"Tell me what you read ..."

Ilya Ilf continued the famous saying like this: "... and I will say to whom you stole this book." Today, stealing the book does not need: they can be bought or borrowed from friends. I borrowed - a year ago, but I read only now. The book is called "Stalin's Architecture" (M.: Progress-Strandy, 2007), wrote its architecture historian Dmitry Khmelnitsky.

This book did not cause me to read it immediately because of the extremely unsuccessful design: not only is the Newton's headset in a very small kegle at best for notes, but not for 370 pages of the main text, and the cover is also banal and surprisingly made unprofessional. The title is scored by white on a kumachi -colored dick, and a strongly cut photograph of the Mayakovskaya metro station is placed above it. As a result, the recognized masterpiece of the Soviet architect A.N. Dushkin is depicted distorted, and even forced to fall into an ambiguous context. A huge and very valuable illustrative material - essentially a whole album of drawings and photographs of buildings - is placed at the end of the book, but the illustrations are not numbered, so the text with them is not associated, which is more than strange for such an publication.

I mention these details so that the unsuccessful form does not turn away other potential readers from the desire to open this, undoubtedly, interesting and instructive book.

The author of the book is Dmitry Khmelnitsky, the architect, born in 1953, received education in Leningrad, since 1987 he lives in Berlin. Judging by the preface to the book, written by Dr. Bruno Flirl, famous for the German historian of architecture, we have a Russian version of the dissertation, completed in 2002 (the UFO publishing house in 2007 was the less special work of Khmelnitsky on the same topic-“Architect Stalin”.)

Khmelnitsky realized himself not only as a historian of architecture, but also as a publicist, whose interests were not limited to architecture: he was published in the magazines "Continent", "Twenty -Two", "Banner", etc. The skills of a publicist make the book more readable, although, of course, they annoy professionals.

Architecture - everywhere the most “state” of arts. The study of Stalinist architecture as an artistic process due to changes in art and in politics at the same time is a difficult and ungrateful task. The architect cannot work "on the table" or turn to a few elected. It is important that in the USSR the architect could not build anything by order of a private person -although this was quite possible in Germany of the 30s, where the construction of private villas remained commonplace.

Khmelnitsky believes that a critical objective view of the activities of Soviet architects has not been developed-especially if you keep in mind the period after the end of the avant-garde (see the Vanguard, see the wonderful book of S.O. Khan Magomedov “Architecture of the Soviet Avangard. M., 1996). According to Khmelnitsky, in the architectural criticism of Chechulin, Alabyan, Ginzburg, Shchusev, Melnikov, they are given the equally complimentary role of the “large Soviet architects”, regardless of whether they were good or bad, they kept beliefs or abandoned them whether people were decent or not, they turned out to be victims or executioners, moved the architecture forward or, conversely, pressed it.

Melnikov and Leonidov in the 1930s were deprived of the right to freedom of creativity and the right to work. Other architects, in order to at least somehow be preserved in the profession, had to adapt “to circumstances”. The architectural life with relative creative freedom ended by 1932 - as evidenced by a detailed and excitingly written analysis of the competition for the construction of the Palace of Soviets. One must think that anywhere in the world, such shameful, murderous for the work of conflict were possible-that’s just a Gothic romance! ..

The passion and categoricality of the author is not everywhere successfully associated with art history analysis itself - however, the material is such that it is difficult to remain impartial. Here, for example, is a characteristic passage about Shchusev:

“Shchusev is rebuilding and lying, without experiencing any internal difficulties. But also not experiencing the need to believe in the nonsense he proclaimed. This position has its own moral advantages. In the Stalinist society, an alternative to lies and cynicism was a sincere faith in the correctness and justice of what was happening. Sincere Stalinists opposed the cynics. ”

In a dispute with the reviewers of his work, the author adds: “Schusev’s cynicism had an undoubted positive side - he did not try to force himself to believe in the meaningfulness of what was happening. With dictatorship, this quality often means preserving not a good name (no one succeeds), but personal dignity. Which is completely a lot. Compared to Speer (I remind you that Speer was not just the main official architect of the Reich, but also a close friend of Hitler and his favorite - R.F.) and his employees “Poor Zholtovsky, Shchusev, Fomin” and even poorest Ginzburg, Ladovsky, Leonids were really slaves. In the literal sense of the word, not even freedmen. And the titles of professors and academicians meant only an increased diet and other household privileges. ”

The analysis of the construction of "Stalin" high -rise buildings is very interesting. In general, the book contains a lot of material that allows you to feel the spirit of the era of “the construction of a bright future” - construction both literally and figuratively. The book is simply interesting to read - and, having got acquainted with the work of Khmelnitsky, you might look at many Moscow architectural objects with different eyes.