Recently, I have twice read false judgments about socialist realism, which supposedly remained the theoretical basis of Soviet architecture even after the decree of the Central Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers "On the elimination of excesses in design and construction" of November 4, 1955. First, I met such a statement in the theses of the discussion at the 19th Vienna Congress dedicated to Soviet modernism, and later I found a similar opinion in the text of the report by Dmitry Khmelnitsky with which he spoke in Warsaw on September 13, 2012 at the conference “Poland and Russia. Art and History ". He said: “… the formulation“the method of socialist realism”has survived and found a second life in the post-Stalin era. The style changed, but that did not change anything in the Soviet architectural theory. " This is not true.
In fact, after the aforementioned decree, the so-called "method" of Soviet architecture lost its meaning and, moreover, was directly associated with negative features in the architecture of previous years, and therefore was completely forgotten and "thrown into the dustbin of history" along with the "development of the classical heritage." And how could it be otherwise, if the directive document obliged "… to boldly master the advanced achievements … of foreign construction"? There, as you know, socialist realism "in the afternoon with fire" can not be found. Among the 1000 subjects in my notebooks * there is the following: - “The younger generation of architects has the same understanding of socialist realism in architecture that young Americans have about the Battle of Stalingrad” (entry No. 466 - 1985). However, I have more convincing evidence that I am right.
In 1979, the newspaper "Architecture" No. 9 published an article "Consonant with time" by the director of the Central Research Institute of the History and Theory of Architecture, Doctor of Architecture, Y. Yaralov. He wrote:
- "In recent years this topic has been stubbornly passed over in silence, there is not a single (my detente FN) theoretical work in which an attempt was made to define what is socialist realism in architecture." And further: - "Attempts to directly transfer creative attitudes and principles, in the field of literature, to architecture, attempts to impose on architecture means of expression alien to it, have failed."
And then it was clear that this speech by Yuri Stepanovich was not his personal initiative. The motivating impulse came from the construction department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The director of TsNIITIA had to react. Readers, including myself, responded to his article. In my text, I argued that socialist realism is not any method and that every artist has the right to rely on his own methodology. And here it is appropriate to cite another plot from the same notebooks, which says: - "Having paraphrased Hegel's statement, we can say: -" If all artists are guided by one method, then they are not artists "(No. 864 - 1988). Further, I argued that any Soviet building appears to be socialist in content, because in one way or another it serves social purposes, and the call for a national form entails the mechanical application of decor corresponding to the location of the object. And then, in order to make what was said above conveniently printed, I proposed to classify buildings that carry social innovations and innovative forms as examples of socialist realism. And in conclusion, he told, from the words of a young colleague who studied in Beijing, about a dispute held there on the topic: - "Can an architect of the bourgeois west create an architectural masterpiece?"Its participants came to the unanimous conclusion: "No, it cannot, for it does not know the teachings of Mao Zedong." On the contrary, I expressed my confidence that innovative forms and social innovations may well be inherent in the work of a foreign author.
The noticeable ironic subtext of my article aroused the anger of N. V. Baranov, who oversees the scientific and publishing activities of the ward institute. And he instructed the doctor of art history G. Minervin to give me a decisive rebuff. Georgy Borisovich wrote a response article, but argued with me so delicately that there was no need to answer him in print or in person. As a result, the newspaper discussion turned out to be fruitless, and from then until the end of the history of Soviet architecture there was not even a rumor or a spirit about socialist realism. And of all the other responses to Yaralov's article, I liked the text of an unknown author, whose last name I did not know before and now I have forgotten, which contains the following.
“Socialist realism in architecture serves as a creative method that guides Soviet architecture towards the creation of works worthy of the Soviet people, national in form and socialist in content, based both on the critical assimilation of the world classical heritage, progressive creations of contemporary foreign art, the deep origins of the creativity of its people, so and genuine innovation. As such, socialist realism in architecture is designed to ensure: the humanistic orientation and ideological purity of the works of Soviet architecture, the unity of their form and content, a truthful and highly artistic reflection of socialist reality with its inherent world-leading ideas, as well as the upbringing in every Soviet person of a deep faith in communist ideals, a sense of patriotism and internationalism, the true beauty of the moral and ethical image. Isn't it said suicidal?
I do not exclude that such a defense of socialist realism has convinced the party-building leadership of the hopelessness of attempts to resurrect this ideological corpse. In their midst, there were still intelligent people. And in the twice mentioned notebooks there is another plot on this score: - “An attempt to revive socialist realism is not even a resurrection of a corpse. Rather, it is the desire to re-fill the scarecrow with straw. (No. 779 - 1986).
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* Felix Novikov. "Between times" // TATLIN. 2010.
