Located 37 km from Moscow along the Leningradskoye Highway, the satellite city of Zelenograd, now administratively a district of the capital, went down in history as a realized modernist ensemble of the city of the future, as it was imagined in the late 1950s and 1960s. In the Soviet Union, many science cities were built, but not all had their own author - not without reason the name of Igor Pokrovsky is equalized in the title of the book with the city itself. It is difficult to imagine such a significant role of the chief architect today, but for almost 40 years it was Pokrovsky's workshop that designed all the key buildings for which the city became famous.
Zelenograd had a prototype - a new green satellite city of Helsinki, Tapiola. The snow-white modernist buildings, picturesquely placed in the middle of the forest, made a strong impression on the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, NS Khrushchev. The leader of the country, as is known from history, was distinguished by a creative character, was the initiator of industrial construction and boldly went to experiments. Architects readily embraced this experimental spirit. By the mid-1960s, Igor Pokrovsky became one of the leaders of the modernist movement in Soviet architecture, and by a happy coincidence he has where to apply his talents: a new city for young science is being built in Zelenograd.
In the memoirs of contemporaries, of whom this book is composed, it is felt that all the participants in the project were possessed by some kind of thaw, youthful fuse. Everyone was inspired, carried away by the creative process, believed that they were doing a common cause that the country needed. And it was very organically woven into the very theme of the city of the future - and Zelenograd was without exaggeration. The emotional upsurge largely explains why everything happened so well in Zelenograd: city-forming ensembles, complexes of key scientific and educational buildings, blocks of typical residential development conceived by the general plan were implemented. Here personal exploits, and overcoming the difficulties of construction and "resistance" of materials, and the usual Russian ingenuity with inventing technologies on the go in conditions of shortage took place. Sometimes it was necessary to take risks - it was so unusual what was done. And the most interesting thing is that the risk was met with understanding and even with approval. Felix Novikov recalls how the Minister of the Electronic Industry Alexander Shokin, the main customer of the construction, was shocked when he first saw the council room of the Scientific Center. In the middle of the hall, above the conference table, a huge tube of overhead light hung from the ceiling, and in surprise the tall leader exclaimed: "This is the Inquisition!" But when he heard the author's answer: "We wanted to do this," he suddenly exclaimed: "Well done!"
Very accurately this state of general elation was described by Ernst Unknown's student Elena Elagina, recalling how a gigantic relief was created in the "field conditions" around the lobby and auditoriums of the main building of the Institute of Electronic Technology - at that time the largest project of the then persecuted and now famous sculptor. They risked their health, worked with plaster in the rain and cold under the still open contour of the interiors, but who was it to stop then …
Ernst Neizvestny was not the only "non-architect" who joined the creative community of Pokrovsky's workshop. Painters, sculptors, scientists worked together, and in the chapter "Clock, Gun and Music" Felix Novikov recalls how he turned to Mikael Tariverdiev for music for the clock of the MIET entrance portal. The composer said: “I'll come and see. If you like it, I will write. " I came and wrote. And this creative community eventually gave birth to a unique ensemble.
Time is acutely felt in the figurative structure of Zelenograd. It was, of course, influenced by the fact that the city was originally designed for the young Soviet intelligentsia. The average age of a resident in 1967 was only 23 years old. The science city was built for experiments in the youngest industry in the Union. In addition, a higher educational institution of electronic technology was to appear here. Only at the turn of the 1950-60s. the first graduates appeared in the USSR with the inscription in the diploma: "specialty - cybernetics", which was previously considered a bourgeois science.
Young scientists were given apartments, mostly in standard series, but there were also individual residential projects. One of them was the famous "Flute". And later, at the suggestion of Boris N. Yeltsin, a Youth Residential Complex was built in Zelenograd and then worked in a workshop aboutPokrovsky, Totan Kuzembaev, on the pages of the book, recalls how enthusiastically young architects designed the prototype of modern coliving, feeling that they were doing something important for history.
With the death of Igor Pokrovsky and the collapse of the collectives, institutions and creative unions that formed in Soviet times, the organic development of the Zelenograd idea ceased to work out. He was badly spoiled by the construction of alien objects. With this, the half-century chronology of the development of the science city ends, as if with a big question - what to do next? However, in order not to put an end to the sad, the author nevertheless made the final of the book positive: Felix Novikov ends his review with a proposal to erect in Zelenograd a monument to its founder - Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev - a man without whom Zelenograd would not exist. It's hard to argue with that.
