Despite the undeniably strong transnational element in the origins of constructivism in the USSR, the generally accepted version that the entire field of cultural production was going through the process of Marxification, in an utterly peculiar early Soviet way, seems to be a starting point safe enough. Parallel to the European avant-garde, constructivists based their practices on the importance of the spatiotemporal properties elucidated by abstract art, the modern means of the industrialized production made possible by the machines, new materials for construction, and the radical denial of the traditional art of ‘academicians’ and their classicist authorities. How non-identical were these principles either to the party line, or to the later reified version of constructivism, might be noted from the suggestion that the first and, post factum, the most iconic symbol of
architectural constructivism appeared as early as 1919, and was made by a man who was neither an architect, nor an engineer. As El Lissitsky repeatedly emphasized: ‘Tatlin created his tower ... [though] he had no schooling in
engineering, no knowledge of technical mechanics or of iron constructions’ and again: ‘[Tatlin] accomplished [the Monument] without having any special knowledge of construction’ ([1925] 1968: 372; [1929] 1984: 29) (Fig. 46).54
54 The project for the Monument to the Third International (1919–20) or Tatlin’s Tower, as it later became known in the West in its depoliticized and individualized version, was a project for a headquarters of the Comintern. It was never built, retaining the utopian potential for future
generations to be tempted by the new possibilities of reconstruction (the latest attempt was made in 2011 for the Building the Revolution: Soviet art and architecture 1915–35 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts).
120 Fig. 46 Vladimir Tatlin and his model of the Monument to the Third
International (1920)
121 Moreover, Vladimir Tatlin did not pursue any further interest in
architecture, preferring the design of new things to paper architecture; the interior to the exterior. However, it would be unfair to dismiss this as an anomaly since it did something comparable to what Shklovsky’s article, ‘The Resurrection of the Word’ [Voskreshenie slova], did in 1914 – it laid bare the device. Both were the manifestos of the new formal method to come,55 both emphasized the material and the utility of their objects (‘a word is a thing’ [slovo – veshch’]) and both were not welcomed by the Party representatives. Trotsky considered Tatlin’s monument not utilitarian enough, whereas Lunacharsky wrote that the Eifel tower is a ‘true beauty in comparison to the crooked construction of Tatlin’.56 With the benefit of long hindsight, the Marxification of literary theory was undoubtedly more
challenging a project, partially determined by the specificity of the media or, to phrase it in the terms of the 1920s, by the nature of a material far more diffuse
55 Before settling for the name ‘rationalists’, the OSA [Obshchestvo sorvemennykh arkhitektorov]
were apparently known as ‘formalists’ (see the use of the term by Lissitzky [1929] 1984: 32).
56 ‘Tatlin is undoubtedly right in rejecting national styles and allegorical sculpture in his project and subjecting the whole idea to the material and its constructive usage; but such has been the architecture of bridges, covered markets and cars for a long time already. Whether he is right in what is considered his personal invention - the rotating glass cube etc. – that he will still have to prove.’ [Что Татлин в своем проекте отбросил национальные стили, аллегорическую скульптуру, подчинив весь замысел материалу и его конструктивному использованию, - в этом он безусловно прав; но такова архитектура мостов, крытых рынков и машин уже давно. Прав ли, однако, Татлин в том, что является его личной выдумкой: вращаяющийся стеклянный куб и проч., - это ему еще придется доказать] ([1922] 1927). Trotsky’s strong-worded condemnation of Formalism is widely known (1923 [1991]-a).
Lunacharskii’s comment reveals the gap of understanding not just between the artist and the representative of power, but between the two representatives of power itself: ‘Comrade Tatlin created a paradoxical construction that could still be seen in one of the halls of the trade union. I might make a subjective mistake in the evaluation of this piece, but if Guy de Maupassant wrote that he is ready to flee from Paris not to see the metal monster – the Eiffel Tower – then, in my opinion, the Eiffel Tower is a true beauty in comparison to the crooked construction of Tatlin.’
[Тов.Татлин создал парадоксальное сооружение, которое сейчас еще можно увидеть в
122 than metal, glass and revolution.57 Yet the radically determinist ambition of the form towards the content was a shared basis to be explored.
The Soviet architectural avant-garde of the 1920s crystallized into two rival groups: the Association of New Architects [Assotsiatsiia Novykh
Arkhitektorov] (ASNOVA) (1923), or so-called rationalists, and the Union of Contemporary Architects [Obshchestvo sorvemennykh arkhitektorov] (OSA) (1925), or constructivists.58 OSA managed to firmly establish its own periodical – the journal Sovremennaia Arkhitektura (1926–31) [Contemporary Architecture (CA)] – thanks to which the group’s theoretical position was more clearly
articulated and is better preserved.59 ASNOVA, on the other hand, published only one issue of the journal Izvestiia ASNOVA [ASNOVA News] (1926) (Fig. 47), a so-called ‘non-periodical’, which was designed by El Lissitsky and is an artistic artefact in itself.
57 Shklovsky famously characterized the Monument [to the Third International] as ‘made of iron, glass and revolution’ [Памятник сделан из железа, стекла и революции] (Shklovsky [1921]
1990).
58 The purpose of this short historical background is to set a very general context; any specialist monograph on the subject gives much more detailed information as to when, why and how these two groups appeared, and who their members were from year to year (Brumfield 1990; Hudson 1995; Ikonnikov 2001; Kopp 1970; Khan-Magomedov 1996; Paperny 2002).
59 When Moisei Ginzburg became editor of CA in 1926, he invited the rationalists to publish there as well. Aleksei Gan even developed a special model of the journal that would allow only the right-hand pages to be read, so one would read the publications of OSA on one side, then turn the journal upside down and familiarize oneself with the articles and projects by ASNOVA. But the rationalists declined his invitation.
123 Fig. 47 Manifesto of ASNOVA (the title page of their only issue of ‘ASNOVA
News’)
124 Nonetheless, their programme was just as well-known since the members published regularly in such journals as Stroitel’stvo Moskvy and CA, and their projects took part in all major architectural competitions of the time. Moreover, ASNOVA had a strong institutional representation after the appointment of the architects Nikolai Ladovskii, Nikolai Dokuchaev, and the sculptor Boris Efimov to the faculty of VKhUTEMAS, the well-known Moscow technical school often compared to the Bauhaus in Germany (Chepkunova 2011). Though divergent in terms of their fundamental principles, both OSA and ASNOVA were united in their opposition to eclectic architecture and their mutual commitment to modernity, as can be discerned in the manifesto-like statements of both groups [my italics] (Figs. 47 and 48): condensers of our epoch – of the new types of architecture that correspond to the social interrelations of today and tomorrow.
Methods of construction: a new social condenser can only be constructed with the help of progressive methods.
New methods of decoration: a new form is ahead of us. It is unknown and it is to be found as the result of the goal-oriented work upon a new social thing, a new social organism.
Decoration is a consequence and a result of the life-building of the new architect (1928b).
ASNOVA believes its basis to be the material implementation of the principle of the USSR in architecture.
ASNOVA believes architecture must be equipped urgently with the tools and methods of modern science.
ASNOVA believes that in order to promote contemporary believes it to be most important to set general principles in architecture and to release it
125 from obsolete forms.
ASNOVA is working on the invention of strict and scientific terms in contemporary
architecture as it considers them to be important tools for its advancement (1926b).
Fig. 48 Programmatic statements of OSA (CA 1928 (1): 41)
Even a brief consideration of these documents confirms that although they do agree on the use of new technology, methods of construction, and the strategic
126 aim that their architecture should correspond to a newly proclaimed ‘socialist state’, the ways they seek to achieve this slightly differ. OSA stresses the
functionality of the building, and though not completely denying the form, leaves it for the future to decide. ASNOVA, on the other hand, declares the superiority of forms and rational volumes in the construction practice, at the same time mocking OSA for its overconcentration on theory and ‘paper’ architecture. Having
sketched the ‘programs’ of the two groups, it might be easier to analyse OSA’s idea of the creation of the structures needed to transform byt [way of life] by constructing not just buildings, but new ‘social condensers of the epoch’, as Moisei Ginzburg termed them,60 capable of ‘direct’ influence on people.
Fig. 49 House-commune of the cooperative union '1st Zamoskvorech’e’ [Dom-kommuna kooperativnogo tovarishchestva ‘1-e Zamoskvorech’e’] (1925-7) by the
members of ASNOVA Georgii Volfenzon and Samuil Aizikovich (image taken from:
http://moskvasovet.ucoz.com/index/dom_kommuna_kooperativnogo_tovarishhest va_1_e_zamoskvoreche/0-54)
60 ‘In constructive periods of history, i.e., in periods of the intensive formation of a new culture, what is first of all required from the architect is the invention and crystallization of social condensers for their epoch, the creation of new architectural organisms, for this epoch of designing and maintaining architectural objects — the spatial repositories for these forms of the new life.’ (Ginzburg 1927: 160)
127 The phenomenon of the house-commune was by no means a new one, originating from the phalanstère type of building offered by Charles Fourier;
however, it was rethought and modernized in the 1920s in the Soviet Union. The first all-union house-commune project competition was announced in 1926 in the journal CA:61
The necessity of creating new types of workers’ housing which would be a stage in forming the byt [way of life] of the workers of the socialist state is absolutely clear. [...] THE MAIN REQUIREMENT:
to construct a new house-organism which would form the new interaction between production and byt [environment] of the workers infiltrated with the idea of collectivism.
[Совершенно очевидна необходимость в создании новых типов
Moreover, the announcement was followed by a double-questionnaire: a ‘social and a byt one’ [sotsial’no-bytovaia] for ‘all workers’ and a ‘technical-industrial one’ [tekhno-proizvodstvennaia] for ‘specialists’. In theory, every interested person could take part and express his or her vision of the house-commune, according to the questions drafted below:
1) How do you visualize the design [veshchestvennoe oformleniie] of the new byt [way of life] of workers and what do you consider to be the philistinism of things, i.e. their petit-bourgeois essence?
2) Which new habits of everyday life do you have? Which new needs are developing and which are now dying out?
61 Ironically, here again the ‘theoretical’ call of the OSA could be juxtaposed with the
‘practicality’ of ASNOVA, whose members Georgii Volfenzon and Samuil Aizikovich submitted a project for the first communal house to Mossovet in 1925, which was constructed in 1927 and is known as ‘House-commune of the cooperative union “1st Zamoskvorech’e”’ [Dom-kommuna kooperativnogo tovarishchestva ‘1-e Zamoskvorech’e’] (Fig. 49). It is still in use today (1928a).
128 3) Which of the everyday habits can stay individual and separated and which could be co-organized as collective ones?
4) How are the problems of public catering linked with the liberation of women from their enforced social passivity?
5) What do you think about and how do you see the collective upbringing of children within the framework of new forms of collectivism and new social customs? How do you consider the possibility of organization of children’s premises which would bring up new active workers?
6) Comrade, do you have a developed plan of organization of workers’ leisure time? (1926a)
Although sociology in the USSR was fully recognized only in the 1960s, the method of ‘providing the answer in the question’ was used much earlier. It does not seem relevant to quote here the replies of the ‘workers’ to this questionnaire, as its basic presuppositions were never challenged. All in all, the features the house-commune usually included were collective facilities such as day nurseries, playgrounds, laundries, and a public dining room and kitchen, which would liberate the woman from kitchen slavery and the upbringing of children, thereby gradually abolishing the institution of the family as such, and encouraging a new way of life with no place for the self-centredness of the petit bourgeois. Before we proceed to the analysis of the actual projects of the house-communes, it must be noted that in the majority of publications on the matter (Brumfield 1990;
Ikonnikov 2001; Stites 1989) the use of the adjective ‘utopian’ to describe these projects has completely lost any critical meaning, and has turned into a ‘code word’ or label for ‘socialism’ or ‘totalitarianism’ (depending on the political views of the author). Therefore, it is rewarding to explore the notion of ‘utopia’ in terms of whether it can actually be spatial rather than textual, architectural rather than literary; and, if so, what new connotations (if any) it acquires.
129