Dear Grigory Isakovich!
I accidentally turned on "Echo of Moscow" at the moment when Vitaly Dymarsky began a conversation with you and listened to it with pleasure. As always, your opinions were meaningful and - I have no doubt - interested the listeners of the radio station. But since the time in question I vividly remember, I would like to bring to your attention a different version of some of the circumstances accompanying Khrushchev's architectural "perestroika". This is his definition.
Stalin had absolutely nothing to do with this case. The assignment to prepare the All-Union Conference of Builders was personally given to the relevant department of the Central Committee by Khrushchev. And the installation for industrialization was also given to them. As for the letter from Gradov, receiving such a document "from below" was included in the plans for the preparation of the event and, as you understand, there was party logic in this. And then personal moments arise.
Three friends of the architect studied together - Gradov (he was an architect, not an engineer - this is his pseudonym - his real name is Sutyagin), Shchetinin and Pozharsky. Gradov was engaged in the design of objects for the city of Stalinsk in the Kemerovo region (later and now Novokuznetsk), and with all the excesses - towers, spiers and other things that relied at that time, I will mention Pozharsky below, and Shchetinin was an instructor in the construction department of the Central Committee of the party. And when the need arose for that very letter, friends, after consulting, appointed Georgy Alexandrovich as its author. Of course, this was agreed. He willingly took up this business, not without reason, believing that the loss will not remain.
The meeting took place and Gradov spoke from the Kremlin rostrum, for which he was co-opted into the Board of the SA of the USSR and appointed its secretary. But this story had an interesting continuation. A year later, the II Congress of Architects gathered and at a meeting of the party group that determined the lists of the new board, delegate David Khodzhaev spoke, withdrew Gradov's candidacy and an open vote with a challenge agreed. Six years later, Gradov will become the director of the TsNIIEP of educational buildings and then Pozharsky will take the place of his deputy for science. That was the case.
I think that the comparison between Gradov and Timashuk is groundless. The doctors' case was more abrupt. And the main thing at that meeting was the speech of Khrushchev himself. However, he did not accuse our brother of sabotage. In wastefulness - yes, he talked about "creating monuments to himself", well, and so on. He must have heard Napoleon's assertion that architects are capable of ruining any state (the emperor also said the same about women, but Khrushchev was not interested in this topic). Your thesis about the destruction of the profession is also too cool. “Our dear Nikita Sergeevich” did something else - he put a contractor over an architect, and this is still not the same thing. Of course, it was difficult to engage in innovations, if necessary, to coordinate design solutions with the builder, but all the more honor to those who succeeded.
Now about the old professors. The resolution of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers “On the elimination of excesses came out almost a year after the meeting. And only then were the guidelines and orientation towards the advanced Western experience given. Punished were - Polyakov, Rybitsky, Dushkin, Efimovich, the chief architects of the cities of Gorky and Kharkov. Polyakov and Zakharov lost their Mosproekt workshops by the decision of the Moscow City Committee of the party. He did not give up his profession, he was excommunicated from it. This is the case of Furtseva, then the 1st secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU. Zakharov suffered for the development project of Lyusinovskaya Street, where he conceived to build six (!) Identical high-rise buildings with a cascade of floors and spiers similar to the high-rise on Kudrinskaya Square (photo attached).
Grigory Alekseevich was a professor. And the rest of the professors remained at their workshops. I worked in Sobolev's workshop, next door was Sinyavsky's workshop. Nobody touched them. True, a few years later, the director of Mosproekt, Osmer, who was the party organizer of the Central Committee at the Magnitogorsk metallurgical plant during the war years, suggested that both professors, who worked in Mosproekt part-time, decide which work was the main one for them. Both preferred teaching, but this, you see, is another reason. You claim that no one is left of the older generation. However, Vladimir Georgievich Gelfreich, who was 70 in 55, continued to lead the workshop and 10 years later in the same position was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. Boris Mikhailovich Iofan, until the 66th, supervised the development of Izmailov and Maryina Roshcha.
You said in passing that Gosstroy became the Academy of Architecture instead. But this
not so - he was with her and after her, and instead became the Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture, headed by a certain Bekhtin, who did not have academic titles and degrees.
I doubt that Khrushchev was delighted with the Stalinist skyscrapers. After all, it was he who stopped the construction of the last of them, the Chechulinskaya in Zaradie, although
the frame has already risen a good fifty meters. And then it was dismantled and the metal went into the construction of the stadium in Luzhniki.
You say that the Palace of Congresses was completed under Brezhnev. But this construction site was closed in 61st for the opening of the 22nd Party Congress - the very one at which Khrushchev promised: "The current generation of Soviet people will live under communism!"
I would like to offer you a different version of the origin of the Novy Arbat ensemble. First of all, let us remember that it was drawn by the plan for the reconstruction of Moscow in 1935, that is, by the Stalin plan. It was not Khrushchev who was captivated by the appearance of the Cuban capital, but his son-in-law and editor-in-chief of the Izvestia newspaper, Adzhubei. He suggested that his father-in-law send the chief architect of Moscow there so that he could look at the "Fox House", which resembled a book in its form. And Mikhail Vasilyevich went. And then, as I recall in the summer of 62, a meeting of the Archplan was held under the chairmanship of Demichev, the 1st secretary of the Moscow City Committee of the CPSU, at which Posokhin reported on the draft of the New Arbat and I was present. First, the "Fox House" was presented - plans, sections, facades, and then the "books" of the avenue, which were then residential. Only in Havana were the gentlemen and the servants divided according to plan, but we, of course, then this could not have been. All this will be confirmed by Mikhail Mikhailovich Posokhin. And about the fact that the avenue, which appeared just in time for the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution, was perceived as America, you are right. It was exactly so. And the "kokhinorite" Tolya Panchenko sang "The Song of the Two Arbats" to the well-known melody of Okudzhava, the words of which were written by your humble servant. It ended like this:
From the Kremlin, from the Palace you flow to the Moscow River, Where the CMEA opened its façade above it.
Ah Arbat, New Arbat, you are my America, You are my Havana, you are almost Broadway.
I remain a sincere admirer of your texts.
Best wishes
Felix Novikov
