Felix Novikov:
Perhaps we will not find another creative phenomenon in the history of world architecture, the birth of which is associated with a specific day in the calendar. We believe that the project of the Palace of Labor of the Vesnin brothers played a major role in the formation of constructivism. However, in the competition for the project of this object, which was then considered the main building of the country, at the insistence of the jury member Zholtovsky Vesnins received the third prize and it took time to properly assess the significance of this project. No one disputes the importance of the competition for the project of the Palace of Soviets in the formation of Stalinist architecture, but it lasted for more than one year. And only Soviet modernism has an exact date of its foundation.
I mean November 4, 1955 - the day on which the party and government decree "On the elimination of excesses in design and construction" was issued. Three provisions became its basis.
- The addresses of the buildings and the names of the authors who became the object of criticism were named. The chief architects of the cities and heads of workshops lost their positions, and the previously received Stalin prizes were taken away. It became obvious that the authorities would no longer tolerate such an architecture.
- The text of the directive document says: “To oblige - the following are the organizations that are concerned - to more boldly master the achievements of domestic and FOREIGN construction ". It is clear that after such an imperious parting word, a window to the world was opened and we found the desired impulse of renewal in the Western experience. Then our progressive legacy of the 1920s was revealed to us. But only our avant-garde was the experience of a quarter of a century ago, relied on handicraft construction production, and we needed new technologies, we had to see and, moreover, feel how new architecture is being made.
- It proposed to announce competitions for standard projects. And they were held across the entire range of residential and public buildings with generous prizes, which had never happened before. And they gave the desired result - projects that meet the new requirements for any construction - a residential building, kindergarten, school, store, cinema, hospital, and so on. And there was undoubtedly a social element in this.
Somehow I received an e-mail asking: “Who is the father of Soviet modernism? Corbusier, Mies, Kahn? I replied that they can be considered gods, and their own father is undoubtedly Nikita Khrushchev. With the above document, he impregnated Soviet architecture and it gave birth to modernism. November 4, 1955, I consider the day of his conception. Today we have reason to celebrate the 61st anniversary of that turning point in our architectural history. In this regard, I had the idea of establishing a professional holiday - the day of the modernist.
Soviet modernism left a bright mark on each of the Soviet republics. During this period, the names of wonderful masters who are no longer with us and who left memorable architectural images - Abdul Akhmedov, Victor Yegerev, Yakov Belopolsky, Abraham Miletsky, Mart Port, Leonid Pavlov, Nikolai Ripinsky, Jim Torosyan, Spartak Khachikyan entered the history of Soviet architecture, Vytautas Chekanauskas, Ilya Chernyavsky, Georgy Chakhava. And the list of modernist masters goes on.
And I will note by the way that it is not by chance that the avant-gardists of neo-modernism of the 21st century, Sergei Skuratov and Vladimir Plotkin, were born in that very year 1955, and exactly ten years later, in 1965, the third of them, Yuri Grigoryan, was born. This is how the law of succession manifests itself.
The day of the modernist could have been instituted if there was no world day of architecture on the first Monday in October - too close. And there would be no public holiday on November 4th. But nothing prevents us from making this day a red day of the calendar for the recently created institution of modernism. Modernism is an eternal business. There will always be modernists. And therefore, I congratulate the newly-minted scientific stronghold of the modernist movement, the Union of Architects of Russia and my like-minded people on the Day of the modernist.
