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ABSTRACT
During the first Five-Year Plan, the Soviet state relied on the expert knowledge of groups of German and other foreign workers (architects, planners, skilled labourers) to design and build the standardized housing projects for industrial cities. This paper outlines the complicated transfer of Western planning ideas and designs into actual built spaces, focusing on the gap between initial plans and the makeshift and provisional types of housing that were constructed in the Soviet industrial city of the early 1930s, amidst escalating attacks on functionalist architecture and constantly fluctuating attitudes toward foreign specialists.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Natallia Barykina received her PhD in Geography from the University of Toronto in 2015. Her dissertation addressed the modernist production of space and housing reform in Weimar Germany and the Soviet Union of the 1930s. Currently pursuing a Master’s of Information degree at the University of Toronto, her scholarly interests are situated at the intersections of critical urban geography, the history of architecture internationally, and archival practices.
Notes
1 As cited in Lefaivre and Tzonis, Architecture of Regionalism, 113.
2 Meerovich, “Ernst Mai: ratsional’noe zhilio dlia Rossii,” 134.
3 Flierl, “Possibly the Greatest Task the Architect Ever Faced,” 161.
4 Tafuri, The Sphere and The Labyrinth, 230.
5 Akcan, Architecture in Translation, 3–4.
6 David-Fox, Crossing Borders, 16.
7 “Concerning Policy of Eliminating Kulaks as a Class,” 185.
8 Flierl, “Possibly the Greatest Task an Architect Ever Faced,” 158.
9 Decree of TsK (Central Committee of the Communist Party) and SNK (Russian Council of People’s Comissars) of 23 November 1927, as cited in Konysheva and Meerovich, Ernst Mai, 8.
10 GARF, f.A-314, op.1, d.7667, ll. 116–17, as cited in Konysheva and Meerovich, Ernst Mai, 172.
11 Documentary film Sotzgorod, directed by Anna Abrahams.
12 Ernst May, “City Councillor May’s Russian Plans,” reprinted from Bauwelt, XXXVI, Berlin 1930, 1156, in Lissitzky, An Architecture for World Revolution, 174–5.
13 Ibid., 174.
14 Flierl, “Possibly the Greatest Task an Architect Ever Faced,” 158–9.
15 “Protiv otorvannosti ot zhizni,” reprinted from Pravda 29 May 1930, in Sovremennaia Arhitektura 1–2, 1930.
16 Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture, 260.
17 Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde, 201.
18 Kopp, “Foreign Architects in the Soviet Union,” 190.
19 “Hannes Meyer über Sovietrußland,” 1602.
20 Richardson, “Hannes Meyer and the General Plan,” 109–24.
21 Schütte-Lihotzky, “Mebel’ dlia detskikh sadov v Aakhene, Germaniia, 1930 g.,” 20.
22 Schütte-Lihotzky, “Sanitarno-tekhnicheskoe oborudovanie kvartir na zapade,” 29–37.
23 El Lissitzky, “Idoly i idolopoklonniki,” Stroitel’naia Promyshlennost’ 11–12 (1928): 854, as cited in Bliznakov, “Soviet Housing,” 137.
24 Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture, 284.
25 Kopp, Town and Revolution, 171–8.
26 Miliutin, Sotzgorod, 65.
27 Starr, “Visionary Town Planning,” 207–38; Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, 190–204.
28 Starr, “Visionary Town Planning,” 226.
29 Valliant-Couturier, “Magnetogorsk . The Giant Plant of the Second Metallurgical Base.”
30 Borngräber, “Foreign Architects in the USSR,” 59.
31 Nizhnik, “Genplan Orska,” 313.
32 Ibid., 313.
33 Ibid., 314.
34 Püschel, “Die Tätigkeit der Gruppe Hannes Meyer,” 471.
35 Borngräber, “Foreign Architects in the USSR,” 59.
36 Qualls, From Ruins to Reconstruction, 85.
37 Arkin, Arkhitektura sovremennogo zapada, 139.
38 Mostakov, “Bezobraznoe nasledstvo.”
39 Nizhnik, “Genplan Orska,” 315.
40 Ibid., 316–17.
41 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 161.
42 Schwagenscheidt’s letter to Hermann Schauffler, 6 August 1932, cited in Preusler and Burghard, Walter Schwagenscheidt 1886–1968, 104.
43 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 53.
44 Meerovich, “Ernst Mai: Ratsional’noe Zil’io,” 134. “Introduction” in Khromov et al., 13.
45 Khromov suggests that the date is not 1927, but 1926.
46 GARF f. R-5446, op.3, d.73, l.2–3, as cited in Khromov et al., Industrializatsia, 224–5.
47 Ibid, 225.
48 RTsKhIDNI f.17, op.3, d. 698, l.3–4, as cited in Khromov et al., 233–4.
49 As cited in David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, 184.
50 Castillo, “Stalinist Modern,” 142.
51 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 110.
52 Konysheva and Meerovich, Ernst Mai, 42–3.
53 Konysheva and Meerovich, Ernst Mai, 57–8.
54 David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, 184–5.
55 Stalin, Works, 128.
56 David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment, 185.
57 Fitzpatrick, “Cultural Revolution as Class War,” 34–7.
58 RGAE f.7297, op. 38, d. 289, l. 65–74, as cited in Khromov et al., 263–4.
59 Stalin, Works, 68.
60 “Arbeitsvertrag mit der Cekombank vom 15. Juli 1930” in Flierl, Standardstädte, 418–19.
61 Ibid., 418.
62 Viola, The Unknown Gulag, 2.
63 Polian, Ne po svoei vole, 68.
64 Viola, The Unknown Gulag, 97.
65 As cited in in Stalin i Kaganovich, Perepiska, 73.
66 Polian, Ne po svoei vole, 68.
67 Viola, The Unknown Gulag, 78.
68 Ibid., 4.
69 Viola, Peasant Rebels Under Stalin, 29.
70 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 281.
71 Püschel, Wege eines Bauhäuslers, 85.
72 Polian, Ne po svoei vole, 12.
73 Bedin, Kushnikova, and Togulev, Kemerovo i Stalinsk , 134.
74 Khromov et al., Industrializatsia, 244–5.
75 GARF f.7416, op. 1, d.151, l.53, in Khromov et al., Industrializatsia, 266.
76 As cited and translated in Borngräber, “Foreign Architects in the USSR,” 58.
77 RGAE f.7297, op. 38, d.37, l.54–57 in Khromov et al., 246.
78 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 35.
79 As cited in Viola, The Unknown Gulag, 77.
80 As cited in Meerovich, Kvadratnye metry, 190–1.
81 Ibid., 192.
82 Viola, The Unknown Gulag, 80.
83 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 472.
84 Ibid., 164.
85 Bedin, Kushnikova, and Togulev, Kuznetskstroi v arkhivnykh dokumentakh, 250.
86 Frankfurt, Rozhdenie stali I cheloveka, 167–8.
87 Ibid., 168–71.
88 GARF, f. 9414, op. 1, d.1944, l.98. The Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State Microfilm Collection are located at the State Archives of the Russian Federation (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii, GARF) in Moscow; at the Lamont library at Harvard University some materials of the collections are on microfilm. These archival documents are cited according to the collection (fond), inventory (opis), file (delo) and folio (list, l in singular, ll in the plural).
89 Viola, The Unknown Gulag, 128.
90 Polian, Ne po svoey vole, 13.
91 GARF, f.9479, op. 1, d.3, l.82.
92 GARF, f.9479, op. 1, d.6, ll. 7–9.
93 GARF, f. 9479, op.1, d. 9, l. 19.
94 Witkin, An American Engineer in Stalin’s Russia, 234.
95 “Addendum. Dispatches from Moscow” in Scott, Behind the Urals, 282.
96 Dominique, Secrets of Siberia, 183.
97 Schwagenscheidt, letter to Ernst Hopmann, 1.1.1931, as cited in Preusler, Walter Schwagenscheidt 1886–1968, 96.
98 Borngräber, “Ausländische Architekten,” 118.
99 Tolziner, “Mit Hannes Meyer am Bauhaus und in der Sowjetunion,” 250.
100 Konysheva and Meerovich, Ernst Mai, 196.
101 Wolters, Spezialist in Sibirien/Spetsialist v Sibiri (1932).
102 Ibid., 73–5.
103 Dominique, Secrets of Siberia, 111–12.
104 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain, 120.
105 Scott, Behind the Urals, 91.
106 Ruble, “From Khrushcheby to Korobki,” 232–70.