Before the 1917 revolution, Shchusev was one of the best and most distinctive modern architects, which can be clearly seen in his designs for churches. In the 1920s, Shchusev became a constructivist, one of the first and also one of the best in Russia. In 1931, Shchusev switched to a new Stalinist style, and was among its founders, became the author of the very first and perhaps the most odious Stalinist structures.
All of his numerous titles and awards, as well as the status of one of the largest Soviet architects, Shchusev earned in Stalin's time, for projects devoid of any artistic merit, but best suited to the tastes of government customers. At the same time, his real successes - pre-revolutionary times and the 20s - remained in the shadows, without analysis, and many practically without mention. Pre-revolutionary church architecture in Soviet times could not be seriously mentioned. But Shchusev, a Stalinist eclectic, even in the late Soviet era, completely overshadowed Shchusev, an exquisite and emotional constructivist.
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zooming 1/3 Competitive project of the library. Lenin. 2nd round, 1929. Perspective Source: Forge of great architecture. Soviet contests 1920-1950s. M., 2014, p. 115
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zooming 2/3 Project of the building of the Central Telegraph in Moscow, Okhotny Ryad, 1926 Source: Modern architecture, no. 3, p. 75
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zooming 3/3 Project of the State Bank in Moscow, Neglinnaya, 1927 Source: Yearbook of the MAO No. 5, 1928, p 93
In terms of the number of Stalinist prizes, Shchusev is ahead of all Soviet architects - he has four of them. The Stalin Prizes were established in 1941 and at the same time Shchusev received the Stalin Prize of the first degree for the project of the building of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Tbilisi (built in 1938).
In 1946 - the Stalin Prize of the second degree for the interior design of the Lenin Mausoleum.
In 1948 - the Stalin Prize of the first degree for the project of the building of the Theater named after A. Navoi in Tashkent.
In 1952, Shchusev posthumously received the Stalin Prize of the second degree for the project of the Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya station of the Moscow metro.
During the Soviet era, more books were published about Shchusev than about any other Soviet architect. The first brochure with his biography and a list of works was published in 1947, on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Shchusev. [I] In 1952, a book by N. B. Sokolov “A. V. Shchusev.”[Ii] In 1954, the book“Works of Academician A. V. Shchusev, awarded the Stalin Prize”was published [iii]. In 1955 the book by E. V. Druzhinina-Georgievskaya and Ya. A. Kornfeld “Architect A. V. Shchusev.”[Iv] The next book, in 1978, was published by K. N. Afanasyev “A. V. Shchusev ".
The first post-Soviet publication was the book “Aleksey Shchusev”, published in 2011. [v] It was based on the memoirs of Aleksey Shchusev's brother, engineer Pavel Shchusev, written in the 50s according to the rules of Stalin's time.
In 2013, Diana Kaypen-Varditz's book "The Temple Architecture of Shchusev" was published. [Vi] And, finally, in 2015, a fictionalized biography of Shchusev by Alexander Vaskin appeared in the ZhZL series [vii].
In addition to monographs on the work of Shchusev, several books about his individual buildings were published at different times. The earliest (1951) - a book about the architecture of the building of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Tbilisi, which received the Stalin Prize in 1941. [viii] In 2013, an album was released - a catalog of an exhibition in the Shchusev Museum dedicated to the design of the Kazan railway station in Moscow. In 2014, a book was published about the Russian pavilion in Venice [ix], and in 2017 - about the temple in Bari. [X]
Of all the books devoted to Shchusev's work, only the monograph by Diana Keipen-Varditz "Shchusev's Temple Architecture" meets the criteria of scientific research, although it covers only a part (however, the most significant) of Shchusev's pre-revolutionary work. In the book of Capeen-Varditz, not only is Shchusev's artistic evolution analyzed, but also the circumstances of the design and construction of individual buildings are analyzed in detail - the methods of obtaining orders, the relationship of the architect with the customers, the customers themselves and the construction process are described. Plus, the social and cultural background on which Shchusev's activities took place was recreated. It can be considered that this particular section of Shchusev's work has been exhaustively studied. The rest of his creative biography is still in a fog.
In all Soviet publications, precisely the pre-revolutionary work of Shchusev was hushed up. And the Soviet was presented apologetically and in full accordance with the state guidelines regarding the history of Soviet architecture. The settings of Stalin's time were very different from those of the Khrushchev-Brezhnev era, but both of them had nothing to do with the real history of Soviet architecture. In both cases, it was argued that the transition from constructivism to Stalinist architecture in the early 1930s was natural, evolutionary, and voluntary. And that all Soviet architects were sincerely imbued with the spirit of the "Stalinist Empire" and were happy to work in it. The official thesis of the late 40s - early 50s said that Shchusev was a great architect in all his manifestations, but especially in the Stalin era, which brought him all the main awards and titles. This thesis has happily survived to our time and is constantly reproduced in numerous publications.
In the book by Selim Khan-Magomedov "Lenin's Mausoleum" (1972) there is a phrase that was fronder for those times: "Not all of Shchusev's works are artistically equal. He worked with greater dedication to his creative powers when he was sincerely convinced of the correctness of the chosen creative direction. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the greatest interest from an artistic point of view is represented by his works of the early XX century, when Shchusev tried to oppose the eclecticism of the traditions of ancient Russian architecture, and his works of the second half of the 1920s, when he worked with enthusiasm in the mainstream of the creative direction of those years. xi]
It is understood that during Stalin's time neither Shchusev nor his colleagues were sincerely convinced of the correctness of what they were doing. That they were forced to do it. And that sincerity in creativity is an essential component of artistic quality.
1972 - the end of the thaw. At that time, the official Soviet historiography of the Brezhnev period had not yet formed, which artistically equated all epochs of Soviet architecture and made it impossible to discuss the sincerity of the work of individual Soviet architects. It was believed that everyone was sincere and always by default, since they sincerely followed the instructions of the party.
In fact, laudatory odes to Shchusev's works of the 1930s and 1940s discredit his real successes of previous eras. And this is a pity, because Shchusev's work undoubtedly deserves a deep and differentiated analysis. And not at all for the reasons for which he was included in the pantheon of "the greatest Soviet architects" even under Stalin.
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The creative biography of Shchusev of the Soviet era is full of secrets, black spots and problems that are almost insoluble at the current level of knowledge.
First, there is the problem of finding out the social status of Shchusev in Soviet times and the places of his service.
Secondly, the problem of finding out the authorship - the authorship of his projects and the authorship of his design graphics.
Thirdly, the problem of customers and relationships with them.
Fourthly, it is a very difficult problem of identifying what in his projects comes from his own views, and what is imposed by customers, bosses and censors. The same applies to the analysis of the texts of his speeches and articles.
Fifth, the problem of studying his personal, human and creative qualities.
The complexity of solving these problems is generated by the specifics of Soviet culture in the 1920s and 1940s. Ideological and artistic censorship, the destruction of architecture as a free profession, the transformation of all architects into co-employees and embedding them in the departmental hierarchy, completely subordinate to the Politburo, the almost complete absence of uncensored sources of information about the events of that time, complete official unanimity of all censored sources of information - all these characteristic features Soviet dictatorships were unprecedented and sharply distinguished its internal life from what was happening outside the borders of the USSR. Hence, difficulties arise that are unthinkable when studying the work of architects from other eras and / or other countries. At the same time, without taking into account this specificity and attempts to solve the problems generated by it, it is unthinkable to study the work of not only Shchusev, but also any of his colleagues.
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Before the revolution, Shchusev was a freelance architect. He took private and state orders, hired employees for his personal workshop, but there were no bosses over him. Shchusev was free both in the choice of customers and in the choice of artistic solutions. Shchusev himself wrote in his 1938 autobiography with poorly concealed nostalgia about pre-revolutionary times: “The main social customer was the Russian government. … Orders were considered "state-owned" they were not liked. Who was in the service, he worked. The main consumer was a private customer - commercial and industrial capital, banks with a lot of money or insurance companies, not to mention the townsfolk, capitalists who ordered a house to receive income from it. Young best architects were often left without orders, but they kept the mark of art and this gave them great satisfaction, since they believed: “Let us live badly, but we will not lower our skill, we will not sink to the level of philistineism.” [Xii]
In Soviet, especially in Stalin's time, the refusal of government orders (and generally the choice of customers) was absolutely impossible for architects. Everyone was at the service.
Formally, at the time of the NEP, private entrepreneurship was allowed, including private architectural activities. In reality, there were practically no private design offices in the USSR in the 1920s. There were either state (within various departments) or joint-stock companies with a predominance of state capital. [Xiii] The latter, by the end of the 1920s (with the beginning of industrialization), became completely state-owned, and architects were prohibited from obtaining private side orders (“homework”) …
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zooming 1/4 Sanatorium No. 7 in New Matsesta. Perspective Source: Tokarev. A. Architecture of the South of Russia. Rostov-on-Don, 2018, p. 231. 1927_4a - CA, No. 3, 1927, p. 99
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zooming 2/4 Alexander Grinberg and Alexey Shchusev. Competitive project of the house of Koopstrakhsoyuz in Moscow, 1928. Perspective Source: Yearbook LOAH №13, 1928, p. 22
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zooming 3/4 Alexander Grinberg and Alexey Shchusev. Competitive project of the house of Koopstrakhsoyuz in Moscow, 1928. Plan of the 1st floor Source: Yearbook LOAH No. 13, 1928, p. 22
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zooming 4/4 Intourist Hotel in Baku. Plan. 1931 Source: Sokolov, N. B. A. V. Shchusev. Moscow, 1952, p. fifty
From the very beginning of the Soviet era, Shchusev was a big boss, worked in government organizations, and carried out important government orders. But among the well-known organizations (about them below), in which he worked, there are no those in which the design of the largest, most important, and, most often, secret objects of the 20-30s could take place. These are Lenin's mausoleum, scientific institutes, the Military Transport Academy, the government sanatorium in Matsesta, the Intourist Hotel (OGPU) in Baku and Batumi, the building of the People's Commissariat for Land and many more famous projects.
In the preface written by Shchusev to the "Yearbook of the MAO" No. 5, dated November 30, 1927, there is a phrase: "Now that production and design are grouped in large teams in government agencies …". [xiv]
1927 is just the beginning of Stalin's reforms, the development of the first five-year plan and a plan for the collectivization of the entire Soviet economy and the entire Soviet society. Including architects. Shchusev by this time undoubtedly headed such a "large team" in the "government agencies." But its name and departmental affiliation still remain a mystery.
There is an episode in Pavel Shchusev's book dating back to 1933, when Shchusev had to redesign the Mossovet hotel: “More than once, returning home in the evening, he said, fingering the strings of his guitar, how he didn’t want to take over the management of another workshop and how difficult to create a new type of Soviet hotel based on the constructivist forms of the building under construction”.[xv] This phrase gives reason to believe that, and after in 1933 Shchusev headed the newly created workshop of the Moscow City Council No. 2, his first mysterious workshop continued to exist. This is also evidenced by the fact that not all of Shchusev's employees working on projects of the 20s - 30s are known as employees of workshop No. 2. Some work places remain in the fog.
Apparently, the vast majority of Shchusev's projects were secret and were developed in closed organizations. For the same reason, the design documentation for Shchusev's buildings is almost unknown, and it is not clear where it is located. Many projects are known only from the scant publications of that time. And for some buildings there is nothing at all except photographs of the facades, as, for example, is the case with the building of the NKVD-MGB on Lubyanskaya Square. Only in 1999 in the book "Lubyanka 2. From the history of domestic counterintelligence" were published colored perspectives of the main facade, made in 1940 by Eugene Lansere.
For example, the plans of the underground part of the stone mausoleum of Lenin, built in 1930, remain a mystery. Compared to the wooden mausoleum of 1925, its underground volume has increased 12 times, but what the building looks like as a whole is unknown. Shchusev has a lot of projects published so flawed that it is difficult to judge about them.
The problem of authorship of Shchusev's projects is very difficult. It is twofold. On the one hand, in many cases the names of Shchusev's employees who participated in the design of some buildings in the 1920s are known. Some are listed in the lists of his work as co-authors or assistants. But it is impossible to identify their contribution to the work, as well as the design process itself. In some cases, we are talking about long-term employees of Shchusev, who did not have or almost did not have, judging by the official information, independent projects (Andrey Snigirev, Nikifor Tamonkin, Isidor French, etc.). But, say, Shchusev's co-author on the building of the People's Commissariat for Land in Moscow, among his other employees (D. Bulgakov, I. Frenchman, G. Yakovlev), is a very bright and independent architect Alexander Grinberg. How the joint work proceeded and what was the contribution of individual participants to it - one can only guess.
On the other hand, after 1933 Shchusev had to deal with the alteration of constructivist buildings already designed and even partially built by other architects, for example, the Mossovet hotel (architects Savelyev and Stapran), the theater in Novosibirsk (architect A. Grinberg), the Meyerhold theater in Moscow (architects Barkhin and Vakhtangov). Moreover, there was no talk of joint work here, on the contrary, Shchusev, on orders from above, distorted other people's projects, adjusting them to Stalin's tastes.
There was no smell of joint work here, therefore, it is hardly possible to call Shchusev a co-author of Grinberg for the theater in Novosibirsk or Savelyev with Stapran for the Mossovet hotel. Although in the latter case, Savelyev and Stapran themselves were engaged in the revision of the original project under the formal leadership of Shchusev.
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zooming 1/3 Hotel Mossovet, 1933. Perspective (option) Source: Sokolov, NB. A. V. Shchusev. Moscow, 1952, p. 160
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zooming 2/3 Mossovet Hotel, 1933. Side facade Source: Sokolov, NB A. V. Shchusev. Moscow, 1952, p. 160
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zooming 3/3 Alexey Shchusev et al. Opera House in Novosibirsk, 1934. Model Source: Lozhkin, A. Opera. Project Siberia, 2005, p. 26
In addition, the problem of authorship is directly linked to the problem of departmental subordination. In architecture (and in art in general), the author of a work in the literal sense of the word is the one who makes artistic decisions. The person who only performs them is the executor. If an architect is a subordinate person (both in the administrative and in the censorship sense), then he is not able to make independent artistic decisions. In this case, the real author of his works may be his direct superiors or officials of the censorship department.
Shchusev, like all other Soviet architects, was included in the system of departmental and censorship subordination. Therefore, an analysis of his work must necessarily be an analysis of the extent to which the artistic result of his work depended on him personally, and to what extent - on his superiors and censorship.
This is where the customer problem arises. Most often, in Soviet times, the architect's customer was his boss, since all design institutes were departmental. But even if the customer represented another department, the most important chief was still common to all of them. Therefore, equal contractual relations between the architect and the customer, characteristic of the pre-revolutionary times and partly of the NEP era, were already completely impossible in Stalin's time. Neither the client nor the architect were independent and could not express their own thoughts and ideas. They were officials who did not have free will and freedom to make decisions. Which naturally left a strong imprint on the design process and on its results.
There is also the problem of authorship of Shchusev's design graphics. Shchusev was an excellent draftsman and watercolourist. His architectural sketches and drawings of the pre-revolutionary period are well recognizable. But already since at least 1914, from the beginning of the design of the Kazan station, Shchusev led a group of assistant executors, among whom were excellent architectural graphics, for example, Nikifor Tamonkin. In Soviet times, Shchusev was a big boss from the very beginning, he was subordinate to many architects and graphic artists. Drawings intended for approval by higher authorities, including large color feeds, were usually signed by "Academician Shchusev", but that did not mean that he did them himself.
Dmitry Chechulin, Shchusev's student at VKHUTEMAS, then an employee of his workshop No. 2 of the Moscow City Council and Shchusev's successor as head of the workshop wrote in the article "This is how Shchusev worked": "He always only drew - I don't remember him at the drawing board. Shchusev saw his task in expressing an idea, a general, defining direction, so to speak, the idea of a future structure. It was intended to reveal the grain of the artistic image. The drawings, as a rule, were developed by his assistants. " [xvi] It is safe to assume that the color and black-and-white submissions of Shchusev's projects of the 1920s - 40s, known from publications, were very diverse in style, were made by his assistants, and only signed by him. The authors of some are known, for example, Eugene Lanceray, Isidore French. Others remain unnamed. And this is a pity, since there are some very interesting graphic works among them.
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Judging by the official publications of the Soviet era (and there were no others), Shchusev is not only a great architect in all his manifestations, whose natural creative evolution ideally coincided with all the vagaries of the development of Soviet architecture as a whole. He is also a sincere supporter of Soviet power from its very birth and, in general, a Soviet person to the core. This is confirmed by the articles and speeches of Shchusev himself over the last 30 years of his life.
In reality, the situation was quite different.
In principle, censored publications of the Soviet era cannot be regarded as direct sources of information about the views and thoughts of their formal authors. In this sense, they are always deceitful. The problem is that Soviet history (especially Stalinist) is almost devoid of uncensored sources of information - letters, diaries, personal documents.
Diaries and memoirs (real, without regard to censorship) in the 1920s and 1930s were written and published in abundance by emigrants. But their personal experience was limited, as a rule, to the pre-revolutionary era and, at best, to the first half of the 1920s.
For those who by the end of the 1920s (and beyond) remained in the USSR, this kind of occupation became dangerous. Correspondence with foreign countries (and internal ones too) was reviewed, and diary entries in the event of an arrest, the probability of which was unpredictable, could cost lives.
In the 1930s and 1940s, honest diaries in the USSR were kept either by those absolutely loyal to the regime, or very brave, or very frivolous people. To this day, very few of them have been published. The artist Eugene Lansere was such a brave or frivolous person. His diaries, published in 2009, are almost the only reliable and non-opportunistic source of personal information about Alexei Shchusev. [Xvii]
Yevgeny Lansere was an old friend and colleague of Shchusev; even before the revolution he worked with him on the design of the Kazan station.
Lanceray did not emigrate, unlike his uncle Alexander Benois and sister Zinaida Serebryakova, he made a career in the USSR. In the 1920s, Lanceray was a professor at the Academy of Arts in Tbilisi, and since 1933 he has been living in Moscow. He receives titles and awards, and occupies an important place in the Soviet artistic hierarchy, although not as high as Shchusev. Lanceray had only one Stalin Prize of the second degree (1943). He paints frescoes for the Kazansky railway station and the Moskva hotel built by Shchusev, fulfills other orders of Shchusev, for example, makes prospects for his design for the NKVD building on Lubyanskaya Square, sketches for Lenin's sarcophagus and graphics for Shchusev's project for the restoration of Istra. Lanceray receives huge royalties and lives in a large apartment (which was a huge privilege), a luxurious life according to the concepts of that time.
At the same time, as is clear from the diary, Lanceray felt both the Soviet regime and his own activities to serve it with a deep and sincere disgust. And not only because his brother, the architect Nikolai Lancere, was arrested twice and died in prison in 1942. Lanceray's attitude in the Soviet regime is typical for people of his age and upbringing, no matter what career they made with her. The only difference is in the degree of cynicism and in the readiness to mentally fit into the new system of social relations. In this sense, Lanceray's diaries stand next to the diaries of Korney Chukovsky. Yes, and humanly they were apparently similar.
The record of the sentence to his brother dated March 22, 1932 is accompanied by the phrase: “Bastards. I am penetrated deeper and deeper into the consciousness that we are enslaved by the scum of the people, boors; rudeness, arrogance, misunderstanding and dishonesty in everything, completely unimaginable under other regimes.”[xviii]
On May 10, 1934 Lanceray writes: “… They broke the Sukharev tower. It is disgusting to work for these people - they are so alien, and so disgusting is that pack of intriguers that stick around the ignorant … ". [xix]
One of the most harsh entries in the diary is dated July 28, 1944: “An idiotic regime, very convenient only for an insignificant handful of fed people, and for our, partly, brother, the“entertainer”. Therefore, we are willingly trying …”. [xx] Shchusev undoubtedly belongs to the community of "amusers".
The entire circle of his contacts - and this is the architectural and artistic elite of Stalin's Moscow - divides Lanceray into decent and dishonest people. Shchusev, he unequivocally refers to decent. And this gives reason to believe that Shchusev's views on life and Soviet power were not too different from those of Lanceray.
Lanceray often mentions that Shchusev is more decent than many. For example, in 1932, shortly after arriving in Moscow: “Grabari, Konchalovsky, Zholtovsky - this is for the sake of politics. I single out Shchusev from this company - he is also a very "artist" (the station is very talented) and more benevolent than those … ". [xxi]
Better among architects than about Shchusev, Lancer writes only about Viktor Vesnin. In the entry of July 20, 1939, it is about the arrested brother, Nikolai Lancer, and in this regard, human assessments of acquaintances of “his circle” are given: “Yesterday I was at V. A. Vesnin, on his part, a truly human, honest and cordial attitude. I consider him better than Shchusev and Zholtovsky, and even more so Shchuka; I don't know Fomin; the same real person was Tamanov.”[xxii]
Shchusev was quite frank with Lanceray. This is evidenced by the entry in the diary of February 20, 1943: ““A. B. said that he no longer had ambition - that our regime had corroded him. But Nesterov had - he hated Grabar; in Zholtovsky, that someone is digging under him …”. [xxiii]
We are talking here about the professional ambition of Shchusev, about the natural desire for an artist to achieve success in his work. The environment in which Shchusev exists at this time allows him to enjoy a mass of hierarchical privileges, but excludes creative satisfaction. The ambition of Nesterov and Zholtovsky, sarcastically noted by Lanceray, is of a completely different nature. Undoubtedly, Shchusev's phrase also answered Lancera's thoughts, therefore it appeared in the diary.
Shchusev's words about the loss of ambition under the Soviet regime are well illustrated by his own phrase from his autobiography written in 1938. Shchusev describes the activities of the architectural group under the leadership of Zholtovsky in 1918 at the Moscow Council, where he himself was "the chief master." The group was engaged in projects of reconstruction and landscaping of Moscow: “All this was done handicraft, without guidelines that could only be given by the leaders and leaders of the revolution. We, the architects, did it, as we understood.”[Xxiv]
Such self-deprecation could not but cost dearly a self-respecting and really very talented person. Shchusev has regularly voiced such servile texts on duty since the very beginning of the 1920s. This was an indispensable part of his professional activity during the Soviet era.
At the same time, Shchusev felt in the environment in which he rotated much more confident and natural than Lanceray, which the latter is partly even ironically jealous of. Record dated October 8, 1943: “… Alexey Viktorovich had - here's a happy (and also good) person - his social qualities come (besides, of course, intelligence, talent, and memory) from this naive, even sweet complacency: he can tell and share with full faith the thoughts that come to him, without doubting their value …”. [xxv]
Lancer is completely foreign to such complacency. He notes as something amazing the ability of Shchusev to feel happy only because of his hierarchical position and administrative activities and despite not only the lack of opportunities for creativity, but also the difficult family situation. Record of January 9, 1944: “Again I will say: Sh [seated], happy that he is invariably pleased with his activities (both artistic [divinely] -architectural], and society [en]), but lives among a silent wife and with a fallen into insanity as a daughter, a maid servant and a disgusting wife of a son in a narrow corridor!..”[xxvi]
Lanceray himself is almost always dissatisfied with his work, for which he received money and awards. Here is an entry dated August 12, 1938 (about sketches for the Soviet pavilion at an exhibition in New York in 1939): “From the point of view of the storyline, this is terribly boring to me. … From this enthusiasm - smiling faces, outstretched hands - turns back! And yet this is the only thing to do - in the Palace of Soviets. " Entry dated June 26, 1943: “Here on my wall there are sketches for Dv. Sov. And I am sick of "jubilant proletarians of all countries." [xxvii]
It can be assumed that Shchusev was also sick of what he did, wrote and spoke at all sorts of official events at this time. In the 50s, more than seditious statements by Shchusev circulated in the architectural environment.
For example, about the building of the NKVD on Lubyanskaya Square: “They asked me to build a torture chamber, so I built a more funky torture chamber for them”.
Or about “socialist realism”, officially announced in 1932 as the only creative method of all Soviet architects: “I am ready to give my monthly salary to someone who will explain to me what socialist realism is in architecture.” [Xxviii] The effect of this statement was enhanced by the well-known in architectural circles Shchusev's avarice.
Another fronder statement by Shchusev is cited by S. O. Khan-Magomedov: "If I knew how to negotiate with the priests, then I will somehow come to an agreement with the Bolsheviks." [xxix]
Apparently, it refers to the early Soviet period, the 1920s, when Shchusev really managed to occupy one of the highest places in the Soviet hierarchy, practically without sacrificing the artistic level of his works. But after the sole seizure of power by Stalin in 1929, the situation changed. It was possible to negotiate with the new bosses only on their terms. There was no chance of compromise. Shchusev understood this faster and better than others.
Therefore, from a group of first-tier architects close to the government in the late 1920s, Shchusev was almost the only one to switch to a new style, without even making an attempt to preserve the old principles. From the very beginning, he knew the value of the Stalinist leadership and did not consider it necessary to fight it, risking his career.
Shchusev conveyed the meaning of the Stalinist artistic reform of 1932 in one frank phrase, also preserved in the memory of his contemporaries: “The state requires pomp.” [Xxx]
However, those who tried to preserve their former professional convictions or at least combine them with the new requirements (the Vesnin brothers, Moisey Ginzburg, Konstantin Melnikov, Ivan Fomin) also failed. The process of their re-education, which lasted for several years, was humiliating, and the results were disastrous.
In the work of Shchusev, there was no such transitional period. He switched to the unconditional execution of new installations immediately, which, apparently, ensured his career success in the early 30s. When Shchusev negotiated with the priests before the revolution, he built charming churches. It was possible to reach an agreement with Stalin only at the cost of losing all meaning of professional activity.
In the character of Shchusev, a successful (both for his career, and at the same time - for reputation among decent people) way combined power, the desire to lead large teams, carry out major government tasks, while using the nomenklatura benefits - and contempt for his own bosses and for the Soviet regime as a whole. … This could be called cynicism, but - in conditions when everyone was forced to be cynics by virtue of the instinct of self-preservation - it can also be called wisdom.
In Stalin's society, an alternative to cynicism was a sincere belief in the correctness and justice of what was happening. The cynics were opposed by sincere Stalinists. Shchusev's cynicism had an undoubted positive side - he did not try to force himself to believe in the meaningfulness of what was happening. Under a dictatorship, this quality often means preserving not a good name (no one succeeds), but personal dignity. Which, however, could only be understood by a narrow circle of close people.
The German architect Bruno Taut worked in Moscow in the summer of 1932 and was Shchusev's rival in the competition for the redesign of the Mossovet hotel. The Stalinist architectural reform has just happened, but few people still understand its meaning. In one of his letters from Moscow, Taut gives irritated characteristics to the first persons of Soviet architecture, including Shchusev: “… Shchusev, who always floats above like a drop of fat and makes jokes with Slavic breadth.” [Xxxi] In another letter, Taut mentions Shchusev, who, as the chairman of the architectural and technical council, does not want to spoil relations with anyone and therefore is not able to stick to one line. [xxxii]
At the same time, there were traits in the character and artistic inclinations of Shchusev that prevented his one hundred percent success in Stalin's time.
All his best works of pre-revolutionary times, both churches and the Kazan station, are characterized by complex spatial compositions that follow the functions of the building, the primacy of volumetric plasticity over decor and a declarative rejection of symmetry and monumentality. It can be assumed that it was precisely these features of artistic thinking that allowed Shchusev to very quickly perceive modern architecture in the early 1920s and become its prominent representative.
The emergence of modern architecture at the beginning of the twentieth century both in Europe, and a little later in Russia, was due to a qualitative leap in the professional thinking of architects. In the realization that the meaning of design lies not in the art of decorating facades for something familiar, but in the spatial development of the building's function and its plastic comprehension. Shchusev, like the Vesnin brothers and many of their other colleagues, made such a leap easily and practically effortlessly (Zholtovsky, for example, did not succeed at all).
But these same features of artistic thinking prevented Shchusev from fully fitting into Stalinist architecture with its demand for pathos, symmetry, order monumentality and superhuman scale. And with its complete indifference to the functional and spatial meaning of the structures. It can be assumed that in order to unconditionally and thoughtlessly surrender to all this, Shchusev had too much culture and a sense of humor.
Shchusev is organically alien to monumentality, therefore, after winning a closed competition in 1933 for redesigning the Mossovet hotel, he took part in the country's main contests quite unsuccessfully.
Shchusev mastered symmetry, but with the order monumentality it was worse. From its former compositional sophistication and exciting play of spatial elements, only a crushed decorativeness, superimposed on primitively organized facade planes and template planning schemes, remained. In all of his projects of the Stalinist era, one can feel confusion, the absence of a clear compositional logic, work at random, relying on someone else's taste that is not too clear to him. Or indifference.
On this field, he could not compete with those colleagues who were imbued with the atmosphere of the Stalinist Empire and felt quite comfortable in it. Alexey Viktorovich Shchusev. Materials for the biobibliography of scientists of the USSR. Architecture series, issue 1. Ed. Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Moscow-Leningrad, 1947. [ii] Sokolov, N. B.: A. V. Shchusev. M., 1952. [iii] Works of Academician A. V. Shchusev, awarded the Stalin Prize. Publishing house of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1954. yu [iv] E. V. Druzhinina-Georgievskaya / Ya. A. Kornfeld: A. V. Shchusev. Publishing house of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow, 1955. [v] Alexey Shchusev: Documents and materials / Comp. M. V. Evstratova, after. E. B. Ovsyannikova. - M.: S. E. Gordeev, 2011. [vi] D. V. Capeen-Varditz: Temple architecture by A. V. Shchusev, M., 2013. [vii] Vaskin, A. A. Shchusev: Architect of All Russia., Molodaya Gvardiya, M., 2015 [viii] V. L. Kulaga Architecture of the building of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in Tbilisi, M., 1950 [ix] Marianna Evstratova, Sergei Koluzakov. Russian pavilion in Venice. A. V. Shchusev. M., 2014 [x] Marianna Evstratova, Sergey Koluzakov. Church of St. Nicholas in Bari. The project of the architect A. V. Shchusev. M., 2017. [xi] Khan-Magomedov, S., Mausoleum. M. Yu 1972, p. 39. [xii] Shchusev P. V. Pages from the life of academician A. B. Shchusev. M.: S. E. Gordeev, 2011, p. 332. [xiii] See Kazus, Igor. Soviet architecture of the 200s: design organization. M., 2009. [xiv] Yearbook of the MAO, No. 5, 1928, p. 7. [xv] Shchusev P. Pages from the life of academician A. B. Shchusev. M.: S. E. Gordeev, 2011, p. 210. [xvi] Chesulin, D. So Shchusev Created. "Moscow", 1978, No. 11, p174. [xvii] For more details on Lancer's diaries, see: Dmitry Khmelnitsky. "It's disgusting to work for these people …". Electronic journal "GEFTER", 10.08.2015, https://gefter.ru/archive/15714 [xviii] Lansere, Eugene. Diaries. Book two. M., 2008, p. 604 [xix] Lanceray, Eugene. Diaries. Book three. M., 2009, p. 38 [xx] Lanceray, Eugene. Diaries. Book three. M., 2009, p. 631 [xxi] Lanceray, Eugene. Diaries. Book two. M., 2008, p. 661. Record of November 27, 1932 [xxii] Lansere, Eugene. Diaries. Book three. M., 2009, from 367 [xxiii] Lansere, Eugene. Diaries. Book three. M., 2009, from 560. [xxiv] Shchusev P. V. Pages from the life of Academician Shchusev. M., 2011. S. 336. [xxv] Lansere, Eugene. Diaries. Book three. M., 2009, p. 595. [xxvi] Lansere, Eugene. Diaries. Book three. M., 2009, from 612. [xxvii] Lansere, Eugene. Diaries. Book three. M., 2009, p. 575. [xxviii] Information by Sergey Khmelnitsky. [xxix] Khan-Magomedov, S. O. Ivan Fomin. Moscow, 2011, p. 90. [xxx] Barshch, Michael. Memories. In: MARKHI, vol. I, M., 2006, p. 113. [xxxi] Kreis, Barbara. Bruno Taut. Moskauer Briefe 1932-1933-Berlin, 2006, S. 236. [xxxii] Kreis, Barbara. Bruno Taut. Moskauer Briefe 1932-1933-Berlin, 2006, S. 288.
