with great sensitivity to the workers’ needs. He was probably recommended by the Printers’ Union to the comrades in Baku. Pen actually added a workers’ club with meeting and recreation rooms, auditorium, etc., to the programme requirements of the Baku publishing house.
The design and construction documents of this building were prepared in Leningrad by a large team of architects and engineers headed by Rudnev and his partner in many projects, Oskar R. Munts (1871–1942). The Azerbaijan House of Government has been criticised for its numerous unusable foyers and wide corridors, for its office spaces lacking daylight and sunshine, for its countless stairways and inconvenient circulation, but never for its architectural appearance. Some Soviet scholars have argued that it represents the ‘national in form’ Socialist Realist dictum for Socialist Azerbaijan. See V. E. Ass, P. O. Zinov’ev, V. O. Munts, Ia. O. Svirskii, and V. V. Khazanov, Arkhitektor Rudnev (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo literatury po stroitel’stvu, arkhitekture i stroitel’nym materialam, 1963).
This complex of eight three-storey apartments (across from the Dynamo Stadium) is still in use. See Tengiz R. Kvirkveliia, Arkhitektura Tbilisi (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1985) p. 256.
Publications on Georgian architecture began in Tbilisi during the nineteenth century: Pl. loseliani, Opisanie drevnostei goroda Tiflisa (1871); Tiflis i ego okrestnosti: Putevoditel’ (Tiflis, 1896); Puteshestvie Shardena po Zakavkaziu v 1672–1673 gg. (Tiflis, 1902); and I. Dzhavakhishvili, Istoriia Gruzii (Tiflis, 1913) [in Georgian]. During the 1920s research on local art and architecture was often published in Georgia. As the number of publications increased during the following decades, so did the number of those published in the Georgian language, as for example
G. Chubinashvili, Istoriia gruzinskogo iskusstva (Tbilisi, 1936);
V. Beridze, Arkhitektura Tbilisi v 1801–1917 gg. (Tbilisi, 1960–1963);
N. Dzhanberidze, Gruzinskaia sovetskaia arkhitektura: Put’razvitiia (Tbilisi, 1971).
N. Dzhashi, ‘protiv formalizma v arkhitekture’, Arkhitektura SSSR vol. 3 (1955) p. 10. The designers were accused of copying R. Estberg’s courthouse (1914–23) in Stockholm.
M. Babenchikov, ‘A. V. Shchusev’, Arkhitektura SSSR vol. 5 (1941) p. 26. Beria became the head of the secret police and Stalin’s most reliable watchdog.
‘Privet laureatam Stalinskikh premii’, Arkhitektura SSSR vol. 3 (1941) p. 3. The other participants were I. A. Fomin, V. D. Kokorin, and A. V. Vlasov from Moscow; N. P. Severov and M. G. Kalashnikov from Tbilisi.
Ruins of Roman temples and fortress walls are found in Garni, near Yerevan. Churches and monasteries in different stages of deterioration are abundant in the Armenian mountains. Among the numerous books and articles on Tamanian are M. Mikaelian, ‘Aleksandr Tamanian’, Arkhitektura SSSR, vol. 1 (1979) pp. 39–41; and M. G. Barkhin (ed.) ‘Aleksandr Ovanesovich Tamanian’, Mastera sovetskoi arkhitektury ob arkhitekture (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1975) vol. 2, pp. 244–54.
M. D. Mazmanian, ‘O natsional’noi arkhitekture’, Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, no. 7, 1929, pp. 79–91
as reprinted in M. G. Barkhin (ed.) Mastera sovetskoi arkhitektury ob arkhitekture (Moscow: Iskusstvo, 1975) vol. 2, p. 441.
S. O. Han-Magomedov, ‘La recherche d’une “style national”: L’exemple de l’Arménie’, in J. L. Cohen, M. de Michellis, and M. Tafuri (eds) URSS 1917–1978: La ville, l’architecture (Paris: L’Equerre, 1979) p. 298.
A. G., ‘Gevorg Barsegovich Kochar’, Arkhitektura SSSR, vol. 4 (1972) pp. 40–41.
The modified ‘Mother Armenia’ monument is illustrated in L.M. Babaian and Iu. S. Iaralov, Rafael Israelian (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1986) p. 18, and in contemporary guidebooks.
The Sea Gull Gateway, designed in 1961 by O. Akopian and sculptor V. Khachatrian, is illustrated in G. Asratian, Yerevan and its Environs (Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1973) ill. 68.
The problem of nationalism and cosmopolitanism in Soviet architecture has been studied extensively by Soviet scholars. For a Soviet point of view on the subject, see Iurii S. Iaralov, Natsional’noe i internatsional’noe v sovetskoi arkhitekture (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1975).
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© 1994 International Council for Soviet and East European Studies and John O. Norman
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Bliznakov, M. (1994). International Modernism or Socialist Realism: Soviet Architecture in the Eastern Republics. In: Norman, J.O. (eds) New Perspectives on Russian and Soviet Artistic Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23190-4_10
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