Plan for "New Moscow" (April 1929)
Here’s another batch of early Soviet avant-garde architectural journals, from between 1929-1930. The 1929 one is the one I most recently worked on; the others were converted into PDFs back before I had perfected the method of separating out the text from the rest of the page. As a result, these are all in grayscale, though they remain very readable. The image quality is a little lower than on my more recent uploads. But here they are, so enjoy!
A Young Nadezhda Krupskaia
The problem of the “socialist city” introduced by Sabsovich was not exclusively pondered over by architects and urban planners. Indeed, quite a number of prominent Soviet officials weighed in on the matter, from the People’s Commissar of Enlightenment, Anatolii Lunacharskii, to the renowned Bolshevik and member of the Politburo Grigorii Zinoviev, all the way to Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Krupskaia.
Krupskaia, who will be the subject of the present post and whose writings will be included along with it, had largely been relegated to the sidelines of Soviet politics by 1929-1930. The Stalinist bloc had by then established itself on fairly firm footing in the political sphere, but knew that Krupskaia was too symbolically important to the Revolution to silence altogether. So Krupskaia was still able to publish some political articles here and there, and became a popular pedagogical and matriarchal figure for the young Soviet regime for her writings on education and children.
In 1929, when the economist Sabsovich published his seminal article on the Socialist city, Krupskaia became intrigued by the prospect of a new mode of social and municipal reorganization. Early on, she sided with Sabsovich’s proposal to overcome the antithesis of town and country with a more uniform system of settlement. She thus wrote her article, “Cities of the Future,” which can be found on pages 161-165 of the volume uploaded below, in which she announced her support for Sabsovich’s Urbanist plan. As a correlative of that plan, in which Sabsovich had proposed that children have their own “little cities” (детьские городки), Krupskaia responded by writing an article posing the question, “Where will Children Live in the Socialist City?” This can be found between pages 206-209.
Also, as the competition for the “Green City” of Moscow heated up, Krupskaia offered her input, as she (amongst other Soviet intellectuals) tried to conceptualize a city for workers’ rest and leisure.
Надежда Крупская – Педагогические сочинения в десяти томах – Том 6
The articles:
Sabsovich’s “The USSR in (literally ‘after’) 15 Years”
In July 1929, the economist Leonid Sabsovich sparked a debate regarding the future of Soviet urbanism with an article he wrote for Плановое Хозяйство (Planned Economy), entitled «Проблема города» (“The Problem of the City”). Sabsovich was convinced that the major urban centers of the USSR were overcrowded and overpopulated; they needed to be reduced to a more manageable size, while preserving the industrial base they provided. At the same time, he considered the countryside to be far too provincial and culturally isolated to remain in the state it was in at that point. So Sabsovich proposed instead a uniform distribution of the population at regular intervals, of interconnected “socialist cities” — both industrial cities and “agro-cities.” These would be evenly populated, with between thirty and fifty thousand inhabitants each.
Sabsovich’s position came to be called the “urbanist” vision of Soviet municipal reformation. The widely-respected group of modernist architects — the brothers Leonid, Aleksandr, and Viktor Vesnin — endorsed his proposal. They all saw Sabsovich’s proposal as a way to overcome what Marx, Engels, and Lenin had termed “the antithesis between town and country.” Reduce the size of the filthy, noisy, and overcrowded mega-cities, Sabsovich argued, and disperse the population into new municipal units that could still maintain their industrial productivity. Conversely, these measures would reorganize the largely peasant population of the various Soviet Republics and grant them access to the culture, education, and opportunity that larger towns would make available. Quite ambitiously, Sabsovich thought that the entire population of the USSR could be redistributed accordingly within a period of ten years — or two five-year plans. He thus wrote a wildly utopian book under the title of СССР через 10 лет (The USSR in 10 Years), elaborating his vision and stressing the practical feasibility of the plan. Later, he would revise this figure to a more modest (but still outlandish) fifteen years, and stressed the central importance of this goal to the greater project of social transformation under communism.
Against Sabsovich’s notion of the middle-path between town and country, the sociologist Mikhail Okhitovich and the renowned Constructivist architect Moisei Ginzburg would oppose their idea of “disurbanism,” abandoning the notion of centralized resettlement altogether, advancing instead their notion of a “linear city.” This would lead to the first major split in the editorship of the journal Современная архитектура (Modern Architecture), as Ginzburg and the Vesnins for the first time found themselves at odds with one another. Luckily, by then, the position of main editor of the magazine had passed on to Roman Khiger, so the one side did not totally drown out the other. Khiger clearly sided with Ginzburg and Okhitovich, however, and so Sabsovich was forced to promote his viewpoint from the pages of Плановое Хозяйство and the various books he managed to publish through Генплан (Genplan, the central planning agency of the Soviet Union at the time). The Urbanist-Disurbanist dispute would continue through until 1931, when both sides were reigned in for utopian speculation. At that point, a number of foreign architects — Le Corbusier and André Lurçat from France, and Bruno Taut, Hannes Meyer, and Ernst May from Germany — were called in to assist in the process of planning Soviet urbanism. Their presence would in turn become unwelcome by 1937, at the height of the Stalinist terror, when the state would hand down the order that all foreign experts exit the country, under suspicion of “sabotaging” Soviet progress.
The following is the original journal article that sparked the whole controversy, reproduced in its entirety:
Леонид Сабсович – «Проблема города» – Плановое Хозяйство – (1929) – № 7
The Archetype of Stalinist Architecture - The Palace of the Soviets
Continuing our theme of the decline of architecture, literature, and the visual arts under Stalin, it is perhaps appropriate to post here a document that was printed in order to educate the public on the proposed architectural design of the building. The Architecture of the Palace of the Soviets (Архитектура Дворца Советов) was intended to accomplish this task. In it, numerous architects, some of them having formerly belonged to the now-vanquished Soviet avant-garde, sing the praises of this bizarre, wedding-cake blend of monumentalist gigantism and neoclassical stylization (the columns and lavishly-decorated façades). Some, like Vladimir Paperny, have suggested that Stalin himself might have had a hand in its design, personally stepping in to oversee the realization of Iofan, Fomin, and Shchuko’s abominable vision. Considering the sheer monstrosity of the final structure, it is not too unlikely that this might have been the case. Either way, below you can download a free .pdf file copy of the 1939 text, which sadly includes a declaration from the once-great architectural modernist Nikolai Miliutin written in in support of the final proposal:
Архитектура Дворца Советов (1939)
And the following is a Stalinist propaganda film made a year before this text, in 1938, called New Moscow (Новая Москва), which features both the interior and exterior of the proposed building:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYvFy-2tB3w]
Shurpin’s "Morning of our Fatherland"
Sonia-Belle has posted an interesting elaboration and expansion of my recent entry on “The Stalinization of Post-Revolutionary Art and Architecture.” She noted how, despite the limitations imposed on them by the tenets of Socialist realism, some artists were still able to achieve interesting artistic and painterly effects. Despite its repugnant subject-matter, with Stalin in one of his characteristic poses gazing out onto his Soviet Fatherland with dignity and resolve, Shurpin’s use of yellow-on-yellow is extremely striking. The white of Stalin’s uniform is only barely suggested beneath its absorption of the sun’s soft rays.
Panteleimon (brother of Il'ia) Golosov's Submission for the Narkomtiazhprom Competition
The vibrant artistic culture that existed in post-revolutionary Russia thrived up until the early 1930s. During that time, the Soviet government allowed a great deal of creative liberty, with a number of independent artistic and architectural movements sprouting up in the aftermath of October. Some state oversight existed in the capacity of Narkompros, the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment. Its Fine Arts division sponsored some projects, but gave no special preference to any particular group or style. Narkompros’ director (and Lenin’s old friend) Anatolii Lunacharskii may have been more fond of the classics of Western civilization than he was of the modernists’ brash iconoclasm, but he was remarkably tolerant of any group that displayed enthusiasm for the Bolsheviks’ social and political revolution.
Post-revolutionary art and architecture can be disaggregated into three main categories: the modernist, the atavistic, and the “proletarian.” This third category traced its origins to Aleksandr Bogdanov, one of leading figures in Russian Social-Democracy and Lenin’s early rival within the Bolshevik party. Modernism had emerged in pre-war Russia out of the fragmentation of Symbolism in the fields of literature, poetry, and art, but absorbed international influences as well. The traditionalist eclecticism of artistic and architectural atavism was passed on through the Imperial Academy system, which had been imported from Western Europe some two hundred years before.
Tatlin's Tower (1919) Digitally Superimposed on the Petersburg Skyline
Out of these three groups, the modernists were the first to lend their support to the Bolshevik cause during the Revolution. Only months after October 1917, Maiakovskii and others declared their solidarity with Lenin’s party. They saw the social and political revolution carried out by the communists as a parallel to the artistic revolution that they were attempting to realize. But the Soviet avant-garde was far from being a unitary movement. In the fifteen years following the October Revolution, numerous avant-garde currents were established, each with their own agendas and often antagonisms against one another. They shared a rejection of the ways of the past, and they tended to be more internationalist and experimental in orientation. There were the Russian Futurists (very different from their Italian counterparts), painterly and architectural Suprematists, Productivists, artistic and architectural Constructivists, and Formalists in architecture and literary theory, etc. These various groups also invited modernists from other countries to join in the project of building a new society.
Eclectic Architecture from 1924
At the same time, however, there was the more conservative brand of eclectic art and architecture inherited from the old academy system. These artists and architects were generally referred to as the academicians, and were generally despised by the avant-gardists. They saw artistic and architectural history as a sort of inventory of recognized styles that could be arbitrarily combined or juxtaposed at the whim of the artist or architect. This is why their style was often referred to as “historicist.”
Anti-Capital (1920)
Alongside this, there was the Proletkult/proleterian art movement that Lenin and Trotskii were so uncomfortable with, that tended to be more realist and “heroic” in its representation of workers, Bolshevik leaders, and revolutionary battle scenes. They believed that there would emerge a new form of art and architecture that was both created by and legible to the revolutionary proletariat. They believed that the working masses had already established their own essential culture in opposition to bourgeois taste and high society under capitalism. Lenin and Trotskii criticized them for believing that the culture of the proletariat would be that drastically different than the culture that had predominated under capitalism. The other aspect that disturbed them was that the Bolshevik Revolution was meant to create a classless society, not a specifically proletarian society. Nevertheless, Proletkult and proletarian art merged with elements of a strange brand of monumentalist avant-gardism that in architecture banded together in the group VOPRA, and this led to the Stalinist synthesis of Socialist realism.
Around 1931-1933, Stalin and his henchmen intervened and wanted to put an end to the various competing groups and form an official style that would be run by forcibly unionizing the different art and architectural groups together. Once all the groups had been subsumed into All-Union appendages of the state, bureaucratized and monitored closely, the decision was made to institute Socialist realism. This way, all artists and architects had to be registered with and licensed by the state and made to conform to union mandates handed down from above, by the Stalinist hierarchy. Those who did not join with the state-funded unions would not have their work supported or even recognized by the Soviet government, and would not receive the regular income that the union provided.
Works now had to be:
- Proletarian: art relevant to the workers and understandable to them.
- Typical: scenes of every day life of the people.
- Realistic: in the representational sense.
- Partisan: supportive of the aims of the State and the Party.
The Vesnin Brother's Later Entry for Narkomtiazhprom (1934)
The following issue of Строительство Москвы is a classic. Submissions for a design competition for a new textile workers’ factory were under discussion, with entries from Leonid Vesnin, Vladimir Shchuko, and Iakov Kornfel’d, among others. A brief on Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Grosstadt Architectur, as well as his conception of a “vertical city,” are also included.
Download the full journal here:
The Absurd Moral Casuistry of Ethical Veganism
To be clear, I am not the author of this entry. I came across this article some time ago, and at that point merely thought it both hilarious and correct. Since I have now written up my own critique of veganism, and “Green” lifestyle politics in general, I find that this piece provides a nice supplement to my own qualms with dietary ethics, as well as the political positions it implies. The article is written from a clearly Marxist perspective, and I find myself agreeing with all of the points it makes regarding the nature of capitalism and the falsity of the supply-and-demand model of economics. The blog on which this was originally published seems to have died out, unfortunately, but I invite readers who enjoy this article to read a follow-up they did to this, now posted on their main page. And yet, in spite of the truths revealed by this article, some pro-vegan abolitionist websites promote the ridiculous notion that veganism is somehow more “revolutionary” than political Marxism.
Reposted from the Original Piece by the Fighting Words Staff
I’m sure you’ve come across some variant of “with the amount of grain used to fatten animals for human consumption, we could, if we all became vegetarian, eliminate world hunger.” The “case” for veganism suffers from the same limitations particular to consumer politics. In that it fails to understand capitalist production, the “air tight” arguments are shown to be nothing but non-sequiturs.
First, world hunger has nothing to do with scarcity. We continue to produce enough grain and other foodstuffs for human consumption to feed double the human population. Economists who speak of a “grain glut” mean that literally tons of grain is wasted and unused, not because people aren’t in need of it, but because they can’t afford it. Second, it speaks to incredible naiveté to assume that world agribusiness would give away any excess grain left over if the meat industry suddenly collapsed. When I say political veganism doesn’t understand capitalism, this is what I mean.
While there’s nothing wrong with seeing it as simply a moral issue, there is something incredibly obnoxious and self-aggrandizing about puffing out your chest, believing your diet will change the world. While the number of vegetarians and vegans has grown into sizeable minority, you would think that meat consumption would’ve shown a slight decline. But the opposite is true. Total meat consumption has increased. With food costs rising, meat has become more practical (in terms of calorie intake) and affordable. There is absolutely no substance to the claim that going vegan saves any animals. Capitalism does not plan production based on a one to one correspondence of a supply demand. In fact, its key feature is overproduction. A general lowering of demand will then likely mean two things: 1) animals not consumed will just be wasted 2) the price of meat becomes cheaper, increasing total consumption.
There is also no precedent for a boycott strategy that has shut down an entire industry the way it’s being described (and it would require a boycott of all supermarkets and restaurants). That’s because the consumer has very little power. One can “choose” to drive a fuel-efficient car, but can’t choose why cities lack efficient public transportation. One can choose to buy energy efficient light bulbs, but has no say about planned product obsolescence. No one can dispute that the factory farm model creates tremendous amounts of waste, contributing to environmental catastrophe. It does so because capitalism forces every industry to accumulate and capture as much of the market as it can, in the most cost effective way. It functions to maximize profit, not to meet needs or work rationally. So every industry is structured unsustainably.
Larvae are not known for having thick skin; indeed, it is often only a thin membrane that separates their primitive organs from the outside world
Much to my surprise, I found myself banned from posting today on the Larval Subjects blog. In a discussion thread attached to an entry about Marxism on his blog, apparently my comments were too controversial or offensive for Levi Bryant, the author of the blog, to tolerate. Of course, I can’t help but point out the irony of this situation, by quoting Engels from Part III of his essay on The Housing Question:
I am not going to quarrel with friend Mülberger about the “tone” of my criticism. When one has been so long in the movement as I have, one develops a fairly thick skin against attacks, and therefore one easily presumes also the existence of the same in others. In order to compensate Mülberger I shall try this time to bring my “tone” into the right relation to the sensitiveness of his epidermis.
Since I can’t contribute to any discussion on his blog anymore, the following is taken from our brief e-mail correspondence over the course of today: Continue reading
Nikolai Ladovskii's Rationalist Metro Station in Moscow (1931)
Not all of the early Soviet architectural avant-garde was “Constructivist,” strictly speaking. Though this was the title often generically ascribed to all modernist architecture coming out of Russia, only those pieces produced by the architectural group OSA can be considered constructivist. OSA’s self-proclaimed position was that of constructivism, which was founded on the principle of the “functional method” of design, as Ginzburg and the Vesnin brothers described it.
An earlier avant-garde group, ASNOVA, had been founded in 1923 by Nikolai Ladovskii, Nikolai Dokuchaev, Vladimir Krinskii, and El Lissitzky (though Lissitzky spent most of his time abroad). This school of architectural thought was deeply informed by the principles of abstract Suprematism in painting, the style invented by Kazimir Malevich some years before. In fact, Lissitzky’s PROUN series led directly into his architectural phase of production.
As opposed to the Constructivists in OSA, which was founded two years later (in 1925), the premise of architectural Rationalism, as it came to be called, was formalistic, rather than functional. The members of ASNOVA appealed to evidence gleaned from the study of psychotechnics, a science imported from Germany and America, to claim that certain formal shapes and patterns of design had a direct effect on the psychology of those who viewed the structure of a building. Once these formal principles could be discerned, they could be used to produce an ideological effect, lifting viewers out of their state of false consciousness and inspiring their participation in the construction of the new society.
Nikolai Dokuchaev was, next to Ladovskii, the main theoretical exponent of Rationalism in architecture. With Lissitzky in Germany, working on periodicals like G, ABC, and Merz, and the majority of Krinskii’s time devoted to teaching and designing new projects, it fell to Dokuchaev and Ladovskii to explicate ASNOVA’s programmatic stance. In the following series of articles, taken from the early Soviet periodical Советское искусство (Soviet Art), Dokuchaev compares the Soviet Constructivist architecture of the OSA group with architectural parallels he sees in the capitalist West. He criticized the Constructivists’ “functional method,” equating it with the spare style of Functionalism that was prominent in Germany at the time. Then, in a later article, published in the journal Строительство Москвы (Building Moscow) [the issue is reproduced in full], Dokuchaev lays out his proposal for the Socialist city of Magnitogorsk, one of the first of many experimental cities that were planned to be built.
These articles and the one complete issue can be downloaded below: