The amount of attention poured into Soviet architecture in the 1960s and 1980s has increased dramatically in recent years. However, the process of revaluation that has begun is expressed, first of all, in various kinds of popularization projects and primary collection of material. Discussions that occur from time to time show that clear criteria for assessing the heritage of this period have not yet been developed, the conceptual apparatus for its analysis has not been developed, periodization has not been established, the factors that influenced the change of stages and determined the regional specifics of the phenomenon that we have just agreed on have not been identified. called Soviet post-war modernism. Olga Kazakova is one of the few researchers who study it within the framework of the academic paradigm, while distancing themselves from the Soviet tradition of describing post-Stalinist architecture. Three of her articles, published in 2011–2014, are devoted to the early, "thaw" stage of Soviet modernism. Two of them are analyzes of the most important "cases" that set the direction for the development of architecture in the 1960s, and the third is an attempt to define the aesthetic criteria of the architecture of the thaw.
The article "The concept of" modernity "in the architecture of the" thaw "- from ethics to aesthetics" [1] is based on the analysis of textual sources in relation to historical circumstances and with examples from both architecture and other arts - from literature to painting. The author shows how the category of "truthfulness" was understood and how it was transformed from ethical into aesthetic (it approaches "expediency" and "real", opposes both "falsehood" and "excesses"), and then does the same with "openness "/" Freedom "/" space "and" ease ", which meant not only freedom from the force of gravity, but also freedom of movement - both in space and in time, from the present to the future. The last feature, which brought the concepts of "modernity" and "future" closer together, is, according to Kazakova, key: at the end of the 1950s, architecture ceased to be mimetic ("to reflect in his works the greatness of the era of building communism", citing the words of A. G. Mordvinov 1951) and became projective, which itself should bring communism closer. The aesthetics and pathos of architecture of the early 1960s are quite convincingly deduced from the local context, and it is all the more interesting that not only the result, but the categories themselves, to a large extent coincide with foreign analogues.
Nowhere have the futuristic aspirations of the architecture of the thaw epoch been more clearly manifested than in the competitive projects of the World Exhibition, which was to be held in Moscow in 1967. In an article dedicated to her [2] Olga Kazakova examines the materials of the two stages of the competition, which took place in 1961-1962. The task of designing an exhibition complex on the territory of 50 hectares, which would show the whole world how far towards a happy future the USSR had moved towards the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, completely deprived the architects of a sense of reality, most of whom were engaged in the design and binding of standard objects in everyday life. The euphoria from the launch of a person into Space gave rise to belief in the limitless possibilities of science and technology, allowing one to neglect even the laws of physics. In the project submitted for the first stage of the competition by Mikhail Posokhin, Vladimir Svirsky and Boris Tkhor, the main pavilion was a sphere of three Moscow State University buildings, hovering over an artificial lake on cables attached to a huge steel ring. The proposals of the other participants were slightly more workable. But, although the party promised the coming of communism by 1980, the government could not allocate a budget corresponding to the scale of the exhibition set by the program. As a result, Moscow simply refused to host the World Exhibition: as you know, Expo-67 was held in Montreal, and the competition materials suffered the usual fate for paper architecture - to serve as a source of ideas for more mundane projects.
Finally, "Palace of Soviets: To Be Continued" [3] tells about the 1957-1959 competition, which played no less important role in the formation of post-Stalinist architecture than the 1931-1933 competition in the formation of Stalinist architecture, as well as about the post-competition design of the government center on Southwest, stopped in 1962 in connection with the construction of the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin. And if the materials of the competition were published and to some extent entered the narrative of the history of Soviet architecture, then the history of the real design of the modernist Palace of Soviets at the foot of Moscow State University is described by Kazakova for the first time. Alas, the documents of the Office about the design of the Palace of Soviets (UPDS), once deposited in the archive, could not be found. The sources used were the stories of the living participants of this work and the few figurative materials preserved in their homes. But although the sumptuous graphic sheets, which all the witnesses remember, are lost, the remainder still makes a strong impression. Under the leadership of Andrey Vlasov, a whole system of updating the architectural language was created. According to Alexander Kudryavtsev, graduates of the Moscow Architectural Institute, who were distinguished not only by their creative abilities, but also by good knowledge of foreign languages, were invited to work at the UPDS. Their task was to study the latest foreign literature, subscribed to a specially created library, and share the knowledge gained with senior comrades. In parallel with the development of the architectural solution and structures of the Palace, experiments were carried out in the field of interior decoration; a separate group worked on the landscape of the park - open to the public and containing both administrative and public facilities. The modernist park was supposed to become the center of the South-West region and the second center of Moscow, abolishing the centuries-old monocentricity that hinders the development of the city and is strongly associated with the idea of authoritarian power. About this idea and broke. The push for the democratization of governance, which was still strong at the time of the competition, had fizzled out by 1962. Nikita Khrushchev made a choice in favor of the Palace of Congresses in the Kremlin. If this had not happened, we would have lived in a different city and, probably, in a different country.
[1] Kazakova O. V. "The concept of" modernity "in the architecture of the" thaw "- from ethics to aesthetics." In the book: "Aesthetics of the Thaw: New in architecture, art, culture" / ed. O. V. Kazakova. - M.: Russian political encyclopedia (ROSSPEN), 2013. S. 161–173.
[2] Kazakova O. V. 1967 World Exhibition in Moscow // Project Russia 60, 2011.
[3] Kazakova O. V. “Palace of the Soviets. To be continued”// Project Russia 70, 2014. P. 221–228.
