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Terror in Soviet Architecture: The Murder of Mikhail Okhitovich

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Hugh D. Hudson Jr.
Hugh D. Hudson Jr.*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Georgia State University
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Extract

Throughout the 1920s and into the years of Stalinism, progressive architects in the Soviet Union sought to construct new forms of housing and settlement that would offer the best of modern technology and whose design would include provisioning of services that would allow all citizens, especially women, to partake in creative work. Schools, dining facilities, laundries, parks, cinemas, clubs and housing in a choice of styles formed the core of these architectural dreams. In the tradition of the Populists, modernist architects initially saw themselves as teachers but some came to appreciate the necessity of listening and began to learn from worker assessments of housing and urban design. This communication formed the basis for bridging, at least in housing, the cultural gap between revolutionary elites and common people. Inherent in the modernist movement in architecture, as reflected most eloquently in the work of the Association of Contemporary Architects (OSA), was a greater democratization of political and social life.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , Fall 1992 , pp. 448 - 467
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1992

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References

Research for this article was made possible by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the International Research and Exchanges Board, and the College of Arts and Sciences and the Department of History of Georgia State University. I wish to thank Professor Robert W. Thurston for his comments and suggestions. An earlier version of this article was presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies Annual Conference, Miami, November 1991.

1. For a general discussion of the early years of Soviet architecture, see Khazanova, V. E., Sovetskaia arkhitektura pervykh let Oktiabria: 1917-1925 gg. (Moscow: Nauka, 1970 Google Scholar; Afanasiev, K. N., ed., Iz istorii sovetskoi arkhitektury 1926-1932: dokurnenty i materialy (Moscow: Nauka, 1970)Google Scholar; Khan-Magomedov, Selim O., Pioneers of Soviet Architecture: The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s (New York: Rizzoli, 1987 Google Scholar; and Astaf'eva-Dlugach, M. I., et al., Zodchie Moskvy: XX vek (Moscow: Moskovskii rabochii, 1988).Google Scholar

2. For an analysis of OSA politics see: Hudson, Hugh D. Jr., ‘ “The Social Condenser of Our Epoch': The Association of Contemporary Architects and the Creation of a New Way of Life in Revolutionary Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 34, no. 4 (1986): 557–78.Google Scholar

3. OSA's positions were best articulated by Ginzburg in his Stil’ i epokha (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924) and incorporated into the program for his course “Theory of Architectural Composition “: Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv literatury i iskusstva (hereafter TsGALl), f. 681 (VKhUTEMAS-VKhUTEIN), op. 2, d. 106, 11. 29-35. ASNOVA's psychological theories were best presented by Nikolai Dokuchaev. See especially, “Sovremennaia russkaia arkhitektura i zapadnye paralleli,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, no. 1 (1927): 5-12 and no. 2 (1927): 5-15; “Arkhitektura i planirovka gorodov,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, no. 6 (1926): 10-15; and “Zhilishchnoe stroitel'stvo i arkhitektura,” Sovetskoe iskusstvo, no. 3 (1928): 48-58.

4. hvestiia VTsJK (25 December 1920), quoted in Lodder, Christina, Russian Constructivism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 109 Google Scholar.

5. Dokuchaev, N, “Sovremennaia russkaia arkhitektura i zapadnye paralleli,” chast’ 1, Sovetskoe iskusstvo, no. 1 (1927): 6–10 Google Scholar. See too Shalavin, F. and Lamtsov, I., “O levoi fraze v arkhitekture,” Krasnaia nov', no. 8 (1927): 226–39Google Scholar. The accusation of “mechanism” was to become a mainstay of Stalinist invectives against Bukharin and others who stressed the necessity of an evolutionary path to socialism. Dokuchaev was the first champion of the term in architectural discourse.

6. Shalavin, F. and Lamtsov, I., “O putiakh razvitiia sovremennoi arkhitekturnoi mysli,” Pechat’ i revoliutsiia, no. 9 (1929): 49–69 Google Scholar.

7. For a discussion of the controversy over the dialectic in marxist theory see, Jordan, Z. A., The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1967)Google Scholar.

8. Paul Larner Willen, “Soviet Architecture in Transformation: A Study in Ideological Manipulation” (M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1953), 95-96.

9. “Protocol of the Meeting of the Presidium of the Architecture Faculty,” 17 June 1927: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 88, 11. 42 ob.; “Protocol of the Meeting of the Soviet of the Architecture Faculty,” 20 June 1927: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 90, 11. 43 ob-44; “Protocol of the Administration,” undated, but located between Protocols for 8 November and 14 November 1927: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 88, 1. 118. Born to an Armenian merchant family in 1897, Alabian had initially attended seminary in Tblisi, where he spent the war years. He moved to Moscow after the February revolution, enrolled in the College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and for five months studied sculpture. Immediately following the October revolution he joined the Communist Party and served two months in the Red Army in Georgia and Armenia. In1923, the Armenian Communist Party sent him to study architecture at VKhUTEMAS where his talent was judged mediocre: “Questionnaire of K. S. Alabian “: TsCALI, f. (581, op. 1, d. 40, 1. 2. Alabian's poor performance at VKhUTEMAS included his failure successfully to complete a summer practicum in 1926 and the decision by the Architecture Faculty in 1928 not to allow him to begin work toward his diploma: “Protocol of the Meeting of the Presidium of the Architecture Faculty,” 3 November 1926: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 2, d. 92, 1. 65; “Protocol No. 6 of the Meeting of the Examination Committee of the Architecture Faculty,” 10 October 1928: TsCALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 93, I. 25 ob.

10. For an informed discussion of the impact of the grain crisis on the psychology of the Stalin leadership, see Viola, Lynne, The Best Sons of the Fatherland: Workers in the Vanguard of Soviet Collectivization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987 Google Scholar.

11. “Protocol of the Meeting of the Scientific-Artistic Curriculum Committee of the Architecture Faculty,” 16 March 1928: TsCALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 92, 1. 14; “Protocol of the Curriculum Committee,” 30 April 1928: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 92, 1. 24.

12. The first recorded social purge at VKhUTEMAS took place the day following thePravda sanction: “Protocol of the Presidium of the Administration,” 6 February 1929: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 8, 1. 8. Further purges were recorded in the “Protocol of the Meeting of the Presidium,” 23 February 1929: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 8, 1. 27. In one example, N. N. Kulikov denounced a fellow student, Kibirev, in April, only to find himself denounced the following month: “Protocol of the Meeting of the Presidium,” 27 April 1929: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 2-a, 1. 62; “Protocol of the Meeting of the Presidium,” 21 May 1929: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 2-a, II. 60-60 ob. OSA's leading graduate students, Mikhail Barshch, Mikhail Siniavskii and Nikolai Krasilnikov werepurged in November: “Protocol of the Meeting of the Presidium,” 19 November 1929: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 2-a, 1. 5. For a discussion of the Komsomol and its relationship to the cultural revolution, see Fitzpatrick, Sheila, “Cultural Revolution as Class War,” in Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 1928-1931 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), 8–40.Google Scholar

13. “Protocol of the Meeting of the Soviet of VKhUTEIN [VKhUTEMAS],” 5 December 1929: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 2, 11. 77-78. Significant progress had actually been made at VKhUTEMAS in educating the lower classes. According to data obtained from questionnaires completed by all 1203 students during 1926 (TsGALI, f. 681, op. 2, d. 436, 11. 27-92), over half the students that year were from peasant or worker backgrounds (peasant = 26.5%, worker = 25.0%), a figure that compares well to that of the St. Petersburg Polytechnic in 1909 when only 6.5 percent came from those classes. The following academic year, 1927-28, the worker component was even stronger, with 30.5 percent being either workers or children of workers, whereas the peasant percentage dropped to 15.9 percent: “Protocol of the Soviet,” 16 December 1927: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 2, 1. 37. But much of the social structure of tsarist education remained; a plurality of students (32.1% in 1926 and 47.3% in 1927) were the children of former tsarist officials. This was even more true in 1928 when 60 percent of the newly admitted students were from the former service and free-professions classes: “Protocol of the Soviet,” 16 December 1927: TsGALI, f. 681, op. 3, d. 2, I. 39 ob. But despite this high representation of the children of the old elite, the Party and Komsomol also were relatively well represented among the students, with 7.9 percent being either full or candidate members in 1926 and 6.6 percent in 1927, and 13.8 percent (1926) and 11.3 percent (1927) of the student body members of the Komsomol. This is particularly striking given that in 1926 only some 0.6 percent of the population enjoyed party membership.

14. The Party Group's inability to win younger architects over to socialist realism from modernism remained the central concern of meetings in preparation for the First Congress. For the Party's own assessment of its failure see, for example: “Protocol of the Meeting of the Party Group,” 27 September 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 7, II. 4-7; “Protocol of the Meeting of the Fraction of the All-Union Union of Architects to Prepare for the Congress,” 4 November 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 1, 1. 35-40 ob.; “Protocol of the Meeting of the Party Group,” 20 November 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 1, 1. 46-47 ob.; “Plan of Mass Work in Preparation for the All-Union Congress of Architects,” 27 November 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 1, d. 12, II. 18-19; “Stenogram of the Party-Komsomol Meeting,” 22 December 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 8, 11. 61-68 ob.; “Protocol of the Meeting of the Secretariat of the Orgcommittee,” 7 March 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 1, d. 12, 1. 86. The concern with the failure to win over the younger architects was heightened by Lazar Kaganovich's condemnation of the Party Group's efforts at a special meeting he called with the Group in September 1934: “Protocol of the Meeting of the Party Group,” 27 September 1934, 11.5-5 ob.

15. Even so perceptive an architectural historian as Khan-Magomedov falls victim to this myth; see Pioneers, pp. 260-64.

16. “Excerpt from the Protocol of the Meeting of the Central Commission of the VKP (b) for Purges,” 11 November 1934: TsGALI, f. 674 (Union of Soviet Architects), op. 2, d. 16 (former Secret Fond SSA No. 9), 1. 5.

17. N. Krasil'nikov, “Problemy sovremennoi arkhitektury,” Sovremennaia arkhitektura (hereafterSA), no. 6 (1928): 170-75. In 1890 New York City had an overall density of only 38, 400 persons per square mile, with the most populous area, the Tenth Ward on the Lower East Side, having a density of 334, 000 per square mile. The problems associated with such massive density would in part be overcome through helicopter service to roofs and moving sidewalks. For a discussion of the motif of flight dominant at this time, see Elizabeth Klosty Beaujour, “Architectural Discourse and Early Soviet Li terature, “/owma/ of the History of Ideas 44 (1983): 477-95.

18. M. Okhitovich, “K probleme goroda,” SA, no. 4 (1929): 131-34 (quotation 134); M. Okhitovich, “Zametki po teorii rasseleniia,” SA, no. 1-2 (1930): 7-16; M. Okhitovich, “'Marksistskaia’ zashchita kommunal'nogo sotsializma,” SA, no. 5 (1930): 12; M. Barshch, V. Vladimirov, M. Okhitovich, N. Sokolov, “Poiasnitel'naia zapiska k proekty sotsialisticheskogo rasseleniia Magnitogor'ia,” SA, no. 1-2 (1930): 40-57.

19. Located in a straight line along a major transportation artery, the ribbon city would include both factory workers and peasants. Residents would be provided with individual apartments set in green zones with plenty of sunshine and fresh air, and offered polytechnic education. See M. Barshch and M. Ginzburg, “Zelenyi gorod,” SA, no. 1-2 (1930): 17-37.

20. M. Barshch and M. Ginzburg, “Osnovye printisipy sotsialisticheskoi organi-f zatsii Zelenogo goroda,” SA, no. 1-2 (1930): 24-32; “Sushchnost’ zhilishchnogo voprosa,” SA, no. 6 (1930): 6-9; “General'nyi plan polosy rasseleniia,” SA, no. 6 (1930): I 1; Okhitovich, “Zametki po teorii rasseleniia,” 12-13. .

21. M. Okhitovich, “K probleme goroda,” SA, no. 4 (1929): 131-34; “Zametki po | teorii rasseleniia,” SA, no. 1-2 (1930): 7-16; “'Marksistskaia’ zashchita kommunal'nogo f sotsializma,” SA, no. 5 (1930): 12. j.

22. “Prikaz No. 21 MO VANO,” 27 April 1932: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 1, d. 4, 1. 21; | “Prikaz No. 23 MOVANO,” 11 May 1932: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 1, d. 4, 1. 22 ob. |

23. “Excerpt from the Protocol of the Meeting of the Central Commission of the tf VKP (b) for Purges,” 4 February 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 16 (former Secret Fond | SSA No. 9), 1. 6.

24. “Excerpts from Protocol No. 3 of the Party Commission of the Central Institute of Experimental Hydrology and Meteorology,” 28 January 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 16, 11.9-10.

25. Ibid., 1. 10 ob.

26. Ibid., 1. 9. The second charge was an attempt to use the technicality that Okhitovich, despite having higher education, had not received his diploma in architecture.

27. Letter to Party Group of the Organizational Committee of the Union of Soviet Architects, Comrade Alabian, from Zakharov, dated 29 January 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 14, 1. 33.

28. For a recent discussion of the events leading to the assassination and the immediate events afterward, see Robert Tucker, C., Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928-1941 (New York: Norton, 1990), 271–302 Google Scholar.

29. “The National Form of Socialist Architecture,” TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 14, 11. 15-31.

30. “Stenographic Report of the Meeting of the Party Group of the Organizational Committee of the Union,” 14 March 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 13, 1. 23.

31. Ibid., 1. 2.

32. Ibid., 1. 4.

33. Ibid., 11. 7-11.

34. Ibid., 1. 12.

35. Ibid., 1. 13.

36. “The National Form of Socialist Architecture,” 1. 15.

37. Ibid., 1. 18.

38. “Architecture in the Planning of the Socialist City: Theses for the Report of Soviet Architects at the Conference on Town Planning,” 13 January 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 1, d. 7, II. 113-16. For a discussion of the significance of the vertical in Stalinist architecture, see Papernyi, Vladimir, Kul'tura “Dva” (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1985 Google Scholar.

39. Ibid., 1. 18 ob.

40. Ibid., 1. 31.

41. “Stenographic Report of the Meeting of the Party Group of the Organizational Committee of the Union,” 14 March 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 13, 1. 15.

42. Ibid., 1. 17.

43. Ibid., 11. 23-33.

44. Ibid., 1. 20.

45. Ibid., 1. 21.

46. “The National Form of Socialist Architecture,” TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 14, 11. 78-81.

47. “Stenographic Report of the Meeting of the Party Group of the Organizational Committee of the Union,” 14 March 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 13, 1. 18.

48. Ibid., 11. 25-26.

49. Ibid., 1. 27.

50. Ibid., 1. 29.

51. Ibid., 1. 30.

52. Ibid., 1. 32.

53. Ibid., 1. 33.

54. “Protocol of the Meeting of the Party Group of the Organizational Committee of the Union of Soviet Architects,” 8 March 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 14, 1. 5.

55. “Protocol of the Meeting of the Party Group of the Union of Soviet Architects,” 19 March 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 14, 1. 8.

56. Secret letter from Zakharov as Head of the Technical Secretariat of the Organizational Committee of the Union of Soviet Architects to the Peoples’ Commissariat of Internal Affairs dated 5 April 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 14, 1. 2.

57. Secret letter from Alabian to Kaganovich, 15 September 1935: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 11, 11.4-7.

58. “Protocol of the Secretariat of the Organizational Committee,” 21 February 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 12, 11. 11 ob.-14.

59. “Protocol of the Secretariat of the Organizational Committee,” 27 April 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 12, 11.26-26 ob.

60. “Protocol of the Plenum of the Secretariat,” 13 February 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 12, 1. 9.

61. Letter from Alabian to Khrushchev, 7 April 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 20, 1. 14.

62. “Resolutions of the Expanded Meeting of the Party Group of the All-Union Organizational Committee of the S.S.A. together with the Party Active of Moscow Architects,” 2 September 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 19, 11. 21-26.

63. See Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 9 (1936): 2, where Lisagor and Okhitovich are singled out as leaders of the trotskyists on the architectural front.

64. Letter from Viacheslav Shkvarikov to Mamedov and Paklin, 7 September 1936: TsGAU, f. 674, op. 2, d. 20, 1. 33.

65. Letter from Mamedov and Paklin to Shkvarikov, 23 September 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 20, 1. 40.

66. “Protocol of the Meeting of the Secretariat of the Organizational Committee,” 22 October 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 12, 1. 85. The special file on “The Aleksandrov Affair” TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 19 listed on the front of the folder and recorded in the opis is missing from the archive.

67. “Protocol of the Expanded Meeting of the Organizational Committee of the Party Group,” 3 October 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2,” d. 19, 1. 27; “Protocol of the Meeting of the Organizational Committee,” 9 October 1936: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 19.1.28.

68. Cooke, Catherine, “Images in Context,” in Wilson, Janet R., ed., Architectural Drawings of the Russian Avant-Garde (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1990), 12-15.Google Scholar

69. See the architectural plans submitted by Alabian and other members of VOPRA in 1931: “VOPRA: Vsesoiuznoe ob “edininie proletarskikh arkhitektorov,” Sovetskaia arkhitektura, nos. 1-2 (1931): 65-71. See also Willen, “Soviet Architecture in Transformation,” 111-12, for a discussion of the similarity between VOPRA's submissions and those of the modernists for the competition staged in 1930 for the House of Industry in Moscow.

70. Alabian had been careful to credit the Armenian filial of VOPRA with displaying the purest form of socialist realism: see, Alabian, Karo S., “O rabote OPRA Armenii,” Sovetskaia arkhitektura, nos. 1-2 (1931): 66–68 Google Scholar. In preparations for the Congress of Soviet Architects, Alabian had further been especially careful in making sure that the Caucasus filials, where VOPRA was strong, were represented in strength: see, “Short Report on the Gathering with Comrades Dispatched to Locals in Connection with the Calling of the Congress of Architects,” 21 October 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 11, 11.56-57.

71. For a discussion of the purges in astronomy and their “local” character, see Robert McCutcheon, A., “The 1936-1937 Purge of Soviet Astronomers,” Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (1991): 100–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other recent works that stress the impact of pressure from below in the origins of the purges include Arch Getty, J., Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985 CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Thurston, Robert W., “Fear and Belief in the USSR's ‘Great Terror': Responses to Arrest, 1935-1939,” Slavic Review 45, no. 2 (1986): 213–34 and 238-44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Manning, Roberta T., “The Great Purges in a Rural District: Belyi Raion Revisited,” Russian History 16, nos. 2-4 (1989): 409–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72. Lunacharsky's role in the stalinization of architecture has to this point been insufficiently appreciated. Speaking in 1926 to the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (GAKhN), he declared that OSA's fascination with the machine was a reflection of bourgeois culture which pushed the proletariat toward individualism. By 1932 he was working closely with VOPRA in his efforts to undermine modernism. In January of that year he appeared at the plenum of the Stalinist organization and delivered hisvision of socialist architecture. The bete noire of Soviet architecture, Lunacharsky declared, was utilitarianism, that is, constructivism, which was alien to tradition. Constructivism also was devoid of “an idea.” He continued with a lengthy service in worship of the building that contained the correct idea—the proposed Palace of Soviets. “Stenogram of the Plenum of VOPRA,” 14 January 1932: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 2, II. 38-41. See also Lunacharsky's evaluation of “correct” architecture in his “Rech’ o proletarskoi arkhitekture,” Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 8 (1934): 4-5.

73. “Protocol of the Meeting of the Party Group,” 27 September 1934: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 7, 11. 5-7.

74. Letter from Bulganin to Alabian, 17 April 1938: TsGALI, f. 674, op. 2, d. 52, 1. 5.

75. Lewin, Moshe, “Society, State, and Ideology during the First Five-Year Plan,” in Fitzpatrick, , ed., Cultural Revolution in Russia, 54.Google Scholar