Soviet Constructivism
At the beginning of the 20th century, at the end of a lengthy period of bourgeois prosperity, ironically dubbed, “the Belle Epoque”, architectural circles in Europe were seized with the desire for complete renewal. Russian artists reached this point before their counterparts in other countries. While Matisse liberated colour, and Picasso advanced the three-dimensional form, Kandinsky and Malevich - each in his own way - managed to break free from the apparently unshakeable foundation of the fine arts: the representation of the visible world.
Abstraction meant that art departed from the limits defined for it and threatened to reorganise life itself. The First World War graphically demonstrated that social reality was as much in need of renewal as the aesthetic sphere. In the revolution that had taken place in Russia, artists saw an opportunity to enact their boldest dreams. The victorious Bolsheviks initially regarded the Avant-garde artists as their allies. These rebels, who until recently had been given a marginal role in the dominant, respectable world of academism, took the helm of art schools and research institutions. VKhUTEMAS (The Higher Art and Technical Workshops) in Moscow, The Free Art Shops in Petrograd, UNOVIS (Founders of Modern Art) in Vitebsk, as well INKhUK (The Institute for Artistic Culture) that ran in all three cities, became laboratories for the search for ways of transforming the world using artistic means and, of course, architecture.
Despite the paralysis that seized the construction industry during the poverty stricken post-revolutionary years, the task of creating new buildings for a hitherto unknown way of life proved such a powerful lure that virtually none of the architects fled the country. In discussions and “paper” architectural projects at the beginning of the 1920s trends were formed that would leave their mark on the architecture of the future. The most significant of these - Rationalism and Constructivism - were born in Moscow’s VKhUTEMAS.
The Rationalists, developed the ideas of the artists Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin and believed that the planning structure and the way their buildings fulfilled their functions were less important than their plastic expression. In contrast the Constructivists believed that the architect should construct a volumetric-spatial solution for a building based on its function, like an engineer creating a new mechanism. For them, the form of the building should be defined by the result of the optimum resolution of its functional tasks. This idea initially came from Constructivist artists, such as Aleksandr Rodchenko and Lyubov Popova.
In 1923 the Rationalists, led by Nikolai Ladovsky, Nikolai Dokuchaev and Vladimir Krinsky, united to form the Association of New Architects, more commonly known, in keeping with the enthusiasm at that time for acronyms, as ASNOVA. Ex-students of VKhUTEMAS and a series of engineers, including the renowned Artur Loleit joined the association. El Lissitsky, who divided his time between Moscow and Dessau, linking the Russian Avant-garde with the German Bauhaus school, was also connected with ASNOVA.
At the end of 1925 the Constructivists also formed their own organisation - the Union of Modern Architects – (OSA). Aleksandr, Viktor and Leonid Vesnin, Moisei Ginzburg, Mikhail Barshch, Andrei Burov, Ginzburg’s pupils Vyacheslav Vladimirov, Ruvim Khiger, Georgy Vegman, the artist Aleksei Gan and others joined the union. Ilya and Panteleimon Golosov and Ivan Nikolaev joined later on. In the application to register the union, Aleksandr Vesnin described it by contrasting it with the Rationalists’ association: “ASNOVA is a union of a small group of architects with a defined ideology, the essence of which can be reduced to the search for an abstract form of a purely aesthetic nature. OSA is collectively allowing and bringing to life a new architectural form, functionally resulting from the purpose of the given building, the materials it is made from, its design and other production conditions, meeting specific tasks, promoting the socialist development of the country 1.
In turn, the Rationalists accused the Constructivists of showing contempt for the artistic side of architecture in favour of functionality. Moisei Ginzburg was particularly stung by such attacks, having always stressed that the functional, constructive and aesthetic were inextricably linked in the creative method espoused by Constructivism, a belief also supported by Nikolai Milyutin. Ginzburg was annoyed by the division of architecture into factions at a time when the real division was between followers of old forms and those in favour of the new architecture. Having become editor of the “Modern Architecture” (SA) journal in 1926, he tried to draw the Rationalists in. At his request, Aleksei Gan redesigned the journal in which only the right-hand pages were intended to be read: once the reader started turning the pages he would find the works of OSA, and if he turned it over and started leafing through the pages again, he would find ASNOVA’s work. The Rationalists rejected this proposal, and since they had no journal of their own and were less well-known than their rivals, the word “Constructivism” took such a hold that it was often used to describe all Russian Avant-garde architecture.
In fact, the Rationalists and Constructivists had much in common. Both fought passionately against the eclectic and rejected the stylized, superficial use of the new architectural language. They both made in-depth studies of the psychology of perception and applied their findings in design practice. Representatives of both movements created not only completely new types of buildings, but also developed highly interesting urban planning proposals. Together with “unaffiliated” architects, including eminent masters such as Konstantin Melnikov and Yakov Chernikov, the Constructivists and Rationalists created a startling phenomenon - the Russian architectural Avant-garde.
They achieved this in a very short time - virtually one decade. The theory and design practice of the Avant-garde movements began to crystallise in 1922 (the history of the architecture of Constructivism is considered to have begun with the plan for the Palace of Labour by the Vesnin brothers, presented in a competition in 1922). Actual building on any significant scale began in 1925, when the first experimental residential and office buildings began to appear, and 1927 - 1929 was the “golden age” of the Russian Avant-garde. In these three years virtually all the best-known buildings were built or planned: Barshch’s and Sinyavsky’s planetarium, the Zuyev club by Ilya Golosov , all the clubs by Melnikov and his own house, Narkomfin, and Nikolaev’s communal house for students. The triumph of the Avant-garde was such that it even inspired Aleksei Shchusev, a well-known and acclaimed pre-revolutionary architect, to design Lenin’s Mausoleum and the Narkomzem building on the Garden Ring in the Constructivist spirit.
One of the most extraordinary projects of the Russian Avant-garde at this time was Ivan Leonidov’s Lenin Institute. Foreseeing the future possibilities offered by technology, the VKhUTEMAS graduate designed a building in which the intellectual resources of all mankind were to be focussed in the form of a balanced composition of simple geometric shapes: a vertical parallelepiped book repository and spherical auditorium. Leonidov’s design was destined to be reflected many times in 20th century world architecture, however it was this very man who provoked criticism at home which marked the beginning of the end of Constructivism.
Party ideologists decided that the lavish splendour of neoclassical architecture with its palaces with columns and mouldings, would more effectively stimulate the people to devote themselves to the construction of communism than the ascetic, unusual and therefore, to many incomprehensible buildings of the Avant-garde. Having started with the campaign against the “Leonidovshchiks”, the pressure on architects did not lessen until in 1932, when the Union of Architects was created and although the former organisations were not disbanded, mastery of classical heritage was declared the only true course for Soviet architecture. Nevertheless, the first half of the 1930s saw the construction of some notable Avant-garde buildings: The Likhachev Palace of Culture by the Vesnin brothers, Melnikov’s “Intourist” garage, and Ladovsky’s Krasniye Vorota metro station vestibule. However, the majority of buildings designed towards the end of the decade were modified considerably during the construction process and acquired classical features. Architects were required to fully comply or lose the possibility to work.
The Avant-garde is one of Russia’s most important contributions to world culture, alongside the music of Tchaikovsky and the writing of Tolstoy. However, unlike music and literature, architectural works by their very nature cannot be reproduced. Dozens of Avant-garde buildings and complexes were built in the USSR in the 1920s but a significant number of them have been lost. The fact that they were built from cheap and sometimes poor quality materials, and that experimental construction methods had not been fully developed, means that Avant-garde buildings need special care which, in the overwhelming majority of cases, they have not received, and, consequently, are in a state of disrepair. Nowadays, virtually all surviving buildings of that era are in need of major and careful restoration.
Anna Bronovitskaya, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Moscow Institute of Architecture